In awe!

This girl never ceases to amaze me!  She drew this all by herself!!!!

S'more Fun

For my oldest two, S'mores are the ultimate treat.

 Baby Girl is not sure that the stickiness of the marshmallow is worth the taste reward! The older two have never minded their hands being dirty, I am having to adjust to having a little one that cares about such things!!!

 She eventually decided that it was just not worth the mess.  She picked at the chocolate and left the rest!

Baby Mine

Baby Mine. I'm talking about my oldest--my first baby--my baby boy who stole my heart 8 3/4 years ago. I wanted to be a mommy so very badly.  Honestly, if you had asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up I might have replied with a dozen different things.  But the real answer was--Mommy.  I wanted to be a mommy. I remember laying on the sonogram table on March 11, 2003 full of anticipation. Sonograms weren't the every doctor's visit thing that they are now when you have a baby.  I had two in that entire pregnancy--one at nine weeks to confirm it and one at 18 weeks.  So, at 18 weeks pregnant with my first baby I heard, "It's a boy!" and I felt the ever so slightest twinge of disappointment.  That disappointment went away after about 30 seconds and I've never looked back. Oh how I love My Boy.  We've watched him grow and mature and become the wonderfully smart, creative, handsome, awe-inspiring dorky little dude that he is.

 I say "dorky little dude" in the very most loving manner.  I mean, have you met 8 year old boys?  Believe me, they are dorky!  But I find his dorkiness so endearing.  I love that he loves Science.  I love that when I open my Ipad I know that he was on it because Safari is opened to National Geographic Kids (he was reading an article on Micro-gravity). I love that he can gently explain to his sister that she has her math paper done all wrong and that he can show her how to fix it.  I love that he can put a 300 piece lego set together all by himself by reading the instructions.  I even love the fact that he won't EVER take that lego set apart. They are his masterpieces and they are displayed in every corner of my house. I love that he solved the Skylander video game with only 14 pieces (there are about oh 40? different pieces you can buy to play the game).  I love that when I can't solve a level on Angry Birds Space that he can solve it for me.  I love that he loves to read. He reads himself to sleep every night because it, according to him, "helps my mind slow down. I don't think such scary thought when I read myself to sleep." How beautiful is that?  Even if I have to pull the book from his hands and turn the light off at 9:30 and force him to sleep--I'm ok with it.  I mean, come on, I'm growing a reader here!

But my favorite, favorite, favorite thing about him loving to read and loving books is that he, his dad and I have found a true bonding source.  We heart Harry Potter.  If you aren't a Potter maniac like we are  you probably aren't going to get this.  I forgive you :).  I love Harry Potter.  I discovered him in about 2001 when I randomly saw a display of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone at Barnes and Noble.  I didn't know about the books and I sat down with it and read a few chapters.  I bought it immediately and devoured the first four books.  I made the Hubs read them (who is not a reader) and he loved them too.  I bought all the books that were out on CD for the Hubs to listen to while he was commuting.  He could seriously go on Jeopardy and win any Harry Potter contest there is.  He knows EVERYTHING about these books.  It's totally dorky, but I dig it. I was pregnant with My Boy when book five came out.  I remember going to every book store in the metroplex trying to find a copy.  I finally got my hands on one a few weeks before my due date.  My mom and nephew were staying with us and I announced after finishing the book,"Ok!  I've finished the book, I can have the baby now."  My poor nephew looked at me like I was nuts.  He said, "Finishing a book means the baby will come?" And I said, "No, but Harry and I are pretty tight.  I wanted to make sure I had him all taken care of before the baby arrives. I have a feeling that the baby might be a little jealous if I was spending all my time reading."  I'm pretty sure he still thought I was nuts :).  And wouldn't you know it....at about 1:00 in the morning on the last day of July I woke up not feeling right.  Ten hours later My Boy took his first breath. Anybody out there know who else has a birthday on July 31?  You guessed it.....Harry Potter and My Boy have the same birthday ;).  They were destined to be great friends too.


