October may have started out rough, but we packed lots of fun things in there, too. It is hard to believe how fast it all went by, so bear with me as we rewind a few weeks and share what we were up to while I was blogging non-stop about my Bible! Kamin & I decided to take the kids to Baker's Farm -- a local pumpkin patch -- on a morning when the guys were otherwise engaged. We figured we could let them run around for a few hours and burn off some energy, while we managed a few cute photos for my mom's Christmas card and then everyone would take a nice long nap. Wrong. Despite these adorable photos (most of which I stole from her), all three kids were terrible and I was pretty close to tears at one point. While searching for the perfect pumpkin (and carrying about 75 pounds of them out ...
holidays
It’s FINALLY Fall
Fall seems to take forever to arrive in Alabama, but it is slowly making itself known around here. When our friends were in town a few weeks ago, we took all of our girls to the local pumpkin patch on Saturday afternoon. It was hot, but that just meant we had the place to ourselves and boy did we enjoy it! First up was the corn maze. I'm pretty sure the "exit" that we used was just a path between rows of corn. These girls were leading us around in circles, so we made a mad dash for freedom when we spotted it. My girls both wanted to take a horse ride and their reactions couldn't be any different. Sophie was grinning ear to ear from the very beginning and waved to me as she rode off into the sunset. Ella, on the other hand, was a nervous wreck! She was very concerned about me ...
The Mommy Wars
I am long overdue for posting pictures of our Easter. But, as I was uploading the photographs earlier this week, all I could think about was how our Easter baskets would be perceived by perfect strangers. Did we do enough? Did we do too much? How sad that those are the thoughts that ran through my head. I've been thinking a lot lately about the wars we wage on each other. In fact, I almost blogged about it several months ago, but convinced myself not to rock the boat. Sometimes when I'm laying in bed at night scrolling through social media sites, I have to shake my head when I see what we say about each other. Why are we, as mommies, so mean? I'm not pointing the finger, I'm guilty of it myself. We are constantly comparing ourselves and when we feel like we don't measure up, we turn on ...
Crappiest Christmas Photography Ever
In my defense, we were so preoccupied with enjoying the moment that I didn't take many pictures. I so wanted to see the look on their faces when they opened each gift and couldn't wait to see how they reacted to our surprise, that the camera was kind of an afterthought. Add to that the fact that my camera was a trillion years old and there is absolutely no natural light in our living room and the few pictures I did get are blurry and the color is wonky. Even photoshop couldn't rescue me this time! Just pretend they are beautiful and rest assured that we got the entire morning on video for posterity. Although we managed to get through the entire morning without a single pajama-clad photograph as a family in front our tree, I did set up the tripod as we were walking out the door for lunch ...
Remember Christmas Eve?
Christmas Eve seems like so long ago! We started the day much like we do every year and celebrated Christmas with Josh parents. We were having such a good time that I managed not to sake a single picture of anything significant. No gift opening, no food eating, no family fun, nothing. Just pretend like you saw cute pictures of my kids and their cousin Bella in adorable black Uggs with stockings the size of a small car! We were exhausted when we left, but per tradition, we met my parents and KCory for candlelight communion at our church. When we arrived home we were greeted by three VERY cute, pajama-clad boys who wanted our help spreading reindeer food and getting excited about Santa's arrival. We sprinkled glittery oats all over both yards and ran around squealing for a bit before ...
The Big Guy
On Sunday after church, we spontaneously decided to run into town and have a visit with Santa. Josh thought I was crazy for braving a weekend at the mall, but I was crossing my fingers for an easy adventure. Much to my delight, we found a parking spot right next to the door and there was nobody in line when we got to Santa's village! Sophie immediately started crying as soon as she saw him and was yelling about not sitting in his lap. Man, I love this part of Christmas! Y'all know I don't really want my children to cry or be unhappy, right? I just think the crying Santa photos are so stinking cute! She did eventually give him a high-five and tell him what she wanted for Christmas (a blue bicycle and a purple umbrella), but still wasn't happy about sitting with him. Ella, on the other hand, ...
12 Days of Elf Antics
A friend shared this post on Facebook right after Thanksgiving and it made me laugh so hard. The funny part is that I am so torn about how I feel about the whole thing. I have zero desire to have our sweet little elf create a mess that I'm required to clean up. I don't want his antics to take any sort of significant amount of time or energy on my part to execute at night before bed. I didn't want to feel bad when I inevitably forgot that he needed to travel home one night, because I was sure that it would happen and I would be forced to explain why he was hanging out in the same spot for another day. The other part of me knows how my children look forward to this. The first thing Ella says every morning in December is "Where is Scout? Have you seen him yet?!" I'm trying to create the best ...
October Revisited
So, it's December 4th and I haven't really blogged since mid-October. Sure, there have been some P365/weekly updates and a few "thankful" posts, but you don't even know how my children dressed up for Halloween! I figured before we could move on into the holiday season, I needed to at least mention the end of October, right? I decided to go the easy route with pumpkins this year. For whatever reason, I'm struggling to keep up in all areas of parenting / creativity / holidays, etc. We didn't make it to the pumpkin patch and I just couldn't force myself to carve pumpkins. I know, I'm a Scrooge. I asked the girls how they felt about painting pumpkins and they were pretty enthusiastic. Aside from the acrylic paint that won't come out of my wool rug, I'll count it a success. We even managed to ...