Seriously. I suck.

Wow. It has really been forever since I've blogged.
I started a post over a month ago and didn't ever finish it.

Umm... so...brief synopsis of life to get everyone up to speed perhaps?

We'll go back to September...

My sister got married! She actually trusted me enough to take her engagement pictures (good thing since her photographer only just barely released all of her files to her 2 months after the wedding). She was a beautiful bride and had a gorgeous and fun "wedding party".

Alex actually started warming up to Kaitlyn! I think it's because she's become more interactive and loves to both laugh at her brother and make him laugh by being silly herself.

I love when I catch great looks like this

one of my new favorite pictures of Alex. It makes a FABULOUS desktop background. :)

So cute!

Alex had a birthday. He turned 4. He was SO excited to have a party! We went to Kangaroo Zoo with his cousins, then to McDonald's for his birthday dinner, and then home for the party with the fam. He requested a Lightning McQueen cake and since I had been rushing all day to get a couple of mermaid costumes mailed, we bought a last minute cake little cake at the grocery store that had oreo crumbs around the outside edge that we put his Cars cars on like they were on a racetrack and then put green sprinkles in the middle of the cake like grass.

And he loved it.

Halloween!

Alex was a frog (again. Halloween was far too crazy this year with mermaid sewing to make him something new. Plus, he loved being a frog anyway, so it was all good!) and Kaitlyn was... a mermaid. I was SO thrilled that it was actually warm the day before Halloween when we were out doing Halloween-y stuff and Kaitlyn didn't even have to wear a onsie with her costume! It felt like Texas and I was THRILLED.

Alex and his cousin who made an ADORABLE Snow White. Sooo... a princess and a frog, right?

I wasn't very successful at getting a good shot of all 4 kids, obviously.

This is all that Kaitlyn was interested in doing

Mmm.... CANDY!

SOOO CUTE!!!!

Throwing a tantrum. Such a girl.

And onto November!

Kaitlyn turned 1. And she let me take some cute pictures of her on her actual birthday before her little party.

This is my FAVORITE and also makes a fabulous desktop background. :)

The girl has been able to stand for awhile, but she just doesn't really have the desire to walk more than a couple of steps here and there. She looks so cute standing there all by herself!

And since I was taking pictures of Kaitlyn, Alex wanted some of him too. He got such a kick out of making silly faces and looking at them on the camera afterward. Such a silly boy.

He gets this one from his daddy

Here are a couple of pictures of Kaitlyn's cupcake and cake. Not the greatest pictures, but it was a cute cake and, best of all, it was SUPER easy. :)

We got to spend our first Thanksgiving in 4 years with ALL of our family! That was fun! (Honestly though, I still love Thanksgiving with Kenn and Amy in TX) I'm used to being in charge of several things and this year I was in charge of just the cheese bowl and crackers. Talk about a step down!

We definitely missed being able to wear shorts and the ward Thanksgiving football game was far too cold to attend. Ahh... TX. I miss you.

Here are some pictures of Kaitlyn on Thanksgiving. Yes, that is all you get.

go utes!

The girl loved pushing the stroller/baby around... until she tipped over with it. Then she walked behind it crying. SO funny!

Cute little walking girl!

We got to visit with Santa at the first family Christmas party we've been able to attend in 4 years. The last time we went to this was when Jon and I were newly (6 months) married.

He looks like he's excited to be there, right? He asked for trains.

and Kaitlyn

happy she got a candy cane out of the deal

I don't have any pictures from December on my computer yet, so I guess I will have to blog that later. Hopefully you enjoyed the pictures and seeing the big events. I promise to have better blogging skills from now on. Remember when I used to blog every day? Ya... maybe I'll do that again. :)

Just doing some bragging

It's mermaid season people!
And I've been a little busy.
Because of this.

Buying Guide: 40+ Cool Homemade Halloween Costumes - Parenting.com (Page 4)

All blogging should be done at 2 am

Because apparently when it's done at 2 am, it actually gets done.

Between having 2 kids and a husband and trying to get them all dressed, fed, and napped every day (and having SLOW tethered {aka phone} internet), taking the time to blog has not happened.

But since I was up sewing tonight (big surprise there), I thought "why the heck not". So here I am.

So what have we been up to in the past who knows when since I last blogged? A lot.

We bought a house. It is marvelous. It will be more marvelous at a much later date.
Here it is.

I've told so many people about the house projects that I don't remember if it's been blogged.
And since I don't feel like looking it up, if it's been said, it will be said again.

We are currently living in 1370 square feet (our house in TX was just over 2100). Suprisingly, we are doing okay space wise!
Granted we have a whole room of boxes in the basement, but we're not really missing too much of the stuff that's down there.

