Happy Due Date!

March 20 was the day! We made it! But no baby yet.

Which is okay. I've got SO MUCH to do. Between Hulafrog, homeschooling, running a household, making it to appointments, Wade being super busy at work, etc... I've got enough on my plate, and while it would be nice to feel like myself again, I know it'll only get crazier. :)

But it's our crazy. Some days the devil tells me, "You can't do this. This is too hard. Look, you can hardly keep up with what you've got. You're drowning and you should just give up."

But another voice tells me that this is not too hard. I can do this. I am strong and I am capable of the blessings He has given me. And if I continue to praise Him in this trying time, keep loving my kids, just don't give up yet, that I will be rewarded. I will be obedient.

And that has proven to work out pretty darn well for our family so far. 

We're ready when you are, Mystery Babe. Just please come relatively soon, because I don't want you to cook too long. I reeeeeeeaaaaaally don't want you to be 11 or 12 lbs. (Remember that Jasper was 10 lbs?)

February Challenge

My "Take a Walk Everyday" Challenge in February was a... SUCCESS!!!

Besides 2 days, I managed to take a walk everyday and it was great. I'm feeling fabulous pregnancy-wise and I almost wonder if walking has been a contributing factor.

I walked in the ocean, in the mountains of Colorado (kind of), in airports, around our neighborhood (a lot), in parks, with friends, with the kids, and by myself.

Taking a picture everyday on Instagram held me accountable and made it fun to look for different things on my walks!

{click to enlarge}

I'm going to try and continue these walks at least up until this little babe is born. (Sadly, I'm 0 for 3 for March. But really. It's SO COLD out right now! Currently 46 degrees out. Nope. That's just craziness.)

My NEXT goal is to find something I'm grateful for everyday in March. Should be a piece of cake ;)

What We've Been Up To...

THIS KID. I found him like this. He had dumped an entire bottle of olive oil into the dog's bowls and all over the floor.

And then 15 minutes later he had pushed the kitchen step over to the counter, found my cookie scoop in a  drawer and  decided to scoop out some butter. 

Reese and Thing One & Thing Two at a Reading Festival! This was shortly after I LOST Beckett. Like, panicking for 10 minutes, called over the loud speaker, sobbing 4 year old, scared mom LOST. Oy.

Same sweet 4 year old. Reese was still asleep and the boys decided they wanted to bring me breakfast in bed. Yes, you can have pie for breakfast. 

We've been going on LOTS of walks this past month, and the sunsets have been AMAZING! Not sure how I haven't noticed them before.

Our Annual Valentines Day Dinner. Cheesy Bacon Chicken, asparagus, cheesey buns, and  raspberry lemonade :)

Despite his crazy antics, I really, really, REALLY do love this kiddo.

My trip to CO in pictures!

(Edited to add that yes, I fully realize I went to Colorado in February, not January. I'll blame it on being pregnant and that this baby is somehow causing me to lose precious brain cells.)

The Beach

I went to the beach today. Sunset Beach. It was a bit cooler today so there wasn't very many people and it was perfect. Just me and Mystery Babe. 

Root beer, lunch, Pandora, a sweatshirt, a beach chair, a magazine and the seagulls.

I'm not sure what it is about this place. I'm absolutely drawn to it when I'm feeling sad. (And when I'm happy...and really, everything in between.)

I love people watching. A dad and his son finding little crabs. Grandmas looking for sea shells. A mom taking pictures of her kids splashing in the water. Couples walking hand in hand. 

I took these pics today with my phone while I walked around. It was strange not chasing little ones and just being able to relax. Part of me didn't know what to do with myself.

Until next time, saltwater.

Let's go for a walk!

And the February challenge begins! My new goal for this month is to go for a walk every day. 

We'll see how it goes!!

