Crazy days....

Why is it that when you own a home, everything seems to break at once?

...Last week, a spring to our garage door broke....several hundred dollars later....(ugh...)

...Then this week, a circuit board went out in the main control of our AC blower....several hundred dollars later.....(ugh, again....)

When you're having rough weeks like these, you try to look for the little blessings in life.

...We've had tons of rain over the past few weeks (thanks, Lord!) bring the area lake levels back up to "normal"
...Our sweet E continues to make us smile with her antics every day, including yelling DADA! DADA! DADA! in church when she saw sweet hubby ushering on Sunday. Too cute!

...E also came up with the weird notion of holding onto her socks while drinking her water on Sunday when we were eating lunch at my mom's. Crazy antics like these? You just HAVE to smile! :-)

Special day...

Our church has a fun birthday tradition....

At the end of each month in the weekly "Sunday School opening" after announcements and offering and prayers, all of the adults and children with birthdays in that month get to go up to the front. Birthday honorees put money in a special offering plate and get a small gift - usually a special sticker or bookmark - and the congregation sings two special Christ-centered birthday songs.

Since my dad and E both have May birthdays, Grampa got to take E up front for the May Sunday School birthday celebration this year. He was SO proud, I thought he was going to burst. This is literally one of the first things my dad thought of when he realized his grandchild was going to have a May birthday....getting to share the church birthday celebration with that grandchild!

E and Grampa had a fun time on Sunday. E observed the whole thing very solemnly. Grampa gave her a penny to put in the collection....Grampa says he put in "a very old and tattered dollar bill...."

(A special note about the stained glass window in this photo...it's one of many in our church....but my parents donated this window in honor of my late grandfather....my mom's daddy. It's been in our church sanctuary since I was a little girl....I always remember it being 'our family window')

I never want to forget....

There are so many fun and funny things that happen around here each day....I know I will never remember all of them, but I want to try! Things like...

...last night on a family walk, watching E see bunnies for the first time. Two little brown cottontails were on the path were we were walking....she was captivated!

...on the same family walk, E saw a man walking two dogs and kept saying "itty ca! itty ca!" (that's E-speak for kitty cat!). Not exactly, E! I guess she thinks everything furry with four legs is a cat!

...this morning at the grocery store, E was lounging in the baby seat of the cart....comfortably leaning back, paging through the sale ad like a pro. She is a mess! Earlier in the shopping trip, she was consulting her "list"....she likes to hold a piece of paper like Mommy does!

...the increasingly-frequent sound of E's THUMP THUMP THUMP crawling through the house....giggling....trying to catch the kitty!

...E pulling up at one of the end tables in the living room and managing to snag the ceiling fan remote control from on top of it....then pushing all of the buttons on the remote and watching the fan go from HIGH to LOW to HIGH to MEDIUM speed....over and over!

Teething...

Teething is evil. For the past three nights, my sweet girl has been up three or four times screaming her head off, and there is very little we can do to comfort her. I even took her to the doctor yesterday, thinking her ear infection came back. But the doctor we saw (not our regular pediatrician) said that her ears were fine and that she was suffering from "teething and attitude".... Not so fun. I am wishing for those days when she slept through the nights. Where, oh where did those nights go?

Needless to say, we're a little tired around here. Sweet hubby is playing with E now, so I was able to catch up on a little freelance work, play on the computer, and write this post! :-)

The Sunday Morning Scramble...

A comment on a friend's blog (which read "What time do you have to get up on Sunday mornings to get everyone looking like that?!") got me thinking....

What time do YOU get up on Sunday morning to get your family ready for church? Around here, my Sunday morning alarm goes off at 5 a.m.....yes, it's obscene, and I don't always get up on time (depending on how well the baby, the husband and the mommy slept the night before!!!)...but it's imperative to get up early to get everyone fed, dressed and a diaper bag packed for 8 a.m. church!

Please post your comments.

Frugal Friday

As a stay-at-home, work-at-home Mom, I try to find ways to stretch the family dollar. We clip coupons, shop at consignment sales, accept all kinds of hand-me-downs and try not to splurge TOO often....

A girlfriend of mine introduced me to Craigslist, an online classified system where people re-sell all manner of items....I frequent the baby/kids and free pages often. Last night, I obtained 18 containers of E's favorite brand of organic baby yogurt (yes, unopened and not expired) off of the free page. A huge money savings! And while E was still a tiny baby, we purchased her Little Tikes green turtle sandbox/swimming pool off of this list for a fraction of the original retail cost.

