Winter Wonderland

Well this winter has certainly not been much of a Maine winter. And I like that! However, since our only significant snow was in October it has been a looooong winter of asking about building snowmen yet. Well we are in for a doozy apparently tonight where more than 10 inches is supposed to fall. And my response? BRING IT! Yes I am excited about the snow. Although, obviously not as excited as my 3 year old.

While I set out for my training run, already falling snow be damned!, Ella watched the flakes fall at the window. While I mapped out my furthest distance and overall time spent running yet, she worked on D about taking her out to catch snowflakes. We both have success! I just came in from accomplishing todays training goals. (By the way I now call myself a runner!) and Ella is outside already using her sled on the grassy hill that has just a dusting of snow. Now for a hot bath while Max naps and hot chocolate by the fire when L and D come in and we have the perfect night before the white!

Feb 29th?

Yep Happy Leap year all!!!!

It's like gaining a whole extra day of doing exactly what I love :0) So far today we have "gone fishing", went "camping" played in our rainbow rice and reminisced together on the couch. Max is playing with Ella's old favorite rattle and I showed Ella a pic of when she was a baby playing with it. That led to a 10 minute session of scrolling through my iPhone Facebook pics of Ella. She got such a kick out of it and I can't believe how fast the years have gone.

The rest of the day will be spent hunkering down in preparation of the blizzard about to hit. I am hoping I can get to the gym to get a run in before it starts but I am glad to be getting a good storm. There has not been a day since October where we stayed in sweats, drank hot chocolate and bundled up multiple times to take a turn on the hill with our sleds. BRING ON THE SNOW!!! I am totally doing the snow dance tonight and wearing my jammies inside out and backwards ;0)

I may also be hoping for a nap today. If I can get both kids down at the same time this afternoon I am so going to curl up myself. I am so so so tired today. My body feels heavy and my eyes just want to close. I hope the sickies stay away, but I have a feeling I am fighting something since Mr. Max only wakes once or twice a night now I know I am not exhausted...

celebrating

Thursday marked our five year wedding anniversary and then on Friday D and I dropped the kiddos off and headed out for our night away. It was hard waaaay harder than I thought to leave those two kids behind and at one point I may have tried to use my power of suggestion to have D turn the car around to pick them up to bring them with us...

But I am glad that I didn't. We arrived to a very beautiful hotel (a HUGE HUGE HUGE thank you to a great friend for helping us score that deal!) pahked the cahhh and went out in search of lunch. It was nice to sit there and sip a cocktail and talk, just talk about anything and everything. Then oh boy lunch was followed by a wonderful nap. Sleeping on my own in my own space for any amount of time has not been something I am accustomed too! Nap was followed by shopping and more drinking and a very expensive cab ride which led to more eating and more drinking and drinking...

I still had to be up every 4 hours to pump through the night but that was ok. I was able to go right back to sleep, again in my OWN space!!!

I really truly had an amazing time celebrating with my love (even though he did lose the car when he forgot where he parked it and finding it entailed a 30 minute running sweep of the parking garage...). The best part though was walking through the door of my parents house where the kids were so excited to see us. Max was full of huge smiles and Ella was super proud of herself for being such a big girl and spending the whole night without crying for us. Although she did admit when I asked her what her favorite part of the weekend was that it was when Mommy and Daddy came to pick me up :0)

I am so looking forward to all the years to come with the love of my life!

PS This wont mean a thing except to my female readers, but the wedding dress that I wore 5 years ago is too BIG for me now!!! After having two kids and the last one only being born 10 weeks ago I think thats a pretty big success!!!

PPS Ella had fun trying my dress on the other day :0)

Crazy in Love after Five YEARS!

As I sit here in bed listening to one of my babies quietly playing dollhouse over the monitor before she begins her day and my other baby's tiny little baby snores as he lays so peaceful next to me, I can't help but miss the love of my life. Five years ago we joined our hearts together forever. These past five years have been amazing. We have worked side by side in so many things and have created a love that is unbreakable and beautiful.

Over the last five years we have seen our role models celebrate 30 and 35 years of marriage. We have learned what love and marriage looks like from them. We turned a broken down 1870 house into a home. A home that is warm, comfy and cozy and is abound with the sounds of tiny feet and baby cries. We learned how to parent together and parent together is exactly what we do. It is truly a 50/50 union when it comes to our kids. And probably the most important and amazing thing we have done is bring our two babies into the world. We had long struggles that brought about lots of stress and sadness but together we held on and were so incredibly blessed with our beautiful and super smart Princess Pie and our adorable and extremely laid back Mr. Max.

Love is an amazing and powerful feeling and force. I fall in love with my man again and again. I'm so lucky to have a man by my side that loves me, supports me and all my crazy dreams and quirky ideas. Growing old along with him is absolutely what I want to do. With a union and love like ours I know the next 70 years will have more ups than downs, more laughs and than tears and more love than words are capable of documenting.

Happy Anniversary Cowboy. You stole my heart and made it grow. You give me the confidence to be me, even with all my weirdness and you make me the happiest girl on the block! Love you forever, for always and no matter what.

