Waiting for the New Year

It's one of those moments where you pause, realize that tomorrow is a new day, new month, new year and you have the momentary panic attack because you're suddenly being pounded by a million thoughts of "What on EARTH did I DO with a WHOLE YEAR?!?"  Then you laugh and comfort yourself with "Oh, it's not THAT bad, I MUST have done SOMETHING constructive this year, right?  Anyone?  Someone going to agree with me?!?"

But seriously...

What DID I do with this last year?

Madison started Primary.  Finalized Maelee's adoption.  Had her sealed to our family for eternity!  Maelee learned to crawl, walk, run, climb, jump and drive us crazy.  I turned 25.  Madison turned 4.  Madison took swimming lessons.  Maelee turned 1.  We finally got a nice TV.  Clint had a few kayaking adventures.  Madison started pre-school.  Clint turned 29.  We discovered Maelee is double-jointed in both thumbs {and it's truly a freakish thing to behold!}.  Madison split her head open and needed 2 staples.  We played in the snow.

That about sums up 2010 as far as milestones, but what else happened?  Did I lose 10 pounds?  Nope.  Totally fell short of that goal... again.  *sigh*  Did I simplify my life?  I'm not exactly sure.  I think I may have just trained myself to not stress out as easily instead... hmmm.  Maybe I need to think about that one a little more!  Did I achieve any great accomplishment?  Yeah, I think I did.

My kids still love me.  My husband still thinks I'm great.  Our home is pretty clean and comfortable.  I haven't totally scarred my children or husband with any of my crazy ideas or lack thereof.  I feel like we're living a semi-charmed, happy life and that, to me, is quite an achievement.

Do I have any regrets for 2010?  Maybe.  Probably.  Yeah, ok.  Yes.  I wish I had exercised more self-control at times.  I wish I had let more little things slide.  I wish I had been more laid-back when it mattered and more stubborn when it was needed of me.  I wish I had been more committed to doing the little things, and making them count. 

Are we ready for 2011?  You betcha!  I'm SUPER excited for the new year.  I'm excited to recommit myself to my goals and to try a little harder.  I'm excited to watch my girls learn and grow.  Excited for all the projects I have written in my little notebook.  I'm excited to watch my photog business grow.  And I'm really excited to spend another year with Clint.  He's such a kid at heart and I love living our life together. 

But right now?  Right this second I'm excited to chill on the couch and watch Incredibles with my girls until Clint gets home.  What a great way to wait for the new year, eh?

Snow, wonderful snow!!!

I love snow!  I say that if you're going to have the cold, you may as well have the snow to play in! 

Clint says that shows that I've never lived in Chicago {where he served a 2-year mission for our Church}!!  LOL

Granted, it's not snowing enough to really stick and make blankets of fluffy, white stuff - but I'm excited anyway.  We're planning on going up to the mountain tomorrow to play in it and freeze!  Woohoo!  The girls are super stoked to go, and I'm sure will be super stoke to come right back home!  Haha, love it!

Christmas Eve lasts FOREVER!

Why is it that the weeks leading up to Christmas speed by, and then Christmas Eve gets here and draaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaags on? 

And on?

And on?

And on?

It's only 3 and already I've slept in {thank you girls!}, eaten too much, taken a nap, played lots of games, watched a few movies... And I know that tomorrow will zip by and be over before I know it!  *Sigh*  I don't want the season to end but this day is ridiculously long!  :O)

Merry Christmas everyone!

I agree with the Grinch

It's true.  I honestly do!!  There is one line from that story that keeps running through my mind...

"I MUST stop this Christmas from Coming!  ...But how?"

Christmas is only 4 days away!  I'm SO {get this!} bummed!!!  Most of the magic of Christmas is the anticipation of it.  Next week we'll be surrounded by fun new things, and my girls will be entertained with all their fun gadgets and gizmos... and I'm the goober who doesn't want it to be here yet.  I want to prolong the season.  Once it's over, life goes back to normal.  We find a home for everything, put all the decorations away until next year, throw the tree out on the burn pile, and then it's just cold without anything special to look forward to.  *Sigh*  Maybe the Grinch and I will go on strike!  Ha ha.

We've had a nice December so far.  I've tried really hard to not get stressed out and to not over-do it.  {Thus, I am still undecided as to whether or not I will send out Christmas cards... they would really be more like New Year's cards at this point... LOL}

Madi and I did a fun project a few weeks back, I taught her how to make paper snowflakes. 

