What a beautiful Afternoon!

Today started out hectic, but it seems most days as a parent get that way at some point.  Before lunch I had mopped the kitchen floor for the first time, bathed the twins (since Bubby decided the best use of the cup of milk that came with breakfast was to pour it over their heads), I had found the dog and gotten him to his runner after he decided to take a tour of the area.  After lunch I got to mop the floor for the second time, pack kup some leftovers for my awesome hubby and run it to the end of the road with all 3 kids and then we had about 10 mins to go before "quiet time." 

Aiden surprisingly came directly inside to play in his room, while the girls and I decided to take advantage of the weather and get some fresh air.  I have found the best way to take them both outside by myself is to put them on the trampoline, so they had fun bouncing and I had fun taking pics and videos.

The girls were looking nice, fresh after a bath, dressed in their purple co-ordinated outfits. Izzy was so proud of herself for findig flower petals from the tree that hangs over the trampoline.  They must have been tasty, since she tested 3 of them as I continued to take them away. (lol)  

Do you need a reason to smile? Here's a few :)

Ok... I had a beautifully worded start to this post and it up and ran away, grrrr I hate it when that happens.... guess it is time for a rewrite... lol

Taking pictures is a passion of mine, and some of my favorite subject matter is my 3 wonderful kids.  There smiles are priceless to me and I feel like if I don't capture them in pictures they will be lost forever.  The smile of a child seems to be much more delicate and sincere than the ones gotten from older children and adults.  They also seem much more contagious.  So if ever you need something to smile about just take a look at these pictures and they are certain to brighten your day. :)

All these toys in here and we prefer to play with the tote! 

Izzy says "You want me to smile on command? You crAzy!"





Emma is always ready to flash a big smile!

She looks worried now, but that's just cause Bubby is trying to steal her spotlight!

Thanks for taking the time to check out my blog! :) I hope you are enjoying some free smiles and Hare having a more wonderful day now! I will update again soon. :) 

Feeling at Ease :)

I read a post on FaceBook the other day that said "You can tell where you are in life by looking at the change in your console, once you have dollars in there you are getting somewhere."  I liked it and decided I must be getting somewhere cause I have a real dollar in my console right now, lol. It's only one but I guess that is a step in the right direction.  Things seem to be falling into place finally and it feels good to be less stressed over money.  I wish I could tell you how we got here, but I really have no clue other than pure determination. 

Josh has been given the opportunity to retake/finish a class he had to drop due to his pnuemonia last fall and has 2 more weeks left of this semester and then he will be back on track with his classes.  He is loading himself down with 12 credits this summer, 17 in the fall adn 21 next spring, hoping to graduate at the end of spring semester.  He is still debating on taking a few additional classes next summer to get a 2nd associates and a certificate or two, but we will have to see if he is still interested or if he is just ready to graduate and be done with school again for awhile.  I am so proud of all he is juggling and the grades he is maintaining.

I am almost out of training and will be moving to my new team at work soon.  It feels good to be getting such high marks and being able to acheive the goals I am setting for myself.  I even managed to win an upsell contest and got $10 Kash to spend at HSN.  There is a lot of motivation to succeed in my position and I have been given set guidlines to follow, but to have my first two recorded QA scores be 100% tells me this is something I can do and i will succeed.

I will take more pics tomorrow and will hopefully be getting even more in an e-mail so that I can go back to providing a visually appealing blog, but tonight I'm just keeping it simple and then heading to bed.  I hope that you are all finding peace, balance, and happiness in your lives and I will talk to y'all tomorrow.

What a fun day!

This morning I got up to my wonderful hubby making eggs, bacon and biscuits.  We all sat down to eat breakfast together and Emma's bed head started things off right by making me smile.

After a quick but delicious breakfast Aiden and I started off by going to the second week of story time at Glenvar Branch Library.  Aiden has become quite taken by a little girl named Anna at story time and today he went a little too far and tried to lick her face.  I guess boys will be boys, but I think he made her mom a liitle uncomfortable.  I am so sorry about that Georgianne, Miss Amelia even pulled me aside when we left and told me that Aiden would have to leave story time next week early if he could not keep to himself to try to teach him a lesson.  I will talk to him, but I guess if he cannot behave we may be leaving early next week.

After story time Aiden did get to go on his long awaited paly date with Anna.  We met up at jump and got to have fun playing for about an hour and a half. Aiden said she was his best friend on the way home and was sad that we couldn't go to lunch with Anna and her other friend Andy, but our schedule was pretty full today.  I did get some fun pictures while we were there though.

 Aiden, Anna and Andy!

 The kids weren't actually supposed to get on this one, but they had a lot of fun before they got caught by the guy working there, lol....guess they should have put a sign on it :)

 Anna with her mom and Maryellens 6 month old..... she was such a happy baby with big beautiful blue eyes that just stole your heart....

 Don't take my picture, I said don't take my picture Mom!!!

 Anna

 Anna and Aiden pretending to play the racing game in the arcade!

 Two little monkey's

Funny Faces!!!!

After Aiden had his play date it was time to get ready for my monthly date with my hubby.  We have vowed to go on one date a month this year and we started in February with the Blake Shelton concert.  Last month we went to dinner and went to hang out with some friends. This month was the Billy Currington concert at the Salem Civic Center. The opening bands were Kip Moore and David Nail.  Below are some of the pics I caught with my phone before it died.  I will add more in another post once I sort them out.

