Last Saturday I turned 28. Over the past few days I have been reflecting on how much I have accomplished during my life so far and I am really just so grateful. God has blessed me abundantly. It was awesome to have a birthday on a Saturday because Dan was home and we were able to have a family day. What did that family day entail?? Well, doing nothing all morning but sit on the couch and watch t.v. and play with the kids. Then in the afternoon Dan helped me straighten up around the house- which was the best gift ever. And to top it all off, he took me out to dinner while my parents watched the kids. Because it was my birthday and Dan was home, I took my time showering, drying my hair, painting my nails and so on...it was wonderful. I felt awesome...with no picture to document, oh well.

I am also thankful for all of the sweet birthday messages from my family and friends. I am amazed at the wonderful people that I have in my life!!

Joshua has had a big week so far! He is now able to get up on all fours and is trying with all of his might to crawl. He rocks and moves backwards and flops on the floor. He has his first little tooth coming (which makes for a fussy baby). He also tried sweet potatoes for the first time and I think he was a fan:

I have been trying to give Kolbe some extra attention this week. While Emma is a school I tend to go into cleaning or errand mode because I want to get done whatever I can with only two kids in tow. But because of that I realized that Kolbe wasn't getting enough one on one time with me. So yesterday I looked up a few ideas on pinterest and we ended up making a road all over his room with tape and raced each other.

It lasted for about ten minutes until Joshua made his way over to some of the tape and started to eat/play with it.

Then we moved on to play-doh. Kolbe asked me to once again build a road and cars to ride on it. Once again, this lasted about ten minutes until Joshua(who was in my lap) grabbed on of the cars and smashed it in his hands.

Yesterday I also ran a few errands before getting Emma. One of the said errands was picking up Chick-fil-a. This is Kolbe's favorite treat ever and he was so excited that once he was clutching his kids meal, he fell asleep. So with both boys asleep in the van, Emma and I had a lunch date in the front seat.

*I was writing this post at 6:30 this morning, while everyone was still sleeping (except Joshua). I lost track of time and then suddenly it was 7:30 and time to get going with:
breakfast making
pants ironing
diaper changing
snot blowing
snack packing
little girl fighting
hair combing
baby crying
toddler eating
and mom screaming...for more coffee.

It is now 8:15. Good morning, America!

Whew! Its Wednesday, but it definitely feels like a Friday. Do you like my new blog header? My dear friend Sheena designed it for me. Unlike my husband, I am awful with computers. So Sheena came to the rescue.

Last Friday, Joshua was diagnosed with a double ear infection. This morning he had another little fever so I decided to take him back to the doctor to make sure his ears were getting better and that the antibiotics were working. I dropped Kolbe off with my sister and after two hours of waiting to see the doctor, we were sent home with a "he is teething" diagnosis. I am so thankful that he is healthy and that his ears are good, but I sure would love those two hours back!

After picking up Kolbe, we went out to lunch and met up with Dan, Emma, a priest friend our ours, and a seminarian. I think having our rowdy crew there helped to confirm this seminarian's vocation. I am just teasing, but Fr. Wall was concerned about me and how often I had to get up throughout the meal. He asked me if I ever get to eat a meal uninterrupted...not really, but if it's my path to Heaven, I will take it, indigestion and all.

All three kiddos fell asleep on the way home, so instead of trying to move them all inside with the hopes of them staying asleep, I just sat in the car, parked in our driveway. I do this a lot. I am sure the neighbors think I am crazy, just sitting in the driveway, staring at my phone...or just staring off into the distance.


A few quotes from my older two:

Kolbe climbed into his high chair and announced: "I will have french fries and ketchup and my truck will have apple juice."

Kolbe was standing on the front porch last night and said, "Oh no!!! Where did the pumpkins go??" (they have been gone since Nov.)

Emma was in her own imaginary world and I overheard her say, "I am in the castle with Ariel because she has SO many children, she didn't know what to do, that is why she called prince Eric." Good call. I always call my prince too. :)

Well, Christmas is now officially over. All of the decorations were put away last night and now it is time to reorganize my life. Sigh. It's a now a new year and I thought it was was time to make up some resolutions.

1. Shower every day. You might think I am kidding, but I am not. For example, as I was making dinner yesterday, it dawned me that I never showered. And then I started to smell roses. Emma had gotten a hold of a perfume and sprayed every room in the house. I am convinced it is because of me. Whatever the reason, Dan and I gagged the rest of the evening as we went from room to room.


2.Exercise. I know, this is an oh so boring and so typical resolution. But I am not saying that I need to exercise more, but that I really need to start exercising in general. As much as I would like for shopping at the grocery store with three kids or nursing a baby while eating a cookie to be considered exercise...it just doesn't cut it.

3. Pursue Emma's dreams of being BRAVE. She wanted to take this bow to school today. I told her that it I don,t think they would appreciate having a pretend weapon. She then responded, "I will tell them it is my harp." I think we are headed for trouble with this one. She is tricky.

4. Cut back on my coffee intake...Ha!

5. Watch less tv...

6. Have Dan teach Joshua how to play the guitar. At 7 months old. Put it on youtube and We will be famous!

7. Potty train the almost three year old. It is time.

8. This one is not a resolution, but more of a concern. I found Emma lining up all of her princess figurines. The five princes that she has were lined up as well. I asked her what she was playing and she responded, "Well, the princesses are in a line and the prince has to pick out the prettiest one." Apparently we have our own season of The Bachelor going on at our house. Hooray...


