CLICK HERE FOR FREE BLOG LAYOUTS, LINK BUTTONS AND MORE! »

Pages

Showing posts with label The kiddos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The kiddos. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Wordless Wednesday










Sunday, January 24, 2016

I'm BACK!!

Holy cow!  How has it been almost 2 years since I posted on my blog?  I think about it often, but I just haven't gotten around to doing it.  I have really missed sitting down and writing out my thoughts and feelings.

Here is what has been happening lately:

  • We celebrated our third New Years Eve in Lubbock.  This is HUGE!  We have never stayed in one city this long, and we still love it!  Lubbock has been so good to our family, that we are not sure when (if ever) we will leave.
  • Maddison is now 11, Gabriella 9, Brayden 5, and Paisley 2!
  • Marco is about a week away from opening his new restaurant, Aspen Creek!  It is crunch time and he's feeling the pressure, but I am so incredibly proud of him!
  • I love my job as a Parent's Day Out teacher, and couldn't be more blessed by the church I work for and the friendships I have made!
  • We found a church home, for all of us!  Gabriella gave her life to Christ and was baptized last year, and Maddison gave her life to Christ this year and will be baptized soon!
Lubbock has really blessed us in many ways, a few we weren't ever expecting, and some are far better than we could have ever imagined!


So what have you been up to?

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Wordless Wednesday

Here are a few of my favorite pictures of the kids together:
 







Friday, March 7, 2014

5 on Friday

I am linking up with Darci from The Good Life blog, for 5 on Friday!  I have been reading them for a few months, found a few great blogs to follow, and so now I am ready to take the plunge and link up myself.

ONE My house right now is a crazy unorganized mess, and it stresses me out very much.  But I have yet to do anything about it.  I am letting it be for now, because I know that if I try to start organizing, the craziness will only get worse in the process.  Cartoons for the boy, nap for the baby, and blogging for mommy wins over the mess.

My house isn't this bad, thank goodness

TWO I seriously have gotten bad at sabotaging myself when it comes to eating better.  I eat great all day, then at night I gorge myself on ice cream (like the whole pint of Blue Bell cookies and cream (it was SO good, I just could not stop)) or candy, really anything sweet.  I am not sure how to control my actions.  I will tell myself in the morning that I will do better than the day before and most days I find I do worse.  I have put up notes for myself that I thought would help for visual motivation.  But when I am brushing my teeth at night, I just feel so deflated and depressed with myself that I couldn't overcome my weakness.  (More on this in another blog post).


THREE The kids are counting down the days till Spring Break (only 7 left), because my mom and possibly my oldest brother are coming into town!!  I seriously cannot wait!!  I am hoping we have some great fun and that loads of memories will be made.

FOUR I recently had to upgrade my iphone to the IOS 7 for a new app I wanted to add (Mint personal finance), and I hate it!  That is all.

FIVE Paisley is growing up way too fast!  She is almost 6 months, and I want time to slow down.  She is my last and I have been savoring every moment, but I still feel like I am missing out.  She is eating fruits and veggies, she is sitting, she is rolling, and she is jumping in her bouncer.  Before I know it, she will be walking and talking.  Please some one tell me how to make time stand still!!

 

Monday, February 24, 2014

Being sick + a water overflow + a broken oven

Last week was a crazy week in our house!  If it wasn't one thing, it was another.  Let me quickly (hopefully) recap for you.

Valentine's Night, I had 2 of my girl friends and their kids over since all of our hubby's had to work.  Crappy right?  Well being a restaurant wife, I am very used to it.  This year, I decided to do something fun for me and the kids.  It was perfect.  We had wine, chocolate covered strawberries, the kids made a HUGE poster board card for the daddies, and they played.  Two of the big girls decided to spend the night with my big girls.  Saturday we went to make cookies, and our first batch burned and our second batch never really finished cooking.  Crazy right?  I wished I would have thought about that then.

