Rushed to make a post

So, Dominic has been sleeping for a little over an hour and I'm now on what I call "borrowed time" - the magical time in which he could wake at any moment. I am always assured a good hour nap, any moment over is simply due to the stars' alignment.

Here are some photos from the snow storm we had last week. Blogger is finally being nice again and letting me post pictures.







This week is a BUSY week for us. We have something on the calendar everyday this week. Monday we have a Valentine's party with the neighborhood group, Tuesday is a playdate, Wednesday we are meeting S and B at the mall, Thursday we have a Meetup charity event and Friday is another playdate! Phew!!

I have some photos of little sister's room but they will have to wait; I want to put together a storyboard of these as the room progresses!

Well, that was my fast recap! Off to nibble on the chocolate chip cookies we made earlier!!

February snow days

We've been holed up inside for 5 days now. First we had a tremendous ice storm blow through that paralyzed the city, then the lowest temps we've seen in a very long time (15 degrees???). Friday we got 5" of snow piled up atop the icy roads and still we stayed inside. It was too cold to play outside for longer than 10 minutes at a time.

This morning we've got a bit of a reprieve: we managed to stay outside in the elements for a good hour with Dad and Annabelle, making two snowmen, a family of snow angels (complete with one for baby sister) and got some fresh air in our lungs! What fun!!

The batteries to the camera died but I did manage to capture some photos from over the course of the 5 day hibernation. At the moment blogger is not allowing me to upload photos so I'll have to try again later.

I've also got pictures of the baby's room and how we are preparing for her arrival.

Sugar and spice...

Looks like we'll be adding a bit of sugar and spice to our house this summer!!! We got a great look at her and Dominic even joined in the conversation saying, "Baby move around....So cute!"

I almost titled this post something else entirely, "Breaking up is hard to do", but wanted to keep the focus positive rather than negative. Basically, this week I have come to the realization that I need to "break-up" with one of my friends. What happened, you may be wondering???

Well...it goes like this:

I am a punctual person. You all already know that. When I have made plans with someone and can't make it, I always make sure to tell them with as much notice as possible. I also try to be on time anytime I am meeting someone out. This past Tuesday I made plans to meet a very new acquaintance and an old friend. I made the details and emailed them both with time and place instructions. I was the only one to show up!
I received a phone call from M asking me where I was, if everything was okay. I told her that I was at said place waiting. She proceeded to tell me that she and the other gal were at another location waiting on me! Did neither one of them read their email???? So D and I had to leave the original meeting place to go to the *wrong* location to meet them.

This is not the first time that M has flaked out on this kind of stuff. The day before this breakfast get together she emailed me to see if I wanted to go to Pump-it-Up with her that morning. I reminded her that we had plans with S. She admitted that she forgot about our plans. Then she asked me what time?

When I had the summer camp, she was a participant. The day of the camp she called to ask me when camp started, and I don't mean what time, she meant what day!! Then she asked what time and THEN she said they would be there everyday instead of the 3 times a week she had previously told me. So I had to drive out and get more supplies for them to attend all week!!!

It's this kind of air-headedness that drives me bananas. If you have plans with someone at least have the courtesy to write it down and the respect to remember it!

So this breakfast get-together was the straw that broke the camel's back. I have got to call this friendship quits before I say something tacky to her. How's this going to go? I have no idea!!!

Anybody home???

I promise we are still alive and well. I'm going to try to keep up this month with our busy life. We've already had quite a bit going on!

I received a new Project Life kit for Christmas and have been plugging away, taking a photo each day to display in the album. My album from last year is only lacking 4 pictures! Not too bad for a busy mom, huh? If you want to see what the fuss is all about, check out the Project Life kit here: www.beckyhiggins.com

Today we don't have a scheduled playdate however O is coming over to play and enjoy a custom-made firetruck cookie. D asked for one earlier and I promised him we could make cookies after his nap.

We got a cool firetruck cookie cutter from Aunt Suge for Christmas so we put it to use today. I'll post pictures of the cookies later, they are in the oven, smelling the house up real nicely!!

Other big news?? We find out pink or blue in just 4 more days!!! I still can't believe that we are already almost halfway through this pregnancy! I am 19w, 2d today. Wow!!

I am planning on doing a cute photoshoot with D sometime tomorrow so I'll post pictures of what I'm able to capture.

