mornings like this

warm my heart. ❤

at the local coffee shop with 2 of my favorite girls while other favorite girl was next door getting her hair cut.

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can you tell i forced myself to take the camera out with me. trying people, trying. 

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the goods: (all of a sudden hungry for a bagel when i saw this pic)

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i look up and it makes me think of new york. ache. want to go back.

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best friend/sister in law in town for a week. lots of coffee, tea, cupcakes and long chats. love her dearly.

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she who finished getting her hair trimmed. lovely.

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'twas a good morning. 🙂 and even better afternoon. will post again soon.

my people

late night supper at the local diner. elsie was about to lose it so i whipped out the camera and let her go to town. i love all these pictures she captured of my people. IMG_4517

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and the photographer herself! made very happy with the distraction of my camera 🙂

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we are a mish mash group here. some without husbands. missing other offspring. adding in neighbors and best friends. this is my community. i love them so much. they've been here for me during this crazy ride my family has been on and i appreciate it wholeheartedly. ❤

i've become the kind of blogger who sucks at taking photos now, that she hands her camera to her 4 year old to complete the blogging process for me. thanks elsie! 🙂

update: i was previewing the blog post and els came up and saw her pictures, she said, you put my pictures up there!!! aww thanks mommy 🙂 hahahaha

absolutely gorgeous weather

lately has caused me to stay away from blogging. last week we had high 60's and mid 70's daily. SO GLORIOUS. here's pics from my phone to prove we love being outside when it's nice 🙂 Photo

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lots of sidewalk chalk and barefeet. ice cream and mud pies (literally). visits to the park- including one that lasted over 3 hours. major mom points that day! 🙂

unfortunately we have rrrrrrrraaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiinnnnn in the forecast next week. im so sad! 😦

layout of my girls

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Sigh. Cute paper is all I need… 🙂 The floral is the new Basic Grey, Kioshi line. It's not at 2p yet but you'll have to keep your eye out. Lavendar hydrangeas, some of my favorite flowers, they were my wedding bouquet! 🙂 I think I'm going to use a butterfly on every page for awhile 🙂 So addicting! Some yummy Dear Lizzy and some new October Afternoon. Solid lines from all of them!

Picture of my and the girls from last summer in Australia. I love my girls. Chris and I were just looking at the pictures from that trip and marveled at how much Kira has grown since then. Seems she was still a little girl there, but since she started high school, time seems like it has accelerated. The teen years are such a delicate time. So many emotions and decisions where every day you face different challenges. It's all about how you as a parent are going to face them. All I can do is pray constantly for the right words and right attitude. It's crazy to think we get to go through this stage 3 more times! But I love the thought of me and my girls when we are all finally past this, when they are grown women. I hope that whatever we do to make it through these teen years, ties us even closer. Elsie makes me think of Kira so much when she was little, I miss her… but am just in awe of the woman she is becoming now.
I hardly take my own pictures anymore, I have to go to Chris' blog to steal his 🙂 He takes so many amazing pictures, these are some of my absolute favorites. Kira3
ok it's tied with this one. 🙂Kira
you can read his own sappy post about her here 🙂
we love her. xoxoxo

play

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it's her favorite thing to do! most of the time she requests that we play with her. which sometimes, i will admit, is sorta hard for me. i don't mind doing things with her, baking, gardening, cooking, being crafty… it's the pretending stuff that i'm not so good at. she's the mom and i'm the sister. she's the princess and i'm the friend. she's the mouse and i'm the lion. yeah, tough sometimes.
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this is my favorite thing, looking over my shoulder and seeing her engaged- pretending with her toys. reading to them. talking to them, singing, dancing and being a mom. i LOVE it.
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she's four in a few weeks, we cannot believe it. :(  she requests nothing but a few friends at the local indoor playground and some cupcakes of course! 🙂 hoping she will have a day of play and feel celebrated. we are so blessed to have her busy little self in our lives! 

i told her today that i thought she needed a haircut and replied incredulously, "ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!" ha! love her.

old school, happy birthday caleb :)

