thanksgiving 2014

Thanksgiving again.

This year, there is so, so much to be thankful for.

This year, I woke up to my newest little buddy on one side and my sweet girl on the other. My husband was up cooking dinner for all the family we have in town. I was able to sleepily pull C into bed and nurse him quietly while his big sister got up to see what was going on in the rest of the house. We have spent a day surrounded by family, which can be overwhelming, but also kind of the point of the holiday.

There is so much to be thankful for.

I cannot believe I have two little ones this year. I am so glad that His plan is greater than ours and He never ceases to surprise us with how good it is. I'm so thankful for this second little miracle baby. Everything is just so, so good right now.

Happy Thanksgiving y'all.

our fourth.

We had a good holiday weekend. Like real good.

Which I wasn't sure it would be with Mr. P working the whole time, but it was.

I've been getting a little emotional lately about this new baby thing. Which is a whole 'nother post in itself but let's just say that my heart has been a little sore lately as I think about dividing my time between two littles. So when I heard that Mr. P was working, I decided that I was going to make it a great "girls weekend". Just a grand 'ol time the two of us.

Then BG woke up in rare form on Friday morning and refused to listen and had a meltdown over her outfit and I was in tears by 11 am. True life y'all.

I gave myself a minute to be woe is me: "we have no friends here", "she has no friends", "this is going to be the WORST holiday ever" (I'm nothing if not dramatic, and wrong, 98% of the time), and then I packed us up and headed to the park. Where we stayed and ran around until I noticed her ear was pouring blood. So off to Urgent Care we went.

A quick diagnosis of conjuctivitis and an outer ear infection later we were on our way.

A friend of mine texted to see if we wanted to join her and her family for the rest of the afternoon so we packed it up and headed over there where we spent the next few hours lounging around with friends. It was good. And tired BG out. WIN.

Mr. P came home to two girls in the bed at 9:30. We decided to wake the little one up for the fireworks in the neighborhood but that was shortlived as she was terrified. So back to bed we went.

We spent the next day lounging around the house. BG played upstairs a lot (yay for new found independence!!) while I got some stuff done downstairs. Around lunch time, I decided we both needed a break so we packed a lunch and had a little picnic outside on the patio.

We made a quick trip for ice cream and then spent the rest of the afternoon in the pool before moving inside for a late afternoon movie.

It was a quiet weekend. But it was so good. I do enjoy this age so much. She just loves everything she gets to do with us and she's (usually) just so happy to be doing it with us. We girls needed a weekend like this. I won't mention ago how prevalent it is in my mind that there's not that many left just the two of us..

Hope you all enjoyed your holiday!

halloween.

Months ago, BG decided that she wanted to be a Mexican jumping bean for Christmas.

I was kind of excited. I mean, how cool. Plus totally original. I loved it.

I set to work finding brown material to make her "bean" and found a sombrero for her to wear. It was going to be EPIC.

Then we went shopping with my aunt and my girl walked by Pottery Barn Kids and suddenly, she HAD to be the purple fairy princess she saw hanging in the window.

Blast.

I thought for sure she would forget about it but as Halloween got closer and closer, it was clear that wasn't going to happen.

Mr. P and I really didn't want to pay the (ridiculously overpriced) price of the PBK costume so she and I ended up at Target one night to try and sway her decision. While there, I got a text from Mr. P saying "just go get the purple one. She'll be the cutest fairy princess ever". Wrapped he is.

But she found a Tinkerbell costume at Target that she liked so we got it. But she wasn't that excited about it.

Long story short; we are pushovers. And BG ended up with two costumes for Halloween. But her smile when we picked out the purple fairy costume (in two sizes too big mind you, last minute sucks), was totally worth it. Mr. P was right; she was the cutest fairy princess I ever did see.

Once she was all dolled up, we headed downtown to our local business trick-or-treat. It was packed out. There were tons of "characters" walking around, which BG is terrified of, and tons of businesses doling out all kinds of fun stuff. We did manage to get her to take a picture with a Ghostbuster. That was all she was having.

We did about half of the walk through and then headed back to our neighborhood. We walked around for a bit, checked out a local haunted house (which only I went through with a bunch of high school girls; holy hilarious), and then headed on home about eight when it was clear a certain toddler was Halloween'd out.

It was a really, really good time. We may be about ninety bucks poorer, but the fairy princess was worth it.

our fourth

In the grand scheme of things, our Fourth of July kind of rocked.

We thought about driving into the city for fireworks and such but ex-nayed that as crowds and toddlers don't usually mix. Mr. P wanted to stick close to home and avoid that whole cluster so we decided to just grill out at the lake with the bff and her kids and let the kids swim before cleaning up and watching the fireworks here in town. Perfect plan.

We spent the morning unpacking (it will NEVER be done) and cleaning while BG played. After naps for the two kiddos of the house (never the Mom), we packed up and headed over to J's to swim for a bit.

The kids had a BLAST. There was the bickering which always occurs when you put two girls together (BG will probably stay an only child, because oh my stars the bickering), but overall, they had a blast.

As has been the norm this entire summer, the fun was rained out all too quickly and we literally had to grab everything and sprint as the clouds all too soon opened up and the daily downpour commenced.