January a la Instagram

In an effort to document this crazy life of ours, my goal for January (I've got one for every month of 2013!) was to take part in the photo-a-day challenge on Instagram with Fat Mum Slim. It went well! I added a couple of extra pics in this collage, and of course, it only has 25 pics and there were 31 days in Jan, but the point was to be able to look back and see that our lives are full. Full of love, fun, silliness, and so SO much goodness.

{ Pics include a day at the beach, an afternoon at the pool, volunteering at a farm, a mock gymnastics meet, my growing belly, a bed full of legos, a trip to the farmers market, 
and lots of little snippets of life. }

On Not Finding Out

This child will be the first and last time we don't find out whether it's a boy or a girl.

It's driving me crazy. I don't like this feeling at all!

I'm not really the super controlling type who has to know and plan for everything, really I'm not. So I'm surprised that I don't enjoy the suspense. I'd say 90% of people look at my belly and say, "Oh, that's a boy for sure!" And at first I was mildly disappointed since I really wanted another girl and for Reese to have a sister. My boys LOVE their daddy and so sometimes it's sad that they don't want to cuddle with me. They go to sleep every night asking for their dad and wake up asking for their dad.

But it's okay! Reese and I have our own thing. And so I came to terms with having 3 crazy little boys. Legos, dinosaurs, dump trucks and dirt. My house is already covered with all of those. And I *think* we finally settled on a name. And my dreams of what my house would look like adding another boy began to take shape. Where he'd sleep, if his hand-me-down clothes would be the right season, if he'd look JUST LIKE his older brothers.

But then a few people have recently tried to convince me they think it's a GIRL.

And it's almost like I'm defensive of my little guy now and the strange thought of losing (the idea) of him feels strange! Basically, it feels like unnecessary drama that I didn't expect. *sigh* At least I've only got 8ish more weeks left. And who knows. Maybe when that little babe comes out, that feeling will be amazing (!!!) and I'll be writing another post titled, "Why Everyone Should NOT Find Out"!

Christmas 2012

What a fun Christmas we had!

We traveled to Iowa for a week just in time for a big snowy blizzard. And it was fabulous. :)

The kids' first plane ride and they were SO EXCITED! They loved it :)

While we were in Iowa the roads were just awful, but we had places to go and people to see, so we had no choice but to hit the pavement. Slowly.

At Grandma and Granpa's house!

I know, Jasper looks miserable, but he kept begging to go back out in the snow!

Once it stopped snowing, it really was gorgeous out. It felt like we were in a different country considering the past weekend we were chillin' on the beach in Clearwater.

Wade's cousin Darin graciously brought over his snowmobiles which were a HIT with the kids (and Wade) and they couldn't wait to tell all their friends back in Florida that they drove a snowmobile!!!!

We spent half the time at Wade's parents and half at mine. Both were a ton of fun and the kids got a bunch of great presents. They are so blessed to have such great grandparents!!

Tooth #6

Dad pulled out tooth 6 this morning! (His first one! Apparently I've done the rest?) She loves losing teeth. Now both front teeth are gone and she can officially sing, "All I want for Christmas is my 2 front teeth" :)

(Doesn't he look all handsome getting ready for work? He got a new job at the dealership, by the way! You'll have to ask him about it, but he's pretty excited!)

Rambling...

It's beautiful out here today! It's 70 degrees and sunny. LOVELY!! Unfortunately I've always been one of those people who let's the weather affect their mood, so this Florida sunshine just does wonders for my soul.

This morning we played at the park with a mom who I met at an event that Hulafrog had a table at. She has loved Hulafrog for awhile now and we ended up setting up a playdate complete w/ vanilla lattes :) Glad someone else (besides me!) is finding the site helpful! (PS, my love for coffee has returned! Yay!)

I've been super blessed lately w/ some great ladies in my life. I can't believe it's been almost a year since we moved down here from Iowa! I feel like it was just last week that week were packing up everything we owned and making the trip down. I feel like things are finally falling into place.

