Augustine's Birthday!

Augustine turned 3 yesterday!

August Cabin Trip

Ah! I keep forgetting to post pictures of our last trip to the cabin... like 2 weeks ago... :)

Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed!

Someone got into Aunt Nikelle's syrup...

Catching

And releasing (Augustine's hair is hilarious!)

Ella was not enthused with the creek

Discovering the wondering of the Etch-A-Sketch

Friday's Antics

This was one of the results of having all the girls (and their kids) over on Friday:

I seriously get a good laugh out if it just about every time I look out my sliding glass door. 

Ooooh children... ;) 

First Day of Preschool!

It was this little guy's first day of preschool at Miss Molly's

"The Smirk"

It took me a few tries.... or more.... ;)\

This is actually him at the Open House

I love how his hands are still slightly pudgy :)

 And he's of course going with his best friend, Eli!

Andrew says I may be a little more excited for him to go to preschool than he is. Not because I want him out of the house, but because I'm so excited for all the fun he'll have, the friends he'll make, and all the things he'll learn. And I can't wait for all the little parties and "homework" activities! Can you tell I was only able to teach 1 year of preschool (I ironically stopped because I had Augustine ;)

Tracking Daddy ;)

Augustine has had a pretty rough time with Andrew being out of town. I think this is the first time that Andrew has been gone and Augustine has actually comprehended that his daddy is going to be gone for a while. On top of that, he seems to be understanding so much cognitively right now that he's having a hard time coping emotionally. So this means we've been working though meltdown after meltdown after meltdown. Something I've bee trying to do to encourage him, though, is to make a simple calendar (and I do mean simple) to help show him how many days he has left until he sees his dad. 

My hope today was to be able to track Andrew's progress on his way home. However, our printer doesn't work (evidently you need to have both color and black ink for it to work... Not just color... Don't get me started...). So I made a ghetto map of the US by tracing one off my computer onto tissue paper and then taping it onto craft paper.

Ghetto? Yes. But it works ;) Now time to stalk Andrew on iCloud as he makes his way across the country with our good friend, Adam! Drive safe, guys!

Visit with Lauren

I took a little road trip with the kiddos today to visit my good friend Lauren in Prescott. I was able to see the new house she and her husband just bought and take a tiny tour of the town they live in. I'm in love with both the house and the town! I've only driven through part of Prescott before so I've never been able to see the downtown area which so happens to remind me a lot of the area Lauren and I grew up in. The weather was even similar! I unfortunately forgot to bring my camera, so we had to make due with iPhone photos :-/ 

Walking around down town. Ella looooove Lauren!

At the lake. Lauren did a pretty good job at keeping Ella from eating rocks ;)

Throwing rocks in the water. Of course.

I really need to get out of the habit of asking him to say "cheese"...

Yeah, definitely need to stop

Oh my

Practicing walking with Lauren

She evidently liked to look up at Lauren through her shirt

Beautiful Lauren and exhausted Ella

The car ride home. I think we wore him out.... ;)

Lauren is so good and patient with my kids. I can't wait to see her become a momma in January!

Oh Yeah, I Have a Blog ;)

Whenever someone asks me how we've been doing I say, "busy" and then realize, "oh wait... I'm always busy... and so is everyone else!" I've realized "busy" has become my new normal; it's just a matter of if I'm just busy or super busy ;) Anyways, I've been hustling about a little more lately so it's been hard finding a time to sit down and write a post. I normally schedule out time to do extra projects late at night after the kids go to bed. However, that time as been preoccupied with other things lately. For example, this:

Editing photos for the swim school's new website. Most of them aren't boring like this one but I'm assuming I'm not allowed to post pictures of our students' bright, shiny (and wet) faces on my personal blog ;)

But alas, I'm done editing (for now) and Andrew is in KY for almost a week so I have a tiny bit of spare time at night to write some posts. Here's a little snippet of what we've been up to:

We're getting ready for Augustine to start preschool. He'll be going to a in-home preschool with his best friend Eli. It'll be interesting adjusting to having a kid in school on a regular basis. I feel like I have no idea what I'm doing. Good thing he'll only be going twice a week ;) Augustine will also be turning 3 at the end of this month so I need to get a move-on with planning his party!

Augustine's new backpack :)

Little Ella is hitting some new milestones. For example, her first set of pigtails:

Oh yeah, and she's also learning to wave, clap, and I got her to take a couple of steps the other day ;)

We've continued to have our girls' hang out on Friday mornings where us girls chat and our kids run a muck in my house. For almost a year now we've had 6-8 boys and only 1 girl over to play on Fridays. I think Ella is excited for her girlfriend, Audrey, to come home! A couple of us moms were laughing about starting to make blog posts dedicated to the shenanigans the boys get into while they are here. They're almost always up to something!

This is a small example of how the house looks after the little wolf pack of boys have ran through it ;)

The rest of this week is full with visiting my good friend Lauren up in Prescott, going to meetings for preschool, welcoming Andrew home (hopefully sometime Thursday) and then going to the cabin for the weekend.

Starving Children

I have this bad tendency of starving my children. Well, more like just Ella. Augustine could care less if he eats. Ella on the other hand, seems to be on the brink of death every time I make dinner...

Cousins

We went up to my in-laws' cabin 2 weekends in a row. The first weekend was for Andrew's birthday. The second was to spend the 4th of July with all of Andrew's family and their kids. Both weekends were full of 4th of July celebrations and trips to the creek. All of the little cousins had some great bonding time; in particular the "older" ones (Jett, Augustine, and Henly). We even made them all pose to take photos to track them growing up together and for mementos when they get older.

