The Tooth Fairy

Well, as you have noticed, I am doing a pretty horrible job of keep up with my blog, BUT.... I plan to stay on top of it from now on. I find that at the end of a long day, my brain just won't compute. Literally, I sit down to write, and nothing comes out. Agh... so, I'm not giving up just yet. Please don't give up on me! Hee hee..
So, the tooth fairy has been a very busy lady around here lately. Abby lost her bottom two teeth quite some time ago, and the new ones have since grown back in. But, in the past week she has lost 3 teeth! Yes, THREE in one week! As you can see below, she looks like quite the snaggle-tooth. It's very surreal for me, because I just know that this means my little girl is growing up.

Abby is best friends with the tooth fairy. Literally, she talks about her as if she knows her in person. It's very cute. It's so fun to watch her get so excited about leaving her tooth for this magical fairy. Last night, when she lost her big front tooth, she decided she would make a nice note for the tooth fairy and make her a little something. She actually said, "the tooth fairy probably never gets presents." So sweet. So, under her pillow went the note, a nice craft she made for her and the tooth. Now let me tell all of you rookies out there. This is no easy job. I seem to almost forget every time. Just as I'm laying down for bed and thinking over the day and checking off my list mentally, it hits me.... oh crap, the tooth! So, I drag myself out of my warm bed to retreive the tooth and leave some money behind. Now, Abby is quite a sound sleeper, but I still get very paranoid. I tip toe in as quietly as possible and try to be as slick as can be not to wake her. This has been pretty easy up until this last tooth when she felt the need to leave all the extras with the tooth. I went to her side of the bed that she had her back to first, slipped my hand under the pillow and was feeling around and then, she turned and kinda moaned a little. I ducked down, hiding and thinking about what to say if I did in fact get busted. "oh, it's okay honey, I'm just making sure that your tooth is still there. We wouldn't want the tooth fairy to come and it not be there!" I think I could get away with it, but hey, kids are smart, and I'm trying to keep all the magical things going on for a couple more years. So, anyways... back to where I started. So, once she was still, I went to the other side of the bed. I mananged to get all the things, slip the money under the pillow, and tip toe back out the door. Mission complete.

Should it be called Vacation, PART 2

Well, as you can see our vacation really put me back a bit on blogging. Anyhow... I'm going to try to get back into the groove here starting, well, starting right now. Our vacation seems like a distant memory now, even though it was only like 1 week ago that we got back home. We did have a great time. Abby did a great job skiing and it was so much fun for Aaron and I to ski with our daughter. We also took Abby and Allyson sledding one day. There was this really cool hill there and they had this pulley system that pulled you up the hill. It was really fun! That was nice to do because we felt like Allyson didn't get to do much. But, it's won't be long before she's in ski school also!! (Maybe next year...) Audrey, well, Audrey just kindof hung out :) The weather was absolutley freezing the first two days we were there. It was below 0 on the top of the mountain!
And for those of you who are wondering how our drive home was, well, it wasn't so bad. Could have been worse I suppose. The kids did pretty well, it was just the typical stuff. We stopped in Harrisonburg because I needed to get formula for Audrey and there was a Target there. I told Aaron we should just grab something to eat there so we only had to make one stop, but he didn't see anything he liked on the menu. Therefore, we did what we shouldn't have done which was put three starving kids back in the car, and go someplace else. Then when we get there, we realize that Allyson is missing a shoe, not just any shoe by the way, her cute little purple fuzzy crocs that I spen $30 bucks on! So, I left them behind and went to find the shoe. Lucky for me, it was in the parking lot of Target along with a toy that fell out of the van also. I went back, we ate, then hit the road. Then we had the great idea that we would stop at Home Depot in Waynesboro because we had never been to one and maybe they have some different things compared to Lowe's. WRONG! They do not.... as a matter of fact, they have almost the exact same and less of a selection. So, that was a waste of time. Anyways.... I rambling, but, you get the picture, just the same old stuff that happens to me on a daily occurance.
I'll finish this by saying that I think we are incedibly lucky to be able to take family vacations and I will never take that for granted. But, it never hurts to look back and laugh at all the things that went wrong!

Should It Be Called Vacation??

Okay, so let me say first and foremost. I love vacations. I love the feeling of getting away from the day to day hustle and most importantly, I love the memories that we make as a family. BUT.... should it really be called a vacation? I don't think so. Let me tell you why.

Let's go back a bit...

Two days before vacation: I should be packing, instead, I'm blogging or reading the Twilight series, New Moon.

Day before vacation: still not packing, but rather, trying to get the house cleaned up before we leave for vacation because who wants to come home to a messy house?

Night before vacation: Okay, have to start packing. Get the kids stuff packed which takes forever because they have so many things they need. And of course, I pack way too much.

Morning before vacation: Get kid off to school, feed other kids, need to go vacuum out car for road trip, need dog food, still need to pack and load up the car, pick up kid from school at noon, come home, make lunch, water the plants so they don't die, clean litter box b/c house sitter won't do it while you're gone, check off your list to make sure you have everything, make sure everyone's gone potty and head out. Try to do all this without having a nervous breakdown, which I did, but that's another story.

On the way: Kids yelling that their headphones aren't working and they don't like this movie and they need a snack and they dropped their cup. The baby, who you know you perfectly timed out that nap, is wide awake and not happy being in the rear-facing car seat. (might I add that two hours of this trip is through nothing but mountains, and I mean BIG SCARY mountains)

Upon Arrival: Unpack everything. Kids extremely wound up from being in the car. One is car sick the other has peed their pants. Baby has been screaming for an hour. They don't want to go to bed because they are someplace new.