Okay- I lie. I am missing all of my crafting stuff and having a home for my fabric etc. But for the time being, the countertop desk in my small laundry room is functioning as a good enough work space (hooray for having the sewing machine off of my kitchen table!).

Alex's room is serving dual purpose as the toy room and his sleeping space. He has more space in there than he knows what to do with.

Kaitlyn's clothes are small enough that her closet has tons of storage space. The 4x4 Expedit is also taking up residence in her room as it wouldn't fit down the stairs (it will be taken apart eventually and taken downstairs once the basement is finished).

I miss my walk in closet. A lot. It was a wonderful, wonderful thing. Thankfully I have a fabulous dad who built in shelves and different rod heights so that our closet is much more functional. And amazingly fits most everything (minus my winter sweaters). I must admit that I covet Alex's closet. It's a foot bigger and has 2 banks of shelves. BUT his room only has 1 window and is 3 ft. shorter and the closet doors swing out into the room (which I don't love). So I'll make do with my single bank of shelves.

I do love having 2 sets of three drawers in our bathroom though! It's been a little weird going from 2.75 bathrooms down to 1.5 (and barely a .5 at that!), but having the main bath as the bathroom with all of our stuff in it gives me extra motivation to keep it clean.


So there you have a break down of our rooms. Even with being okay with the space we have, it will be nice to have the extra space once we get the basement done.

When might we get the basement done you ask? I do not know. All of us have had a lot going on, so house projects got bumped down on the list. And then there is the eternal question of which house projects need to be at the top of the list (*cough* painting the molding)

So want to know what we've done since we moved into our house in July? SURE you do!
Here is the running tally (it makes me feel good to have a list of all that we've accomplished... makes what we have left somehow less daunting)

• put in atankless water heater (and thus pulled the old water heater out),
• new furnace and AC (was formerly swamp...so that was a project...)
  
• painted the bedrooms (and the molding in them) and 2 exterior doors
• totally retextured the walls and painted in the front room
  
• pulled out the last of the gross carpet that was downstairs
• put in new basement windows
• pulled out old sprinkler pipe, various debris, and HUGE dead trees in the backyard
• took down a ratty old over grown chain link fence from 3 sides of our .46 acre lot
• tore out and poured a new driveway
• pulled out various bushes and creeping jenny that was taking over the fence and trees
• regraded the dirt to slope away from the house in the back
• dug some trenches for future sprinkler pipe
• and added insulation to the attic.

We did all of those things while they were ripping up and working on paving our narrow little road. It was awesome.

And for your viewing pleasure, here is our yard in it's present condition. Except the weeds are actually taller (on the list to be weed whacked ASAP).

We still have a lot of work to do. Pictures to hang, more molding to paint, a whole basement to do finish work on (paint, molding, carpet), putting up faux board and batten in Kaitlyn's room (which will probably be for the next baby by the time we get to it) planning out a yard (kinda fun!), planting some trees/bushes (and then sod down the road), sprinklers, and hopefully planting a garden next year.

Needless to say, we have plenty to keep us busy. I can't wait for it to all be done and be able to sit back and enjoy it... at least until the next minute when another project comes up.

Besides just liking our house, we're liking pleanty of other things about being here.
We're really liking our neighbors. Alex really loves talking to anyone who walks down our street, which is a lot of people as our street is pretty gorgeous and everyone loves to walk down it.

Here is a picture of our road. It is awesome.

We're loving being able to walk to church.
It's also handy that the elementary school (and playground) is in walking distance as well.
It only takes Jon 15 minutes to get to work and not a single minute is spent on the freeway. We LOVE not having to pay $40 in tolls every month and he doesn't use as much gas.
Speaking of the freeway, it takes less than 5 minutes to get on/off the freeway. Did I mention no tolls?
The weather is MARVELOUS. Even though we have AC, we've only used it for about 2 weeks. The nights have been cool enough that we can open the windows and we can get away without turning on the AC for most of if not all day. Actually having dry air as opposed to that humid Texas stuff is wonderful.

Obviously, we love being right where we're at. I think the only thing that would make this house perfect was if it was all done. But then we would have had to pay a lot more.
We plan on being here for a very long time, so we've got time to get our projects done (and add new ones on as the years go by).

I promise we'll have a party one of these days so y'all can actually see our house! Ha- It just may not be until this winter when we get the basement done!

envibum chance #2

yes, I'm crazy enough to google and find any and all envibum giveaways. LOL... maybe envibum should let me review a diaper since I'm so desperate to have one!