I've said all along that that we feel like God was calling us down here, for reasons we weren't sure of yet. I think my  life motto this year is going to be TRUST THE PLAN! I really do believe that He's got a really great plan laid out for each of us, as long as we trust that everything will happen the way it's supposed to, it'll all end up great. (Disclaimer: this little motto also scares the crap out of me. What if something AWFUL & TRAGIC happens? Will I still be able to say with confidence that I "trust the plan"? I pray, pray, pray that God doesn't test me like that...)

Our Thanksgiving was great. Just us. No turkey. But a neighbor did bring us a homemade pumpkin pie that was SO good. It was nice out, so we (mostly Wade and the kids...) played football outside, watched more football inside, drank hot chocolate, the kids circled every. single. toy they claimed they "wanted" in the Black Friday Ads, and I felt so thankful for my little family :)

We'll be back in Iowa in 3 weeks. Wade and I are lining stuff up like boarding the puppy, how many checked bags we'll need, how the heck we're gonna lug 3 car seats through the airport, etc... EXCITED!

Think that's all for now!

2012-2013 School Pictures!

Reese, 6 years old and in 1st grade

A little bit of what we're doing:

Right now we are working on the names and location of all 50 states (she's about 80% there), we are learning the parts of speech like nouns, verbs adjectives.  She is doing the Pizza Hut Book-It program and in November she had to read 20 books (anything) and 2 chapter books (Magic Treehouse and Ivy & Bean) to earn her little personal pizza!

In math we are still working on addition and subtraction, counting money, telling time, and more. She loved our Friday Homeschool Co-op this year, where she took an art class, PE and an anatomy class called 

My Body By God. 

She write letters to her friends and family and does daily chores around the house.

This is seriously not everything, but as I think of all the things we do, this list would get rather long...

Goals: 

I'd like to get some more volunteer time in, 

start an instrument (any unused pianos out there???) 

She tried out and made it onto the team at gymnastics, 

so she'll be going twice a week now for 2 1/2 hours a night. She'll start competing this spring.

Continue to meet friends through co-op and church.

Girl Scouts??? We'll go to a meeting next week for a possible troop. We'll see if she's excited about it. I'm on the fence.

Beckett, 4 years old and in Preschool

A little bit of what we're doing:

I'm already seeing a bit of middle child syndrome going on here with this little guy.  I can already tell I'm not spending as much "teaching time" with him as I did with Reese at his age, but he's such a boy!!! (He carries around a sword in the back of his shirt like a ninja) 

So he kind of piggy backs off of what Reese and I do.

He LOVES books and being read to, and has just started reading books from memory, which is an important step in the process. 

He can write his name and we're occasionally working on other letters and sounds.

I'm still trying to get him to do his chores on a daily basis, most days he doesn't and it's not worth the fight.

We're working on social skills like being a caring & helpful big brother, not freaking out when it's time to leave a friend's house, picking up after yourself, and using good manners.

We talk about what it means to be a gentleman A LOT.

Goals:

To be able to write and know all of the letter sounds by May so that we can start reading next fall.

Chores. Every morning. I just need to find out what motivates him. Or maybe different chores.

Using WORDS to talk about stuff instead of whining, crying, yelling when conflict comes up.

He just complete flag football, so he won't be participating in another sport 'til next year.

Less cartoons.

and of course,

{ He's not school-aged so no picture, just imagine the cutest toddler you've ever seen }

Jasper, 18 months old and the baby of the family

A little bit of what we're doing:

So far this year he has learned to pull the kitchen step up to the counter and throw things onto the floor,

open the pantry door and help himself to whatever he feels like eating,

he practices his coloring on walls, tables, dressers, the floor.

He has dropped his morning nap and is no where close to potty training.

He eats more that I do some days.

He's grown to be a big (aka HEAVY) little boy, so carrying him is a workout.

He has learned how to run! Fast! Away from Mommy in stores!!!!!!!

Goals:

To not let him destroy the house and on most days, I pretty much just want to SURVIVE.