Lexi's birthday

I posted Saturday that it was Lexi's birthday and talked all about my little girl turning 4. Well we had her party that afternoon, nothing fancy, just family but it was fun and she loved being in the spot light! Miss Pris just pranced around the whole time and ate up all the attention everyone gave her! :o)

I did make her cake again this year and it was quite a lot of work! I think it was actually more work than her cake last year! But I spent most of the week doing things for it when I could so that made it so much easier. She decided she wanted a Tinkerbell birthday so if course I made a Tinkerbell cake, although I just bought the toys to go on the cake. No way on earth was I going to try sculpting them!! haha! So anyways, I just had to post a few pics of the party. :o)

Here's the cake...




The birthday girl, not real sure why she looks like she's praying here! haha




And just a cute one of Logyn. :o)




Anyways, just had to post a few pics from the day. Now it's time to get ready for Logyn's birthday! :o)

4 years ago

4 years ago today my beautiful Lexi was born. From the beginning I should have known she was all drama! I went to the hospital for 4 different false alarms. Everyone of those times I could have sworn was "it" and a couple of them almost were, until she changed her mind and decided she was good to stay put a little while longer! But when she was finally born, my life changed. I thought she'd be a lot like her brother...I couldn't have been more wrong! I thought she'd be a little like me...I was right. I thought since she was a girl i'd know more of what I was doing and parent her better...I was wrong! I thought she'd be her daddy's little girl...I was very, very right!

Colby and I had the hardest time agreeing on a name for her before she was born. Early on I suggested Alexis and he didn't like it, he then suggested Ferrari and I said "NO"!!! :o) Then I fell in love with the name Harmony, it just seemed so perfect to me but Colby wasn't having it. He had finally decided he liked Alexis, so we agreed on Alexis Harmony. Then of course he thought she should be called Ali, and I thought she should be called Lexi. Seriously, all the arguing and back and forth, should have given me a hint at what life with this child would be like! :o) We never did agree on if she would be Ali or Lexi, she was born and she was just, Lexi! Harmony would have been absolutely the wrong name for her, i'm hoping since it is her middle name she will learn it at some point during her life! She is every bit, Lexi.

I have talked before about how she is my little drama queen, she's strong willed and she can be very difficult when she wants and while all of those are true, they don't completely make her up. The main things that describe her are simply, daughter and sister. She is only 4 after all, there's not much more in her life than being a daughter and sister! :o) But wow, she carries both of those roles so well. On my side bar I describe her as "Best friend to Konner and keeper of Daddy's heart". That describes my Lexi! As much as her and Konner can drive each other crazy, they really are the best of friends. As for her daddy, I don't think anything in this world melts his heart like that little girl! She truly is blessed to be able to call him "daddy".

So today, we get to celebrate the day she came into our lives and filled a hole we didn't even know was there. I love you my sweet Lexi! I hope you never doubt that and always know how much you mean to me. You fill my heart, you drive me crazy, you make me laugh, you are simply you. Don't ever change that! Happy Birthday my Lexi girl!

Today

Today is Monday. Normally I hate Mondays. The weekend is over and it's time to get back to the normal routine. Time to clean up the house after having taken some time off over the weekend. All in all, I just don't like Mondays. But, today has not been just any Monday. Today was a special Monday! Today I got to go eat lunch with Konner at school! His school is awesome about allowing parents and grandparents to come up for lunch or just during the day at any time to visit. So far I hadn't had the opportunity to go yet, it's kinda hard finding something to do with the girls while i'm gone for about an hour. But my mom offered to come watch the girls for me today so I could go up there with him.

I stopped and got him lunch which was really special because he normally eats the school lunches. But of course that made me run a few minuets late. *eye roll at myself for not leaving with more time!* I got there about 2 minuets late and the poor guy was already worried I wasn't coming! It broke my heart! I very rarely am not able to follow through on something I tell the kids i'm doing so i'm not sure why he thought I wouldn't be there. But the relief on his face when I walked in just about made me cry! *Yes, I am a very emotional person! :o)* So we sat down with several of his friends and had a great time eating and talking about his day. Of course the kids quickly moved on to talking about God vs. Incredible Hulk since they all said they had learned absolutely nothing all day! :o)

Then we went outside for recess and he showed me all around. We did the hula-hoops, basket ball, races and then just all the other little stuff they have. There were a bunch of kids out there and he was obviously friends with a lot of them. They all came up and asked who I was and talked to us and followed us around. It was so cute!

