Lots of Birthday Fun

Thursday was my birthday and we celebrated by going to dinner with my parents.  I had no idea where I wanted to eat so I let C pick.  Naturally, she picked Olive Garden because she wanted noodles.  We stuffed ourselves silly and had zero room for dessert so our waitress brought this out instead.

 

 

Major storms were brewing (or so we thought) that night so C and I spent the remainder of the evening sitting in the hallway.

 

 

This lead into a lesson on tornados and we watched a few videos because C needed to know what we were talking about and why we had to sit in the hall.  Thankfully is wasn't as big of a deal as we had thought.

 

Saturday, Brent and I passed C off to my parents and we hit the road to do some antique shopping.  Actually, we passed C off to my dad because she had her BFF's birthday party that morning and he so graciously took.

 

 

Clearly this was her sad face because her mama wasn't there.

C and her BF Addisyn

 

After the party, they meet up with my mom and hit the park.

 

It's really hard looking at these pictures because you can really see how bad she is missing us.

 

Honestly, its great we can leave her and know that she is having a blast.  Brent and I actually had a pretty fantastic time ourselves.

 

Thanks to my hairdresser, we found the cutest little drugstore that had the BEST old fashion milkshakes!

 

Good way to start our day!

 

We headed to Nashville after that and hit just about every antique store we could find.  Some were complete busts and others we found lots of cools things.

 

Two of our favorite purchases was a whiskey barrel.

 

And the other was this vintage baseball glove.

 

Brent almost passed it up until I convinced him he had to have it.

 

It was the perfect day to be hopping in and out of stores.  I'm not sure if I've ever had a 60 degree weather birthday.  It was nice!

 

We ended the day with dinner at PF Chang's and a relaxing night of not having to entertain a 3 year old.

Fit For A Princess

Yesterday will go down as one of my favorite days with C.  We got together with all of her friends from dance class and went to a Princess Tea Party hosted by a local high school choir.

 

 

To say the girls were in awe is an understatement. 

 

 

Every Disney princess that you could think of was there along with their male companion.

 

The girls danced their little hearts away as each princess sang a song from their movie.

 

 

 

We are so lucky that we have found good friends in our dance class.

 

All the girls are so sweet and have fun with each other.

 

 

 

I joked with a few of the moms that this was C's coming out party.  She is typically super shy and stays close to my side in big crowds but yesterday she was a totally different kid.  She stayed on the dance floor and wasn't too shy about meeting the princesses or talking to other little girls that she didn't know that well.

 

It was so fun watching her reaction to everything and having fun with her friends.  She has already asked to do it all again!

Happy Valentine's Day!

C has been LOVIN' the Valentine season! 

 

 Last year, I started the tradition of C getting a note everyday starting February 1st to the 14th from us.  She loved it last year and has had a bigger time with it this year.

 

 

She checks her mailbox everyday after school to see what the mailman brought.  It is the cutest thing to see her eyes light up!

 

We went the other night to pick out treats for her friends at school.  She had lots of ideas but she finally settled on mini slinkies.  She has lots of fun last night helping me get them ready for school.

 

 

This morning, I had a little special breakfast for the 3 of us.

 

C was so excited about the day and her party at school that she could barely eat!  Did NOT get that from me.  :)

 

Look at her.  You can see the excitement in her eyes.

 

 

Can't wait to hear all about her day this afternoon!

A Little Q&A Session with C

These answers are based on C's almost 4 year old self.

What is your favorite food?  Noodles (aka spaghetti)

What is your favorite color?  Purple

What is your favorite drink?  Juice

What is your favorite snack?  Skittles and Jelly Beans (I can't say this it too accurate because she had a mouthful of Skittles at the time and we had had jelly beans earlier)

Who is your best friend?  Mama (I would normally find this super sweet but she has told me all weekend that she doesn't like me and wants to go live with my parents.)

Who is your best friend at school?  Addyson

What is your favorite thing to do?  Crafts and iPad  (great combo of Brent and I!)

What is your favorite thing to do?  Go to the bookstore and library.

Where is your favorite place to eat?  McDonalds (another shocker because here lately she has been requesting Cracker Barrel.)

What is your favorite thing to do with Daddy?  Play in my tent

What is your favorite thing to do with Mama?  Play

What is your favorite tv show?  SpongeBob

What is your favorite breakfast?  Lucky Charms

What do you want to be when you grow up?  A builder and a mama.

B-O-R-I-N-G is Our Name-O

We are so boring right now.  Between the weather and a cold that I can't shake, there has been a lot of nothing going on at the ole homestead.  I'm so over the cold and ready for spring.

About the only fun we've had is watching C go into complete meltdown mode over taking Band-Aids and stickers off her leg.

This is after I took her Band-Aid off from getting her flu shot at HER request.  For 5 minutes after the Band-Aid came off, she would scream every other breath.  I hated to laugh but I'm inappropriate and it was hilarious.