Jett 4, Augustine 2.5, Henly 2.5, Ella 9 months, Brody 3 months

These photos remind me of the photos my mom used to show me of her with her sister and cousins when she was a kid. It will be fun to see them grow and to see how many more we add to the clan :)

Little Ella Bella Turns 9 Months

I was originally going to have my next post be about our trip to the cabin over the weekend. However, little Ella is 9 months old today so I decided to just to a little post on her. 

It's been interesting having a baby like Ella. Augustine was my touchy/cranky baby that wasn't much fun until he was about 6 months old. But Ella has always been so sweet and easy going, with little twist of ambition. 

She's ambitious. (bolting through wet sand to get to her favorite thing: water)

She's my Mini-Me

She's sweet.

She loves her Daddy :)

She will laugh at Augustine more than anyone else. Hands down.

She's our baby girl!

The Birthday Old Man

So today is this guy's birthday:

I had an epiphany earlier today about what Andrew will be like in another 10 years. First, let me list off a few of what I like to call, "Andrewisms" (hilarious things Andrew says that I find ridiculously hilarious)...

Jack-wagon: a name he calls people without wanting to insult them
Jack-hole: as opposed to a$$hole
Loose canon: someone on the rode who is driving sporadically
Butterproof: a gluten-free bread I had him try a few weeks ago

Not only does he have funny descriptions for things, he also has hilarious analogies. For example, when describing the difficulty of backing up in the new mini-van, he described it as follows: "if there was a birthday party of small children behind me I would run over each one of them!"

So I have come to the conclusion that Andrew is going to turn into this guy:

"You wouldn't hear a dump truck driving through a nitroglycerin plant"

Anyways, yes, I'm just being silly :)

To the person that makes me laugh more than anyone else:
Happy Birthday, Andrew ;)

Busy Week!

This week was a little "cray-cray." Mainly between us selling the Corolla, buying a minivan (yes, I know, I have a minivan), and Andrew's birthday party all within the course of a few days. Throw in 2 small children, regular life, and one night of me working in there and you have yourself a little bit of chaos.

Selling the Corolla and buying the Honda Odyssey was totally God's doing. Well, everything is, but this is one of those times where it's distinctly evident. After talking with some friends that had just bought a van off Craigslist, we thought we'd be in for a long and frustrating search. On top of that, since we were selling our only car, we were concerned about having a lapse of time without a car. However! We put the Corolla on Craigslist on Tuesday. Wednesday Andrew got in contact with a family that was selling their van- we got the heads up from his dad who found out from his friend/mechanic. The family who was selling the van turned out to be a very kind Christian family who ended up being very happy to take our offer and hold the van for us while we sold our car. Thursday night (after I got off work) we sold our car and bought the van. The van is exactly what we were hoping for but never thought we would be able to afford, but thanks to some very generous people we were able to get it! I'll post some photos of it some other time.

I haven't mentioned this yet but I'm sure I'll mention this often in future posts: when I married Andrew I obtained solid gold in in-laws. 1) because they love and care for us so much, 2) because they love and care for our children so much, 3) because they are so stinkin' generous! Take Thursday for example: my MIL watched my kids while I worked (which Augustine gets so excited he can barely nap), she let me steal her car to go to work, and my FIL came over to help install a new kitchen faucet and give us their old patio set.

The "new-to-us" patio set

Friday was Andrew's birthday party (he'll be 30 on Tuesday). We did our traditional Blue Wasabi outing with a few friends. Afterwards I had planned a "Beer and Bacon" party for him. I would post pictures but 1) since I was the host, I was too distracted and totally forgot to take some! and 2) the pictures wouldn't be that interesting seeing as how I wasn't able to do any fancy Pinterest decorations ;) We played Munchkins which almost always solicits some sort of rowdiness and heated discussions about the rules but always overall ends up being fun.

Like I said, Andrew's birthday is on Tuesday and we are going up to my in-laws' cabin (see, their they are again! ;) next weekend to celebrate. I'm sure I'll end up taking plenty of photos to post; especially since I failed to do so on Friday... but for now I'll just post a picture of little Ella since she's standing next to me being so cute :)

When Andrew first saw her this morning he said, "what is she wearing?? A moo-moo?!" Men! ;)

Nailed It!

How I felt when I was trimming our ficus tree the other day:





How I envisioned our ficus tree to turn out:

How our ficus tree actually turned out:

As Andrew would say, "now, in my defense" the tree was looking pretty gangly in the first place. Apparently trees around these parts can't handle cooler temperatures at all. And when I say "cooler temperatures" I mean if it dips even slightly below 32* this wimpy little tree starts to shrivel up and die. A few months ago this happened and (despite putting 5 blankets and a heater on it) we ended up having to cut huge chunks of dead branches out of it. I feel as though the poor thing had a bad accident and is having to go through a series of surgeries to get back to it's normal figure...

Baby Girl Has and Addiction

Ella has a little addiction to eating paper....

I could have our floor completely spotless (which almost never happens, but still) and she would still find a tiny piece of paper to chew on. She even gets this crazy look in her eyes when she first spots it and then hones in on it as quickly as possible. Silly girl :)

Fun stuff

Andrew made an awesome swing for Augustine; I'm so impressed!

And Ella is hitting the "please-hold-me-all-the-time-especially-when-you're-trying-to-cook-dinner" milestone.