Thankful {Thanksgiving} Thursday

*I am thankful for the love that fills these walls. Chaos and constant it is, but I have 3 people in these walls who love me and love each other unconditionally. I am thankful that God has blessed me with an amazing husband and two beautiful, precious, healthy children.

*I am thankful that God has called me to the vocation of motherhood. It is the most difficult, selfless (which is why it's so difficult) thing I have ever embarked on but oh, so rewarding!

*I am thankful for my husband who has made me the lucky one in our marriage.

*And I am thankful to God who has given me all that I have; even though, I deserve none of it.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Fabuloso!

Sweet Amanda gave me the above award.

Here are the rules:
First I must list 5 things that I find fabulously addictive:

1.) COFFEE!!!! I use to not need a cup each morning. Two kids later, I need atleast 2 cups before my morning grouchiness starts to subside and the fog in my head begins to dissipate. I have found that getting up several times a night with a wee one can quickly kill the chipperness that a typical morning person feels at say 7 a.m.


2.) Sticking with caffine, I find Dr. Pepper to be fabulously addictive. I try to only drink it on occasion due to the high calories, but about once every couple of weeks or so I get a huge craving for a Dr. Pepper and must drink one, even if it's just a baby can; otherwise, I get a massive headache and that ain't fabulous.


3.) White noise - After having kids and hearing lots of squeaks and shifts in the night from them, I have to have white noise in the background when I sleep so that I only hear the serious cries and am not constantly awakened by sounds. I am so addicted to white noise while I sleep now that I don't think I could sleep without it, even if there were no kids in the house. I don't know how I slept with silence in the background for 25 years?!?!


4.) Domestic blogs. I am not super crafty at all, but I love all of the blogs that are out there that help moms with ideas for cheap decorating and give inexpensive, creative ideas. Two of my faves are this one and this one. I'm even going to try and do this idea when I decorate Hattie's big girl room!

5.) Locked Up Abroad - ever seen this show? I watched it for the first time with Sean last night. He's highly addicted to it, and I have to say that I am, too, now. It's totally interesting and fascinating.

Now I have to share the award with 5 other fabulous bloggers:
1.) Laurel because she's my sweet sister-in-law and posts about her beautiful daughter and life in the northwest.
2.) Missy because she's my other sweet sister-in-law who has an awesome blog and is a mama to 4 little cuties, ages 5 and under.
3.) Shalonda because she's Catholic, an Aggie, and has two beautiful girls and the sweetest personality.
4.) Akat because I just "met" her. She has a cute blog and is expecting her first baby this spring.
5.) Christie because she never blogs anymore, and this can be a start to getting back on track - as if you have time, I know ;), but she's an amazing friend and is expecting baby boy #2 in March, and I get to be his godmother :).

Hope you all have a fabulous Tuesday and a Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Say Cheese!

Amanda's post got me thinking about our Christmas cards this year. We're blessed to have a sweet friend, Katie, who is going to take the picture and make the cards for us (thank you, Katie!). She has her work cut out for her, though, trying to get a good picture of two adults, a toddler, and a baby smiling or looking pleasant and all looking at the camera at the same time.

It's easy to get Hattie to smile. She's a ham with the camera, but this is what her fake smile always looks like:

All scrunched up and kind of evil looking, I think.

And this little bit - it's pretty easy to get a smile from her, too.

All I have to do is get up in her face and be all squeaky and the smiles come. But with babies it's all about timing - finding the perfect window where they're up and happy, not tired or hungry - and that's usually about a 45 minute to one hour window for Mary Ellen. Otherwise, we can forget the smiles.

And I found the girls matching Christmas dresses about a month ago. So excited about those! Dressing my two girls alike for holidays and such has been a dream of mine ever since I found out Mary Ellen was a girl. But I've learned the hard way that I shouldn't show Hattie a new dress until the day she can wear it. She has asked me every. single. morning. if she can wear her Christmas dress TODAY! It's lacey and poofy and totally up her alley.

Speaking of getting ready for Christmas, I asked Hattie what she wanted Santa to bring her this year. Here's her list of what she wants:
1.) A jump rope
2.) A purple present
3.) A story-tale
4.) Princess rings and princess earrings
"And that's all that we need" is how she ended her list :). Easy enough. I can handle all that with like one trip to the local dollar store. I better enjoy the desire for cheap presents while it lasts, right! And she has made it very clear that she is NOT sitting on Santa's lap. She is going to stand by him with Mommy when she tells him what she wants. So that picture'll be pretty interesting, too, I'm sure!

Happy Friday, y'all!

