It's hot. It's really, really hot. And other observational gems.

Heat makes me cranky. 

So do two-year-olds.

I have both. so obviously we're having a swell time.

 

 We're all trying to wear as little as possible. That helps with the heat.

I got to go to the pool. Alone. That helps with the two-year-old. The lack-of.

I even took a picture in the pool bathroom. Alone. Rare.

I've brought a little more summer to the house...a new reading nook in the kitchen, some happy flowers from trader joes, an organized coffee station, and a cleaned-out kid's drawer. 

 

And just so I don't start feeling too good about my cleaning skills, the girls help bring me back down.

What every table top ends up looking like:

What my bag ends up looking like:

How's your summer going? Hot? Filled with small children? Or crackers?

A week in pictures

                                                                           

*The new Hello Kitty store at the mall. She was in heaven.

broke my 2-day-old, no-eating-in-the-car rule. 

regretted it.

fire station birthday

 

 

 did crafty things

put my shoes on to go running...

but only completed the first part ;)

Enjoy the day!

Happenings

caught someone playing during nap time

at least someone thinks I'm funny

a little "me" time at barnes & noble

picking out counters with a design client

my favorite yardsale find...hello, little brass whale. hello, small armadillo

30 day Mom's To-Do List... be a better mom in a month

Just one, simple, encouraging thing every day for a month...

Source: imom.com via iMOM on Pinterest

things of no importance

Tip Top of the Mornin' to you

Blogger is being a total hussy today and keeps deleting everything. I've written this 3 times and now I'm over it. So In no semblance of order or meaning, and with zero editing...some tidbits floating through this mind.

-I've tried color blocking. I've really tried. I still feel like a 3 year old who dressed herself.

-my 3 year old who does indeed dress herself is going to be the end of me. and the beginning of gray hair.
she changes clothes 17 times a day.  completely new ensembles from head to toe, headband to socks. and the most desperately-needed-must-happen-right-this-second outfit changes always happen 3 seconds before I have to walk out the door somewhere. I hope you are a wealthy man, Charlotte's future husband, and can keep her closet filled to the brim. Wealthy and patient.

-I'm a total hypochondriac. 5 minutes watching Dr. Oz and I can feel myself wasting away from any number of terrible illnesses. {"why yes, Dr. O, I do have all 3 warning signs!!"}But in my defense, I've had some really random health issues that are pretty serious mixed in with lots of It's-absolutely-nothing-here's-your-$200-bill-thanks-for-coming. If I win the lottery tomorrow and didn't have to worry about medical expenses from my crummy insurance, the first thing I would do is line up a slew of appointments and blood-workings and smears and scans and have every inch of me checked out. It would be more exciting than planning a trip to belize.  But I did just win the lottery so obviously i would then actually go to belize. {"is there a higher sun index there?? is spf 120 good enough?? did i remember to get that mole checked out!?!"}

-I have lots of friends who home-school their kids. I'm both proud of their commitment and dedication and also deeply mystified by their desire to be with their children every. second. of. the. day.
yes, I will shed some tears when Charlotte trots off to kindergarten. but then I will send up deep prayers of thanks to God that I made it through 5 years of her life with both of us alive,  and {mostly} unmedicated, and breathe a huge sigh of relief. and go back inside to be with Juliette who would then be the same insanely, mind numbingly difficult age that Charlotte is right now. {do my glands look swollen??}

-my husband is wonderful. so patient. good lord, the man is patient. i don't think i've ever sung his praises here and it is about time i did. he's my tall glass of diet coke on a hot summer day and i'm thankful he picked me.

Time Out with Charlotte {this is bound to be a repeating series}

Time Out #234

Me: Charlotte, we do not hit our sister with toys.
2 minutes later....
Me again: Charlotte, we also do not hurt other people with our hands.
2 minutes later...
Still me: Charlotte Jane, if you touch your sister one more time you are going to time out!
30 seconds later...
Me: That is it! Time out! We do not hurt others with our feet, hands, or objects, do you understand those rules?

Charlotte:  FINE! THEN I WILL HURT.  YOUR.  FEELINGS!!!

Glad Tidings

In three days at this exact time we'll be getting off a plane and being swooped up by family from the north.
It's my husband's first flight with both girls. I had the pleasure of flying with both of them cross country this past summer. Don't expect to make friends, I say as I prepare him. Just be as quiet as possible, and keep shooting silent, pained looks to those around you and try to make your eyeballs convey a sense of both deep apology and Christmas spirit.