It was hard for her little hands to cut through so much paper, but she did a great job

and we made quiiiiiite a mess!

It took about a week to finish up, not because it was hard or anything, but more because it just took me that long to get my iron out! We ironed them so they would be nice and flat,

then we sprayed them with glitter spray and hung them over our bay window in the dining nook. So fun!!

Next came our ward party. It was CRAZY!! There were so many people that we ran out of tables and chairs! They had to pull some out of the classrooms and seat people out in the foyer. The Primary did the Nativity, and as you can see, Madi was VERY interested...

LOL She actually really DID get into it, and was basically sitting backwards in her chair the whole time. It just got a little long for her... Ha ha Evidently it did for Maelee too cuz this is how she watched the performance

Clint is SUCH a trooper! He gets the Super-Dad award! Then the girls saw Santa, and I'm so annoyed at my camera and flash that THIS was the best pic I got. Grrr!

The guy had actually grown out his beard and bleached it so it was white. Very cool! The kids were SO excited, Maelee almost jumped out of my arms to get to him, then they both stroked his belly while Madi told him what she wanted. When I reached for Maelee, she defiantly told me, "NO!!" and turned back to Santa to pet him some more. He thought that was GREAT, and rewarded her with a few tickles - to which she cupped his face and gave him a love. Too cute!

Last week was the last this semester for pre-school, so we had a party during the last hour on Thursday. The girls were SO adorable. {Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU to Michele for the pictures!} First, we played "Hang the Ornament on the Christmas Tree"

All the girls got a few turns, and even Maelee and Marshall got a turn. :O)

Then we attempted to play the white elephant gift exchange game... Note to self, don't, repeat DO NOT play this game with 4-year-old girls! It's just not fair to the poor girl who gets her present taken! I felt so bad for Bentlee! Whoops!

Next, we had a junk break and decorated cupcakes to look like Rudolph. So cute!

That afternoon, Clint and I cashed in on some hour-massage gift certs he had gotten us for our anniversary back in June. HEAVEN!!! Then we went out to lunch {"This is like a REAL date! Wow!!"}, and got ready to head down to see my family for the weekend. As always, we were spoiled there and came home with heartburn from all the good food, a trunk full of fun toys and goodies, and lots of memories. I didn't bring my big, nice camera and forgot the SD card for my piece-o-crap-but-very-small camera... SO, I didn't get any pics of my family festivities. We also had a visit with Kiki, and I was able to get some from that before my internal memory was full.

Madi and Kapuai ran crazy dressed up like fairies, fun fun!

Maelee may look like she knew what she was doing, but she didn't stay on her feet for too long...

It was a great visit, and we are so happy to see Kiki and her family doing so well.

Merry Christmas too all, know that we love and are thinking of you!  And props if you made it through that!  :O)

I love... winter?

Before I get into all the hoopla for Christmas, I have to pass on the info that Madi had her staples removed this morning and it was quite the traumatic experience {almost more so than getting them IN!!}.  The nurse came rushing in to make sure we weren't killing her, that's about how loud her terrified screams were.  Of course, if you were being pinned to a table by your mom while a doctor came at your head with scissor-looking things, you'd probably be pretty freaked out too!  SO sad!  Trent, our family doctor and friend, did it as fast as he could - one staple actually flew across the room and the other fell and got caught in her curls in the rush.  Blah!! 

You MAY be able to tell in the pic, but rest assured that it's healing well and as a memo to all for future reference - he said that if you or your child ever have a head trauma like Madi's and you're out where you can't get to a doctor quickly, you can grab 2 pieces of hair from either side of the wound and tie them together.  He said that that works really nicely to close the wound back up until you can get medical attention!  Who knew?!

Last week was CRAZY 'round this place!  Aside from Madison's head-splitting adventure, she also had her performances for her FIRST play!!  They did "It's a Small World" and it was adorable!  She was a London Bridge - basically a cute kid in a school uniform who came out and sang the song.  Too cute!  I went to every show {except Friday night, I helped out back stage} and enjoyed all the little moments that the kids brought to the stage that weren't supposed to be there!!  LOL  Madi did great and I'm so proud of her!!!

I also did the HS Wrestling pics and Clint helped out at our local HS's Invitational.  Needless to say that by Sunday we were pretty exhausted and the girls both took a 3 hour nap... at the SAME time!!  LOVED it!

