Someone Said it Sunday - Happy Anniversary!

I'm keeping it short and sweet today, and I do mean sweet! Today is our 7th anniversary! We're celebrating 7 years of marriage, plus two years of dating (which was a lot like marriage in a way). So we're celebrating 9 years together, and how can you celebrate marriage without celebrating your family? So here's to 1 crazy couple, 9 crazy years, and 2 crazy kids! With all that craziness, here's a little piece of sanity. This is the best marriage advice I have ever heard:

"I am satisfied that happiness in marriage is not so much a matter of romance as it is an anxious concern for the comfort and well-being of one's companion. Any man who will make his wife's concern his first concern will stay in love with her throughout their lives and through the eternity yet to come." ~Gordon B. Hinckley

Sweetest couple ever!

Five Year Pregnancy

Here's the funny thing about book club: we have been pregnant for five years. What?! Yes. Five years. For five years of monthly meetings, someone has been pregnant every time. When someone is a few weeks to months away from their due date, someone else announces that they are pregnant. So we've overlapped just enough to stretch the pregnancies out 5 years. I should be able to figure out how many babies that has been, but we had book club last night, so I'm tired. It's hard to keep track of all the babies that have moved away too. We'll just say there have been a lot of babies. We're now down to just 5 of us "regulars" and these "regulars" are all done having babies. So last night we held our last newborn "book club baby". We're marking the end of an era! haha.

When we first started book club, I had zero kids and nearly zero experience being a "housewife". Now I have two kids and have learned a lot about being a "SAHM". My book club friends have helped me more than they even know! Through pregnancy, the first baby and "fun" toddler stages, not to mention the best cleaning tips and painters to hire.

It's a difficult thing to close a chapter of your life, but exciting to look forward to the next stage. As Sophie raced across the floor this morning on her hands and knees, I felt a twinge of sadness that I would never see her "belly racing" again. At the same time, I was thrilled to see how delighted she was to be moving so quickly on her own. I guess the key to enjoying life is being content in the stage you're in, and holding those sweet memories close...and watching the videos over and over again.

Funny Sleeping Positions

Little Boy has never been a fan of sleep. Very unfortunate for me. However, he has been known to fall asleep a time or two in a funny place or a funny position. Here are a few of my recent favorites:

As opposed to this little cutie, who likes to sleep with her face planted on the bed. (It seriously scares me to death, and I honestly wake up every morning wondering which of my children has

stopped breathing during the night. Well, not every morning, just the ones where they have both managed to stay asleep all night. Ok, so recently, that has probably equaled a grand total of twice). Sometimes, if she can move before she falls into a deep oblivion, she will move her hands under her face and wakes up with a red handprint on her face. It's cute. 

And here's my all-time favorite. I promise it looks worse than it is. He did NOT get into those pills.

Kitchen Mini-Redo

My kitchen is a decent kitchen. "Decent" meaning, I did NOT agree with the design center when we were building our house, so I put in temporary countertops, backsplash, and floors, thinking it will be replaced eventually. Unfortunately, eventually is the key word here. Not that I mind it. A new refrigerator, a new washer, paying for babies and all the fun stuff that comes with them, has definitely been worth it, but I'm still longing for that beautiful quartz countertop, quatrefoil marble backsplash I have in my mind. (Not to mention the dark hand-scraped wood floors throughout the house...*sigh*)

Anyway, all is not lost. I'm finally getting around to fixing our terrible paint job, and repainting the walls back to a lovely rich neutral color. I'm not a fan of neutral, which is why we went with red just a few short weeks after we moved in. (Note to everyone: if you've never painted before, do NOT start by painting a very obvious room red. So many reasons. Don't even get me started.) However, there are bonuses to having neutral walls again. I get to change up the decor for every season and holiday. Think of all the fun things I can do. Fun valances, fun dishes, tablecloths... you get the idea. I've acutally been looking for new dish towels for quite some time now and have been disappointed in my hunt for them. I don't know what I was thinking (or wasn't thinking), but have just now turned to online hunting for them. Me, who buys everything online. Hey, you win some, you lose some. (Brain cells that is.) 

We can go with a different color for every day of the week:

Reminiscent of the underwear we all wore in Elementary School.

Or even add language lesson dish towels:

Nachooooo!

Go with something "fancy":

Ok I'm totally kidding.

Or something with a not so subliminal message:

Tell me how you REALLY feel.

Seriously though, here are a few that I actually love. Really, what a fun changeable accessory for the kitchen right?

Fun with a bright colored towel next to it.

or in-between the two.

Am I right, or am I right?

Apparently, it's all the rage to make your own dish towels. Maybe I'll have to get a little crafty. Let's be honest, anything to avoid doing the dishes.

First Year Calendar & Free Printables

When Evan was born, I knew I wanted to record not only the major milestones, but the cute day to day things as well. The best (and quickest) solution I came up with was to write it down on a calendar.  So I printed out a couple plain month calendars, and (almost) everyday, I wrote a few words down. Fast forward a couple years (he just turned 3) and I'm finally ready to make a nice, final version with pictures.

I love the idea of using the faux chalkboard technique that is so trendy right now. But I literally had A DAY to get this done. So I didn't add all the cute doodles and stuff. (Guess what I'll be doing with our 2013 Family book?) Thanks to my super organized photo filing system, I got this baby done in just a couple hours. Now all that's left is to transfer what I wrote on the old rough draft version and that, my friends, is going to be the most time-consuming part of this whole project, but it will be nice for him to have it in my handwriting.

