My valentines

Hoping to make cookies for Hubby aka Daddy when the girls wake up from their nap. I guess "make" should be replaced with "open package, pull out pre-squared blob of cookie dough and place on pan". While I love homemade the best, I'm ok with making un-homemade cookies today.

Looking ahead

It's still hard for me to believe that 2011 is almost here. That's a common theme around here, because I can never believe the girls are as old as they are. I think that means I'm getting old.

I have pretty much repeated my resolutions from 2009 in 2010, so I think it's time to write some new ones.

2010 was a tough year for me in many ways. Mom found out that she had breast cancer, Hubby lost his job, and I lost my job. But, even with all the uncertainty, when I look back I do have good memories. Mom handled breast cancer like a champ. Hubby got a new job, and well, I'm still looking and trying to take advantage of this time while I can. Plus, we had another year with Maddy and Libby and it's been wonderful, stressful, funny, and enjoyable all at the same time. Watching them grow into full blown toddlers has been amazing to say the least. The verbal skills and their personalities are definitely shining through.

So, for 2011, I hope to ...

1. Keep running. I ran 4 half marathons and walked a 60 mile/3 day event in 2010. 820 miles for the year, give or take a few. I had hoped to be a little closer to 1,000, but I'll take it. I also hoped to run a 5th half marathon, but I just didn't quite make it. I don't think I'm going to make a goal of a specific number of races, but just try to run consistently and finish at least run 2 halfs.

2. Simplify/Less Stress. If the house is trashed; it's ok. If I don't have the perfect outfit; it's ok. If I never lose this extra 5 pounds; it's ok. If my to-do list isn't finished; that's ok, too. I do want to simplify my eating - cleaner, healthier, easier. I want to simplify our house - get rid of the clutter, and enjoy our home, finally do some projects that I have envisioned. I want my daughters to have a simpler life - do they really need every toy out there? I want them to have the experiences and remember the important stuff.

3. Do something for me. I'm not sure what this will be. An art class? A writing class? Bikram yoga, again? Finally figure out the manual setting on my camera? But something just for me.

4. Find a job that I love. Amen to this one. Right now, I'm feeling a little stressed to find a job. But, I really don't want to take just anything. I want to feel great about it and find somewhere that can be fulfilling to me and that I can contribute to the success of the company and make a difference.

5. Be a better Mom/Wife/Friend. Oh, I think this one needs a lot of work. Hubby and I need to plan date nights and actually take time to talk. I need to have more patience with Maddy and Libby. I need to be the friend that picks up the phone more.

So, on that note ... Happy New Year, my friends. Hubby and I enjoyed a home cooked meal with our daughters (even though all we heard was "I don't like it"), but it was a nice dinner, nonetheless. I'm going to pour another class of cab and wish in 2011.

Christmas 2010

Excuse the blurriness. Excitedness = not stopping to stand still for a photo.

Merry Christmas!

Twas the day before Christmas and all through the house; not a creature was stirring not even a mouse. The girls were both napping, and Hubby was out; buying a few presents that we had forgotten about. The dogs were at camp, frolicking around, and Susan D. was baking

and eating gum drops.

Merry, Merry Christmas from our family to yours!

Pumpkins and witches, oh my.

Yesterday, we attended our church Fall Festival, complete with "Trunk or Treat." I didn't know if the girls would "get it" or not, since this was truly their 1st trick-or-treating experience. They quickly learned that all of the people would give you candy to put in your little buckets. Even though they really didn't eat much candy, they still liked that idea.They also loved our neighboring car who let them take nearly every piece of candy out of their bowl and put it into their buckets. I was just happy it was MnM's. Just kidding, sort of. Mini Butterfingers would have been better.

Oh, and yes ... no witch costume for Maddy. No way, no how, wasn't going to leave the house without screaming and tearing at the costume kind of meltdown, so we decided a happy uncostumed kid was better than a miserable, costumed kid.

Maddy did oblige me by wearing the witch hat when we got home. Do you like her ink?

Libby did end up with one lollipop that she thoroughly enjoyed, plus a new frog tat.

Happy Independence Day!

