Halloween 2012

Happy Halloween!

I found the girl's costumes for Halloween in the beginning of September! I usually go to this second-hand shop in my town to find clothes for cheap. The day that I went, they had just put out their collection on Halloween costumes! And they were selling them for $1 each! I couldn't pass it up! I did a once-through and found three perfect costumes for my little ladies!

But this past Saturday, I went back to the rerun shop to find some workout clothes for me. They had more Halloween costumes and they were in the FREE bin! I went through the bin and found seven costumes for the girls that will fit them until they are 10! When I got home, Vivian showed interest in one costume that I brought home, so Charles and I decided that she would dress in that costume for trick-or-treating.

Caitlin as Spider Girl

Caitlin was set that she wanted to be Spiderman this year. I was very lucky to have found a costume for her right away! It was right next to a red tutu. I put the two together and BAM! Spider Girl was born! Caitlin spent the night singing, "Spider girl, spider girl" and shooting web from her hands! She really is my hero!

Rosalie as Princess Barbie

Each time Charles and I go shopping with the girls and we go to the toy section, Rosalie goes crazy in the dress-up section! So when I saw the bright pink, puffy dress, I knew she'd LOVE it! It had a picture of Barbie in a small jewel on the dress and Rosie noticed it right away saying, "Princess. Barbie!" She was very happy to be wearing a puffy dress that she could spin in! She's my little princess!

Vivian as Tinkerbell Fairy

We originally got a duck costume for Vivian. She wore it to 2 Halloween parties that we went to the weekend before. But when she saw the pretty green tutu, she tried to put the costume on by herself! It had just enough stretch to put on over her coat last night while we went trick-or-treating! She also had a little jewel on the front of her costume that had a picture of Tinkerbell in it. The only thing missing from Vivi's costume were her wings, but no one even noticed! She's my little fairy!

I was a goober and didn't take any photos of our girls at the Halloween parties we went to last weekend. Caitlin went as Belle from Beauty and the Beast, Rosalie wore the same costume as she wore for trick-or-treating, and Vivian wore her duck costume. I did, however, get one photo of Vivian in her duck costume!

Charles and I dressed up for the Halloween parties. I went as a Vampire Queen and he went as a Skeleton Jester. I didn't get any photos of us... I'm sad about that. But we had a lot of fun! I won a friends' costume contest with my costume and got a lot of compliments! 

For trick-or-treating last night, we went to one large neighborhood to go trick-or-treating and stopped by some of our friends' houses. The girls had a blast! They kept commenting on other kids' costumes and the Halloween decorations in the yards!

I want to have coordinating costumes next year, maybe. We'll see! I want to make our costumes, too. But if not, the girls have many costumes to choose from now! Hope you all had a fun, safe Halloween! 

Fourth of July Week/Weekend

Our Fourth of July was one for the books this year! It was Vivian's first Fourth of July, the first parade I've been in since High School, and the girls' first fireworks show! This was by far my favorite Independence Day since I've been married! Nothing is better than spending the entire day surrounded by family and friends!

I spent the morning getting ready for the parade with Karmen. We found a site that showed us how to cut regular t-shirts into workout shirts. So we took two shirts and made them for the parade! Once they were done, we headed over to Jennifer's house to line up for the parade. We took photos and then lined up for the parade!

Back Row (L to R): Kayla, Karmen, April, Carie (me), Tawnya
Front Row (L to R): Jennifer and Jessica

Charles was an *awesome* husband and had the girls all to himself! Super Daddy! It was hot outside, but that didn't keep the girls from enjoying the parade! He told me that they got to the parade a little late, but the girls had a blast picking up the candy and waving to the people in the parade!

I knew where they'd be as I started doing Zumba in the parade. They were at the half-way point in the parade, so I knew I'd be tired by the time I saw them! But as soon as I did, they were yelling, "MOMMY!" and I was waving like crazy! It was a nice energy boost!