*SIDENOTE: what is UP with the weather this year? Wettest summer ever.*

Once it cleared up again, we packed up the goods for lunch and headed down to the lake where J and I quickly found a spot to lay while the kids played and Mr. P grilled. Should have been perfection.

And it was. But we're Moms and all too soon the kids were over letting us do nothing and were throwing things in the lake and talking our ears off. We wouldn't trade them for the world though. ;)

After lunch, we let them play down at the lake for a bit before we hustled everyone back to the house for showers before getting ready to see the fireworks.

Only it poured again. So laying at the pool watching the show didn't happen. Because they canceled it. Boo.

We trekked down to the lake again where we found a couple of guys setting off fireworks of their own. We found a bench and curled up together and watched as they attempted a show of some sort that really was not going well. The kids were losing interest about five minutes in when the guys messed up and shot the fireworks backwards; directly at us.

Obviously we're okay but it was kind of scary and my poor child is now completely TERRIFIED of fireworks and has told us every night since that she's good on fireworks and is okay if they never go off again.

Fun.

But all in all? a day spent with friends and family, good food and cold drinks? Total win. Hope you all enjoyed your holiday as well.

for my two favorite dads.

I know. I'm late. But I didn't want to let the day (month?) go by without giving a little shout out to my two favorite Dads.

I don't have any cute pictures because my life is currently chaos as we are moving and my computer with all my pictures is packed and heck, even my presents and cards I got for the two of them are packed, so all I have today is words.

I have the luckiest daughter in the world because she will never, not once, not for a day doubt how much her Daddy loves her. Mr. P is hands down, one of the best fathers I have ever laid eyes on. Babe, our girl is the most blessed little girl ever. The way she lights up when you walk into a room speaks volumes to how you parent her. The fact that you "date" her and make her a priority will do wonders for her in life. More than you can even imagine. Thank you for guiding our family. For being the spiritual leader. For praying with her. For taking her to church. You're giving her a great foundation for her future. I can't wait to see what kind of lady she turns out to be. She's going to be so amazing.

To my Dad. I'm so lucky to look back on a life of great memories with you. One of my favorites is sitting in a warm up circle with the rest of my team, getting ready for that days soccer practice, watching you as you dribbled a ball around and waited on us to get ready to start. You knew that we wouldn't get anything done until we had all gossiped about the days events. I actually loved how in sync you were with me and my friends. I so appreciate all that time you spent investing in my life. You showed me what a good father/daughter relationship looked like and I am so thankful for that. And I know how lucky how I am.

There are so many girls who aren't lucky enough to have a great relationship with their Dads. Too many. Baby Girl and I are beyond blessed to not be in that category. We hit the jackpot with our fathers.

Happy Father's Day you two. I love you both more than the world.

real life.

I have a million things that somehow have to be done in a very short amount of time. This weekend is one of my biggest events at work and I won't even be here. Nice right?

So not only am I trying to pull off my biggest weekend of the year, I'm trying to pull everything together for my little family to go out of town and be in a wedding this weekend. To say I'm stressed out would be an understatement of epic proportions.

How about a bit of real life?

For Easter I wanted one decent family picture. One.

Not too bad except for Mr. P and those blasted glasses. These are about as good as you get with the little these days but I decided we had to try again without those glasses. So we did.

Some day these family pictures will be funny right?!

Easter shenanigans

This past weekend was epic. One of those weekends that just make you smile.

It didn't start that way. We actually had plans for Saturday that we had to cancel when the little one woke up not feeling so hot, but after a lazy morning hanging around the house, we thought she might be feeling well enough to head out for a bit. So head out we did.

We drove to a local park that was putting on an Easter egg hunt. I took BG to a big hunt last year in Anderson and she had a blast, so I was excited to find one she could go to this year. And Mr. P was able to go too. It was the perfect little afternoon plan to get the three of us out of the house for a bit.

BG had a blast. There weren't really any hiding places for the eggs so they made the kids use spoons to carry them back to their baskets. Made for some entertainment for sure. The rules were the younger kids could use their hands, but as soon as BG saw how hard everyone else was working with the spoons, she decided she had to use a spoon too. She definitely gave it a hardcore shot.

We had such a good time. BG ran around like a crazy person and laughed and giggled the whole time. We just enjoyed the heck out of watching her. Kids make everything more fun.

We'll pretend that she didn't have so much fun at this hunt that we'll now be doing egg hunts for weeks. That's how you know a certain toddler had one good 'ol time.

Easter 2013.

Easter was magnificent. No, we didn't accomplish every activity I had planned for us, but we squeezed in a whole lot of fun. There were egg hunts galore, family visits, and church which my Mom and my brother and niece came to attend with us. We ate lunch out, which was different, but I found that it really doesn't matter what you're doing when the company is good.

The day was good. Really good.

I adore these girls.

It was so, so good to have my brother and niece here. BG just adores both of them and I love having my partner-in-crime here. The girls absolutely loved getting to hunt eggs together. The laughter I heard absolutely made my day.

I'm so thankful for what this day means as well. More so now that I'm a Mom than I ever was before. How blessed am I to have a God who did what He did for me? For my daughter? For my family? I am so thankful He lives!