Sunday I woke up with a major headache.  I toughed it out as long as I could before I decided to take a nap before the hubby went to work.  I slept close to 3 hours before I had to finally get up, and by then not only was my head still pounding, my throat was starting to hurt.  I made it through the night as best I could with all the kids, and I crawled in bed early.

Monday I got up to take the girls to school and I could hardly swallow.  My hubby sent me to the doctor before he had to go back to work for the day.  I ended up having strep.  BOO!!  The doctor gave me a shot and a prescription and sent me on my way.

I made it through the day with my two little ones, and went to pick up my meds and dinner before getting the older girls from school.  I figured pizza would be easy for me to make for the kids, and I got myself some tomato soup.  The big girls and Brayden hung out watching tv most of the afternoon, while Paisley and I napped.

I got up to "fix" dinner by throwing the pizza in the oven, and Maddi helped me by starting some laundry.  This is where things go majorly downhill for me.  The oven was not working (wished I would have thought about the cookies) and in return, not cooking the pizza.  I sent my hubby and text, and he offered to feed the kids BJ's pizza when he got off.  Life saver!!  I left the pizza in the oven to see how long it would take with the temperature reaching a staggering "warm" and it took well over 2 hrs!  Ugh!

In the mean time, Maddi went to go to my room, which is close to the laundry room and noticed water all over the floor.  I squished my way to the laundry room, and was greeted by a waterfall of water coming out of the washer.  The carpet was soaked and the laundry room was flooded with ice cold water.  I told the big girls to get towels to soak up the water on the carpet while I scooped water in the laundry room.  The girls took turns dumping out the water for me.  The towels didn't really help since there was so much water.

Luckily my hubby felt sorry for me being sick and all, and brought home the pizza for the kids, and went and picked up a shop vac from work and a carpet shampooer to help suck up the water.

The next day, I started feeling better, and we had a guy here to fix the washer (a tube came loose), a guy here to put out fans to dry out the carpet, and a guy here to fix the oven (a wire burned).  Our house was a mad house for a few days walking over fans, catching up on laundry, and having lots of workers come and go, but it all worked out, ya know $200 later.  But that's life I guess.

Monday, February 10, 2014

Naptime=Playtime 4 Cloud Dough

Brayden and I are having so much fun with our naptime=playtime activities. 

As I was searching pinterest for new ideas for my Indoor Fun and Games board, I came across one of my new favorite blogs for fun ideas, Kara's Classroom.  I first found her post on cloud dough and then searched through her blog and I cannot wait to try more of her ideas.

Cloud dough was easy to make, and Brayden had lots of fun playing with it. 

To make cloud dough all you need is 7 cups of flour, 1 cup of vegetable oil and a big container to put it in.  *I wish we would have had a bigger container, but our little one worked just fine.

To start, we gathered our flour, oil, container, and a towel to sit on.  Brayden helped me count and measure out the cups of flour and then mix in the oil. 

He played for awhile with just the dough till we were interrupted by Paisley who wanted to join in the fun.  She started off in her bouncer, but she did not want to stay there.  I put her in the bumbo and gave her a cookie cutter to play with.  Brayden loved trying to make the cookie cutter shapes in the dough.  Next time, I want to come up with more things for him to play with in the dough, even though his hands and the cookie cutters worked just fine. 

After the big girls got home from school, Brayden told them what he had played with and they wanted to play too.  Even my girls liked it, and this is why I want a bigger container.

Overall, the cloud dough was a HUGE success and I cannot wait to get it out again!

Any suggestions on what else to play with in the cloud dough?

Sunday, February 9, 2014

Letter Obstacle Fun


It has been very cold here for a few days and the kids really haven't been able to go outside.  Thursday it was snowy (and I kept the girls home from school) and I wanted to do an activity to keep their bodies and minds active but that was also fun.

I found this post from pinterest, and thought I could do something similar.

I used small and colorful sheets of paper and wrote a letter on one.  Then I taped them all over the floor, chairs, bench, and table.  Then I had the kids jump to each letter.

For Brayden (3), we started with saying what each letter was.  For Ella (7), I had her tell me a word that started with the letter.  For Maddi (9), I had her tell me a word and spell the word for each letter.