I introduced this same girlfriend to Freecycle and rEcycle, two Yahoo! groups that you can sign up for....people post items that they no longer want, and you can email to see if you can get them. Warning - if you are interested in signing up for these, don't do so with your main personal email address...I used an "extra" email address for this...it can mean a lot of email. But the extra email is worth it! Above mentioned girlfriend got a purple dinosaur Little Tikes sandbox for her kids yesterday. E's swimsuit in the below post was from a rEcycle member that gave me a ton of little girl clothes....over the years, I've received landscaping stones, greeting cards, decorative computer paper, and much, much more!

Just some Frugal Friday tips from my corner of the world!

Swim time!...

E tried out "swimming" for the first time this afternoon and had a blast. I could hardly get out of the pool to come in the house! Too fun! I predict many summer afternoons with more "pool time!"

Cruisin'

E had fun this morning cruising around the living room holding on to various pieces of furniture. Occasionally, she'd turn to see if I was watching her "walk". I swear, she was thinking "look at me Mom! I am such a big girl!"

It's true....she is changing so fast! What fun! And what a blessing that I am here with her everyday to see these little accomplishments!

Simple joys....

...My sweet sis-in-law gave me a wonderful gift basket of bath goodies for my birthday, and last night I had a chance to dig into the soaps, bubble bath and other Nantucket Briar products...what a treat! Our whole bathroom smells so yummie! Thanks, sis!

...While we are talking about fun treats, sis-in-law also gave me a gorgeous Vera Bradley makeup bag in the aforementioned gift basket. I think of her every time I pull it out! Thanks again, sis! :-)

...We took a walk as a family last night ... it was so nice to just chat and enjoy the outdoors. We also met a neighbor down the street that we'd hadn't previously had the opportunity to get to know. It seems like we don't make time for those kinds of things often enough. The neighbor owns the gray cat that frequents our flowerbeds and often naps on our visitor's cars. We found out his name is Grayson...we've called him "Gray Kitty" for years...

...My sweet friend Connie (who lives in Oregon!) called last night...we were able to catch up by phone, which we haven't done in a long time. What would we do without cell phones with free minutes?

...Our precious E seems to finally be feeling better. Hooray! It's no fun to have a sick baby in the house!

Snack thief...

This afternoon, in an attempt to avoid my beloved M&Ms, I was eating a banana for a snack. As I was eating, little munchkin kept pointing and making all manner of noises....finally I offered her some banana, and she ended up eating almost half of it! My snacks are no longer my own....

E is currently fascinated with the TV. She keeps turning it off, and has so much fun pushing all of those neat buttons! What fun, Mom!

Celebrity Look Alikes...

I read about this fun site in a magazine today and decided to give it a shot. What a hoot!

Call the tooth fairy!

E is proud to announce the arrival of her FIRST TOOTH! The object of interest made an appearance late this afternoon after many months of eager anticipation! This beautiful bottom left front tooth is barely visible, but can be felt when its owner bites down on Mommy's finger! :-)

Call the tooth fairy! It looks like we're going to need her around here, after all!

Happy Mother's Day!

We had a nice day with my parents and Granny (despite the fact that I was up overnight several times with a sad baby, and dear hubby snored all night). It was a nice family day full of good food, visiting and family time.


Last year, on Mother's Day, E was only a week old. This year is just a little bit different, to say the least!


What a blessing to be a Mom. What a blessing to have a great mom! What a blessing to have a mother-in-law, without whom my husband would not be here! :-) What a blessing to have several family friends who are like moms to our family. What a blessing to still have my Granny with us. I am so thankful she was able to share in our family celebration today!

Little bookworm!

I...absolutely...love...watching...my...daughter...with...books!

Reading is such a joy and such a part of my life. I love to watch my little girl get so excited about books. She loves to be absolutely surrounded by them, and is so excited to turn each page and marvel at the words, shapes and colors.

I love it! We're going to start library story time this summer with our friend Ethan, and I just know E will absolutely love it. I can hardly wait!

The blessings of friendship...

We are so blessed to have so many wonderful friends.

Tonight, two dear friends joined us for great Chinese food, wine and conversation....a wonderful, relaxing, fun evening.

