FAMILY PHOTOS | 2015

Our amazing photographer friend has done it again! It's the first time we've had family pictures taken since Gavin was a newborn (what a slacker I've become!), so I was definitely nervous as to how to boys would cooperate. Gavin got a little fussy towards the end, but we somehow still managed to capture some smiles out of him. Of course it was humid and windy, so my hair lasted 2.5 seconds (can you say first world girl problems?), but how adorable are my guys?!

Thank you again Bill! If you'd like to check out his website, here is the link, and of course he also has a Facebook page.

Please don't copy or use these photos as your own, that wouldn't be very nice. ;)

BIRTHDAYS & FIELD TRIPS

Happy almost Memorial Day Weekend, everyone! I'm not exactly sure what our weekend has in store for us...we're throwing around a lot of ideas...boating, staining the deck, cleaning the garages, working on Dustin's new office....all I do know is that we have a baby doc appointment tomorrow & then a babysitter TWO NIGHTS IN A ROW. Sorry if it seemed like a was shouting...but it's because I was. ;) 

But anywho, I wanted to catch everyone up on our past week. I turned the big 2-8. I'm content with this age, I'd like to stay here, please. ;) 

Gavin was the cutest napper ever. Why are the always so much sweeter when sleeping?! Oh yeah, it's because they aren't throwing themselves backwards onto the floor because you told them they can't throw their paci into the toilet. 

Despite the craziness that has been my world lately, there are the sweetest moments when they are both calm & snuggly. And those moments must be captured because they are rare.

The rest of our days are similar to this. Wild. Laughter. Yelling. Tears. Pushing. Pulling. Hugging. Life with boys.

Last Thursday was Christian's 2nd to last day of preschool & they had an ice cream outing. I don't know about you, but the face looks much sweeter than the actual vanilla cup with sprinkles.

And then Friday was his official last day. We took a field trip to Huber's Orchard & Winery with all of the other students at his school. He had a blast...as did his brother. Of course, the second his little girl friend showed up, they were inseparable. 

We were absolutely exhausted after a few hours of chasing these two around. And to think we're adding another into the mix...

Saturday was my birthday. It was very low-key...we visited Dustin's grand opening at the new store, did a little all-by-myself shopping & then dinner with a few friends.

It was also filled with two of my favorite things...fresh peonies from my momma's garden & FGT's. 

And folks, I make some darn good fried green tomatoes.

Ever since Christian was little, Dustin would empty his pockets of change and give it to him for his piggy bank. Now we're teaching Christian to split that money in half and let Gavin put some in his bank. They were both really excited about it & one may have thrown a fit when the money was gone...I'll give you one guess as to who that was.

On Sunday we had family pictures taken by one of our closest friends, who also happens to be an amazing photographer. I was totally prepared for baby bump Finn to be the only cooperating boy, but they all surprised me and made it an almost stress-free experience! 

This week I decided to try cutting out the AM nap, as this is normally his longest nap and then he either refuses to take an afternoon nap or it lasts mayyyyyybe an hour, if I'm lucky. Since I am an introverted person, and require quiet time to myself at some point during the day in order to survive, this was just not working for me.

Gavin did great until noon, when he started to get pretty fussy. I decided to do lunch a little earlier and this is what happened. Two grapes later and he was asleep. He stayed asleep for the transfer & the diaper change. And then slept for 4 hours. I definitely got the quiet time I needed! However, I hate that he was that exhausted, so I'm going to try giving him just a 30 minute morning nap and see how that goes. It's all trial & error, this parenting thing!

And yesterday was my dad's birthday, so we joined him and the family for dinner at Big Four Burgers in New Albany. Dustin was a little overwhelmed with the size of his burger. ;)

And that's it! It's been a week full of ups and downs, visits to the chiropractor for my lower back pain (ahh, relief), cleaning up the outside of our house, planting trees and tomatoes (GROW, BABIES, GROW!), looking forward to some kid-free time and checking in on little Finnick. 

I hope everyone enjoys their holiday weekend, stays safe and remembers what Memorial Day is about...God Bless the men & women who paid the ultimate sacrifice for this beautiful country.

Thanks for reading!

GOOD-BYE NURSERY, HELLO BOYS' ROOM

We finally finished making over the nursery into a shared room for Christian & Gavin! It took about 2 weeks, but I'm so happy with the results! Since Gavin isn't quite ready to transition to a big boy bed, he is still sleeping in the crib in what will be little Finnick's nursery. Christian is beyond excited about his new bunk bed, and keeps asking when Gavin can sleep in there, too. Finn will be sleeping in our bedroom until at least 4 months old, so we have a little while before we have to transition Gavin...which is good, because I'm SO not ready for that yet! I'm not sure when we'll start on the nursery, because I'm "nested out" for now! 