The next time through, I had Brayden count the letters, Ella made up an addition problem with each number, and Maddi made up multiplication problems with each number.  Ella did lots of +1's and +0's, and I am ok with that.  Maddi did some x1's and x0's, but for the 20's, she tried to figure out what two numbers multiplied together would make that number (ex:4x5=20).

The kids loved getting to climb on the table since it is something that is normally not allowed.  We also changed it up and did different exercises over the letters.  They did jumping jacks, high knees, bear crawl, crab walk, going backwards, and so on. 

They laughed, worked their brains, and their bodies.  I would say it was a successful indoor activity!!

 

Friday, February 7, 2014

I love you because...(Simple Valentines Craft for you Children)

I wanted to let my kids know how much they mean to me since we have had some rough couple of months here and there.  I thought I could make them something for each of the kids that would be tailored just to them.  I came up with this simple craft because of all the Valentine décor floating around pinterest right now.

I took some construction paper and cut out a bunch of little hearts.  Then I cut out 3 big hearts, one for each of my bigger children.  On the big hearts I wrote their names, then wrote I love you because.

I hung each of them on their doors on a ribbon, and wrote on the little hearts things I loved about them.  For example, on some of Brayden's I wrote that he loves to cuddle, he loves monster trucks, and he is a great big brother.  I plan on adding one everyday till Valentine's day (and hopefully for a long time after).  So far I have added 4 hearts. 
 
The kids love seeing what new heart I add to their ribbon every day.  For me it is a great reminder that my kids are very special in their own way.  This is an easy thing to do for your kids to let them know how much you love them. 
 
*I didn't do one for Paisley for obvious reasons (she is 4 months old and would not understand (I will include her in the future though)).

Sunday, February 2, 2014

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Our Christmas 2013 Part 3

Catch up on Part 1 HERE
Part 2 HERE

Christmas morning was great!  I love seeing the kids dig into their stockings.  I had some bigger plans for the kids' stockings, but those were ruined by two girls peeking in my closet.  Oh well, they loved everything in their stockings and it all worked out.  Ella's big Santa present was a bow and arrow, Maddi's was a scooter for her American Girl, Brayden's was a Superman and football, and Paisley's was a giggly pig.

My dad and step mom headed for Christmas with her family, and we headed to my mom's house for Christmas with the McGregor side of the family.  It was small, but very nice to catch up with my uncles, an Aunt, and a cousin and her little girl.  We opened presents and had dinner there.  My mom made all the kids pjs and Brayden put his on immediately.  She also got each of them a game and we had fun trying them out.  The night went too fast, and of course there wasn't enough time spent over there.

Thursday morning was spent watching the kids play football in dad's backyard.  Paisley napped in my arms, as Brayden, Ella, and Maddi tried to figure out how to catch, throw, kick, and tackle.  Then came the task of packing up everything, getting some snacks together, and figuring out how to fit everything in the car.

It took forever to pack up and make sure we had everything we needed to bring home.  Marco packed up the car (then I repacked it so everything would fit better).  The car was packed full, and I don't think we could have fit anything else. 

We headed to get the dogs and start our long drive home.  Paisley did good on the first leg of the drive home, but not so much after we stopped for dinner.  She threw a huge fit, so we ended up pulling over so I could feed her again in the car.  It worked out though, because Brayden needed to go potty while we were stopped.  Once I thought I had her calmed down, we started back on the road and she started throwing a mega fit.  So much so, that I had to switch spots with Ella while we were driving.  There was no where to pull over, and I wasn't about to have Marco pull off to the side to possibly be hit by a semi.  So Ella and I switched spots.  She loved sitting in the front for the few minutes it took me to get Paisley calmed down and asleep.  Then, we switched back.  It was an exciting drive home, needless to say.