 Josh had a Margarita on the rocks and I had a Coco Loco (which are fantabulous btw) at Rancho Viejo before the show.

 We found a $20 in a puddle outside the concert so we picked up an extra souvenier, a signed Billy Currington CD, and each of us got a concert T-shirt.  Here is my awesome hubby in his.

 Kip Moore was first and he is most well known for "Somethin' bout a truck," but overall his performance was fun and enjoyable.

David Nail is best known for "Let it rain," but aside from that I didn't enjoy his music as much as I did from the other two acts. It would have been better if we had gotten more than 1/2 a smile out of hi whole performance. I guess it is possible that he was disappointed with the turn-out, as I would rate it as sad.  Even once Billy Currington took the stage I would say the arena was still only about 1/2 full. 

 



These are some of the best pics I have from teh concert loaded up so far, but I will go through the rest and get the best ones posted in tomorrows story!

Hope you guys have enjoyed your day as much as my family and I have enjoyed ours.  Thanks again for watching the kids Kelsey adn we will see you again on Tuesday!

We are free!

Got some chores done and still need to do a few more before the day will be done, but at least most of the laundry is washed and dried.  Hopefully there will be something on the DVR to watch while I am folding so it doesn't seem so tedious, lol.  I have been trying to figure out how to give the girls some more room to play without having to baby proof everything.  Today I managed to wedge a gate in the doorway to the kitchen and was able to give them the whole living room and the hallway to play in.

 The girls really seem to like the extra space...

 ...Bubby was being nice and sharing some of his toys too...

 ...though Emma still tuned into the TV quite often...

...and so did Izzy, but Aiden is always ready to make a face for the camera!

 Yay! She looked at the camera and didn't move!

Aiden even got a decent picture of me today! :)

Aiden really wanted them to play in his room with him, but there is so much small stuff in there I wouldn't let them stay long!

I am really hoping this cold weather will break soon so I can get the kids back outside to enjoy some sunshine again soon.  Aiden is so excited about our plans tomorrow.  We are going to storytime and his Daddy doesn't have to go to school all day so he is going to stay home with 'sisters' and then after storytime he has a play date with Anna.  As far as I know we are going to Burger King for lunch and then they will get to play in the indoor play area, so no worries about the weather for tomorrows plans.

I did get to have a nice little visit with Mom and Dad today.  The girls and I went to pick up the booster seat we had accidentally left there on our last visit.  They girls really enjoy playing at Grandma and Papaw's house and I got a few good pictures while we were there.

 What are you doing Papaw?

 Putting a duck on Emma's toe!

 Grandma laughed...

 ...and Izzy had to investigate! :)

 

Did we hear you open a bag of crackers Grandma?  Well if she gets one I want one too! :)

You know you're exhausted when it's almost noon before you feel awake :)

So glad that it is my Friday today.  This past work week has been pretty eventful, but very exhausting.  Dad was feeling well enough on Saturday to go out to the strawberry patch.  So Mom, Dad, Rick, Alice, Lisa D, Logan, Aiden, Isabella, Emma, William and I went out to pick strawberries together. Alice got some great pics this past week that I am hoping to get my hands on, but I did get some cute shots of her and Isabella at strawberry patch.

Aiden had started pulling on his right ear on Friday and continued to say it was bothering him throughout the weekend and he even crawled in bed with us on Sunday night. So on Monday before work I took him to the Dr ad was amazed at the ammount of wax they flushed out of his ear.  I think them cleaning it hurt worse that it being impacted, but he was a trooper and after lots of crying we got through it.

Since they were blasting on 81 we took Poor Mountain Rd to get to Mom and Dads to get the girls back and got to see some pretty deer along the way.

It was great to get to visit with Rick and Alice so much while they were in town this time and hopefully they will be home soon.  We will get to see Mary and Charlie Churney next weekend. It is nice to be getting back into the swing of things and getting to visit with family more again.  We really need to get out to Gramma Peggy's again before she takes off and moves to Harrisonburg, but from what I hear she has lots of friends that live up there and will be happier when she is closer to them again. I hate that she will be that much farther away, but she is already about an hour away and we generally only get to see her on the holidays and the occasional birthday celebration.  Maybe she will have a Wednesday free of babies that we can visit her before she leaves or i can take off some weekend time so that we can go out and visit.



Story time starts again!

Summer session of story time @ Glenvar Branch library has started again. It runs from 10:30 am - 11:15 am on Wednesdays and Thursdays and they have an excellent program for 2-5 year olds.  Aiden loves his "teacher" Miss Amelia and has made friends with some of the other children as well.  Since the temporary location for the library only has a small room for storytime, unless there is a small turnout it is nearly impossible to take the girls too. Luckily, Rick and Alice came in from Tenn and they were able to help Mom with the girls during storytime.

After this weeks stories and songs about pets we went up to Mom and Dad's to visit.  Aiden really wanted to go to the zoo with his friend Anna, so we have a playdate after story time for that next week.  Below are some of the pics from our visit :) Enjoy!

 Alice got Izzy to smile!

 The girls with Grandma and Papaw

 Papaw and Emma