NOW FOR CHRISTMAS!!

The weather has been so screwy around here lately, we had a freezing cold front move in around Thanksgiving and stay for a while, but thankfully it has since passed on.  This week it's been back to flip-flops and short-sleeves!  Crazy.  And yet the mountain is starting to collect drifts of snow!  Gotta love the dessert!  :O)

We finally got our tree up and it's so pretty!  Madi did a great job helping me decorate it this year.  I told her the cardinal rule of tree decorating: You never, ever put 2 things that are alike next to each other.  You need to spread them around so it looks nice and even.  This was her plan of action: Place her princess ornaments all around the bottom of the tree {good}, then place a fairy ornament right next to each princess so that they all would have a friend.  "They're not the same, Mom!  Princesses and fairies are different!"  Well... sigh... yes, that is correct.  Can't fight that logic!  LOL  It's adorable and I love it.

Since our tree was up, Madi insisted that it meant our presents needed to be wrapped, so I made a trip to the devil's store {yes, I mean Wal-Mart.  We SO need a Target!} and knocked out a big chunk of my shopping, then spent a few hours wrapping... the large amount of time was mainly due to the fact that I was half wrapping, half watching a movie.  :O)

We got our house lights up right after Turkey-Day, and our other house decor up before that.  It's been so fun to see it slowly come together, and now we're all decked out, narrowing down those last few purchases and almost ready for the big day.  Of course, Madi keeps insisting that we open the presents right now cuz Santa will bring us more and we need room under the tree for when he does... Oh, she is SO my child when she thinks like that!  Ha ha ha!

Head wounds bleed... a LOT!

So I had the scariest moment in my life as a Mom today...

I was picking Madi up from pre-school and had told her for the ump-teenth time to clean up and get changed back into her clothes from the dress-up dress she had on {she could tell I wasn't too entirely anxious for her to hurry since I was enjoying talking with the other moms} and she hurried back downstairs to Bentlee's room, supposedly to change.  Yeah right.

A few minutes later I hear this blood curdling scream, I didn't really think too much of it because she DOES tend to be a little bit of a drama queen when she's tired.  I figured she had gotten hurt a little bit and was making a big deal of it...  wish that we were so lucky.  I pull her onto my lap and she tells me her head hurts, so I put pressure on it where she pointed and try to calm her down.  When I pulled my hand away, I saw the one thing that will give any parent a heart attack - blood.  And not just blood, but lots of it.  Kachelle ran for a paper towel, Teonna ran for a wash cloth, I put hard pressure on it and tried to not panic.  I got the bleeding to stop after about 10 minutes and then drove to the ER {she was still in her dress-up at this point, so we put her pants on under the dress and her jacket on over.  Boy howdy did she look cool!  Ha ha}.  They put a numbing ointment on it, bandaged her head and when it was supposed to be all numbed up they brought in the staple gun.

She had calmed down, cheered up and was enjoying orange tic-tacs until they touched her head.  She burst into sobs and started freaking out.  Clint was there by that point {what a good Daddy, she wanted him there so he took off work} and we had to hold her down so the doctor could put in the 2 staples needed for it to close up.  I watched it and GAG.  That was so awful watching them put her head back together and listening to her scream as I held her head still.  They said that she was probably more scared than in pain and she said, "No, it hurt WAAAAAAY more than just a little!  I'm not scared, it really, really hurt!"  My poor baby!

The gash is just over an inch long and was about 1/8 of an inch deep.  Luckily, they didn't have to shave any hair off and hopefully it won't leave too large of a scar.  So what happened?  She says she was trying to lay down on Bentlee's bed and the headboard was closer than she thought.  She hit her head on it, but I'm not exactly sure if there was an edge that she nailed or if she just hit it so hard that it split open.  She can't really remember and the other girls were either not looking or too freaked out like Madi to remember.

How is Madison?  Great!  Bouncing off the walls!  Jumping on the couch!  Laughing and giggling, and I haven't given her ANY medicine.  Who's kid IS this?  Oh yeah, she's Clint's.  That explains things.  If she were ANYthing like her Mom she would be milking this thing for all it's worth!  :O)  We went and got chicken nuggets after and I gave her one of her Christmas presents early {How to Train Your Dragon} for being so brave.  We can't get it wet or touch it for 2 days and our doc will take the staples out next week.  CRAZY!  I'm honestly amazed that we have had kids for 4 1/2 years and this was our first trip to the ER.  How lucky are we?! {Knock on wood!}

And in other news, Maelee has decided that Daddy's shoes are MUCH cooler than her own and likes to walk around looking like Goofy, only much cuter.  :O)

Psycho day, but Grandma brought over cookies so all is well!  LOL

Ooo La La!