Thanks for hanging in with me!!

We're still around...

We are still here...we've just been super busy and super tired! We haven't even done much with friends since the camp. It's been all about D and I lately. We've gotten a whole lot of Christmas shopping done and that's really kept us pretty busy.

Thanksgiving was a BLAST! We had the BIG family year this time and it was so wonderful to see D playing with the big kids. I still can't believe he is getting so big!! As soon as I get our family photo, I'll be sure to post it here. It's so much fun to see how we've grown as a family. Next year there will be 4 of us!

This morning we went to visit Santa. Dominic did wonderful!!! This photo just makes me smile b/c they look deep in conversation. Dominic has always been such a curious child and he really seems to be giving Santa the once-over, don't you agree?

8 days and 4 stitches later...

I'm so sorry I haven't updated in a while! I have just been falling in to bed lately and haven't really had any down time during the day to sit and post.

Last Wednesday we did one of the best playdates I've ever participated in (Halloween costume parade being #1). We met three other moms and kids at a local pottery place and got to choose an item to paint! I have always wanted to get D a personalized birthday plate for him to use for his birthday breakfast so we chose a birthday plate.

We painted it light blue and then D put his handprints on the plate with dark blue paint. Then I filled in the letters and added his name to the bottom. It should be ready for pick-up this Friday!! Here's the boy in action:










Unfortunately, the next day was not so good for us. D was running in the living room and ran RIGHT into the corner of the coffee table!! We had to rush to the ER and he ended up getting 4 stitches. Poor baby...
Look how gnarly this boo-boo is:




Please forgive the MESSY face, he had lasagna for dinner and we were bribing him with ice cream so that I could get his band-aid off.

This week we started our fall camp. I'll post separately about that later. I've got some great crafts for the little ones to do.

Only 52 more sleeps...

until Christmas, according to Santa's Official Christmas Clock!!!

I feel bad for Thanksgiving. It gets smooshed in between two kids holidays and it really deserves it's own time to shine. We went to the bookstore today to look for our camping titles and the stores are already all dolled up for Christmas! What happened to Thanksgiving?

My husband's family has a BIG family Thanksgiving every year and I just love it! He has such a great family (and I'm not just saying that b/c my MIL reads this blog every once in a while). The first Thanksgiving that I was a part of their festivities they just welcomed me in and chatted me up as if they'd known me all along. I LOVE that Dominic gets to experience the family Thanksgiving. They've been doing it for YEARS!!

So....I am going to let November do it's own thing this year. No more rushing it to hurry by so that Santa can be on his merry way. Each day in November I will mentally take the time to be thankful for the blessings in my life-and I have many. Lucky me!!

When I taught school I would have my middle schoolers keep a daily journal for the month of November. Every night they would list 3 things that they were thankful for that day. Think it sounds easy? The twist: they couldn't list the same things more than twice in the journal. That really made them focus on the little mundane things in their life. Try it out...you may find it helps refocus you, too!

So, enough about that. You're really checking in to see pics of our Halloween, aren't you?? We don't have much, I'm afraid. The hubster was in charge of the pics and he's not as nostalgic as I am, so we'll have to make do with what we've got.

On Wednesday, the 27th we participated in a costume parade at a local senior center and boy, was it fun!!! The olds just loved seeing all the kiddo's dressed up for Halloween. Of course D strutted his stuff like a pro.






Thursday we had a 12pm ultrasound. Baby #2 is looking good!! Heartrate of 176 (which means girl, for those wondering) and measuring right on track! We are 9 weeks preggo today.

This past weekend we went out of town to visit Aunt Suge and her crazy bunch. D loved playing in the boy's room!! We had a wonderful visit and a few hours after pulling in the driveway here at home we were off to the neighborhood block party.

D got to trick-or-treat for the FIRST time Sunday night. Our street is pretty quiet so there were only 5 houses to go to but he had a ball blurting out, "trick or treat!"





Yesterday we invited L and A over for some afternoon sandbox play. We haven't seen them in a while so D was excited to get some A-time in. As usual, the boys had a great time together.

I was going to post about the camp coming up but I think I'll wait until next time. The little man is napping and mommy needs to try and get in some z's too, if possible.

We also have a recipe club tonight and David made his SCRUMPTIOUS spinach. We should definitely win tonight!!! I'll post the recipe in the next post and let you know if we won or not.