TGIF!!!

Yesssss! It's finally Friday! This has been a very tiring and stressful week but it's now time to paaaar-tay! First up, is daddy's bday tomorrow. The big 3-1! He's not looking forward to it because it means he can no longer tease me about being older. We are going out to a trivia night thing with friends and I'm pretty excited about it. It's not often that he can hang with my friends without the presence of kids everywhere so I'm really looking forward to him meeting some of the other dads. It should be great fun!

Today was a great day. We went to bootcamp (typical, I know) and then to the pool. That seems to be protocol for our Friday's lately but with school quickly approaching, I know it'll be less and less and surprisingly - I'll miss it. Today we had a lot of "firsts" as well. With having 3 kids to keep track of, we've been only venturing out to the smaller pools. The pools that have larger baby sections and smaller adult sections. It appeals to Bryce but definitely not to Skylar. Well today, a lot of our friends wanted to go to a pretty popular pool. One that has a big play structure with slides and buckets of water and then has a HUGE slide that they can go off of with friends. It was one of our favorite pools last Summer while I was preggo. But now that Bryce is more independent and that baby is outtta my tummy - I was a bit hesitant but they did great. It's so nice to have Skylar swimming now and Bryce is so close to swimming, it's unreal. He's mastered knowing how to hold his breath and not venture out where he can not reach. Definitely something that makes this mama feel loads better. Bryce has now graduated from the baby slides to the big slide and when I looked up in time to see him go down, my heart stopped. Down he went and popped right back up out of the water, over to the stairs and on and on it went. He was so excited and I was so proud but also a little sad that my little boy is growing up so fast. And that Eva girl that was once in my tummy at this same pool was now out and enjoying the action. Can't ya tell....

And here's one of sweet Brycie with his buddies. He's really enjoying guy time lately....

First Sleep-over!

Sigh. I can't believe how fast time is going by. Just yesterday I announced that I was pregnant with this little gem and now she's 5 and having slumber parties. So not cool. She has a little bestie on our street that she simply adores. It's become a regular habit of ours this Summer to allow her to go and play at least once a week. Such a highlight for her since it's total girl time. No having to fuss with stinky little brothers or slobbering little sisters. Well on this day, Matthew went to pick her up to bring her home from dinner and when she got home, she came barreling through the front door begging and pleading for me to let her stay the night at her friends house. Just then her daddy walks in and says "it's okay with me." This of course led to a later discussion of not making mama out to be the bad guy and lets discuss things in private. Anyway, she flashed those big beautiful brown eyes (covered in bright blue eye shadow from their earlier fashion party) and I caved. I was a mess and trying my best to fight tears but a few snuck out and she just kept hugging me and thanking me.

Can you tell she's excited?! This was her first time to sleep away from me (outside of her grandparents). She did fantastic and of course begged to stay for breakfast and one more night. We went with breakfast but I snatched her back as quick as possible. While she was away, it meant more time for snuggles with these two...

...which was awesome! I adore my kiddos just wish that time would slow down some. Pretty soon it'll be my little man off to football camp or something...waaaaah.

Worst. Blogger. Ever.

Or it could even be titled "Worst. New Years Resolution Keeper. Ever." Both are fairly accurate. Fail. I will try not to spend most of my time beating myself up over this and instead focus on today and move forward. After all, it's been 2 months of complete and utter chaos and to commit to making an entry for each of those days is just ludicrous. In my defense (because there always is one), we really did have SO much going on. First was the umpteen number of birthday parties, outside of Skylar and Brycens, to attend to. And then Weddings. And finally the "purchase" of a new home. That's right, I did say purchase and it is in quotations for a reason. But first let me back up by saying that the house we found is in every sense of the word, our dream home. Buuuuuut, in this stage of our life - we are not quite ready for our dream home. We did sign on the dotted line and we did pick cabinets and flooring at the design center but two days before the final meeting, we got cold feet. Well, that's at least when we officially backed out. From the start of this, we never really felt comfortable with our decision and both of us had an extreme amount of stress that neither was conveying to the other. It just happened to be one Sunday afternoon that we were causally talking it over and how we didn't think it was the right decision and how I felt God was really trying to impress upon me that while we are excited, everything happens in HIS time not my own. So I backed out. And the minute we made that decision, it was as if you told us we won the lottery. You could almost see the dark cloud lifting off of us and floating away. Am I disappointed? Sure. But I am trusting that God knows what's best and in His perfect timing, we will stumble upon our dream house again. So there ya have it. With the normal day-to-day stress coupled with trying to sell our current home and keep it "show-ready" with 3 little ones, and then all of the different design center and builder appointments, etc; the daily blogging commitment took a back burner but here I am, back at it. My goal is to "try" and finish out the year but life often gets in the way so I'll do my best. Here goes.

Today...Day number...whatever :)
This morning was a fun filled morning with trying to get our sweet family of five ready and out the door for the 9am church service. It's always funny to me how we can be at each others throats and you begin to feel like this is just not worth it until you walk in those chapel doors and the stress of the morning seems to melt away. And then you pick the kids back up from the nursery... ha ha ha! No really though, it was another typical morning in May-wood trying to get out of the house but we managed it. The sermon was pretty cool as we had a guest speaker with a very thick Russian accent and he made a couple of jokes that really made the environment welcoming. We got the kids a bit early and brought them back into the chapel to hear the closing praise and worship (one of Skylar's favorites) and just then saw my parents turn around, smiling at us. How funny that we went through the entire church service not even realizing they were there. After church we all decided to go to breakfast which is always fun. Poor Matthew was not as amped up about the idea as the rest of us but was eventually glad we went. I adore my dad and have absolutely no way of telling him "no." Maybe all of those years of knowing he couldn't do it to me has now backfired. We had a really nice time and I am thankful for moments like that. Once we finished breakfast, it was off to the house to get chores done and naps in before we had complete meltdowns. My funny for the day was when Matthew and I were arguing over who would go outside to check if Skylar's neighborhood friend was home that she was begging to go see. Skylar stood between us and said "guys. GUYS! Seriously, calm down and no stress. Mama, you go see." Well, yes ma'am! Little stinker. It was a great day!

