Summer Fun!

Madi loves her little sister! Her new favorite thing to play with Hali is dress-up ( suprise, suprise!). This is Hali, I mean tinkerbell, in her first photo shoot.

Even tyce got in on the fun. I sent this text to Mark while he was at work in an attempt to get him home early and save his only son. It worked!!

Such a pretty little fairy!

Now you all have a mental picture of Hali in her swimsuit. This is why summer is my favorite season, baby girls in swimsuits are a tourist attraction for sure! (Never mind her huge diaper, I forgot to get a swim diaper before we went swimming and poor Hali had to deal with the consequences!). We love summer!

Pre-School Graduation

Madi had pre-school graduation the end of June and I am finally posting pictures! She really isn't graduating, she still has one more year, but she was excited about it anyway. She loved pre-school! It was fun to watch her learn and grow so much in one year. She can write most of the alphabet and her name. In fact, she has even tagged some of our furniture...how fun for me!

This is her class. She loved all the new friends she made.

Wedding Flowers

I recently did the flowers for a wedding of some friends here in royal. She used mostly calla Lilly's and it turned out really simple and elegant. Above is the bridal bouquet.

I love the look of this swirling arrangement. We decided to add this arrangement in at the last minute and I am so glad we did, it went well with the look they were going for.

I love arranging with white and green hydrangeas, could be my favorite flower right now.

Don't be fooled by how simple this arrangement looks. I all but had to weld these babies to the bottom of the vase to keep them from floating up, and even that didn't work! It was high stress there for a while but finally I came up with a solution and it was so much easier than what I initially had experimented with. I dropped clear marbles in the center of the flower and weighted them down that way. Simple is always best...I hope I remember that next time! I do love how this turned out. Also, a little tip: if you do an arrangement like this, use distilled water so you don't get air bubbles on your flowers.

Pictures

These pictures demonstrate why there are not more pictures on my blog. I am a horrible photographer. Luckily my subjects are patient with me, for the most part

I love this picture of Hali. This is the face she makes when she sees me! How lucky for me!

Updates!

I can't believe how quickly time is going! This is Hali eating her first bowl of rice cereal. She has since decided that she really likes to eat. In fact, she is rarely happy if she isn't eating!

In these pictures you can see how far she has come in the world of eating. She considers herself a "foodie" in every sense of the word.

She is now also sitting up and scooting and rolling all over the floor. This week she will be nine months old! I can't believe that! I keep telling people that I just had a baby but I guess I can't do that anymore. Now what excuse do I have?

Just a few new ones!

All morning I was encouraging/pleading/threatening the kids to clean up there room. I thought I was finally making some progress when Madi came into my room and said this:

madi: "well.. ( her hands in the air), tyce wouldn't clean so......we decided to clean next thursday."

my future little union worker!

Mark got on board and was trying to convince the kids to clean and had this conversation with madi

Madi: what could I do to make mom happy?

mark: it would make mom really happy if you went and cleaned up your room

Madi: Or............ I could do something else!

Being Still

I am still here...I really am. Still alive, still moving, still chasing madi and tyce all over the house (except now tyce is usually naked since we are potty training. Pray for me and my last shred of sanity!). Still taking on more projects than I should even though my new years resolution was to let some things go, which I did, I just happened to pick other things up in their place! Still calling Mark every 5 minutes to see if he is on his way home (he never is, but I love that I am optimistic that today may be the day I have help in the evening), still cuddling little Hali (she makes my hard days happier), still picking up 20 outfits off the floor as madi has a wardrobe change every half hour, still waking up at 6 in the morning and committing to get up and exercise....and then rolling over, still folding laundry, doing dishes, still growing out my hair, still trying to remember to buy batteries for my camera, still appreciating the fact that I get to be home with the kids, still adding to the mounting pile of projects that need to be finished, still driving to my mom's or my mother-in law's when I need a place to go fro 3-5 in the afternoon (why is that time so hard?), still hoping for winter to end, still running a humidifier in both the kid rooms, still calling at least one of my sister every day ( sometimes I call them all in one day!!), still missing having neighbors and a sidewalk to walk on (I took those things for granted before) , still wondering how you get to 9 am church on time, or how to keep my house as organized and clean as my mom did with 7 kids, still eying my pre-pregnancy jeans with envy and hope.....maybe one day...., one thing I am not STILL doing is looking at my blog and telling myself to post something, and then switching over to a craft blog instead, I guess I still surprise myself sometimes.