Thankful Thursday

I've seen this going around in the blogging world, and I'm kinda grumpy today, so I thought I should copy this idea and count my blessings. I have ambition to do this every Thursday, but we'll see......
Some of the things I'm thankful for on this Thursday (in no particular order):
1.) My husband who politely puts up with my morning grumpiness when I haven't had enough sleep the night before.
2.) These two healthy boogers:

3.) The gorgeous days we've been having.
4.) My sister who came and spent the day with us recently and watched the girls so I could go grocery shopping and then took Hattie to McDonald's to play and get out of the house. When are you coming back, Aunt Brittany ;)?!?!
5.)Finally having a cordless phone! With two small children it was REALLY impossible trying to talk on our retro phone that's attached to the wall without being able to move around the house. The cheapster in me was refusing to buy one since we have a perfectly good working phone, but hubby insisted, I submitted, and am SO glad I did!
6.) Mothers Day Out!
7.) God's grace and mercy in my life......I don't even want to think about where I'd be without THEM!
8.) Healthy babies brought into the world without complication. Congrats on becoming an aunt, Katie!!!!!! Can't wait to see pictures of baby Luke!
What are you thankful for this Thursday?

Cha-Cha-Changes!

#1 Welcome to our now private blog, and I hope you were able to get access without complication.

#2) Look who moved to a big girl bed this weekend!!!!

We had no intention of moving her quite yet, but I found this bedspread on Friday, and she REALLY wanted to sleep in her "princess bed" that night, so we figured why not just give it a try. So far it's smooth sailing!

#3) Mary Ellen has learned to roll from stomach to back, and since we tummy sleep her, it's NOT BEEN FUN! These last two or three nights have not been nice to me since she's been waking often to be turned back over. I pretty much feel like this today:


#4) Remember how Sean posted that I like to paint things? Well, this is what our kitchen use to look like:

And this is what it looks like now:

It's still a work in progress, but the color helps, I think! Sean thinks our kitchen looks more "country apple" than ever. And yes, the cabinet door is now covered with chalkboard paint, which so far is working out great for quick lists and "art."

#5) The wonderful cold weather!!! We are loving it!!!!

{3 Months}

This little girl is 3 months old today. She is quite the chatter-box, moreso than Hattie was if I remember correctly. If Mary Ellen is awake, she's either cooing or smiling, and if she's not doing either of those things, she's usually tired. She's a happy baby. In fact, I've had the thought that we should've named her Joy, but then she wouldn't be named after her great-great grandmother, now would she :)!

Mary Ellen's biggest accomplishment this month is that she laughed out loud for the first time on Monday. It was by accident. She was as surprised as I was. Something startled her, and I laughed because babies are so cute when they startle, I think. Then she laughed as if she got the humor in it all, too. She's our little booger!

Mary Ellen loves to watch her big sister play around her. Hattie is her favorite source of entertainment. I also started putting her in the bumbo this month, and she loves it and holds her head well.

My only real complaint is that she's still not sleeping through the night; she still gets up around 2 a.m. to eat and then sometimes at 5:30 a.m. What a blessed mama am I to have that as my only present "hardship!" Blogs have opened up a whole new world for me, and after reading about so many struggles that parents go through with their sick babies and children, I am so thankful for this perfectly healthy little pumpkin no matter what the hour!

And I'm just as thankful for her "lively" big sister, too!

Happy 3 month birthday, Mary Ellen. You're getting blonder and stronger by the day! And who would have thought that your brown-eyed parents could produce such pretty blue eyes in such a pretty little munchkin!

Because......

sometimes you're just in the right place at the right time with your camera nearby.

But don't let these pictures fool you. They are not a true glimpse of what my morning has been. There was lots of whining and crying (some from the kids, too), and I just happen to capture the 1 minute where everything was right with the world in my house.

Now it's naptime, and Mama is going to recharge and try to gain back the portion of her sanity that was lost over the course of the last 4 hours :).

New Find

This is awesome, and hopefully it'll quench my thirst for photoshop a little longer because really, I can't justify spending that kind of money - I'm no photographer, and I don't have that kind of money lying around to spend on hobbies, but if you want to buy me an expensive gift for Christmas or my birthday coming up......;)

Anyways, I digress. Here's what I did on the site in the five minutes I had to sit and play with it:

I also created the new header there, too.
So enjoy, but beware! You will end up spending way too much time on your computer playing around with your pics.

Seven Random Things About Sean

When I saw that Sean had written 7 random things about me Sunday morning, I almost typed some explanations in the post to defend some of the things he put about me, but instead, I'll just reveal 7 random things about him :)!