Day 162: Pool MADNESS

Don't you just love how you can plan your day out in your mind and it all makes sense but in reality NOTHING goes according to plan? Well, thats how today felt for me. I intended on us getting to the pool around 10:30 and swimming until 12:30 because Skylar had swim lessons at 3:45. There was a better part of me that felt like this was a bad idea but the kids had so much energy this morning that I just could not see us staying at home until then. When we got to the pool however, we all discovered that it didn't open until noon. So after discussing it we decided to head to a different pool that was already opened. When we pulled in the parking lot though, it started raining. After mulling it over and all of us texting each other on what to do, we decided to give it a go. So we got everyone out and into the pool. Thankfully the weather cleared up but wouldn't you know, we didn't get into the pool until close to noon?! Just my luck. The kids played their little hearts out and I tried my best to keep track of time so that they would have plenty of time to sleep before heading out for Skylar's lessons but again - mom fail. I guess I assumed we lived right next door and that they would just instantly fall asleep but no...it took us 20 minutes to get home because of the weather and then the kids all fought sleep so it meant trying to wake them up after only a 20-30 minute nap and I just couldn't do it. I chalked it up to a total mom-fail and from now on we will not be doing pool fun on the same days that Skylar has lessons. So while they slept, I called daddy and told him how bad I felt and if we can somehow make it up to her. We decided to take her out to dinner for a little pre-birthday celebration and going to swim lessons was just a distant memory. We all had a lot of fun celebrating her!

Day 161: No work for Nana means all play for Mama!

Today we went to bootcamp again (ya, ya, I know - same story; different day). Afterwards we played for a bit and then sent Nana a text to see if we could come swim since we were rained out yesterday. Much to our surprise we found out that she was home!! It's always nice to hear that because it means that she will take care of Eva while I get a chance to play with Skylar and Brycen. Even Papa joined in on the fun. Skylar and Bryce were so excited to see Nana and Papa and it was hard to convince Skylar that this wasn't a Friday night because she was so prepared to spend the night. Papa got out the floaties which were wonderful and if it hadn't been for having to be on mom-duty I swear I would've fallen asleep right there. It was a beautiful day.

Day 160: Lets go swimming!

So when asking the kids what they wanted to do today, this was the answer we got. They have to see their Nana and Papa at least once a week and it's just an added bonus that they have a pool. After getting everyone loaded up with all their belongings, then getting sunblock on, floaties, towels, etc - they finally jumped in the pool only to get out 20 minutes later because of rain. Boo. They still had fun though hanging at Nana and Papa's for a little while and now that Gigi lives there, we got to visit with her too! After eating lunch and saying our goodbyes, we headed back home to finish up some chores before starting our busy week. Daddy wasn't too pleased with this since he was really looking forward to just kicking back on this rainy day but since I'm a lot like my dad (who can't sit still), I had to have things done and first up was my car. What I didn't mention last Thursday is that Bryce spilled chocolate milk in my car on the way to our Restore class. I did what I could to clean it up but we were already late so it was just a quick once-over. In hindsight I wish I would've just skipped class and taken the time to thoroughly clean my car but we live and learn. After restore, we headed to the pool and it was after that I realized I made a huge mistake because now that milk sat in my car from 9 in the morning until 3 in the afternoon and the smells that were coming out of my van were awful. I tried all weekend to lift that smell and even took my van in to have the carpets professionally cleaned. The problem is that my car has a sliding middle row that can move all the way forward and all the way back and because of that there are these tracks that all of that milk seeped into and made it impossible to get to. So while the carpet cleaning lifted the stain and helped somewhat with the smell, it was what was under all of that. I had to literally use a tooth brush, vinegar and paper towels to finally get everything cleaned up. But alas, I finally did. We now have a new rule in our car which is "no food or drink unless it's water." I'm praying we can stick to it because I don't want to go through that again. On the bright side, all of the carseats are clean and my car smells like vanilla ice cream thanks to papa for giving us an extra smelly thingy. Sunday blew by with all of our chores but I guess in a way I'm glad it rained otherwise we would've been gone most of the day, leaving me Monday to clean everything up in my house with no help from daddy since he was back at work. Happy to be done!

Day 159: Party, party, party!

Today was an incredibly busy day with a lot of places to be and not enough time in the day. First up was celebrating our sweet friend Olivia's 3rd birthday. The kids were very excited because it was at one of their favorite places, Wonderwild. And I was really excited because daddy was actually able to come with us this time around. Surprisingly we showed up only 10 minutes late which was such a relief because I was so afraid they wouldn't get a chance to play and then we would have a meltdown right there at the party. The kids had a lot of fun running around, playing with their friends. Eva and I also had fun catching up with girl talk and daddy made is way around shaking hands and chasing Bryce. After leaving the party we grabbed some coffee, made a quick appearance at another party then headed home to change and head to Papa Jack's house. There we had fun playing at the park, then running through the sprinklers, then spraying every one with the water hose (be prepared to get wet when you give a 3 year old boy complete control of the water hose), and even a little baseball. We haven't seen Jack and Melissa in a really long time so this visit was long overdue. The kids really seemed to have fun and we had to deal with the normal "mama, can Bree and Aidree pleeeeease spend the night?" Sigh. But it was a lot of fun and we all vowed to make it happen again soon.