My Ava Grace

To my beautiful spirit as she turns 2.

You mesmerize me my baby princess. Your love, laughter and excitement can't help but be contagious when you appear in the room that you command.


You move to your own rhythm with no concept of time for I truly believe that you think the world revolves around you.


I love that you are unbelievably funny and love to laugh as much as your mommy and daddy. What would our life be without your laughter? Please never stop laughing sweet girl. The world would be so much less without your giggle.


I love that you are undoubtedly my girly-girl of all little girls. No doubt you are a little priss and isn't that what I prayed for?? My own little princess to play dress up with and doll up each day. To put lipstick and nail polish on her sweet face after putting a bow in soft curls. To hear her clunk through the house with plastic heels in costume jewelry and a feather boa. I no doubt got a princess to call mine. With all of the drama and chatter that comes with it. I love every second of it baby girl. Thank you for choosing me as your mommy.

1st day mommy blues

So how come this is what I saw as you walked onto the bus on this rainy morning, but the only picture running through my mind was this one???

You are growing so big and so fast my handsome boy. Where have my yesterdays gone and why are the tomorrows coming so quickly? I can't seem to hold you tight enough to tell you how much I love you and how proud of the little man that you are. So BIG my little first grader. I blinked and my baby is almost 7.

Hold the hands hold the hands!!!!

As many know, last week was birthday week, which also means, making cakes, which means making homemade-to-die-for butter cream frosting. This ALSO means, everything is in upheaval and a disaster area with things left out and baking products everywhere. I admit it, when i am planning, things are a disaster. One morning for breakfast, Jackson decided he wanted green eggs and ham. SO i made him green eggs seeing as how the kitchen was chaos and full of baking supplies. Later that morning, the Lindsey kiddos came to play while their mommy was at a bible study. Kids played and I cleaned. everything was going swimmingly. My friend Jess came back and we ate lunch and sis and Aubrynn were sitting in the chair when I looked over and I saw it and all i could think was "hold the hands, hold the hands!!!" Sis had gotten into blue food coloring and gotten it all over her hands. The pic below is after washing. It was WAAAYYYY brighter believe me. The next night as I was dying icing with my mom I turned and she was into the yellow Wilton icing dye. EATING it!!! what is it with sis and the food dye??? Thankfully it managed to be fairly easy clean-up and didn't get on anything other than skin. An angel was watching I tell ya. The please don't make a mess so mommy doesn't pull her hair out angel of mine that seems to be permanently attached to my shoulder. Thank you Jesus for making her mine. I so need her!!

The Lure of the "Red Stuff"

So this is the face of our little diva after I noticed her missing one evening after dinner. I had left the bottle of ketchup on the counter to which sis had pushed a chair over, climbed up, got herself a plate, and dumped a almost entire bottle of ketchup covering the Disney princess' , and then preceded to eat plain ole ketchup with her fingers. I just don't get the lure of the red stuff. I mean it's good with fries and on burgers and dogs, but eating plain?? Dipping a green bean in it?? on a ham sandwich?? I don't get it??!! Some of my girlfriends would tell me to ban the stuff because of all the "red dye" in it sent from Satan. Don't think I'm quite that extreme, but I do think there is some kind of narcotic in it to make kids dump it all over Ariel's face and eat it with their lil fingers.

Trying to make a memory dang it!!!

So, I was trying to be the good mom and I bought all the fixins to make smores thinking we would all stand around the chimminhea, sing campfire songs, hold hands and giggle. Right, that worked out well. The kids did ok for about .5 seconds. Jackson didn't even want to eat his marshmallow, Maddox just wanted the bag of marshmallows to eat out of, Danno hates smores and wouldn't even act like he was interested, and Miss Ava wanted to poke her brothers with the skewers because she thought it was funny after eating 4 Hershey bars. Her tiny face smeared in rings of chocolate and hands a sticky mess that attracted every bug in our backyard. I am trying to make a memory here family, please humor me in participating!! I did enjoy two of them after Jackson went in the house to play Wii, Maddox begged to open bubbles, Dan played with his phone and sis continued to drag her chocolated coated hands through the clean hair that I had just washed. So I guess that the memory is... no one really likes smores but mama :( But, never fails, I will try to make this same memory again, when its a little cooler.

Is there anything better??

There are so many things that make summertime that much better. Dips in a cool pool, no school, and endless hours playing video games and watching TV. But can anything really be better than a Flavor-ice on the front porch. Their easy no dip plastic packets you would think could be every mommy's no fuss dream. My children however, seem to find a way to make them almost as bad as a baby eating rice scattering it all over the floor. But never fails, every afternoon and into the evening, someone begs to have Flavor-Ice Popsicles to ease the heat of summer and make that 100 degree that much more bearable. Not to mention that it seems to cost a dollar for about 100 of them :)