Dear Monday, Thanks for showing up so quickly. You always manage to ruin the perfect weekend. Dear Alabama Football, Thanks for being much kinder to us this weekend. Our Saturday was filled with good friends (and pretty babies), corn hole and more barbecue that one could possible eat. The day was going to be pretty much perfect anyway, but a 59-0 finish over Texas A&M certainly helped. Dear The Most Amazing Dry Shampoo of All Time, Thank you for making me look completely put together and CLEAN, even when I'm not. I have successfully worn three-day hair to work on numerous occasions in the last few weeks because of you. Dear Jerry Seinfeld, Why can't I seem to find the bit I'm looking for on YouTube? You know, the one you've opened with every time we've seen you live? Where you ...
Small Town Friday Night
This is one of those posts that I write every year and I feel like I say the same thing over and over again. Do you mind? Living in a small town is one of my favorite things. It has its disadvantages, certainly, but there are so many wonderful things that we choose to focus on those instead. High School Homecoming is the highlight of football season and everybody in town turns out for a full week of events. With dance pretty much monopolizing our lives, we had to opt out of the weeknight activities, but boy did we shop up on Friday. We don't send our girls to school on Homecoming any more because it is always too hard to get them checked out and either lined up for the parade or camped out downtown to watch. Josh sat in a carpool line for hours one year and vowed to never do that again! ...
Letters
Dear Sophie, I thought for sure you would take to elementary school like a champ. You seem so grown up and four year old kindergarten is all you talked about for months before classes started. We picked out a backpack and talked about navigating the cafeteria. We visited your classroom and got you all ready to meet new friends. As eager as you were, school has not been without it's challenges. I worry a lot that we did the right thing, sending you a year early. If we had kept you at home one more year, would you be more ready? Would you have settled down a little and be easier to engage? Or would we be facing these same tears, but during a more critical year of instruction? Last week you came home and told me, "Did you know they don't even let you watch TV during naptime?!" as if it ...
Shopping with Ella
As Ella gets older, she gets fewer and fewer toys for her birthday. If it isn't a book, clothes or make believe, she just isn't interested. This has been pretty typical of her growing up -- she has never really been the kind of child who played with "things" unless they involved dressing up or using her extreme imagination. Since she was having a slumber party this year, we didn't have a big family party like we normally would. Instead, they all tried to visit her at some point during her birthday week and she got tons of gift cards. Girl racked up and had been looking forward to spending it all -- cue the shopping trip. If you follow us on Instagram, you may have seen this post on a Sunday afternoon a few weeks ago. They were pretty quick to pose for a selfie in our first dressing room ...
Short Term Memory
I love day in the life posts. Love. But I'm guessing for the most part, people don't care to see an almost two hour commute both ways and a list of the things I accomplish at a law office on any given day. I can assure you, it's positively riveting. Josh was in Oxford for the Alabama football game last weekend and the girls and I had talked about some fun things we could do in his absence. I had visions of sweet, happy little girls, no whining or complaining and a stack of pretty pictures when it was all over with. That is not exactly what I got. 8:18 AM: The first time Sophie woke me up, I sent her out of my room with the iPad. Netflix Kids can keep them busy for hours, so I knew it would buy me some time. I get up pretty early most days, so I look forward to sleeping in on Saturdays. ...
Letters
Dear Ella, It's barely been a month since your eighth birthday and I feel like you've changed so much already. I can see so much growth in such a short period of time. Second grade is hard, but you are thriving. I am so impressed with your knowledge and your enthusiasm for learning. You rarely complain about homework and you will give up anything to squeeze in extra reading time. We have to fill out a daily reading chart to show how many much you are reading independently. The maximum number of minutes on the chart is sixty, so naturally your goal is to read at least that many minutes each day. You read at Gran's in the afternoon before I pick you up. You read at night while you're waiting on dinner. You read by flashlight long after you're supposed to be asleep. On Saturday mornings, ...
Rollerskating & Sleepovers
I shared a little bit about Ella's party a few weeks ago, but those pictures were really for me. Other than roller skating, her one wish for this year was a slumber party. Thanks to Sofia the First and her "royal sleepover" that is just about all my girls talk about anymore. I keep trying to explain to Sophie that she isn't old enough to have friends over, but it isn't quite sinking in. I think eight is the perfect age for slumber parties -- I remember having three friends over for my birthday when I was in the second grade, too. The other thing she was opinionated about was what she would wear! She saw a picture on Pinterest months ago (I wish I had thought to save it!) where a little girl was dressed up funky for her roller skating party and that was all she wrote. We had an ...
Letters
Dear Blog Friends, Today is when I would normally type some letters to random things to fill you in on the little things that don't often get blogged about. Instead, I just thought I'd write you a letter and tell you a little bit about what I'm thinking. Taz + Belly has been in a little bit of a flux the past few weeks as I try to figure out some kind of regular posting schedule to help me not feel so overwhelmed. I love writing here, not only to preserve our memories for our little people and so we can read about our youth when we're old and gray, but I love connecting with you -- my virtual friends. I go through spurts where I blog often and then life happens and I feel guilty for not keeping up. There are posts with many comments and follow up emails and others with lots of crickets. I ...