9. Have the house clean, laundry done and put away, dinner made, and kids happily playing when Dan comes home every day...Ha! Yeah right, but a mom can dream, right?!
(obviously don't have a picture of this one...)

10. Pray more and keep striving for holiness.

So there you have it. Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Today is the last day of Dan's vacation. We had 10 wonderful days with Daddy home and I am not ready to let that go! All I can say to sum up the past week, is that I am so blessed and I am so grateful.

The kids got all dressed up for Christmas Mass. Emma was very proud in her pretty dress and was so excited to wear it. At the end of Mass, Emma went and sat in Dan's lap and said to him very seriously, "Daddy, I am prettier than all of the other girls here." How do you respond to that one?! Needless to say, she is a very confidant little girl.

We go the kids in bed around 7:30, Emma fell asleep a little before 10. I think she was just a tad bit excited.

We had a wonderful morning at our house, then headed over to my parents for lunch.
Happy Birthday dear Jesus!

I think these pics pretty much sum up how we all felt at the end of the day:

One thing that we have been trying to do this year is to find fun ways to celebrate the entire 12 days of Christmas. One surprise trip we made was to go visit some dear friends at their new home in Mississippi. We had a wonderful time. Jess was the first friend I made when we moved to Mobile. We would go out shopping to Target with Emma and her oldest, Stephen, and now, well, that isn't so easy to do anymore:

Their second oldest, Abby, is our beautiful goddaughter.

With Stephen now in Kindergarten and Emma in Pre-school, it is hard to find time to visit them. Before our visit to their home, I caught Emma staring at their Christmas card. She said in a sweet, but pathetic voice, "Stephen looks so different. He looks older...he is going away to college and I will never see him again..." Oh the woes of a 4 and a half year old who has spent most of her life hanging out with teenagers. ;)

Ok, my computer battery is almost gone and my baby is crying for my attention..Happy new year!

My kids are so excited because tomorrow we get to light the fourth candle on our Advent wreath and then the following day is Christmas Eve...can't believe it.
According to them the best part about lighting the Advent wreath is blowing out the candles after dinner. But now we are at the point where they ask every 2 minutes if they can blow out the candles yet. And tomorrow will be great because they each will have 2 candles to blow out. Sometimes life is fair after all.

We have started a new Advent tradition this year. A few years ago I bought a stocking for Jesus. I thought it would be fun to have this because, well, we are celebrating His birthday.


We have never done anything with it except to hang it with our other stockings, but this year, since Emma is almost 5, I thought we needed to do something special with it. After brainstorming with some friends, I decided to write down with the kids the good deeds they had done that day and then they put them in Jesus's stocking. The plan is to surprise the kids after Christmas Eve Mass with a piece of chocolate replacing each good deed. If you can't tell, I am pretty excited about this idea.


Last night I was putting the kids in bed and I told them that they need to go to sleep because when they wake up it will be three days until Christmas!! They both giggled and Emma happily yelled, "and then it will be 2 days, then 1, and then..."
And I then jumped in and yelled, "Santa comes!!!!"
Emma stopped and looked at me with a serious face and said: "Mommy, we have to be excited about Jesus. It is not just about Santa."
I told her that she was absolutely right and was so proud to be corrected by my little girl.




And yes, I know, my pictures for this post are random. But so is my life.

Merry Christmas!! (Almost) ;)

It's been a little while since I posted...so here are a few thoughts and stories to catch you up on our lives.

I can't believe that Christmas is two weeks away! When did this happen?!


We just got back from Memphis and we had a wonderful visit with Dan's family. The kids loved spending time with their grandparents and great-grandparents and they had so much fun playing with Uncle Pete and Uncle Matt!





Emma said that her favorite part of the trip was getting to play with Grammy's childhood baby doll, "Toodles".
My favorite part was having family time and having Dan with us for 4 days away from work. :)



On Sunday we decorated our tree and we brought out our nativity sets and Christmas books. I was so excited to decorate the house. While we were waiting for Dan to get home from LifeTeen, we cleaned up the living room, had bath time, baked cookies, and made hot chocolate. Finally Dan walked in the door and the craziness began, complete with Mickey Mouse singing "jingle bells" and Justin Bieber's "Santa Claus is coming to town." While decorating, Joshua cried because he couldn't eat the tree and garland. Kolbe cried because I dropped and broke one of his ornaments. And Emma cried because we had to hide baby Jesus until Christmas. She said passionately, "You can't hide Jesus! He needs to stay with his mommy!"
And for this reason we have multiple Nativity sets. One beautiful, but breakable one:



And two for the kids to play with:




Despite all of the tears, we had a lot of fun decorating and our living room looks beautiful.

Joshua is 6 months old today! Time is flying by. We are just starting to feed him rice cereal:








I think he likes it- it's hard to tell sometimes when there are a lot of little helpers. He isn't crawling yet, but according to Emma he is speaking. She said, "Mommy, Daddy! Joshua just said 'eeb', it is Spanish for 'eew'!" There you have it folks, our little baby prodigy!

And this concludes my update for the evening. Good night.

Ha


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