While I was watching him run around the play yard, race with his friends, and do all the other things he did, all I could think was "Take a mental picture!" I know it sounds silly to make such a big deal out of watching my son at recess but to me, it was huge. I know that the days of him being my five year old little boy are almost gone. The days of him turning to smile at me and make sure I see every basket he makes, they won't last forever. There will come a day when one of his friends asks who I am and he doesn't answer with such pride! haha I'm sure 10 years from now, my coming up to eat lunch with him won't be something he looks forward to for days. I want to do everything I can to hold on to these times. I want to remember every smile, every look, every single "That's my mommy!" because once again i'm reminded that these times go by all too soon.

There's an old saying, "A daughter's a daughter for life. A son is a son until he takes a wife." I remember looking at Konner just moments after he was born and I was reminded of that saying. One of my first thoughts was "18 years. I only have you all to myself for 18 years." That 18 has now moved to 13. All too soon it will be 12, and before I know it those 18 years will be gone.

So while my making a big deal out of something like going up to eat lunch with him might seem silly to some, to me, i'm simply making the most out of every single opportunity. Because I know that very very soon, these opportunities will be gone. But for now, my little boy still loves to be my little boy. So i'll take advantage of every single moment that I can and store up as many mental pictures as possible!

What to talk about

I have sat down so many times to try and post, but every single time my mind has been running in a thousand directions. So far I haven't been able to actually focus on a single topic so I just haven't posted. I've gone from wanting to talk about just every day stuff, to more serious specific topics. So for now I just decided to go with a general update and save the specific topics for another post.

Konner is now in his third month of school and he's doing amazing! The first month was very hard. He would go and have a great day, but at the end of the day when it was time to go home he would tell me every day how much he didn't like school and really didn't want to go back. I think it was very very hard for him to get used to being gone all day every day. But starting out I knew we needed to give it a full month before looking into it deeper and sure enough, that's exactly what it took. Almost 1 month to the day was all all it took! He now absolutely loves school and is always so excited to go, he has such a great time and is really enjoying learning everything. He is reading now too which is just such a proud thing for a parent to see! I talked to his teacher-who is absolutely amazing-a few weeks ago to see if he was behind at all. This school actually starts in all day Pre-K and he hadn't gone last year so I was worried that he would be behind most of the other kids. But she said he's not behind at all and learns things and picks up on things very quickly. I had to tell her that he gets all of that from his dad! :o) That's one thing I absolutely can not take any credit for! But that's just fine with me!

We are getting ready for Lexi's 4th birthday in just over a week. I can't believe she's already going to be four! Every birthday just seems so weird to me. I don't exactly remember allowing my children to grow up! I know that they're not exactly grown yet but everyday they just get closer and closer, doesn't get any easier to watch either! Lexi is doing great though, her and Logyn are getting super close now that they're getting so much time together while Konner is in school. We are still, yes STILL, working on potty training that girl! Such a weird and hard thing to admit as a mother! We have been working hard on this for over a year and are starting to get closer to it. She is finally out of pull-ups on a regular basis, now mostly just for naps and bedtime but accidents are still a fairly common thing. I know, a lot of people say to never even use pull-ups and maybe that's something we should have done to begin with. But I will say, after cleaning up so many accidents, those things were a life saver! Lexi is a very strong willed little girl and I honestly think that's why it is taking her so long to get trained. She has such a hard time doing anything that she doesn't want to do or doesn't care about doing and that's been the biggest problem. But I do think we are getting close and she is for the most part trained. I will however hold the fact that she wasn't trained till she was 4 over her head for the rest of her life! My payment for changing so many diapers and pull-ups!!! :o)

Logyn...what can I possible say about my Logyn that hasn't been said. She isn't even 2 after all so there couldn't possibly be much to say about her right? Not hardly! That little girl absolutely completes our family! She is the perfect mix of her brother and sister and yet somehow is absolutely her own person with her very own personality. Colby and I have talked quite a lot about before she was born. I had felt for quite sometime like someone was missing. It was so hard to explain because it wasn't like someone had been there and left so to a point it just didn't make any sense. Plus Colby didn't feel it at all! We had a little boy and a little girl, all we needed was a golden retriever and we'd be the perfect american family! But for over a year I absolutely knew someone was missing. I never thought Colby would ever change his mind about having another baby and I tried and prayed so hard to be ok with that. Colby did end up changing his mind and we have been so blessed every day since she was born-although Colby has admitted to having some doubts the first night home with her when she kept us up till 4am screaming! :o) She is just such an amazing kid and brings out the best in all of us...most of the time. Konner's not too fond of her when she's stealing his sun glasses, and Lexi isn't thrilled when Logyn eats her food when she's not looking! But other than those times, she's amazing!