 Last summer My Boy begged to read the first book.  So we read it to him.  He was enthralled.  So we read the second and third books.  He wanted to keep going.  After a few months of begging we relented and said we would read up through book four and then we would have to wait until he got a little older to finish the series.  He is so engaged by these books.  We talk about them constantly.  He figures out what will happen next.  He tries to guess what's coming in future books.  He has picked out his good guys and bad guys. He is enthralled, I know I already said that but I can't think of a better word.  He had to write a story at the beginning of the year about something that scared him.  He wrote about Basilisks (see book 2-Chamber of Secrets). When he is playing with swords he doesn't make the normal star wars fighting noises most boys make.  He shouts out magical curses from the books instead, "Expelliarmus! (which of course releases the wizards wand you are fighting with)."  We don't practice witchcraft around here, thankfully none of his spells have worked :). This is true dorkiness. And I find it utterly charming.  He's just pretending when he does all these things.  I for one am so glad that in this day and age I have an 8 year child who can still pretend.  He will grow out of being a dorky little dude....or maybe he won't.  I'm ok with that.  I'll say it again--oh how I love him!

Lent Challenge update

I did it!

I can't say that every single nook and cranny in my home is organized, but I gave it a good shot.  I go a little "intense" as my husband calls it when I'm passionate about a project. What I mean by this is, I didn't exactly throw one bag of trash away every day for 40 days.  I took a space in the house and "overhauled" it instead.  On days when I was short of time, I might do a drawer somewhere.  On days when I had a good deal of time I would tackle a closet or other big project.  Honestly, it was exhausting.  It has already been soooo worth it though!  I can now proclaim myself, "Queen of the plastic bin."  I've always been a plastic box fan, but now I seem to find them even more wonderful.  I probably bought 20 or so bins in various sizes throughout this process--and spent a few hundred dollars, this was not an inexpensive project :). Here is a SMALL sampling of what I did for lent.  Really, this is just a few of my projects (and it looks like a ton!).

I had a haphazard mixture of art supplies and drawing paper in this drawer.  I moved all of our drawing supplies in here as well as our stickers and coloring books.  I put our paint in a high drawer in the laundry room (for obvious reasons). I threw away TWENTY coloring books that had been completely used up.  Why did I keep them?

I went through all 200!!! of our DVDs and categorized them.  These are the movies, for grown-ups (alphabetized, of course!) and a few games (games used to live in this cabinet along with puzzles) that Gumdrop can play with.

These are the movies for kids.  This is not exactly a space saving solution, but I wanted to be able to see everything, and the Hubs really wanted to keep all the DVD packaging.  So, this was my solution.  Before, our DVD's were stacked on top of each other in these cabinets and I could never find what I wanted.

My desk drawer, complete with bins for cords and supplies! I also keep my address book and some stationary for jotting down notes.

I had all my big necklaces hanging on a corkboard hidden in my closet.  I decided I might wear them more if they were out where I could see them.  I put necklaces in a jar and bracelets in another jar.

A bin for everything!  This cabinet under my bathroom sink looks so much less cluttered just by putting my "extras" in a plastic container.

Bags, bags, and more bags.  I had bags everywhere.  Under beds, in the top of closets, in the laundry room, in the garage---you name it.  I took all of the bags that we don't use every day--like my traveling toiletry bag, my swim bag, an extra backpack, and a laundry bag that I use for traveling and put everything in a box in the bottom of my closet.

This one I can't take credit for but I wanted to share.  My MIL came up with this solution to store our extra legos.  Genius, huh?

I cleaned out so many toys!  A huge bag of baby toys is now in my garage ready to be donated. Very bittersweet.  This is what baby girl ended up with, which I think it plenty!

 I discovered in this process that my son is a collector.  I found no less than 20 lollipop wrappers in his bathroom.  Mind you, he has had extensive problems with his teeth and I don't allow lollipops often. I couldn't fathom where he had gotten them from, nor could I fathom why he was keeping them.  I threw them out and he freaked out when he came home from school that day and saw that they were gone.  I asked why he was keeping them and he said, "We get Dum Dums for doing good things at school.  I was collecting them to make sure I had gotten every flavor."  One of my friends said, "At least he has goals."  Hilarious.

