yes, she had a birthday

it’s been 2 1/2 weeks since laurel turned one, and i can still hardly believe her birthday has come and gone.  i remember being so excited for nate and jilly as they turned one and learned each new thing.  with laurel though, i want to stay and savor each passing moment.  i feel as if i’ve not had an adequate chance to soak in the current stage before she’s already blazing on to the next one.

but it happens.  her birthday came.  i can’t deny she’s one.  it seems as if i get comments so often regarding how much she’s growing up lately.  it helps me remember to get down andplay with her and soak every passing moment in.

her birthday happened to be on a thursday (oct. 13) which meant nate had a full day of school and brad had a full day of work.  i felt bad that we had no big plans, but a laid back day at home is always a winner in my book so that’s what we did.  valisa (one of laurel’s godparents and her birthday buddy) joined us for dinner that night since her birthday plans were dinner the cafeteria and studying.

{birthday muffins for breakfast}

{my stair-loving girl was granted 2 stairs to play on rather than totally blocking them off}

{she seemed to know exactly what this present unwrapping was all about and wasted no time}

{nate and jilly were a little excited to get a shot at using the toy they had picked out to give her}

{clothes!  well, at least i was excited about them.}

{the birthday girls}

{cookie cake!}

{time for a bath!}

up for visitors?

the past few weeks have been a whirlwind of activity around here.  besides what seems to be the new norm of several non-stop days each week, we had 2 birthday girls (laurel and myself), a surprise visit from family, a couple of routine doctor appointments, a birthday celebration with brad’s side of the family, a trip down to the farm, and several others occurrences i can’t recall at the moment.

backing up though, we’ll start with the surprise visit from family.  most who know me even a little bit know the hardest, stinkiest thing about living in Nebraska is that it is way too far (618.80 miles from our driveway to mom and dad’s) from my entire family who all live within a half hour of each other.

after showering and getting ready on friday, october 7th, i cam downstair to check on how things were going for brad and the girls.  i was beyond shocked to make it halfway down the stairs and find my mom, dad, sister, and brother-in-law coming through the front door at that very moment. apparently brad had been planning this with them for months without any knowledge of it on my end.

it was the perfect surprise.  with laurel’s birthday (especially her 1st birthday) right on the heels of mine, i figured my birthday has kinda taken on a different look.  but, this surprise weekend with my family totally proved that wrong.  they planned and fixed several of my very favorite meals, made my favorite birthday cake (chocolate chip cheese cake), brought me flowers, and reminded me of how much i am loved.

here are a few pictures from our weekend together:

a case of the mondays

usually i am a pretty pro-monday kinda gal.  i actually love ’em.  since most weekends are pretty busy for us, monday has always been such a nice relief.  prior to school starting this fall you would 9 times out of 10 find the kids and i hanging out in our jammies the entire monday long.  it’s the perfect reaction to an on the go weekend.  school has some what changed the pace of our daily life, and mondays are quite so laid back anymore.  i still tend to enjoy them though since the girls and i are able to maintain a pretty low-key monday existence.

then came today.

it’s bound to happen.  we’re all going to have one of “those” mondays from time to time.  i guess i had finally come back around in the rotations of handing out cases of the mondays.

i decided i would help myself out a bit by bathing the girls this morning since i knew brad had a meeting at cornerstone tonight.  only having one child to bathe tonight would definitely be easier than three.  laurel is first up so i can get her bathed and down for nap before needing to get her up in time for our stroll intense walk around walnut creek at 10.  all is great until i spy it.  i had let her have 3 toys in the tub, but now there were more than 3 objects in the tub.  yup.  poop in the tub.  every mom’s dream nightmare.  out of the tub comes laurel and out come the bottle of cleaner.  scrub tub.  (yay for a clean bathtub!)  refill and reinsert laurel for a second attempt at a bath.  transition to nap goes smoothly.  jilly is bathed with no extra drama.  yay for two clean girls.

fast-forward to lunch time.  laurel and jilly are both happily eating lunch.  i’ve just begun working on my sandwich.  jilly (as is her norm) announces that although she absolutely, beyond a shadow of a doubt had no need to go potty before lunch now must use the potty.  i send her off and add cheese to my turkey sandwich.  then screams of “mommmmyyyyy!”  i don’t even have to move to know what’s happened.  as i enter the bathroom, i find that yes, the contents of all 5 great lakes now reside in a puddle on the half bath floor.  jilly’s bath is now null and void.  i take the easy route and give her a baby wipes thorough wipe down and scrubbing.  jilly is now redressed and back at the table finishing lunch.  i soak up the great lakes and figure a clorox wipe floor scrubbing will have to do until naptime.  back to fixing my sandwich that by now i should have finished eating.