All in all, I love my little family. There are times they drive me absolutely crazy, and they may be young but they can fight with the best of them! But I really can't picture not having the three of them running around here. It seems like life would be so dull and somewhat pointless without them. I am so thankful to be their mother and to have the wonderfully challenging job of raising them!

I guess i'll stop here, it's gone from an update to sappy so that's always a good time to stop! :o) Wonder what i'll talk about next time...

Bad Mommy Moment

Anyone else ever had one of those? 10? Maybe you've lost count?! I've been a mother for 5 years and let me tell you, i've had more bad mommy moments than I can even count! There have been small moments and there have been rather large moments. Some long term, some short term. For example, i've never read a bedtime story to my kids every night. I've done it here and there but not every night. Bad mommy moment! I hate cooking with my daughter, i'm a bit of a mico-manager and have such a hard time when things aren't done exactly right. Another bad mommy moment. I have in fact allowed the kids to go to bed without brushing their teeth before. I know, the horror!!! Hard to believe huh?! I have used my tv to babysit more times than I should have. I have also yelled at my kids, it's horrible and should never be done. But yet, i've done it on more than one occasion. Major bad mommy moment! I don't know if any other mom's have had such bad mommy moments, I tell myself of course you all have. I just can't handle the fact that i'm the worst mother out there!!! :o)

But what about those lifetime bad mommy choices? Anyone ever made one of those? This year we put Konner in school, it was such a hard choice for us to make and we went back and forth on it for such a long time. We had always planned on homeschooling our children, after all, both my husband and I were home schooled so what other choice was there really?! But after a LOT of talking, thinking and praying about it we decided to put him in a public school.

Today he started his fifth week in school and over the weekend I started wondering if we made the right choice. He still has days were he says he doesn't like school and just begs us to not make him go. Nothing will pull at your heart strings more than that let me tell you!!! Plus the plan was always to home school right?! Why did I change that?! Am I damaging him for life with this decision? Was this the best choice for him? Would it have been better to keep him home? So many questions!

But last night I re-read a post on one of my favorite blogs. This post was about all the ways that we are homeschooling our children regardless of where they go to school. I couldn't even summarize her post so you just have to read it for yourself HERE. It's amazing, trust me!! :o)

So after reading that last night I was reminded of why we chose this route for our family in the first place. I remembered all the great opportunities Konner will have here. I think i'll always have the a reason to second guess myself no matter what the situation is. That's something i'm just going to have to figure out myself but the schooling issue has been settled for me once again. I believe this was the best decision for Konner and for the girls as they get older and i'm so thankful that for that blog post. It was the perfect read at the perfect time!

Now if I could just figure out how to fix all those other bad mommy moments!!! :o)

Do you scrapbook?

I love scrapbooking! It's probably one of my very favorite things to do, although I have to admit that I just don't get to do it very often. But I found a website with some pretty cool layouts called Scrappin Daisy Designs so of course I have to share it with everyone on my blog! If you get a chance you'll have to go check it out HERE plus I added a button for them on here as well. This way you can get to it very easily! Enjoy!! :o)

Can you feel it?

It's coming! Very soon it will be here. Do you know what it is? Can you guess? Are you just dying to know? Ok i'll tell you...no really, here it comes. Fall. Such a small word, so simple and yet, there's such comfort in it. There are just so many wonderful things about this season. There's the colors, the way everything changes into such beautiful browns and oranges. The "fall scent", you know you've smelt it! Thanksgiving. Enough said. But I think one of my very favorite things about Fall is simple, pumpkin. Again, a very simple thing but it's just so wonderful.

Pumpkin muffins. Pumpkin bread. Pumpkin spice latte's, from Starbucks of course! Pumpkin creamer that I have to admit I search for every time I go to Walmart from August until February. Pumpkin cinnamon rolls, which I am determined to master this year. And of course, pumpkin pie completely smothered in cool whip. Oh and in case you were wondering, no you can not use any brand other than cool whip! It's extremely important to remember that!

Of course since I am delighted that fall is so close you can feel it, I had to change the look of my blog! It makes me warm and fuzzy just looking at it. Now i'm off to drool and dream of all things pumpkin!!

By the way, what are your favorite things about Fall? Do you share my love of pumpkin or is this obsession specific only to me?!