Madison's friend Brittlee had a Fancy Nancy birthday a few weekends ago and Madi was SO excited to get all fancied up!  I have made the comparison many times that Madi and Maelee are just like Fancy Nancy {if you have no idea who that is, don't worry.  Ask ANY little girl and she'll fill you in!} and her little sister {who oddly, doesn't have a name.  Not that she doesn't have a name, we just don't know what it is...}.  In the books, Nancy is always super fancy and her little sis tries so hard to be just as dolled up, aaaaaaaand never quite succeeds.  She's a cutie, but she just can't quite rock all the dress-ups like Nancy can.  Now, switch gears to my girls.  Madi is pretty much dressed like a ballerina-princess-rockstar-fairy at least 4 days a week for a few hours each day.  Maelee generally follows suit and comes to me with a skirt on her head, a leotard on like a jacket - one arm in an arm hole, the other in a leg one - cloth wrapped around a leg and tied to her waist {courtesy of Madison} and one princess slipper.  She knows it's just not right, but can't figure out how to fix it and be like her big sister.  It really is priceless and I love it!

Ok, wow.  I really got off track there!  Brittlee's birthday party...  ANYway, Michele had the girls all dress fancy {I swear Madi could have literally walked out of a Fancy Nancy book.  She has the same hair, the same body type, and some of the same costume pieces.  It was GREAT!!}, and they had a fancy party.  They had a tea party with cookies and had to put their pinkies up, played fun games and each got fancy jewelry to take home.

Madi loved the party and hasn't stopped talking about it.  She even corrects me if I don't put my pinky up when I drink.  :O)  Ah, the joys of being the mom of a fancy 4 year old!!

Holy WOW cow!!

I mean that with all the fiber of my being.

I am sorry for the slacker-off-er-ing of my blog posting.  I have had 15 photo shoots in the last 6 weeks and have 3 more this week!  NOW you understand the "WOW", eh?  :O)  It's keeping me busy and has totally thrown off my sleeping schedule... Instead of going to bed around 9 I've turned back into the night owl I was before I had wee ones.  11:30pm is about the norm nowadays.  Thank heavens my girls have been sleeping in until 8!!!!!!!  LOL

I love it though, {not the staying up late part} I'm having SO MUCH FUN with these pictures I've been taking and with the whole photog business part of my life.  It's been just enough to re-charge my Tiffany batteries, enough of a break from being Mom that I really look forward to finishing up my editing and spending the Holidays spoiling my girls with attention.  I think everyone needs that once in a while, you know?  Click here to see what I've been able to post so far of the chaos that has been Simply Photography!

Halloween was super fun this year, I made the girls matching lady bug costumes!  They were frickin' adorable in their wings and skirts {which will double as their Christmas dresses, how smart and thrifty am I?!}.  I saw the idea in Pottery Barn, and their costumes were $70!  EACH!!  Just for the wings and skirts!  I made both girls', with fabric to spare and having bought a shirt for Maelee and a leotard for Madi and their skirts, for under $20.  GO ME!  LOL

We went to the trunk-or-treat and they had a blast dancing, singing, twirling, getting candy, riding the train ride {Madi rode a horse-train that bounced her all over the place!  Her curls were priceless boinging like that!}, and eating cotton candy.  Love my nerdy children!  

I know there was something else I was going to post about but my brain is fried.  Love to all and hope you're doing well!

Hoorah for Family Pictures!!!

Zoo-eee-mama!  You have NO idea how excited for these beautiful pictures I am!  We haven't had family pics taken since 2008... I know, right?  We have ONE family shot with Maelee from last August at my brother's wedding, and that's it.  I realize what you're thinking, "she takes pictures for other people, why can't she take them for herself?!"  Good point.  The answer is that neither my husband or my kids would take it very seriously if I were running back and forth or using my remote.  And, let's face it - they would NEVER have turned out like these ones did!  Thank you a MILLION to Megan for taking these for us, they are incredible!  We LOVE them!

Can you see why I am so madly in love with this beautiful family of mine?