The boys' room was a lot of work...more than I had originally anticipated. I decided I wanted to do a board & batton look in the room, which meant putting up a chair rail, vertical trim & painting the lower half of the wall. The whole idea behind this is that the higher gloss paint on the bottom half will be much easier to clean up with dirty, grimy boy hands living in there. 

Dustin hung the chair rail & trim and I caulked & painted...teamwork at it's best! This actually would have been a super easy project, except that we ran into a paint color problem. The trim in the entire house is antique white, which I've never been completely in love with. So I just assumed that I could paint that antique white on the bottom of the chair rail and all would look fine. Unfortunately, I started painting, stepped back, and realized it looked awful. All of the furniture is bright white. The blinds are bright white. The antique white looked horrible. So we had two choices...tear down the chair rail and trim & leave the walls plain, or repaint all of the trim, doors & baseboards in the bedroom a bright white. 

Well as you can imagine, once I get my mind set on something, I do NOT want to go back...so off to Home Depot I went to purchase a bright white paint. Painting baseboards and doors is NOT fun. I was pretty much cussing and grumbling the entire time. However, I am so pleased with the results and very happy we decided to go that route. Of course, now I want all the rest of the trim in the house bright white, but that's a HUGE project that we will never, ever do. So I can just enjoy the one room of pretty white trim. 

So enough chit-chat...onto the photos!

Here is a before...

Gavin was quite the helper. ;)

Hanging chair rail & vertical trim.

 We got the bunk bed put together just in time for Christian's birthday. We don't have a second mattress yet for Gavin, and we're really in no hurry either!

And the finished product!

Here is a complete before & after...Gavin's nursery & now a shared boy's room.

I love these leaning shelf towers! I got them on sale at Target and I think they're perfect storage. Plus I put them together all by myself. ;)

Another before & after.

This table we got from IKEA and I just put a coat of stain on it.

And last but not least, the closet! Having 2 boys move into 1 room means I need a lot of storage, so we got this awesome shelving unit from IKEA and attached clothing rods to it...lots of storage & looks good, too!

Funny little story though, Dustin installed the shelf in the middle of the closet while the laundry basket was still in the closet. And the first day I went to do laundry...well, the basket is now a permanent fixture in the closet, because it doesn't fit in between the shelf and the closet door! And it's a metal basket, so it won't bend. We cracked up laughing when we realized what he did. 

But that's it! The boy's are loving the new room and so far, no accidents from bunk bed. Knock on wood. Now that I say that, Christian is sure to fall out tonight. :)

Thanks for reading!

MOTHER'S DAY WEEKEND

Happy Tuesday friends! 

I hope everyone had a great Mother's Day weekend...we definitely did! We started out with some flowers for Christian's preschool teacher's for Teacher Appreciation week. He can finally write his name on his own and I'm a pretty proud mama!

After preschool, it was so warm outside we decided to break out the water table. Needless to say, the boys loved it.

After naps, I always get some serious snuggle time...well, at least until the snacks run out. ;) 

And this "mean face" is kind of my favorite thing ever.

Mother's Day morning we planned an early breakfast with both of our mom's & crew. Before breakfast, the boys brought me my cards and presents. Dustin got me two new adorable beads for my bracelet & Christian made me goodies at school.

Dustin's mom, step-dad & family...

And my mom, step-dad & family. We had a super yummy breakfast and I stuffed my belly full of pancakes & bacon...I'd say that's an excellent start to my day!

BTW, one of these days maybe we'll give my mom a grand-daughter. We're starting to get a little outnumbered!

I snapped a quick picture of the photo boxes I put together for our mom's. 

A little Mimi love from her favorite little red-head.

After breakfast, Dustin asked me what I wanted to do, and my response was a very quick, "go home & nap, please." So he took care of the boys while I got a very nice, uninterrupted nap...followed by more baby snuggles.

After naps, we headed to my grandma's house for dinner. Gavin had a blast rockin' out on the piano.

The bump turned 23 weeks & my boys were looking cute as ever. ;)

After my grandma's, we got some ice-cream at the local Comfy Cow & then back home to crash!

Monday was a little rough for everyone, but today we have been busy little bees playing weekend catch-up. This morning, the husband had his ribbon cutting ceremony for the new store he has been working on so diligently. We visited him there, ate some cake, went to the grocery, have done 6 loads of laundry & are attempting to stay busy while daddy is at work all day long. This is going to be a super busy week for him, so I've got my work cut out for me, too! Thankfully, my birthday is this weekend, and I'll hopefully get a much needed movie night out!

If you're in the southern Indiana area, check out the new Charlie Wilson Appliance store in Clarksville...you won't be disappointed, and I promise you'll get the best deal around! Plus I hear the manager isn't bad to look at either! ;)

Hope everyone has a great week & thanks for reading!

HELLO, MAY!