9 years ago today caleb was born!
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he was born a week early in a hospital in chesapeake, virginia. kira was nearly six and cam just turned two. Boys01
kira would be off to school for a few hours each day. the boys were home with me while chris went to work and finished his masters. we lived on the east coast for barely a year while our family lived on the west coast. we weren't used to the cold weather. we lived in a tiny apartment with one car. our days were lonnnnnng. we passed the time with lots of playing and Toy Story and baking. the internet wasn't quite big yet and we didn't have a digital camera, i remember calling my sister in law lots and sending lots of photos to family via snail mail! to say that these days were the toughest of my life to date isn't an exaggeration! _3sleep
this image above is a perfect description of a long day. 🙂
and now that they are all grown up, i miss those long virginia days! 3leaves

elsie was looking through all these photos with me and was wondering why she wasn't in any of the pics 🙂 seems i cannot quite escape the playing with a toddler stages of my life, oh well. wouldn't trade it for the world! 🙂

more old school, via scrapbooking talk here today 🙂 crazy to see the evolution of my style 🙂

little bit of rain

it seems like ages ago when i had a girl who would love to play in the puddles and i'd be happy to capture it all with the camera. today i don't think i would have even whipped out the camera if she didn't look so darn cute as she came into my bedroom wearing my socks. 🙂IMG_2799

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seriously that's all she had for me. and since all the cold air was coming in, i was fine with just that. it's been rainy. i'm not a rain kind of person. sorta hard on me. i haven't stepped outside at all today, even to take these pics, i was still inside and i just shooed her outside to get some nice light 🙂

just to clarify, yes she is wearing the saaaame boots from 2 years ago 🙂 they were big at the time and she wore lots of socks to fit. now they are close to being too small. she loves them so much, she's going to be sad when she does finally outgrow them!

almost four

chris doesn't like it when people ask how old she is and i answer, almost 4. he thinks there's no need to rush her, and i totally agree. but developmentally, 3 and almost 4 are whole different ballparks! these are from a few weeks ago. in her own little world, performing as usual 🙂 IMG_2300
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she is N O N S T O P. ask anyone who knows her and converses with her. she is alllllll conversation, games and performance! i have to admit that at the end of the day, when she's asleep, there's times i will look at her and think, 'i could have been a better mom to her today, more patient, played more, done more.' it's hard! and tiring! but every morning, i greet her with a fresh start and know that i am excited and blessed to spend my day with her. our days are filled with errands, endless games of pretend and lots of conversation. she asks me questions to things that you would think is self explanatory. i'm kicking myself that i didn't write them down now! chris is great at explaining them to her, even in non kid terms, and she's just like, oh okay. 🙂 she has an amazing sense of humor. she has her favorite sundresses that i have to hide from her because she will wear them on rotation, even on the coldest days. she will only wear skinny leggings, cracks me up that she knows the difference. still crazy about her pink rain boots. will change her clothes many times throughout the day, surely working my nerves! she's finally entered the stage of wanting things at the store, thanks to all the gift cards at christmas! 🙂 (trying my patience since of course, you can't always get what you want) but really, she's so happy. all she wants in her world is her blue blankie, her family, her fingers and a treat every now and then. we cannot believe that she is turning FOUR in a month and a half. how is that possible!?

he loves milk

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like many bowls of cereal a day. many glasses of milk and chocolate milk a day. but he's been having horrible headaches for the past few months, and today his doctor suggested taking milk out of his diet. 😦 as soon as we left the office, we went to the store and i got him every flavor of soy milk and had him stock up on other snacks besides yogurt, pudding and string cheese. tonight i made chicken curry and made his portion separate as i put cream in the dish, his was cream-less and rather sad looking. he made a bowl of oatmeal (with water) afterwards and gobbled that up. 😦 i'm so sad for him but i am determined to figure out the cause of these headaches! hopefully milk won't be the cause and he can go back to it in a few weeks!

anyone have any dairy free snacks, drinks or recipes you'd like to share? he would be super appreciative 🙂

snow

each year, around wintertime i wish we lived in a place where it snowed. i always think it'd be so nice to wake up to and have it around for the holidays. i almost feel like we are missing out on the fullness of the holidays by not having snow. it's so pretty! but then we get a little dose of snow and i am quickly reminded how much i love southern california in the winter 🙂 our family can only take snow for a few days before we realize how wimpy we truly are 🙂 we took a little trip to lake arrowhead and stayed with some friends. when we woke up, we looked out the window and saw the snow falling. it was beautiful! IMG_1782

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nice to get the car cleaned again 🙂 i like how the snow covers my dent that the post office pole made on the side.

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we didn't expect snow so we came unprepared in regular street clothes. we don't even own clothes much warmer than this 🙂

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we took a little walk to a tea shop and this is when i want to quit and stay indoors and not get back outside till it warms up.  IMG_1785 

good memories! chris posted one of my favorite arrowhead pictures here. he'll be posting more eventually.

happy new year! my two resolutions for the year: exercise and blog more. i never put exercise on my list because i know i will never go through with it. just putting it on the list this year makes me feel like at least i will attempt it at some point. 🙂

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