I'm excited about visiting family, and taking advantage of free babysitting(!) so Wes and I can take a few quiet moments to drive around our old stomping ground...the place where we spent our first years as a married couple...to try and remember what exactly we did with all our free time before we had the girls???

I always think it's funny when people without kids bemoan their lack of "free time". If you have no children, all your time is free time. I don't care if you work 80 hours a week and haven't been on vacation since 1987. If
 you're able to go to the bathroom alone, sleep through the night in a bed without goldfish crumbs, drive in your car with whatever music you feel like having on {or better yet..none!},  then you are free baby, free as a bird! If you don't believe me, {or *worse*, tell me that you have pets so it's really like the same as having kids}, your time will come. And if you don't plan on having kids, you may come borrow mine so I can take a nap. Afterwards, you will drive away wallowing, simply wallowing I tell you, in all of your glorious free time.

Well that was a sidetrack-ish sort of tangent possibly spurned from sending someone to timeout 7 times today already. Anyway.

What I'm trying to get at is that while I am super excited to celebrate Christmas, to be with family, to make memories...I'm really looking forward to a new year.

A fresh start. A new beginning. A new calendar filled with tiny boxes waiting to be filled. Changes can be made anytime you get your backside out of the chair and just do it, but somehow a new year just gives me that extra push.

I want to be more intentional. With my time, with my words, with my actions...I want to spend more time playing with my kids, not just watching them play. I want to write letters to people. Real letters. With ink and stamps. I have a big design project starting the construction phase in January and I hope it's a push to even bigger things.

And I want to change this little piece of blogland too. I started it wanting to write about "lovely things, wife-ish things, and raising girls." Or at least that's what my header says. But I got really sucked down the rabbit hole of all the down right amazing blogs written by such talented women and moms, and I doubted my voice and stopped writing anything really worth reading. Just posting pretty pictures that you could go search out from somewhere else if you wanted to. So I'm going to change that. I know I don't have the time or skill to craft the words or take the beautiful photographs that some of my favorite blogs do.

But I am the only one who can take the pictures of my girls, and write the words of their story, of our days.

And that's what I want to go back and see that I've done in a year from now. That I've written things that matter to me and want to remember. Anything else is a waste of time. And time is a-flying people!

So Merry, Merriest of Christmases! And I'll see you in the 'twenty-twelve', friends :)

(borrowed) Thoughts on Thursday

"Through a course of events, we came to believe that this is the truest truth:

"If you cling to your life, you will lose it; but if you give up your life for me, you will find it."
Matthew 10-:39

I mean, I thought my life was pretty fantastic already, and come to find out I hadn't even found it.  

It made me want to track it down"

-from a post by Shannan. 

if you want to be encouraged and challenged, visit her. 

 her words are a gift to me every time I go. 
and her kids are edible muffins.

I don't know much, But...

I do know this:

1. My daily outfit choice has less to do with what the weather or occasion is and more to do with the last time I shaved.     And how close I will need to get to people that day.      And how good their vision is.

2. Feta cheese makes everything taste better.

3. I'm really thankful for my weekly mom's group meet-up. If you're a new mom, or an expectant mom, or an old-pro mom, or an in the middle-ish mom, you need to make time to be with other ones. You do.

4. Home Owner's Association meetings. You learn a lot about people. That's all I'll say about that. I'd like to say more but I fear some of them might read my blog. And then report me to the new anonymous tip line (true story) for heinous neighborhood crimes like leaving my stroller on the front porch ;)

5. Going from a working every day and lots of weekends mom, to a working a few days a week mom, to doing my own freelance design almost entirely while being a stay-at-home mom has been....better and worse and easier and harder and more fun and less fun all at the same time.      But I know it's worth it.

via

The circle

Life is.... _________

That's how I started this post 3 days ago, thinking the right words would come to me.
But 3 days later and I still don't really know what to put.



Last week, the life of a mother was brutally taken from her children, at the hands of her husband. They went to our church. Their kids played with mine.

A few days later a son was taken from his mother in a quick and terrible act of nature's fury; lost in a flash flood. Though I've never seen her in person, I've followed along with her blog for years and felt her loss as though she were a dear friend.