Unpacking the car when we got home was no fun, but we managed to get everything in the house.  Then we opened up our gifts to each other.  The kids did an amazing job of picking out gifts for each other.  This year instead of dollar store gifts, Marco took them to use $5 for one thoughtful gift.  Brayden got each of the girls a Ty animal from Cracker Barrel.  Both Ella and Maddi found great gifts but they were over their $5 spending limit.  Both girls said they would give their own money from their piggy banks to make up the difference.  What amazing girls!  Maddi got Brayden a superman shirt with a cape, Ella Hello Kitty slippers, and Paisley a little piano toy.  Ella got Paisley a ball toy, Brayden a superman cape, and Maddi some silly stompers slippers.  I really love that they enjoy buying and giving to each other.

We had an amazing Christmas and the only thing that would have made it better would have been getting more time with everyone.  I am glad that the kids and I went in early with out Marco, it meant I was able to spend time with my two best friends.  Even with all the stress, I am very happy we made the decision to go leave the house for Christmas.  The kids had a blast, and it was more than worth it!!

Thank you if you read it all :)  I didn't realize when I started writing about our Christmas that it would end up so long!
 

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Our Christmas 2013 Part 2

Catch up on Part 1 HERE

When we left my brother's house Saturday night, we drove to my best friend, Roxy's house.  She had no clue we were in town, and I couldn't wait to surprise her.  I was talking to her earlier that day, and I almost gave myself away, but I had to make sure she would be home when I was going to head to her house.  I tried to record her reaction on my phone but some how stopped the video instead of recording, but it was priceless!!  I enjoyed an amazing night of catching up and only wish there had been more hours that night for us.  The kids and I spent the night, and Roxy and I stayed up way too late chatting and listening to our kids' laughter.
 
Sunday was her annual cookie party (a tradition we missed last year), and I was so excited to have made it this year.  The kids love rolling out their own cookies, making messes with flour and dough, and then decorating the cookies how ever they want.  These cookies are always used for Santa cookies, since they are overly sprinkled and frosted.
 
After the cookie party, the kids and I headed to my mom's for a big kid sleepover with Grani.  The big girls love spending the night with my mom and Brayden was going to try it out for the first time.  They had a blast!  Pepe, our elf, made an appearance, they made chocolate mice and cupcakes, and just overall enjoyed some Grani time.  Brayden did great staying with her, and I got a semi-kid free night.  Paisley and I went back to my dad's Sunday night.

Monday afternoon, Paisley and I headed to my mom's house.  I heard how Grani almost made Pepe lose his magic by accidently knocking him over.  Maddi and Ella freaked out for a few minutes, but Pepe let my mom know (when she was by herself of course), that he was ok because grandparents can touch the elves.  That was a close call though.


After the elf fiasco, mom and I loaded up the kids and went to see my grandpa.  It is a long story, but after a fall he had, he has been placed in a home where he is getting 24 hour nursing care.  But he seems to be slowly declining.  We took a few pictures and tried to talk to him, but he had no idea who we were.  The whole situation is very sad, and I don't like talking about it.

To end Monday on a happier note, the kids and I went to see my other best friend Marsha.  Her hubby, Cliff and I went to high school together, so I have known them forever.  Marsha has an older son, Blake, that Brayden just absolutely adores, and a daughter that is 1 month younger than Ella.  Cliff went to pick up Marco from the airport, which was perfect for me to get in some Marsha time.  I just love her!  Marco and I hung out way too late after he got there.  We let the girls spend the night with Persy, and the rest of us headed back to my dad's.
 
Christmas Eve we headed back to pick up the girls and do some final Christmas shopping.  Maddi started feeling bad, and ended up running fever all night.  She was puny most of the day, but had nothing more than fever.
 
We were getting together for Christmas at my dad's Tuesday, so both of my brother's came there.  The guys played pool, the kids ran around like crazy, Pepe left the kids some green milk (with magic dust to help them sleep), we ate, we opened presents, and we watched movies.  To end the night, my dad drove us around his neighborhood to look at Christmas lights.  When we got back, the kids put out their reindeer food and Santa cookies, and it was off to bed.

 
Part 3 Coming Tomorrow

Total Pageviews

LinkWithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...
HOME     ABOUT ME     CONTACT     PR WELCOME     30 before 30