Here's my attempt at patriotic star cookies for a cookout later today. Libby hurt my feelings by proclaiming "flowers!" when they were cooling. Yep, she's right ... my stars spread out into flowers, but they are still yummy sugar cookies nonetheless.

Happy 4th of July, everyone!

Happy Mother's Day

I found this quote about Motherhood and it really hit home.

“The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new.” - Rajneesh.

So true. I really had no idea how I would react to being a mother. While I always knew I wanted children, I wasn't one of those women who was baby-crazy for years prior to getting pregnant. When the time was right and it happened, I was thrilled, but I still had 33 weeks and 2 days of apprehension about what kind of mother I would be.


I do remember getting to hold Maddy the night she was born and something changed in me. I don't know how to explain it, but I felt something shift. Her small, warm body just fit on my chest and I think I could have stayed like that forever. Almost equally as hard as leaving both of my babies in the NICU when I was discharged from the hospital, I couldn't hold Libby the first night she was born as she was hooked up to a CPap machine.

Some days, I still wonder what kind of mother I am. I strive to be good, kind, caring, funny, compassionate, honest, and loving. Some days, I think I'm doing well to achieve one of those qualities each day, and some days I feel like I'm just getting by with the basics in a day. But, when bedtime rolls around, and I say goodnight to two sweet little girls, I know that there is no better job in this world than being a Mother.

So, Happy Mother's Day to all of the Mom's out there. Today, I'm thinking about my Mom in particular. I have wonderful memories of racing down the grocery store aisles with my Mom pushing the cart and me riding, weekly trips to our library and being allowed to check out as many books as I could take, Mom's grilled cheese sandwiches, homemade applesauce, and chocolate chip cookies, Christmas mornings, and seeing my Mom the night Maddy and Libby were born.

I'm also thinking about three special friends who have had to deal with the loss of a child, the loss of a Mom, and the hope of becoming a Mom. A, J, and K, you are in my thoughts today!

Mother's Day 2010

Maddy was ready to pose.

Keeping it real with Libby. Not interested in photos. At all.

Three-peat

I always send photos to family and friends showing the latest antics of Maddy and Libby. Yesterday, that was a link to Easter weekend photos.

Then, I uploaded some of those to Facebook.

So, I better put some on the bloggity blog or you wouldn't see what we did this weekend.

Wait, are you yawning?

Libby, crusing around at the egg hunt.

Hunting eggs, or possibly borrowing them from one of their friends.

The Easter Bunny came!

Maddy loved this little bunny.

Hunting eggs at their Grandparents. They had very different hunting styles ... very interesting. Oh, and Abby the dog tried to hunt, too.

Maddy brought a few of the indoor eggs out to the hunt.


Libby was pretty serious about the whole thing.

Do you know what the problem is with all of these pictures? Not one good family photo of all of us. We did take a few, but none were share or print worthy. Boo. Try, try, again.

Can you believe this was last year's post? What a difference a year makes ... no family photos last year, either!

Happy Easter

I don't know how they do it, but it does seem that dogwood trees always bloom at Easter ... whether Easter falls early or late in the year. I've always loved these trees since I was a little girl. My parents had trees with pink and white blooms at both houses where we lived.

We were thrilled to see that our home also has several white trees throughout our front and back yard.

I remember looking at these after a visit to Sunday School where they taught us that the blooms also represent the crucifixion of Christ and I would always look for those little marks on each end of the bloom. Sure enough, they are always there.

I sometimes have to wonder if they bloom at the "right" time because that big guy upstairs is in charge.

Spring!

Spring has sprung around these parts. My yard is full of daffodils, even though I've decided that I could plant an entire yard full and still want more. I can see the tulips getting ready to bloom, and of course, a little pollen in the air, and noticing that our lawn needs to be mowed.

I also unpacked a few Easter goodies for around the house.

Mom gave me this little guy and he found a home on our rather unadorned mantle, along with some forsythia branches.

On the agenda this week, Easter egg dyeing (pastel glitter!), and putting together Easter baskets. Pretty simple around here ... one new book each, sidewalk chalk to share, and Little People that come in eggs. I think we'll round it out with either some goldfish crack-uhs or an-mul (animal) crack-uhs.