Prayers, positive thoughts and crossed fingers...

So lots of thoughts have been swimming around in my head and I am able to think about them while driving so I tend to make lots of errands up to run lately :0). Seriously though I have a plan to one day be living my dream. Well, I honestly am already living my dream but one day within the next 10 years I hope to be working my dream and fulfilling a hobby turned dream job. Certain things (like extra cash) need o happen first and I'm really hoping that a phone call I got the other day is the answer in the first step of my business plan. So cross all fingers and toes for me. Things are starting I change and I'm liking it!!!

lOvE

love (n.) a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person, a feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection (as for a parent, a child, or a friend), sexual passion or desire, a person toward whom love is felt; sweetheart.
   
There is no doubt about it, today is the day for love. See for me I feel love towards my dear little family 365 days a year. But do I call this a commercial holiday that is just a waste of money? Heck NO! I love yes LOVE the fact that today I can love on my sweeties in the most corny way and not get made fun of for it. You see I love all those corny romantic and cheesy ideas that get brought to light on Valentine's Day. My hunny and I love each other and the kids so much that words can not even explain it. I could never get down in writing the love that I feel for life, for family and for friends. But today, today I get to be all out cheesy about it and well I LOVE it!

So as I sent some friends a picture valentine about loving them more than ally whores love crack and lovingly shopped for some items for the kids cupid baskets (inspired by a fellow mom, thanks Bree!), I had a smile on my face all day. Ella and I spent the afternoon making project after project for D. And tonights plans are not all about dropping the kids off and going out. Instead we are spending the evening in with the little loves of our lives too. We have plans of a picnic dinner, special play time and then cuddles before bed. D and I will then transform our living room into a campsite by dragging down the air mattress, throwing together a blanket tent and stealing the kids sea turtle that projects stars onto the ceiling. We will then camp out just like the night we did when D proposed (of course this time we will be woken up every few hours by a hungry little boy). I can not wait.

So Happy Valentine's Day to all. I hope that you all got a chance to do something totally cheesy in the name of love today!

And here are the two most precious loves of my life, in love with each other already :0)

Business Venture....

OK so it wasn't any surprise that I did not get any photographers to offer me a job blogging about their shoots, I mean that would be way to easy of a dream come true right? Even though we make it on one income bringing in some extra money is always good right?

After working 12 summers at a local rec summer camp program, I will NOT yes folks NOT be going back this year. Am I sad? Actually, no. I do not feel the little tug pulling me back in like I have years passed. I don't feel needed there at all anymore in fact. So where does that leave me? Well I usually can sub to bring in extra but that's out this year since I do not want to have to worry about feeding schedules and places to pump for $65 a day. I know my lovely sister-in-law may be able to get me in on waitress a few nights a week but my confidence level for that is nil. I do not feel confident enough AT ALL to wait on tables. So I am doing a few things to bring in some extra cash. They do not bring in nearly enough extra, for things like upcoming wedding trips and camping or 30th errrr I mean 25th birthday bashes, but they are a start.

Number one I have joined a local, or a couple of local yard-sale Facebook pages and have been posting unwanted stuff like a mad women for some extra cash. In fact every time Ella sees something by the door she immediately asks what I am trying to sell this time. And yes she may have taken things to her room in fear of mommy trying to sell them. It's not so bad so far I have earned almost $200 this way....

Number two: I posted these pictures on said yard sale sites with the caption of "My new hobby PM me if you are interested in me making anything for you"




Well I actually got lots of interest but no one really wanted to buy since they thought I was charging too much. In fact, I am making them for very little profit when all is said and done but oh well. EXCEPT!!! Yes one lady decided to order not just letters but letters AND a stool!!! I just got done making her matching set and will hopefully be delivering them soon! Not sure if I can make this business venture work but its kind of a fun one to try :0) Oh and here is the picture of the finished stool and letters for LANDON!

Who woulda thunk it?

Ok so I have this passion, well my kids are my top passion, but I have this other passion. I LOVE absolutely love photography. I enjoy seeing moments that others have captured. I could go and look at pictures for hours (and this is why Pinterest is BAD for my time managament!). But I also have visions when I am out and about or playing around with the kids of what a photo captured at that moment would look like. I enjoy having a camera in my hand and trying to get the image in my head to come out in a photo. Often times I fail but I SEE what should have been.

My all time dream EVER would be to be able to take professional quality photos of what I envision. I have taken a class and caught some pretty good photos and because of that class my cousin and my aunt asked me to take their wedding photos this past summer. I hesitated but jumped at the chance. After all weddings AND taking pictures those are two of my favorite things! (being a wedding planner is another dream of mine!) Anyway so this March I am doing the photos at another cousins wedding AND drum roll please...............

A non family member saw the photos I did and asked me to do hers as well! I mean I am totally excited that I get to play for a day at something I absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE doing. Am I nervous? Oh heck yeah. I want to give her the moon in her photos and I am afraid I will fail. But I will damn well try my best to capture every precious moment in both my upcoming photo shoots!!!

Now here are some of my photos that I captured this past summer :0)