fast-forward to nap time.  you know, i’m thankful for my scrubbed tub.  after working through my bsf day 5, i decide it’s time to mop.  if i’m going to pull out the mop, i’m going to go ahead and mop the kitchen, dining, entryway, and the peed in bathroom.  i’d been wanting to mop yesterday and am now so thankful that i ran out of time before small group came over.  so, i mopped.  and felt good about now having mopped floor to go along with the scrubbed tub.

fast-forward to post dinner.  we hit fazoli’s for dinner.  in all my unplanned cleaning efforts, i forgot to pull anything out for dinner.  a nonchalant mention of fazoli’s to my fazoli loving family, and we had our minds made up.  (oh, and i decided to wash my van real quick between brad coming home and heading out for an early dinner since way too soon it’ll be time to pay for car washes once again.)  jilly always requests lemonade when getting a kids meal.  she’d had her milk at home already because she will only drink skim and most places serve 2%.  she never finishes her lemonade.  it always comes home with us.  (i think this is intentional.)  after the happenings of the day, i’m a little leery that next up might be nate getting sick and throwing up all over the carpet or furniture, well, because that would just fit in with how the day had gone.  then i hear a strange noise.  laurel is missing.  laurel is in the kitchen.  sitting in a big pool of lemonade holding a fazoli’s kid-size cup which had been left too close to the edge of the kitchen table that our littlest is now big enough to reach things placed close to the edge of.  yay.  now, a kid and a floor i’ve already washed today are both a sticky mess.  (can i crawl in bed yet?)  clean kid with baby wipes.  clean floor with clorox wipes.  pray that bedtime come very, very soon.

let’s hope my turn at a case of the mondays doesn’t come around again for a long, long time. (and that i don’t get awakened during the night to find vomit somewhere in the house!)

holding it together

i’ve countlessy chronicled on the blog regarding jilly mae’s hair’s lackadaisical (thanks spell check!) approach to growth.  although it still seems slow, it’s fun to have it at a length where I can actually do a little more than it.  we usually just opt for the quick and easy one small partial ponytail pulled back to keep it out of her face, but occasionally she’ll humor me to let me mess with it more.  who am i kidding?  i bribed her with a tv show.  we usually don’t have tv on the getting ready hours of the morning because we’d never get out the door on time, but this morning we found ourselves with a little extra time before heading out to bsf.

although my parting straight skills need major improvement (i’ll blame lack of a willing subject on which to practice) and my french braiding skills are a little on the loose side, what stood out to me is that they were still mostly holding together at lunchtime!!!  this is huge!  i attempted to do this to her hair this summer and we didn’t even make it an hour before they were falling out all over the place.  this is proof positive that although i find it hard to notice, her hair IS growing!  yay!!

and because she’s just too cute to take a picture of just the back of her head (and the fact that i knew i’d love the picture since she was wearing a blue shirt which makes her blue eyes pop all the more):

and, not to be left out, little miss lj has been known once or twice lately to be sporting a Pebbles-ish ponytail of her own (please look past her need for a kleenex).  i’ve been pleasantly surprise each time i’ve done one for her to see just how long the hair i collect together happens to be.  i’ll have to get a better shot soon.

better than a birthday?

although i forgot to ask him when he got home last night, i would say that nate probably thinks harvest time at the farm is better than his birthday and christmas (possibly both combined).  if nothing else, it’s at least equal to birthday and christmas.  he seriously looks forward to harvest time all year long.  he talks about “my friend mike” as if there wasn’t a 20+ year age gap between them.

i haven’t heard all the stories from the weekend yet, but i’m sure there are many.  i’m thankful that i sent his camera with him so he could capture pictures as they combined the soybeans.

i’m sure he’ll want to be a part of harvesting corn when it’s time for that!

now if only he had today off school so i could have my weekend time with him!  it’s hard to give nate up when the weekends is the only time we really get good quality time with him, but i know how big of a deal harvest time is to him and it only comes once a year.