Alternately titled, the post with 35 photographs. Yes, I counted. I've mentioned that Ella is on a competition dance team several times, but I've not gone into much detail about what that really means. I put Ella in a "tiny dancer" ballet/tap class at a local studio right before her third birthday. She was such a mature child and really in need of some organized extra-curricular activity. She loved it from the very beginning and danced with that same group of girls for three years. At the end of last season, her instructor mentioned that they would have a competition team this year for girls aged 6-8 and told us she had referred Ella for that class. At the time, we thought she would have to audition and decided to let her make that decision when the time came. Fortunately for us (and not ...
Dailies / Week 16
106/365: It feels a little weird to talk about Monday without mentioning Boston. I ended up not feeling well and spent the morning watching the marathon from bed and loved every moment of it (except for the sick part). A friend of my uncle's ran it for the first time and I got text updates all morning about his progress. The only time I even left the bed all day was to bring Sophie's birthday gifts in from the car - can you say princess stuff?! While I was putting all of this away my mom called to see if we were watching the news and for the first time all day the volume was turned down and we had no idea what had just happened. Within 30 minutes of the bombs we were trying to reach Heath & Jeff and finally got a text message to go through. Thankfully, they had already boarded the ...
15 Weird Things You’ll Wish You Didn’t Know
on our way home from Panama City Beach the summer after he graduated high-school I read a funny post earlier in the week where the blogger asked her husband for a list of funny / random / unknown facts about her. It kind of made me snort laugh. Not really because of what he said about her, but because I could only imagine what my husband might say about me. I emailed him at work and asked him to compile a list for me. That was my only instruction. I didn't give him any direction about what I wanted, how many or how long they should be or even what topics were off limits. Here is what he had to say (with my commentary, of course): She wants everything to be divisible by the number five. I think we've discussed this before, but let me enlighten you just in case. I have a thing with ...
Perfectly unexpected
Josh & I used to talk about how we wanted a house full of children. Five, maybe. I just knew we'd have them all by the time we were thirty. What were we thinking?! After Ella was born, we negotiated and decided three sounded better. Then Taz arrived. I know that every child is different and that your life changes drastically with each one. Ella was a learning experience because we had never done it before. Sophie was a learning experience in a completely different way. She is challenging and causes you to question even the best parenting advice. She is the kind of child that inspires birth control and helps you decide that two children feels just right! She is a whirlwind. She came in quiet, but she is anything but. She's energetic and fiesty, her laugh is infectious and she is ...
Dailies / Week 15
99/365: This was my third week of hot yoga and I'm loving it. It's a 90 minute class and it gets HOT in there. The thermometer read 105* at one point! I wish I could go twice a week, but with Bible Study, two nights of dance for Ella and just life in general, I can't abandon Josh one more night during the week. I also got to see Gran's creation for Sophie's party when I got home on Monday night. This is a little sneak peek of SK's Alice in Wonderland get up for her tea party on Sunday. Adorbs, right? Just a few more days and I'll have photos of another birthday bash to share. Ella's fancy party was for her third birthday and we wanted to something equally "fancy" for SK. 100/365: Did you know about this? It's kind of hard to believe that there are 27 million slaves in the world today ...
Dailies / Week 14
92/365: Ella had an appointment with her pediatrician on Monday morning and there just wasn't a way to get her back to school and me on to the office in an efficient way. We decided to skip kindergarten that day and she hung out with me instead. Since we were officially past lent, she was THRILLED to indulge in Chick-fil-A for lunch.She spent most of her time watching movies and decimating my office supplies. 93/265: The only photo I took on Tuesday was for #pinstyle and you've already seen that one. Ooops! 94/265: On Wednesday my Bible study group started reading Francis Chan's Forgotten God. It is so good. I loved this quote from FC that our fearless shared. 95/365: On Thursday, Josh & Ella were off on an adventure and SK & I were at home playing. She went through just about ...
Around the house
After I found myself unexpectedly at home for the day on Monday, I decided to resist the urge to be lazy while Josh was working and try to accomplish a few things that were lurking on my to-do list. Our house hasn't been really cleaned since the holidays and I can always find an excuse to avoid those mundane tasks if at all possible. One of my favorite bloggers posts about her days sometimes and I wonder why I don't take "every day" photos like that anymore. Just pictures of what I'm doing instead of pictures of events. As Ella gets older and I question what to share publicly, this kind of blogging really speaks to me and I find myself gravitating towards that kind of sharing. When Josh caught me taking pictures as I worked, he laughed and started drafting a blog post out loud for me, ...
Loaded Potato Soup
On Saturday afternoon, I made the best loaded potato soup ever. And then I'm pretty sure that I threw the recipe away by mistake! There is a lunch restaurant near my office who serves potato soup in the winter and it sells out almost every day. If you want it, you have to eat lunch at 11 o'clock or you're out of luck. After seeing a yummy recipe on Facebook last week, I decided to try my hand at it. And considering that the scrap of paper where I wrote the directions is probably somewhere beneath the remnants of Easter candy in our trashcan, I'm going to do my best to tell you how to make it from memory. INGREDIENTS: 4 large baking potatoes 3 cups chicken stock 1 lb bacon, cooked and chopped into small pieces 1/3 white onion, chopped 3 green onions, finely diced 3 T butter 3 T ...