They met back up with me at Jennifer's house. They were very excited to see me! Caitlin showed me the candy bag, Rosalie showed me some pencils and toys, and Vivian had all smiles! We came home and enjoyed the air conditioning! I showered and everyone else napped before we headed out to Aunt Karen and Uncle Dean's house for the annual 4th of July grill-out.

I was beyond tired, but the party was awesome! The girls just LOVE the toys at their house! PLUS, they bought a bunch of water guns and were filling up water balloons as we ate our supper. We were served hamburgers, hot dogs, potato salad, pasta salad, grapes, chips, and more! I made some rice krispie treats and sugar cookie cups for dessert and everyone loved them!

After dessert the entire family had a HUGE water balloon fight. I sat out with Vivian to take pictures! It was chaos at first, but soon after, everyone went after Charles!

After the water balloons were done, the adults filled up a bucket and let the kiddos play in it. They filled water guns up, splashed, and in the end, it was dumped over my nephew, Austin! Rosalie got some of the water on her, but she just laughed and laughed!

Afterwards, we went home to watch the fireworks from our front yard. It was the first fireworks display the girls have ever watched! They usually go to bed around 8 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., the fireworks were at 9:30 p.m. The girls napped late, so we knew they'd be fine to stay up. And they did wonderfully! They colored with sidewalk chalk, ran around the yard, and blew bubbles until it was time to watch the fireworks.

Right before the show started, Rosalie decided it was time to take off all her clothes! She does this inside, and we kept telling her to stop, but she decided to not listen... I decided to take photos instead of getting mad! She was super cute!

Once she was "nudie", it was time to watch the fireworks! After each one went off, the girls would giggle and scream, "THE FIREWORK WENT BOOM!" Caity kept her hands over her ears the entire time while Rosalie danced in circles after each firework!

We took the girls to the public pool the day after. It was Vivian's first time at the pool! I forgot my camera, but Jamie went with us and snapped a few photos of Vivian in her floatie!

Vivian turned 9 months on the 6th! Crazy to think that my baby is that old already! She is doing things much faster than my other two. She is pulling up onto things faster, trying to walk across the couch, and more! Happy 9 Months to my beautiful, precious baby girl, Vivian Rane!

We went to Red Oak for my nephew's first birthday party on Saturday. The girls were so excited to see Graydon and have some birthday cake! Once we got there, my sister Melissa was there with her baby boy, Tommy. I have never seen him before, so I was pretty excited to get to hold him! And Caitlin was pretty excited to see him as well!

Graydon and the girls kept loving on each other! They have only seen him about 10 or so times because we live across the state from each other, but they have never forgotten him! As soon as they saw him, they wanted to hold him and love on him!

Happy First Birthday Graydon! We love you very, very much and wish you many more birthdays! We hope to see you more than we did in your first year. Your Mommy and Daddy are very lucky to have such a handsome son!

Memorial Day 2012

Memorial Day this year was a blast for our whole family! Charles got a call from our friend, Mike, to go Frisbee golfing that morning. I stayed home with our girls because Rosalie wasn't awake when Charles had left.

By the time Charles got home, we still hadn't eaten breakfast, so Mike asked if we wanted to go out to eat for breakfast. Of course! While I packed the diaper bag, Caitlin had some fun trying on Mike's motorcycle helmet! Rosalie didn't want to, so I snapped some photos of Caity in the helmet!

By the time we got there, it was almost noon, so we went ahead and ordered breakfast! Mike's wife, Karmen, got off work at noon and joined us at the restaurant. We saw a lot of people we knew and had some time to chat and catch up. We soon headed home for the girls' nap time. 

Vivian was awake for nap time so I fed her lunch and let her roam around the house without her big sisters in her way! Caitlin and Rosalie usually pull her around by her feet or try to sit on top of her, so she really had a great time army crawling/scooting around our living room!

When the girls got up from nap time, it was time to head over to Grandma's house for a wienie roast and birthday celebration. There was going to be a pool set up for the kiddos to play in, and once I told the girls, they were beside themselves! It took me no time to get them into their swim suits and head out the door!

As soon as we pulled in and let the girls out, they sprinted down the yard to the pool!