I gave him a ziploc baggie to collect them in (although, I'm pretty sure this particular treat is going to get us another cavity).  I also gave him a baggie to collect his Skylander video game cards. Better solution for this anyone?

I did massive clean out of the girls' bathroom.  We made bins for sunglasses and jewelry.  I'm also astonished that my daughter has enough make-up (lip glosses and such) to warrant a little dish for them.  Geez.  Those stella and dot containers hold our pony tail holders and barrettes.

Books, books and more books.  I'm an avid reader and so are my kids.  We sorted through and cleaned out dozens of books.

I felt like I would leave an area only to find something else in it.  See that block under the book case in the photo above?  When I went to grab it I found this booklet and another book.  It never ends!

This is my only "before" photo (I was too embarrassed to take pics of anything else).  All this artwork was in a closet about two years ago.  I took it all out and stuck it under Lollipops bed thinking I would find a suitable place for it soon.  Well, two years went by and it was still there. I'm really ashamed at myself!  Anyway, I went through it all and parted with a bunch of it.

Now it is back in its home (under the bed) but it lives in an under bed tub.

Games Gumdrop can destroy or that cause choking hazards were put in a bin and placed in the top of My Boys closet. Bigger games and puzzles are on the opposite high shelf away from destructive little baby hands (oh how I love her!).

This is my masterpiece.  Paperwork kicks my butt.  I'm clueless.  I hate throwing it out, don't have time to spend hours shredding it, and don't really want to part with my babies' masterpieces.  I FORCED myself to go through boxes of paperwork.  I had stuff for My Boy going all the way back to his Mother's Day Out Days.  I allowed myself to keep 20 or so papers for each grade level (way more for 1st grade---we had some awesome stuff last year).  It now lives in this fantastic file box.  I know I'll have to make a new one when we start 3rd grade, but I'm cool with that. I made one for Lollipop too.  Ya'll don't understand, I was drowning in paper work.  This is a Hallelujah moment!!!!

I put away all of our winter clothes (well I kept a few things out for a cold spell) and boxed up donated items and items to sell at JBF in October.  I spent probably a total of 6 days on all three of the kids closets.

My hall closet!  Look at this find!  I used to keep my tissue paper and ribbon in a big open box.  Now I have this stackable box.  Ribbon on top, tissue on bottom.  I love it!

I spent a full day in here.  All those boxes on the two bottom shelves hold holiday decorations (I already had those before this started). When we are ready to move out I'm determined to go through each of those boxes and sell all the Christmas stuff I don't put out.  I didn't tackle that right now because I figure its contained and if I moved it out I would have to find a place for it.  My gift tub is also in this closet along with all my gift wrap stuff.

Notes, paper, and stationary.  Again, all this was scattered all over the place. My address labels and stickers were in the kitchen with the stamps.  My calling cards were with my gift wrap.  My stationary was in a closet.  I decided I wanted all paper products in one place.  I love this.  I know exactly where to go now when I need something.

We have a built in pantry that stays pretty well organized.  I'm including this because I have a little challenge.  She's 20 months old today and she gets into everything.  I can only use the top three shelves of my pantry (including the door).  Fun, huh?  I've even had to move everything out of the drawers she can reach (which is why my bread is with ziploc baggies).  I'm running out of options.....I can't wait for my new house's walk in pantry....with a door that can be baby proofed!

So, when was the last time you cleaned out your medicine cabinet?  I threw away some Benadryl from 2008.  Awesome.

And finally, under my kitchen sink.  Thankfully, the baby has broken most of the locks we put on the cabinets but these have held up.  I threw away so much stuff in here.  I had so many duplicates.  I'm hoping that by putting everything in shower caddies I can see what I have.

I hope that next year I'll do something else for lent because I'll have this awesome, new organized house. I'm determined to keep up the organization and never go back to a "I'll just stick it here for now" mentality. It takes daily maintenance but my sense of peace shows me how worth it the process is!

He is Risen.