Let me just start with...YAYYY! May is by far my favorite month! It's mine and Christian's (along with 527 other people I know) birthday month, and I've always been a lover of birthdays! Plus, the flowers bloom, the weather gets warmer and I get to plant tomatoes and patiently wait for tomato season to start. However, we are only a week in and I can already tell this month is going to fly by. Dustin is opening a new store that he has been working so hard on, so between his work schedule, family photos, school stuff for Christian & birthdays, we literally have something planned almost every single day this month. I think I counted 5 free days with nothing going on. That's insane. I can't imagine what life will be like when the boys get older and start doing outside school activities. 

Our first week has already been crazy busy, because I got the bright idea to start on the boys' shared room. I'll post a blog all about that as soon as it's finished...which all I'm waiting on now is for a spare hour to finish putting together the closet. Then that room will be complete and I can start thinking about the nursery...my husband just loves pregnant, nesting Bessie. ;)

May started out with the oldest's 4th birthday. He was born May 1st, 2011 at 1:55 in the afternoon by emergency c-section (that was fun....). He shares his birthday with the same day the Navy Seal team found and killed Osama Bin Laden, so guess what we watched on the news the entire hospital stay?? I thought about sharing his birth story (and I might one of these days) but to be honest, I don't remember a lot of the details, so I feel like a lot of it would be guessing & going off what Dustin has told me happened. Regardless of how he entered the world, he was a healthy 8lbs, 5oz and 22inches...at 2 weeks early! Thank goodness he decided to come early, that would have been a LARGE baby!

He is my sweet, sensitive, dramatic & super hyper little man. He is so independent and thinks he can do everything all by himself. We butt heads a lot because I am a control freak, and giving him control to do stuff literally makes me crazy. BUT, we are learning about this whole parenting thing together & I think we're doing pretty good so far. At 4 years old, he is 42 inches tall (89th %ile) and weighs 33.6 pounds (26th %ile). He is in his first year of preschool, and is obsessed. He counts down the days until he gets to see his friends, learn a new letter & sit by his best friend Addalyn. 

For his birthday this year, we took donuts to his classroom & his teacher told me they sang happy birthday to him. Then when daddy got home from work, we took just him to dinner and to pick out a new toy. It was a very laid back birthday, but he loved it and that's all that matters!

The entire way home from preschool, he kept telling me, "Mom, I just love Gavin. He's my favorite brother." Then I looked in the mirror and saw this. 

My heart is still in a puddle on the side of the road.

And to end the day, he got to sleep in his new bunk bed. Obsessed. 

On Saturday, we spent the entire day working on the room, took a break to let the boys play outside & then called it a night.

On Sunday, we took an early birthday trip for me up to IKEA. We spent the whole day together without kids, and it's just what we needed! 

This week, we've been putting together all of our IKEA goodies, and I'm in love with how this table turned out! I got the idea to stain it from another blogger & now I want to stain everything else in the house this color.

I'd say Gavin approves, too. 

At Christian's 4-year check-up...all was great until they poked his finger. Like I said, he's a little on the dramatic side. ;)

And we celebrated Cinco-de-Mayo with a ladies trip to a Tapas restaurant, followed by ice cream. It was really a send off for our bestie, Kayla, who is off to Texas for her husband's next duty station. Gosh, I'm going to miss her!

I hit my 5 month preggo mark this week. I've gained about 8 pounds and I'm currently having horrible cramping. I'm assuming they are ligament pains, but it's insane to me how every pregnancy is much more intense than the previous. I feel like my ligaments should be plenty stretched already, so give it a rest please! But that's what I've been trying to do the past couple days...rest, water & a heating pad. Other than the cramps, I'm doing great. Sleeping well, still have lots of energy & starting to get endlessly hungry. Did someone say pizza, french fries, mozzarella sticks & an ice cold coke?! Because that's all I've been wanting lately. Good thing I throw in a healthy smoothie and salad in between all of these cravings!

Belly bump from every angle...including the dreaded front view. I've said before in past blogs that my "lovehandles" seem to be taking the brunt of my weight gain. Excuse me, but there is no baby in there, so that can stop now. ;)

Since I'm trying to get lots of rest, yesterday was a snacks on the couch and endless amounts of Bubble Guppies day. Luckily the boys obliged pretty well and we're insanely adorable.

And when Dustin told Christian to go pick out a book & crawl in bed...this is what he came into 5 minutes later...Buzz Lightyear ears, toothpaste crusted face & passed OUT. We cracked up over this for a good 30 minutes. Considering he normally needs 2 books, 2 songs, a drink of water, to pee just one more time and then to come out 3 more times to ask if 1) he has school in the morning and 2) if daddy has to work, we couldn't believe this sight. It made for an easy bedtime routine & Dustin and I actually got to watch American Idol in real time on the couch (GO CLARK BECKHAM!).

I'm hoping to get the boys' closet finished later today and then be able to finally share the room with everyone tomorrow. Wishful thinking, probably! 

Hope everyone is enjoying May as much as we are...thanks for reading!