It took us a while to get the girls out of the pool and get them to eat their supper! But they eventually gave up the fight and let us dry them off and put normal clothes on. We roasted hot dogs and had potato salad, kidney bean salad, watermelon, and finished it all off with a cookie cake for Shelly's 16th birthday! 

After all was said and done, we let the girls swing in the tire swing in the backyard while Charles and I took turns loading up the car. 

When we got home, the girls fell into bed and kept saying, "Tomorrow we go swim at Grandma's!"

I set up our own pool the next day, but it was too cold to let the girls enjoy it. Hopefully it will start warming up again and they can enjoy their own pool! 

And Life Goes On...

Things have been crazy around here since the tornado hit my town a week and a half ago. Doctor's appointments have been cancelled, Vivian's shots have been delayed, and more. But through it all, this town has come together and proved to the world that complete strangers can show love and support when times are hard.

I've put off posting about Easter, so I'll update everyone on what our girls did for Easter, then catch up with what we've been doing this month!

The Saturday before Easter, Caitlin and I colored eggs together! Rosalie is still to little to participate, but I'm looking forward to coloring eggs with her next year! I decided to make the color for the eggs this year. (check out the recipe on my craft blog here!) I let Caitlin color some eggs with crayons while I got the colors ready!

The face she made when my tea kettle started to whistle!

A while ago, I found an idea on Pinterest to use a whisk to dunk eggs into the color water. I thought I'd give Caity a chance to try it out and see if she liked it or not!

Turns out, she wanted to use spoons instead. She wanted to put the egg on the newspaper to dry and she couldn't get the egg out of the whisk on her own. So we took the old-fashion route and used spoons! The colors turned out FANTASTIC!

We were going to have a small hunt with them in our backyard, but we ended up getting too busy and by the time we got home, it was already time to get the girls ready for bed. But that was just fine! As soon as we got the girls to bed, we set out their Easter Baskets!

I loaded them up with the candy they asked for! Eggs filled with jelly beans, Peeps, Peeps Bunnies, Ring Pops, and some Easter straws! I set them on the table and had my camera ready to capture their faces the next morning!

Easter morning was a little different than usual. Rosalie got up before Caitlin. This NEVER happens. Usually Caity wakes up first, yells for me, and wakes Rosie up in the process. But this time, Rosie called for me quietly and I gave her her basket first!

Rosalie got to pick the basket she wanted! She took everything out of her basket and examined each candy filled egg while shouting, "EGGGGGGGG!" at the top of her lungs! I should have had the video camera ready instead!

Caity woke up almost and hour later, and to avoid Rosalie attacking Caity's basket, I had to put Caity's on a chair in the middle of the floor and corral Rosie behind me. But Caity didn't even notice her basket until I told her about! But when she found it, she shouted, "EGGGGGGGSSS!" Too funny!

We got the girls breakfast and dressed them in the Easter dresses Grandma A made for them! But in the picture below, Caitlin is wearing cousin Shelly's dress that Grandma made about 13 years ago! Caity's dress still needed a button on the back, so Grandma brought her dress to church!

When we got back from church, I put the girls down for nap and made colored deviled eggs and cupcakes for our family dinner that night! (Also on my craft blog!)

As soon as I was done making all those goodies, we loaded up the girls and went to Grandma's house for an Easter Egg hunt in her yard! The girls were WAY pumped! It was Rosie's very first egg hunt! My niece and nephews hid the eggs around the yard, but they hid the golden egg really well. Guess who found it!

And the GOLDEN Easter Egg was found by:

VIVIAN!!!!!!

It was hidden in the trampoline net so my hubby had to get it. He had Vivi in his hands, so she found it first! Vivian = WINNING! She even tried to eat it! She didn't let go of the egg for quite a while!