Thank God for the blessings of friendship!

My daughter has taught me many things...

My daughter makes me laugh every day.
And she shows me how to find joy in the smallest things.

She has taught me so many things:

...did you know socks are fun to play with?

...and drawer handles can amuse babies for a long time?

...it's fun to take EVERY book out of the "book bucket", then put them all back in

...yes, Mommy, it's very fun to make my toys play the same songs over and over....and over

I love having Cheerios and a sippy cup in the bottom of my purse. I love peeking at my baby while she is sleeping. I love watching my girl discover new foods....


I'm so blessed to be E's Mommy!

Post-Party Recovery!

We had a grand time on Saturday at E's first birthday party. It was a fun afternoon full of cake, presents, family and friends. We are truly blessed!

Sunday night, E was awake screaming her poor little heart out for almost four hours. She had the sniffles last week, but they seemed to be getting better....however, things took a turn for the worse somewhere along the way. So I had to take the poor baby to the doctor ON HER FIRST BIRTHDAY. Yep, she has her first ear infection! Not exactly what I wanted or hoped to do on her actual birthday, but she's handling it like a trooper and seems to be feeling much better today!

In my sleep-deprived delirium yesterday morning, I answered the phone to a "Happy Birthday call" for E from Geoffrey the Giraffe from Toys R Us. It would have been cute and funny if I had been well rested....but in my then-exhausted state, it was most annoying! :-(

Today is a much better day ... E is feeling better, and we are in recovery mode around here...getting back to "normal" life full of work, projects, toys, joys and fun!

Exciting news!...

My best friend in the whole world, Jennifer, told us this week that she is expecting!

Woo Hoo! Her seven year old daughter is very excited, but her almost four year old son told her "Mommy, we don't need another baby around here!" Too cute.

I am so excited that E will have another new little friend to love! We can hardly wait for December to meet the new little one.

Party prep...

Our days have been full of preparations for E's first bday party, and for the guests that will visit our home this weekend. I had fun putting together these treat buckets for the kiddos that will be attending her party.

E seems to be feeling a little bit better. Her congestion is finally breaking up, even though that first tooth STILL has not popped through!

Hubby is off work tomorrow - yay! We're looking forward to a fun day tomorrow, full of family time, party preparation and relaxation!

Stormy weather...

I think I have an inkling of an idea what a hurricane is like now! Tonight we had the heaviest rain I've ever seen and 50+ mph winds. You couldn't see across our street and the wind was blowing the rain in sheets! I'm very glad we were all safe and sound at home!

Crazy days....

We had a really fun weekend...Friday night we took a family shopping trip to Sprouts Farmer's Market to stock up on produce...and their wonderful coffee was on sale - fill the pantry! My favorite blend is called "Midnight Stroller"! Yum!

Saturday, I ran a few errands (by myself!) in the morning, and we generally had a good "home day" that day before heading to a friend's home to have dinner with our Bible study group. A very enjoyable outing!

Saturday night/Sunday morning, E woke several times, making for a tired, cranky Mommy and a tired, sad baby during church. That, combined with the fact that E now likes to be ON THE MOVE made it hard to contain her during the service. After lunch for us and nap for her, we headed to Pottery Barn Kids to get her table and chairs for her birthday present. I agonized over this decision for months. I didn't want to spend so much on this item for her, but also wanted solid wood, and not the popular plastic options that are so widely available. After considering purchasing raw wood pieces and finishing them myself or trying to find something used on Craigslist, I finally gave up and realized that the PBK version was not really that much more expensive than buying raw furniture and doing it myself. Sigh. At least she'll have it for years and years. Ben jokes that her table and chairs is nicer than the one we have in our kitchen!!! (He's actually correct!).

Sunday night, I managed to run into the doorframe in our kitchen and break the little toe on my right foot. It's a rather lovely shade of purple/black right now and feels achy. Good thing it's flip flop season!

E has been fussy, cranky and whiny. She has a little cough, a drippy nose, and the elusive teeth still have not come through. I told her she cannot be sick for her birthday party on Saturday! That just is not acceptable! Hopefully, she'll be feeling better by then. Night time sleep has still been "iffy" - making us all grumpy. So the week is full of naps, coffee, and party prep -- regardless, we are looking forward to her celebration this weekend! Let them eat cake!