Next couple days: Lose everything because you are living out of suitcases AND you are trying to go skiing, therefore, you need hats, gloves, jackets, boots, skiis and tons more for everyone. Get your nice minivan that's not used to the snow and ice stuck in the driveway. Baby refuses to sleep in pack and play and is waking up at least three times a night.

Okay, so there you have it, and we haven't even left yet... so I guess this is to be continued. I'll let you know how the departure goes. And, although I am complaining, we had a great time. Abby did awesome skiing, we did relaxe quite a bit and it was wonderful spending time with the ones I love most. And, don't worry, I have plenty of pictures for the next blog!

Abby is Six

Abigayle Ana tuned six last week! It is so hard to believe. We celebrated that evening with her grandparents and had dinner, cake and presents. We also watched some video that we had taken of Abby from birth through about age two. It was quite emotional for me. You see, for some reason, turning six was a hard one for me. At five, I still felt like she was my baby in a sense. She wasn't in kindergaten yet, she was still with me the majority of the time. Now that she is six, it feels like she is a kid now, like a big kid. One of those kids that I used to look at in the play area at the mall and think, "oh great, a big kid's coming in here and is going to trample my little toddler." Now she is one of them.
Abigayle was born on a very cold January day. As a matter of fact, we came home from the hospital to find that our pipes had frozen and we had no water. (I was not too happy about this!) Anyhow... having Abby as my first child was such a blessing. She was an angel baby, actually I called her my "textbook" baby. She did exactly what the books said she was supposed to do. She was easy going, fat and happy. Her and I spent every day together, just the two of us for her first three years of life. I have so many great memories over the past six years. One of my favorite memories is when she would dance as a baby. Abby loved to dance, and still does. I would put on a song, and she would stand up, as she was just pulling up at this age, and bounce up and down and laugh and giggle. She was hysterical. She hasn't changed much... she's still my easy-going girl, aside from some 6-year old drama, she is a delight. I realize how lucky I am to have a daughter like her. I have been trying to remind myself as Abby, and my other two little ones, grow right before my eyes, how quickly this time will pass. I feel like I blinked and Abby is all grown up. No longer a baby, she doesn't need me as much anymore. My prayer for Abby is to continue to grow, to walk with Jesus, and to stay true to who she is, which is just perfect to me. Happy birthday Abby, I love you.

Allyson the Pig

Allyson has started this new thing where she snorts when she laughs! It is absolutely hilarious and now she just does it all the time. Well, yesterday at lunch, she was on a snorting roll! She was cracking me up :) Check it out:

What I've been up to!

So, this is kindof a silly post but I just feel like writing. Some of my favorite things lately!

I've really gotten into coupon clipping. I found this great blog: www.frugalinvirgina.com and it's awesome. I guess you can say I've been totally inspired by it and have taken on a whole new hobby of obsessively clipping coupons and trying to save money. It is a lot of extra work, but it's totally worth it and the feeling I get when I save a lot of money is a total adrenaline rush! Today I went to KMart, where they were participating in double coupons up to a $2 face value, and I bought $80 dollars worth of cosmetics, cleaning stuff and medicines for $32. (I also bought some invitations for Abby's birthday party which I didn't have a coupon for :) Anyhow... it's really been a lot of fun.

My new camera! I am totally obsessed with it. It's a super nice Canon Powershot and it takes great pictures. I love taking pictures of my little girls. I would love to one day get into photography a little more and maybe even make an income on it! I think I could be really good at it.

Something else that had been put on the back burner for a while was reading, but I just finished reading Twighlight last week. (thanks Clancy!) Oh my... it was such a great book and I can't wait to get the next in the series.

I am also trying really hard to stay at home more and get organized. I've realized that with three kids under the age of 5, that being organized is almost a must. I am really trying to squeeze in the time to get things nice and tidy around here. I hate looking for something and not being able to find it!!

And, I can't believe that I haven't mentioned this yet, but we are also remodeling our home. We bought our house 2 years ago from my parents and it was like a dream come true for us. We started our family young, and for so long, home ownership was like a fantasy. When we had the oppurtunity to buy my parents house, the house that I pretty much grew up in, we jumped on it! It was a great house to start off with, but we have taken great pride in personalizing it and making it our own. We have done so many things. We painted the outside from what used to be a somewhat burnt orangish color, to a grayish-blue color. We replaced all the windows and re-trimmed them and got a new front door. We put recessed lighting in some bedrooms and hallways, put down hardwood flooring in the hallway upstairs and also fenced in the backyard. We also replaced the front porch with this "Trek" boarding stuff and it looks great! Needless to say we have been very busy improving our house and we have lots more planned this year!

I also weaned Audrey this week and have been sleep-training her to sleep in her own bed. It went really well, and as of Thursday it will have been 2 weeks that she has been on bottles and in her own bed! It's kindof sad that I will never nurse another baby again, but also very uplifting. It's really nice to start getting back to focusing on me and have my body back, somewhat ;)

With that being said, next month, I am getting a gym membership and hitting it hard to lose the rest of this weight! I miss the gym so much. It used to be a very important part of my life and I can't wait to get back in there. So, hopefully, you will be seeing a new, slimmer me this summer!

A Box....

So simple.... yet, to my girls, soooo much fun! We had some boxes hanging around after Christmas and the kids had a great time getting creative with them. As you can see below, with the help of Daddy, Abby turned two boxes into a robot. She thought this was so cool, and the funniest part of the evening was, and I hate to say it, but was when she fell because she couldn't see where she was going. I laughed for almost an hour, as a matter of fact, I'm still laughing thinking of it. She was a good sport though, and was giggling away inside her box.


Here is Audrey playing the box that became Abby's robot head.

And my sweet girls playing in the robot's body.

They had a great time. It's amazing how many things you can do with a box!