The big red box

On Christmas Eve, we attended our church's candlelight service, took a drive to see Christmas lights and then headed home since it was nearing 7:15 and Maddy and Libby's bedtime.

When we got home, the girls were wandering around downstairs and Hubby and I were grabbing a few items that we needed to take upstairs.

Maddy walked back to one of the guest bedrooms and I found her patting a BIG gift wrapped box. Hmmmmm .... I know I didn't put that there, but I was trying to figure out when it arrived.

I told Hubby that Maddy had sold him out and led me to a surprise that I could only assume was for me. He just stood there and laughed. After moving it from the front porch to our mud room, then wrapping it, he showed it to Maddy.

This sucker would have been hard enough to wrap, but also to hide? Nearly impossible! I had to also laugh that he did this while I was out running a couple of short errands and was probably only gone about 30-40 minutes.

Oh, and what was inside? Not a refrigerator, but a new cubby/shelf with hooks to hang in our mudroom so there is a place to hang my purse, their backpacks, diaper bag, dog leashes, etc.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to you and yours from Susan D., Hubby, Maddy, Libby, Zeus, and Zoe too.

One day,

I'll have something witty to write about, but until now ... more photos of my children.

This was their first experience with chocolate chip cookies. They actually seemed to take their time and nibble them, just like my Meme would have done. Only, they also drank sippy cups of milk and Meme would have been drinking black coffee.

They are 18 months old today. Where does the time go?

The cookies never left their hot little hands the entire time.

Don't even think about it.

Yummmm.

Sweet.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

Now it definitely feels (and looks) a lot like Christmas ...

Santa! I know him!

One of our neighbors had a little gathering last weekend for about 10 families ... and Santa made an appearance. It was great watching all of the other kids (who were about 4-5 years old) when he showed up at the door.

Our two weren't so sure about sitting on his lap by themselves, but they were fine once we hung out on the sofa with the big guy.

We had to laugh how they are totally checking him out. I also laughed at how Libby is holding a measuring cup that she must have "borrowed" from the kitchen and Maddy was wearing the jewels that she "borrowed" as well.

It's so hard for me to believe that Christmas is next week. I definitely feel in the spirit this year, but it just really feels like this month is flying by. I think I now understand what my Mom always said ... that she wanted everything to slow down this time of year so we could truly take time to enjoy it.

Baby Dyson

I know most of you know how much we love our Dyson. I am certain I've blogged about her on several occasions.

We received our beloved Animal Dyson as a wedding gift. It was the only one that I knew exactly what it was. Kind of hard to disguise a vacuum cleaner at a wedding reception.

The Animal came with a coupon for a free Baby Dyson. Not a real-deal vacuum, but a toy designed to look just like the real thing. So, I sent off for it in the hopes of having a child someday to enjoy it.

So it arrived and has stayed stored for the past 4 years ... until now. We got it out of the basement yesterday to put it together so we can give to Maddy and Libby as one of their Christmas gifts.


Is it not the cutest thing you've ever seen? It takes batteries, so it actually makes sound, things whirl around, and the package says that it will pick up tiny pieces of debris. Maybe we can try tandem vacuuming!

Calling it done.

Since I didn't want to

A. not put up a tree
B. put the tree up in a different room
C. put a gate up around the tree
D. keep the naked chic tree

We opted to go with the 3/4 decorated tree.


Don't look too closely ... just keep your eyes at the top half and don't let them wander too far down. Oops. You did, didn't you?

Can you tell how high Maddy and Libby can reach? Yep, you guessed it. Right about there.


Now if they figure out that they can drag their rocking chair over to the tree and stand on it, then we're all in big trouble.


And, just for you AL, the Pottery Barn wanna be slipcovered sofa ala Jacque Penne. So far, so good. We feel like it needs to be "broken in" a little ... you don't sink right in like I think you will after another month or so. All in all, I've been pleased. I did have to return the slipcover to the chair because the zipper broke when we were putting it on. Those suckers are tight. Let me know if you want to come test it out. Just wish it came in the color of Black Lab.

O' Christmas Tree

Maybe we'll just leave it like this.