As far as I know you can print/use the blank calendar for your own purposes, but don't sell them. The images are copyrighted by Stampin' Up! This calendar was made by me with Stampin' Up! My Digital Studio software. If you want me to email you the blank calendar, just leave me a note in the comments or email me.

Monet Made My Monday

Last night (or maybe it was early this morning), I lay in bed wondering what was in store for me today. What was going to be so great that was worth blogging about under the title "Made My Monday"? I wasn't planning on going to Target (because when it doubt, I know that I'll always have a good time there). In fact, I wasn't planning on going out at all, except to my friends house around the corner to pick up her boys so she could have a break (with her ADORABLE newborn). Then I would be teaching a couple piano lessons, which are always fun, but I'm not sure anything would happen that would really make my Monday... (although, Sophie did play a cute game of throw her binky and crawl really fast to it, then throw it again, over and over). Anyway, I figured I was in for a great surprise!

The morning started off with the usual routine. Well, maybe a little quicker than normal. (If we were moving around faster than normal, THAT would have totally made my Monday.) (What do you call that anyway? Time lapse video? Fast forward? Because I really think there should be a cool name for that.) Anyway, to make a long story short... we ended up going to Wal-Mart (my least favorite store in the world) for paint rollers and sandals for the Little Boy. On the way out of the neighborhood I ran into (not literally) a couple of my really good friends who were out for a walk in this GORGEOUS weather, and had the chance to stop and visit for a few minutes. Their kids were cute with my kids, and we all had a good time. So off to Wal-Mart I go, feeling uplifted and blessed to have so many good friends.

Wal-Mart was pretty uneventful, but we did pick up some sweet Spidey sandals that light up. Evan's first pair of light-up shoes, and oh boy did they light up his day! He was SO EXCITED about them, he gave me his "I-love-you-so-much-Mom-I-don't-know-how-I-was-blessed-with-the-best-Mom-in-the-world-and-all-I-can-think-of-to-repay-you-is-to-give-you-the-sweetest-smile-I-can" smile. (Yes, this is a real smile. I will try to document it on film, or iPhone, whatever.)

I visited my friend (who didn't need me to babysit after all) and her sweet newborn. I do not even remember either one of my children being so small. (In fact, another thing I thought about while in bed was the actual birth days of both kids. Of course I can remember Sophie's just 9 1/2 months ago, but can I remember Evan's? It was only 3 years ago. I need to think of it more often so I don't forget!) Anyway, so there I was with another great friend and our sweet kids, feeling blessed to have the two sweetest children that ever lived.

We came home and I painted the stripes in the bathroom, which look awesome...so that made my Monday as well. I taught piano lessons to 2 of the cutest girls ever, and saw another friend while I was outside chatting. Friends, friends, and more friends!

Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, BEETLEJUICE!

The evening was it's usual crazy self, but we finished dinner (EVERYONE (eventually) finished dinner, which, again, made my Monday). (Although, I may or may not have had to yell "STOP" at one point when a glass of water was spilled, but that's beside the point.) Both kids made it to bed, in their OWN beds, in pajamas, with full bellies. Major accomplishment right there. (Look at all these Made My Mondays!) I needed a little wind-down time before bed, and the activity of choice was mindless vegging with my best friend the internet. (Hey, men have ESPN, women have Pinterest. Am I right?) One thing leads to another, an hour or so later, I've been inspired to order peacock prints for the now amazing bathroom. If only someone were online to chat with for that oh-so-important-impulse-buy second opinion. I open up my email and right there with a green dot by her name is my sister Monet! Ask and ye shall receive! We came to the conclusion that I needed to buy both prints in question (they ARE 25% off after all!) but not necessarily hang them both in the half bath, risking peacock overload. I told her she was the star of my Make My Monday blog post.

If you can understand all of that mindless babbling, you will see that what made my Monday was not something but someone, or a lot of someones actually. I feel like I should bust into "A Heart Full of Love" opera style like I did with the sisters back in the day, but for everyone's sake, I won't. Just know that my heart is indeed full of love, and that song from Les Mis was incidentally one of Evan's favorite songs in utero. True story. The other favorite was Clair de Lune. That kid's gonna be a heartbreaker for sure.

Someone Said it Sunday - Mother's Day Style

It wasn't too hard to narrow it down today. I kept thinking about this poem. Probably because this is where I am right now. I can't do everything, so I have to choose what (or who) is most important and let the other stuff go. Both of these came from a friend who is the most organized person I know, and even she admits to feeling inadequate. My philosophy is that if you don't feel inadequate sometimes, you won't try harder. We can't dwell on our inadequacies. Our kids know we are human and don't expect perfection. In fact, I think they would be happier if we were a little less concerned with being perfect!

If I Had My Child to Raise Over Again
by Diane Loomans

If I had my child to raise over again,
I'd finger-paint more and point the finger less.
I'd do less correcting and more connecting.
I'd take my eyes off my watch, and watch with my eyes.
I would care to know less and know to care more.
I'd take more hikes and fly more kites.
I'd stop playing serious, and seriously play.
I'd run though more fields and gaze at more stars.
I'd do more hugging and less tugging.
I would be firm less often, and affirm much more.
I'd build self-esteem first, and the house later.
I'd teach less about the love of power,
And more about the power of love.

Here's my awesome mom. I know she felt guilty and inadequate,
but she's the best mom for me! I wouldn't want her any other way!

Further reading: This is an awesome blog post called "drops of awesome" that will help you if you're feeling overwhelmed, guilty or not quite up to this motherhood thing.