1.) Our babies' cries do not affect Sean; in fact, he doesn't even notice them half the time. For instance, after Mary Ellen's 3 a.m. feed this morning (it's been awhile since she's slept through again :() I went back to bed and heard her fussing and stirring on the monitor. Every muscle in my body tensed up, and I layed awake for 30 minutes or so waiting and praying it didn't turn into full blown cries. Sean snored through the whole thing. He never even woke up from what I could tell. And when he does hear our babies crying, it doesn't bother him AT ALL. I don't understand this because it drives me INSANE to hear them cry.

2.) Sean has tons of confidence. He can get up in front of a group of people and talk without sweaty palms or a heart about to burst out of his chest, unlike me. He'll also much more easily give his opinion even if it's a controversial topic. He doesn't care if people like what he has to say or not; he knows what he thinks is always right - this is something I seriously admire about him, but it can be a bad thing when arguing with the man ;).

3.) On the flip side of his confidence, Sean can be pretty shy about some things, like asking a neighbor he doesn't know very well to borrow some milk. He will not, never ever, over his dead body, do something like this because he thinks it's awkward.

4.) Sean is kinda picky. But his pickiness is weird. Pretty much if he didn't try a food before 1995, he's not going to like it. He doesn't want to try it to see if he'll like it either. It's like he met his quota for the number of types of foods he'll eat back in high school, and that's that. There are exceptions, though. He didn't try guacamole until like 2003, and he loves it!

5.) This probably ties into his confidence level, but Sean is always optimistic about the Aggies. Every year, about a month before football season begins, I get to hear how this year is going to be different because of the players or the new coach, ect. He talks up how great the team is going to be. Then after the second or third loss, he starts making excuses about the young players or the new plays how it's gonna take a year to figure things out and that next year will be MUCH better. I'm not doggin' the Ags. I love 'em. I just think it's funny how Sean's Aggie football cup is always half full :)!

6.) Sean is as scared of bugs as I am. If we both see a roach crawl across the floor, we're killin' each other, trying to be the first one out of the room. If a bee flies in our path, he's pushin' me out of the way to run in the house. In all fairness, though, he is always the one to kill the bugs. I don't do that. If he's not home, I will put a bowl or shoe on top of the bug and leave it for him to take care of when he gets home. That's a man's job, but he HATES it, so I love him all the more when he does it.

7.) I'm gonna end on something nice.....I think it's so sweet how sensitive my husband is. He is the crier when we watch sappy, sad movies. He was way more teery eyed than me when we had our big ultra-sounds with both girls. I mean, I cry more than him on a day to day basis because I've got the plethra of hormones and all, but he's not afraid to show his emotions, and I'm thankful to have a man like that!

Seven Random Things About Stephanie

I got this idea from my brother, Walker, who wrote about his wife Missy on Its Almost Naptime.

By: Sean

1) Stephanie is a perfectionist. Or, in Spanish, a "perfectionista." She is also a rule follower. At Texas A&M I would generally skip about 30% of my classes. Stephanie would NEVER skip. She would even go to class on days when attendance was "optional." We eventually had a class together. An English lit. class. After much prodding I finally got her to skip a class with me. She was freaking out the entire time.

2) Stephanie is extremely frugal. She also worries about money a lot. At the end of the month, if our cash flow is a little low she gets real worried and starts buying "off-brand" cereal because she says that we can't afford brand name cereal. However, it doesn't last long because after payday she feels better about our financial situation and starts buying brand name cereal or, as I call it, "The Good Stuff."

3) Stephanie likes to cook and try new ambitious recipes. Last year she got very excited about a recipe for a 'pumpkin bread roll.' She bought all the ingredients. I remember thinking that it looked very hard but she was determined. She toiled in the kitchen for hours. Finally the finished product came out of the oven. It tasted OK but didn't look like the picture in the cook book...so, she started another one. After about four attempts she gave up. We ate pumpkin "roll" (which was more like a giant mass) for weeks!

4) Stephanie is constantly wanting to paint things. She hates bare white walls. She also insists on painting furniture and interior doors. In our old home we ending painting our middle bedroom about six times. The plus side to this obsession is that she is now a very good house painter.

5) Stephanie insists on having the girls dressed nice whenever we go somewhere. Sometimes, we'll just be going to Target or something and I'll put Hattie in a t-shirt and shorts. If those clothes don't match perfectly, Stephanie will make me change her!

6) Stephanie is very affectionate. Like a little puppy. When we sit on the couch and watch t.v. she always wants to sit on the same couch and "cuddle".

7) Stephanie is mechanically inclined. Sometimes I'll be trying to fix something...like the kitchen faucet. I'll be having trouble with some aspect of putting it back together and Stephanie will have an epiphany and say, "Oh, do it like this" and it usually works.