A few strands of lights at the top and undecorated.

Kind of nature-chic, don't you think? Please excuse the assorted chairs and ladder ... they aren't part of the decor this year. Or maybe we'll keep them up to deter two toddlers from playing in the tree.

We are lucky that we have a good friend, Ben whose family has a Christmas tree farm in the NC mountains. Ben is OCD about picking out trees, so we let him pick out our tree and he hand delivers it over Thanksgiving weekend. "This was alive at 11am", he always tells us.

This has to be the densest tree that we've ever had, because Hubby started putting up lights on Sunday and you can't even tell that they are on there. So, our plan is to start over and make sure we have more on the outer branches. It just hasn't happened yet this week.

Hopefully tonight and I can post a photo of a lit tree. Now, decorating may be another story. I like to pull out all of the ornaments so I can see what I have and decide what to put where. I know that ain't happening during awake toddler hours.

** Edited at 11:00 PM. We had 4 bad strands of lights. No idea what happened since last year & these are supposed to be the kind that if one light goes out, the rest will stay. So, tomorrow, I'm planning to buy about 5 more strands so we can hopefully finish the lights tomorrow. Whoopee!

My babies are growing up.

I know I say it every time I look at pictures, or when I've been out of town, but they really are. 17 months? How did it happen? Plus, I see their personalities shining through so much. Maddy, Miss Independent, slightly mischievous, and a little bit daring. Libby, aka Drama, the hugger, and the communicator. They both have some unique dance floor moves, love to read their books, or play with any object that has buttons or keys. Remotes, phones, and laptops are all kept well out of reach. I'm contemplating giving them big calculators for Christmas.

We had a good Thanksgiving at my in-laws ... eating too much and visiting with family. The girls absolutely love their Grandparents ranch style house. It gives them the perfect racetrack to navigate and that's pretty much what they did anytime they weren't sleeping or eating. This sitting down and being held business? Nah ... not anymore.

Hubby took the 17 month chair photos while I was out of town.

Wearing their Black Dog tee shirts.
This was one of my favorite baby shower gifts and I'm so glad they finally fit into them.

Maddy loooved her Grandma's tree in the entry way. It's always seasonally decorated, so she especially liked plucking out all the little pumpkins and carrying them around.

Libby at Thanksgiving dinner. They ate turkey, a little bit of dressing, creamed corn, deviled eggs, cranberry sauce(!), rolls (yum), green beans, chicken & pastry, and the mini marshmallows from the sweet potatoes.

Not sure if they were eating or playing at this point.

One thing I noticed from all of the photos. Where am I? Behind the camera, most likely shoving pecan pie in my face, but the real problem is that there are no family photos. We really need to make the point to get photos of our little family, but it would have been fun to have tried to take a photo of the entire family. With Hubby's family, that might have been hard since there are 10,000 people at the house for holidays, but I still want to get better about more family photos.

sicky, sicky

I would assume that not feeling 100% on Friday + drinking too much + sleeping too little for two nights + four flights = one sick mama.

I felt bad on Monday morning, but felt even worse yesterday and had a fever for most of the day, so I finally went to the Doctor today.

Luckily, my diagnosis was a sinus infection and not H1N1, so a Z-pack for me and I hope to be on the road to recovery. Of course I didn't mention that I was acting like a 21 year old again over the weekend ... Oh, to be young again.

So, I am very thankful that I have a Hubby who takes care of the girls and takes care of me when I am sick. He made me two grilled cheese sandwiches last night (don't judge), because I hadn't eaten all day and was starving and made sure I had all my supplies for the evening: tissues, Delsym cough syrup, saline nose spray, cough drops, and extra pillows.

I am also very thankful for a Mother-in-Law that told us not to worry about bringing anything for Thanksgiving and really meant it. This year, I've done absolutely nothing. I think we could put Maddy and Libby on the doorstep, ring the bell, and run to a hotel and it would be fine with them.

And on a serious note, I am so thankful for a happy and healthy family, a kind Husband, and wonderful friends near and far. I am so lucky on so many levels and know that I am very blessed. Happy Thanksgiving everyone ... I hope you enjoy the holiday with those special to you.