Fast forward a week, girlfriend entertains herself by sticking 100 TINY stickers to her leg.

this was at the halfway point.

For 15 minutes, she screamed/cried as I tried to get all the stickers off.  She would jerk my hand away and scream "NO" in the same breath as pleading with me to get them off.  She got even madder when I laughed.  Again, I'm inappropriate.  I'm pretty sure she won't be doing this again but I can't guarantee it.

After all that drama, we had family craft time.  Brent was thrilled as you can imagine.  Bless his heart, his creativity level is at a  negative 2 but C wanted him in there so he gave it a try.  This was the outcome.

I made the turtle, Brent gave him a face and put marks on his shell and C named it Clarabell.  Not too shabby and C was impressed.

About the only other thing going on in our house is I'm redoing our bedroom which is requiring lots of DIY since my budget is umm zero.  But I've managed to redo our headboard,

 and paint our side tables.

I have some art projects to work on and I still need to paint but that requires lots of mind tricks to get Brent to agree to help and I just haven't had the energy.  :)

What We've been doing.

 

Well, C turned 12.

 

 

Overnight, C turned into this SUPER independent girl who HAS to do everything herself regardless of what it is.

 

While out shopping with my mom and C, I took this picture: 

 

C wanted to try on some clothes and I was instructed to stand outside the door, that she could handle this.  And handle it she did.  She tried on a few things and modeled each item.  Seriously, where did my 3 year old go?

 

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C has been learning about hibernation at school so we had to make a cave and hibernate like bears.

 

We even had to eat snacks so we could make it through the winter months.  Ha!

 

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Friday, I had to butter C up with some ice cream before I had to break the bad news that she had to get a flu shot.

 

I also took her to the library to sweetin' the deal.

 

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Saturday, we all decked out in our Colt's gear to show our support to B's team.

 

 

Sadly, they lost but that's ok, mama's (and C's) team is still in it for one more week!

 

After the game, I needed a stress reliever so naturally I did some craftin'... 

 

C is obsessed with this pillow.  She want's to sleep with it every night. 

 

A little V-Day shirt

 

Remember these?  I gave new life to this desk and love how it turned out!  It was well worth my hands being stained for 2 days.

 

 

Christmas 2013

 

Christmas time is hands down the best time of year!  Since having C, the magic of Christmas for us has been restored and we love seeing Christmas through her eyes.  She has been in awe over all of it, from the smallest Christmas decoration to the largest Christmas lights display.

 

On Christmas Eve, my mom, Brent, C and I went to Nashville to Opry Mills to see Frozen and to see Opryland's light display.  It has been years since I've seen the lights at Opryland and it was everything I remember it being.  C didn't know which way to turn her head next.

 

            

                   

 

We came home in enough time to regroup and put our jammies on before heading out to church for the midnight service. 

 

 

Christmas morning, Santa left a few things despite one little girl's fear of him.  She decided last minute that she didn't mind him coming to her house.  :)

 

 

 

We spent the day hanging out, playing with new toys and then going to my Nanny's for dinner.

 

This year was a little bit more special at my Nanny's because she present all of us grandkids with a quilt made out of my Poppy's old shirts.  This marked our 5th Christmas without him and it could not have been a better time to make us these quilts.  She has worked hard for several months on these and they turned out perfect.  It will be hard not to think of him every time we snuggle up on the couch.

 

 

The day after Christmas we had dinner at my Granny's and spent time with my Dad's side of the family. 

C trying to be like her Pap.

 

After we left my Granny's, we headed up to Indiana to spend the weekend with Brent's family.  This is the part of our Christmas that I never want to forget.

 

We got to Brent's parent's house around 12:30am.  I had worked that morning which means I got up around 5:30am so it was already a long day for me.  I didn't sleep on the way up because I wanted to be a trooper since Brent couldn't sleep, I wasn't going to either.  C passed out about 2 hours into our trip but perked up when we got to her grandparent's house.

 

We finally went to bed around 1am but C's excitement got the best of her.  She could NOT go to sleep and was determined not to let us sleep either.  Around 2:30am, Brent went to the couch thinking she would sleep better in the bed.  No such luck.  At 4am, I finally turned the tv and at 5am she told me I could turn it off and she FINALLY went to sleep.  If you are doing the math, I was up for almost 24 HOURS!  I had no idea my body was even capable of such a thing but the kicker was she only slept for about 4 hours and then was up and ready for the day.  I have never in my life!  At least she was making the most of her time with everyone.

 



 This is her at 4:12am watching tv.

 

C has so much fun being around her cousins.  They all play well with one another and have a blast.

 

 

 

Matching jammies is now a MUST every year.  So cute!

 

And to wrap up our Christmas, the Monday after Christmas, we spent the evening with my family.  It was my brothers last day in town and C needed her some Mo time.

 



 Watching movies with Mo on his iPad.

 

We were on the move a lot this year but we enjoyed being around family and spending time with everyone.  C is already wishing it was Christmas again and I can't blame her.  It was a pretty good time.