What we have been doing lately!

Well, It's been a few years since I blogged, but I just feel the need to start again. Facebook just isn't doing it for me. Facebook just makes me annoyed really. I prefer my relationships to be real life and I like people lots better in real life than I do on Facebook. Don't get me wrong, I like all my facebook friends, I just get annoyed easily at things that are posted and find I am a much happier person when I don't look at Facebook. So, I'm starting my blog back up for myself and my family who live far away from me. Here is what we have been up to in reverse order because I put the pics in backward and don't have time to change it, nor do I care enough to change it. Today, we went for a walk. Walking makes me feel so good. I don't know why I don't do it more. I was able to just take it all in today. Something I haven't done in too long. Watching Jolie run in front of me was pretty much the cutest thing ever. She just giggled as I chased her with the stroller. All she needs is a little attention and she is just a little giggly, happy, cute little girl and I just got to enjoy her this morning. When I don't give her that attention, she is really hard to deal with. But, it really is the simple things for her and I need to make more time for that. Documenting this is important so I don't forget and so that adult/teen Jolie knows I tried ;).

Next up, Davis. He is almost a year old and he is a dream of a baby. I have never had a baby sleep through the night before they are weaned. I have weaned my kids around 18 months. This means I have woken up every single night, usually many times, for 5 and 1/2 years of my 10 year marriage. Sometimes I like to look at it like that because it makes me feel like a superhuman person and I am really proud that my children and husband all still love me. It is an accomplishment that I feel proud of even though it is just normal life. I have endured hard things. But, this little Davey boy knew that his mom didn't know if she could do the waking up thing for one more night. We moved him out of our nursery upstairs to a downstairs room while we renovate our room and he just started sleeping. It has been amazing. I love him more than all of my other children for it too. I'm only mostly joking on that one. Sorry other children. He is just a sweet, happy little guy who loves to be held. He loves to fall asleep on his Aunt Nat who is really the only one who will actually spend the time to get him to fall asleep on her because it takes forever. We love Aunt Nat. He loves to climb all over everything now and is just pretty much delightful. His favorite food is dog food. Up until this week, everything that went in his mouth was promptly gagged on and puked out along with his previous milk meal....except dog food. Yes, he has eaten dog food. He is the 4th child. It would be wrong if he hadn't eaten dog food. It's his right as 4th baby. He loves it. He never gags on it or pukes it out. Okay, so I don't really encourage this, but he makes a break for the dog food any chance he can and he has succeeded more times than I care to admit. I'm so grateful he came last. I'm tired. Oh, and I think he is our last. That's a recent discovery. We feel like our little family is complete, which is a sad and happy thing all at the same time. I sold the baby swing today even. It's for real. I love the idea of not being pregnant again. I've been pregnant a lot of times and I just feel very ready to not be any more. I feel so happy that I feel ready to move on.

I love sensory bins. I love introducing my kids to them. I love seeing their eyes as they run their fingers through it for the first time. I will miss those little firsts.

Come on! Could that smile be any cuter?

We took our kids to Beauty and the Beast. It was Jolie's first real play and she was scared and loved it and wanted to go home all at the same time. After the fact, she loved it though and still talks about it. The wolves were scary to her. I'm not gonna lie, the wolves were scary to me, so they accomplished their purpose I think. It was fun to go with the whole fam. Dan and I got to hold hands for some of it (before the scare incident, which was at the very beginning) and it was pretty dang nice. I like this guy. He is cool an fun and smart and apparently really good at electricity now too. More on this later.

My cute little nieces turned 1 about 6 weeks before Davis will. They are darling and cute and we love them. And, their mom loves them more than I love my children because she always does cute things for birthdays and I'm lame. But, she has 6 kids so she has more time on her hands....wait...uh, well, she loves birthdays and we love having them close so we can attend.

We love our neighborhood so much. It is our village. We love each other and we take care of each other and we have fun together. And, apparently we don't take pictures together cuz this is all I got for now. That's my baby asleep on our friend. He bounced him on the tramp until he fell asleep. It was adorable. And, there is our other friend's legs and hands and he is apparently telling a very great story that Dan seems to really be into.

We are making our dreams come true and adding on a master bath and closet!! Yes, you heard that right. When we were looking for homes, all Dan wanted was a garage, master bath and not a split entry home. Well, he lost an we ended up in a split entry with a carport and a nursery attached to our room instead of a bathroom. After 6 years of waiting and then thinking it was impossible, we figured out a way to turn our room/nursery into a master suite and we can hardly stand the wait. We decided that we would pay other people to do most of the work and that Dan would just do demo. Well, after some pretty extensive googling and a really high electrical bid, my self motivated little hubby decided he would do the electrical himself. I was a little skeptical and made him make promises like, "if you get shocked and die you will come back from the dead and increase our insurance policy!" Okay, not really, but I was really nervous and afraid he would burn our house down. He sure did surprise me though. He spent tons of hours reading about the best, safest methods of doing all things electrical and exhaust fan-y and he went and saved us $4,000. Yup, you read that right. It was $4000 we were planning on spending too. AMAZIIIIING!! And, an unexpected bonus: I am really attracted to dirty, electrician/contractor Dan. He has electrical skills and his wife's trust in his electrical skills, AND I get the best of both worlds with nerdy, techy Dan and dirty contractor Dan. Wins all around!! It has been fun to watch him be excited about doing it and he really rocked it, so add that to the list of things I didn't know I was getting with this guy. The first pic is of the kids showing the camera what will be in the spots they are standing. Logan and Jolie are washing their hair and Mason, well, you can let your imagination wander on that one.

Oops, wasps nest in the outlet. That was an unexpected surprise...

#demoday! Goodbye giant armoires and shelving with cardboard boxes as drawers!!

Me and a friend in the neighborhood are doing a little Preschool for our 2 girls twice a week. We have invited a few of the neighbor kids who are 3 to join us. Jolie thinks it's the best thing ever and it lets me get my preschool on without the commitment of an actual preschool where people pay you and stuff. I love that I love it and I love that I only do it once a week. The first pic is Jolie's first day at preschool at this friend's house. She wanted 3 pony tails with different bows. She loves blue and green along with pink. I love her fun little personality. She just has very different tastes than I do... So, we are enjoying that. We love this little girl. One of her greatest talents is talking. She has been talking like she is 5 since she was like 15 months. On more than one occasion she completely creeped people out because she looked like a baby and spoke like a 5 year old. It's funny every time. The girl loves to talk and it's been really nice not to have to guess what she says. She definitely doesn't hide that talent under a bushel....I'm an introvert. It's hard for me to have really talkative kids. I have 2 of them that talk pretty much constantly. When I need a minute with my own thoughts, the only way to make them stop talking is to turn on a show. So, sorry American Academy of Pediatrics, this girl watches tv daily. How cute are these kids?!? So cute.

And, because I am never in any pictures. Here is what mom looked like at 33.

Honestly, I think this was just a day Dan got home from work. They like him.

Legos!! Davis finally made it to the lego box. He crawled so fast. I was literally out of the room for 20 seconds and he seized his opportunity. I had to let him play for awhile.