Here is a giveaway for an envibum from heather @mommy of 1 and counting!

and check out the diapers themselves at envibum.com

shameless

Yes, I am one of those people who is using their blog to win a giveaway. I hope that no one who reads this decides to enter. :)

My friend recently hosted a giveaway of Envibum diapers and after looking at them I decided I wanted to try to win one so that I can try them out!
They are ADORABLE and look so soft and comfy!



Don't tell me Kaitlyn wouldn't look cute in one of those!

so please, unless you are entering with the intents of if you win you hand the loot over to me, don't go to Dirty Diaper Laundry to check out the contest.

Alex Funnies

I have found a new great way to remember the stuff Alex says. As soon as he says something good I put Alex's name in the subject of an email to Jon and then put the quote in the email. Then they are all in the my sent box and in Jon's inbox so I can easily pull them up. This is especially handy with having internet on my phone... makes it so easy to remember the good stuff as soon as it happens!

Some recent funny things Alex has said:

At the lacrosse championship game, they let a ton of balloons into the air at the same time and Alex goes, "Those balloons are lost! They need to get back to their family!"

Alex was brushing my hair with my mom's brush and it had hairs in it of course and he tells me, "it won't hurt Mama. You need to be brave."

Alex told me "We need to go somewhere to make me feel special."

We were putting on Alex's pajamas and he was upset about his shirt or something and said "it's impost-able" (impossible).

The other morning Jon went with Alex into the fish bathroom at my parent's house and Alex said, "Daddy, this bathroom is so fishy!" On that note, he used the other downstairs bathroom at my parent's house the other day and asked me why that other bathroom didn't have fishies in it.

One of my favorite things he's saying right now is when I ask him if he can/will do something and he goes, "I sure can do ____" It's very cute.

Every day after his nap when we were living at my parent's house he would wake up and stand in the doorway of his room downstairs and ask, "can I come up now?" We'd always answer yes (unless it was only an hour later and he hadn't been to sleep) and then he'd go, "I sure can come up?" after which we'd have to confirm that yes, he sure can come upstairs.

I was pumping and Alex was watching and I was explaining that I have milk in my breasts, but I made Kaitlyn a bottle, so I still had milk in my breasts that I needed to get out and Alex goes, "Ya! and I have chocolate milk in my breasts!"

We were up at my parent's house and I was sewing while my mom played with the kids. My mom had to go change the laundry so she told Alex to stay there and play and she'll be right back and he goes, "ya, and i will watch Kaitlyn" very matter of factly. (odd since he's not really into kaitlyn...)

alex has a favorite road that he calls "The Dark Road. He knows exactly where we need to turn to go on it. When we turn on it he exclaims, "yes! this is my favorite road!". We always have to go on it when we are going to/from our new house to/from my parent's house.

I was telling Alex that I needed to feed Kaitlyn and he goes, "ya. we don't want her to be a mean baby-child!"

My mom was telling Alex that he had a nice shirt on (button up plaid like Jon wears a lot) and Alex goes, "this is my shirt like daddy's! And I wear it when I go to work with Carrie. My mom said, "you mean when you go to work with mama?" Alex replied, "ya, when carrie and I go to work!"

He told me that he calls me Carrie so that I will listen. Jon is still Daddy.

When Alex doesn't want us to I don't want you look in at him (in his room/bathroom/etc.) he tells us, "I don't want you to peek me!"

I'm loving how he's saying bed and like sounding words. he makes them sound very southern. let's see if I can type out how it sounds... beh-ud. and then his swimming teacher is tim and he says it tih-um. It cracks me up.

The other day at the dinner table with Jon's teenaged siblings we were talking about kissing and Alex started teasing, "Tanner has a girlfriend". He repeated that at least 10 times. We tell Jon's siblings it's payback for when Jon was a teenager and they were all little and annoying. :)


That's all for now! Hope you enjoyed them and I'm sure there will be more to come!

Cute baby girl!

I took some pictures of Kaitlyn earlier this month and thought they were pretty adorable.

Kaitlyn just had her 6 month check up and is doing well! She weighs 16 pounds (50%), is 27 1/4" long (93%), and has a head circumference of 42.8 cm (60%).

She is eating solid foods and loving it. My mom and I made a HUGE batch of carrots (we used a big bag of carrots from Costco) and beans and blended up a few pears. I know, not a whole lot of variety. I think making more to freeze will be on the list this week. We need to do some peas, sweet potato, and squash.

Besides eating, she is also rolling like crazy and is getting better at sitting up. When she's on her tummy, she can hold her upper body up with her arms really well (see the pictures) She loves laughing at Alex, sucking on her toes (again, see pictures), and has an adorable smile.


Here she is in all of her cuteness!