Happy Easter!  We have had a busy, fun filled week celebrating.  Lollipop's class went on a super fun field trip to hunt eggs and celebrate with classmates. This was so bittersweet for me because its the last time she will have a Easter party at school.  They are growing up too fast! We also had a beautiful butterfly release service at church this morning.  What a wonderful, special day!

Our sweet Kindergarten class!

If you look closely you will see that my alpha-female is leading the pack in the hunt for eggs :).

Baby Girl is big enough to hunt eggs this year.  But the Easter Bunny is not cool.  She would yell "No!" if he came within a foot of her!

My sweet big girl loves E.B.

Sweet girls!

I love her.

My pretty butterfly.

Taking a peek at our butterfly at church this morning.

Lollipop is not afraid of E.B. but the butterflies were pretty scary!  Bad pic, but look at that face!

My oldest wasn't crazy about the butterflies either.  He said, "They freak me out!"

This little lovebug thought that they were amazing!

After she was blessed with a butterfly landing on her, she decided they were cool after all!

My precious family

Blowing bubbles with the family!

Have you ever seen someone look so adoringly at someone else?  Be still my heart!

Sometimes its hard.

I'm having a hard time.  In fact, I haven't wanted to write.  Blog posts have been a struggle for me lately.  Normally its something I enjoy doing.  I have these awesome-fantastic-wonderful-creative-genius little kids and I want to brag on them.  Occasionally I add a little tid-bit here and there that is not kid related.  I sometimes vent on my blog (well, not so much on this one but I did it on my old one once or twice).  Anyway, writing has always been very cathartic for me.  Its my release.  But, lately, I just haven't wanted to.  Sometimes life is hard and I just don't know what to say.  Today I want to write, so here goes.

Right after Christmas I heard some really, really bad news.  I found out that the mom of a precious little girl in my son's second grade class was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  She's in her early 40s and has a second grader, a fifth grader and a sixth grader. The prognosis is not good.  I don't know this woman well, only enough to say hello in passing and have a little chat about how my oldest and her youngest are doing. She's told me on multiple occasions, "Your son is hilarious, he makes me laugh out loud!" Anyone who tells me that gets an A+ in my book.  I'm trying not to focus on me and how scary this is and how this is going to make me feel.  I'm thinking about my kid.  My eight year old little kid. We go to this small private school. There are only two classes in every grade level with 17-19 kids in each class.  These kids are really close and will continue to be close. He spends every day with this little girl who is about to lose her mommy and my heart is just ripping apart.  The three months she was given to live have passed and from what I hear she's doing very poorly.  I told my husband on Sunday, "She's still hanging on."  And he said, "Wouldn't you be too?"

Same topic, different person.  My best friend has cancer.  Brain cancer.  My best friend since the fifth grade--- that I walked home with every day after school with, who house I had my first sleepover at, who was the first person I told I'd kissed a boy, who held my hand through high school break-ups, whose neck I cried into after high school graduation, who held me up high during the year the Hubs and I spent apart in college, who forgave me when I let us grow apart when I went away to college, whose hand I held when she found out her third baby was actually going to be a third and a fourth baby (while I laughed hysterically and finally got her to laugh about it too), who sat with me in a lab at the hospital and held my hand while I had blood-work done during a miscarriage, and who was the first person I told when I was expecting again--- has brain cancer.  Why?  Why? I'm scared.  I'm scared for her and for me and for every little thing in between.  Thank goodness, on this topic I can say that the prognosis is good. But, its going to be a long, hard road.

So, I sort of feel a little turned upside down right now.  I'm trying to be strong but feel like I fail daily.  I'm short with my kids.  I'm irritable.  I don't think I'm being the wife and mother that I need to be, which makes me really mad at myself because the things I have mentioned above show me that I only get one shot at this.  Sometimes, its hard. But you better believe that I'm going to be there for my kid and my best friend.  God didn't promise us this life would be easy, and I'm ok with that.  I'm going to pick myself up and do the very best that I can today and continue to do so from now on. Writing session is over, tears are streaming down my face, and I feel like a weight has been lifted.  Thanks be to God.