Vivian has been growing quite a bit this month! She's doing the same thing my other girls did. She'll be tired so I feed her, burp her, and try to rock her to sleep. But she won't... so then she gets BEYOND upset because she's so tired that I have to set her on the couch with her binky and walk away. When I come back to her once she's quieted down, these are a few examples of what I find:

The funniest photo I took was when I thought she was gassy, so I gave her some drops and laid her on the couch with her bink. She was calm, so I watched a movie. I looked over at her after a few minutes and this is what I saw:

I almost woke her up because I was laughing so hard! She used the dropper as her bink! She can fall asleep in the most random positions and places!

Another milestone for our baby this month was that she ate baby food for the first time! She owned an entire jar of applesauce and wanted more! Seems crazy that she'll be eating on her own soon enough!

A friend of mine had shoulder surgery this month and asked me to watch her two kiddos while she recoups. I agreed and her little girl and little boy are so great to watch! Caitlin has made a new best friend!

Her little guy is so, so stinking cute! He just loves on Vivian all day! And boy does he LOVE marshmallows!

Rosie (our Ninja) got her first birthday present in the mail! It arrived early, but I couldn't wait to give it to her! I found a cute site on Etsy called Twistyfishies. The lady behind the store is Kristie and she makes handmade Amigurumi, Kawaii Plush, and original art. She is TALENTED! And Rosalie LOVED her little pink Ninja!

We went to a friend's reception last Friday in Lenox. The girls had a blast getting ready for it. I asked Caity and Rosie to pick out their outfits and this is what they picked:

The girls had a blast at the reception, too! Fruit, juice, running around, and dancing! Oh, and last but not least, CAKE! Caity wanted to stay until they could have a piece of cake. We got home late, but both girls ate the entire piece of cake they got!

The next morning, Caitlin kept trying to climb on top of Vivian. I had to stop her each time. After the 100th attempt, I asked her, "Why do you keep doing that?!" She responded, "Let me show you!" So I let her climb on top of Vivian and Caity shouted, "SISTER SANDWICH!!!!" I lost it! I laughed so, SO hard! I told her to do it again for the camera and this is the shot I got:

Caitlin cracks me up! She's so, so funny! And she just adores her sisters! I'm still working on getting her to WANT to potty train. She has gone on the potty and will if I ask her, but most of the time, she just doesn't want to. I don't want to force her and make going to the potty some kind of punishment... but I'm running out of ideas. I've taken her every few hours for her to sit on the potty for 30 minutes and not go, put on her diaper, and finally go. We have tried putting her in just panties and that didn't work... we've tried rewards with no success, naked training with no success... She's over 3 years now. She knows the entire alphabet, she can count to 20, and more, but she just won't potty train. HELP! I need some ideas!

This past Sunday I switched the girls' clothes around since each one of them needed to bump up a size. It took me ALL. DAY. It was ridiculous! But I sorted through all their clothes and I now have a keep pile and a garage sale pile ready to go! In moving the girls up, I realize Rosalie and Vivian had some matching clothes! And boy did Rosalie love wearing the same thing as her baby sissy!

So now that we're caught up on the girls, I thought I'd give an update on Charles and I.  We've both been dealing with seasonal allergies and they are kicking our butts! It's made it hard to go to sleep at night and hard to wake up in the morning. So most of this month has been spent using up a ridiculous amount of tissues, eye drops, and orange juice. But we are getting better. 

We have also decided that we want to start losing weight together. We have said this before, but it is time. Time for a change. Time to start focusing on bettering our lives so that we can live to see our kids grow up. We have started eating less and walking more as a start, but once we get our allergies under control, we're going to start working out again. It's just kinda hard to work out when I can't breathe while sitting down!

I'm still having issues with my postpartum depression. I've tried weaning myself off of the pills only to find that I really should be taking them right now. And it sucks having to admit that I need them in order to not sit and cry all day, or move and be super angry all day. I hate the highs and lows. More the lows than the highs. I started have major anxiety/panic attacks. My pulse would race all day long. So even though I'm mentally ready to not be taking any pills, my body is saying, "NOT YET!" 

I look forward to the point in this journey when things will be better. I pray each night that tomorrow will be that day. I will know when it's here. I will know. And it will be GLORIOUS!