My heart just hurts. I have yet to deal with the passing of a close loved one. I've been able to keep loss at a far distance...locked out of my house, pushed from the corners of my mind. I've only felt it's chill from a distance.

And suddenly everything just feels...
fragile.
crystalline.
paper-thin. 

Even with the priceless knowledge that the end is not really the end, and that more, and better, and bigger than we could ever image waits for us and those we love. Even knowing that not even a single, small bird can fall on this earth without the eyes of my Savior upon it, and His loving hands cradling it.

Even then.

Life is.... hard. painful. unfair. short

...................................................................

Last week I got to meet two beautiful new additions to our neighborhood.
Sweet baby girls born a few weeks apart...to two new moms on my street.

One of my best friends, and also a neighbor, is pregnant with yet another precious baby girl...due this winter.

And my own 2nd born will turn One next week. And you better believe I'm going to squeeze her and kiss her and breathe her in every second of that day that I can, before she wriggles away to chase after her older sister on wobbly, unsure legs.

Life is....precious. beautiful. breathtaking. stunning. impossible to plan. short

So I'm telling this to me, to you...Go live. 

Live Huge! Live Big or Go Home, damn it! Take too many pictures of your family. Hang them in too many frames. Hug the bejeezes out of people even if they don't like hugs! Find a new baby and just stare at the miracle of hands and feet that could be that small. Sing along with that c.d. in your car of 1001 annoying children's songs so loudly that other drivers think you're INSANE and your kids think your AMAZING. But live bigger than just you. Spill and splash your life onto other people or else none of it really matters. Give things. Share things. Say things that need to be said.

Put your sunnies on, baby.  There are always bright days ahead.

Still here

...Well I am, at least. You may not be. It's been so long since I've written, you all may have given up on this little overgrown, neglected, weed-ridden patch of the interwebs.

School has started, which doesn't really mean much to me since my littles don't go yet.
But it does mean that the museum, the aquarium, and the Chick-fil-a playground are abandoned since all of your wild and unruly offspring are locked away getting educated. It's fabulous.

Sometimes I feel guilty about this next statement but I'm going to say it anyway.
I'm looking forward to the girl's being in school. It goes without saying how fiercely I love them both, but I'm not the world's best stay-at-home mom. I'm just not. Kid's shows bore me. Arts and Crafts give me hives...glitter everywhere...paint spilling...glue (shudder). I count the hours until nap time everyday. I could never home-school. I have several friends who are planning on doing it because the public school system here is the pits, and that is definitely not in the cards for me. We're going with the fail proof option of winning the lottery and sending them to an elite private school instead.

I think this long, brutally hot summer and being cooped up inside has just worn away at my last nerves. I know I'm actually going to bawl my eyeballs right out the first time I put a lunchbox in Charlotte's hand and walk her through the doors of kindergarten. But still... I'm just really looking forward to the first time we can all go out somewhere with no strollers, no diaper bag, and no crouching on the floor of a gas station women's room for 30 minutes waiting for Charlotte to get over her horrific disgust of public bathrooms and poop in the damn potty already. (If we go to your house and your toilet is not up to her lofty sanitation standards, she will tell you. And I'm sorry.)

But at any rate, I hope this transition into fall is going well for you...whatever stage of life you're in.

Leaving on a Jet Plane

 

Well, I'm headed out West friends. I know you're crying in your cornflakes because it means I won't be posting very much. Wait...that's no different than normal. 

I keep meaning to come here and talk to you but the living of life has just gotten in the way of writing about life.

The dessert table I was putting together and decorating for a wedding...done.

A really large presentation for a design client...done. And maybe when I get back I'll have word that they're ready to get started!

So where am I off to?

 

The smalls and I are flying out to california to celebrate my grandparent's 30th wedding anniversary.

Wes has to stay behind and work, so it's going to be a 'girl's only' trip...with my mom joining us from virginia. I am beyond excited to go back to where a large piece of my heart lives.

I'll get to see aunts and uncles, cousins, cousin's kids to play with my girls, and of course my grandparents...who don't know even know we're coming! 

And even if I didn't know a soul in SoCal, I would get on the plane to go there just because the weather is going to be THIS:

75°F

76°

77°

79°

81°

79°

77°

78°

77°

77°

See you later gators!					xoxox