katie.

Avery has a new friend.
Her name is Katie.
She's 19.
And has a purple car.
And a cat.
And lives a couple of houses away from our house.
In the brown house, I think.
Katie is full of useful information.
She loves the same things that Avery loves and hates the same things that she hates.
Avery talks about her constantly.
She talks with her constantly.
They go everywhere together.
They are total BFF's.

It would probably be a little weird if she weren't imaginary.

Here she is (on what was clearly a very windy afternoon) sitting next to Katie after I asked her to pose with her.

 Here she is taking a little walk with her...

 and pushing her on the swings (while talking to her about how she shouldn't be scared to swing high).

Avery even has Charlie talking about Katie from time to time.
Oh Goodness.

almost wordless wednesday

a freshly painted blue door.

a new place to sit and relax.

 an afternoon in the park.

springtime in the south.

...just a few of my favorite things.

something positive...and encouraging...

Yesterday, we were all driving in the car listening to the only safe radio station in the country (Klove) when one of the 5 songs they play came on the air.

No, it wasn't something by Third Day.
Or something by Toby Mac.
Or even something by The Newsboys.
I know.
Shocking, right?
2 more guesses...
Nope. Not Casting Crowns.
Come on... you're so close...
Seriously? Steve Green? Now you're not even trying.
It was Chris Tomlin.
Duh.

Anyway - we were driving along when Avery started singing along with the song "Indescribable" . If you've never heard the song, you may not know that it's full of words like "incomparable", "uncontainable", and "awestruck".
Big 'ol churchy SAT words. 
Words that no normal 4 year-old could possibly pronounce - much less understand the meanings of.
So, as you can probably imagine, much of Avery's singing involved mumbling through those crazy big words... but she was plugging along just the same.
It makes my heart happy when she does that.

When the song got to the chorus, I heard her sing:
you see the depths of my heart and you love me the same...
you're an amazing guy.
...and a huuuge smile spread across my face.
Because it's so true.
Who needs big 'ol SAT words?
God is an amazing guy.

happy birthday to yooooou

March is Birthday Month for David and me. We have birthdays exactly 10 days and 3 years apart.

March is also the time of year that I like to rag on David for being SOOOO much older than me. 'Cause I'm a super sweet wifey.

This year, we celebrated Birthday Month surrounded by boxes in our new house. By the way - have I mentioned that we have a NEW house????? Have I???? Because we do. Oh we do.

Anyway - Partly to escape Box Land for a bit, and partly to do something different and fun, I took Avery and Charlie to a pottery painting studio to make David's birthday gift.

I totally loved watching my little guys at work...

My precocious and not-so-shockingly perfectionistic Avery took her time, chose her colors thoughtfully, and carefully painted each ring on her plate slowly and methodically.

That's my girl.

Charlie painted for approximately 2.5 seconds with several random colors using several random brushes at once, before deciding that pulling pottery pieces from the wall and playing in the dirty paint water was way more fun.

That's my boy.

I have to say, I think they turned out just perfect.

Another Birthday Month came and went and I spent every second with the people I love most in the world.

Life is pretty awesome.

there's no place like home

I've been happily enjoying an amazing, awesome, incredible, and totally over-the- top gift from God during the last month.

 

It's been...beautiful.

At least once a day, David and I look at each other and say in disbelief, "...this is our house...".

I'm going to go ahead and say that the moment our Realtor handed us the keys to our new home was one of the top 10 best moments of my life.

The house we bought was a foreclosure, so there was definitely some work that we had to do to get things up to par. Especially in the cleanliness department. 

Cleaning up someone else's mess is not fun.
Especially a total stranger's mess.
Every single drawer, cabinet, shelf and corner was covered in dirt and/or hair...and stuff.

Gross.

Groooooosss.

Thank you God for shelf-liner.

And rubber gloves.

The fans in our screened in porch had at least 2 inches of black dirt caked on top of each blade.

Some Krud Kutter, a grout brush, and some serious elbow grease later and...

 It's safe to breathe in my screened in porch again.

I have an unrealistic amount of soap scum on the shower doors of our bathrooms upstairs. I've really never seen anything like it. It has to be from years of build up. It grosses me out. Really bad.

I've tried everything to get rid of it. 

After getting Chemical Pneumonia a few times, I decided to check out my other options. 

Did you know that you can literally watch hours of you tube videos just on cleaning a shower door? 

Unreal.

Still no success. My final solution may end up involving a large jack hammer. I'll keep you posted. 

Cleaning was bumming me out, so I decided to move on to to something more challenging...Furniture refinishing.

Last year, I spilled some bug spray on my kitchen table. In case you were wondering, bug spray and wood don't really mix...

I've wanted to refinish it forever... and our new move seemed like the perfect excuse.

Here's the before pictures:

 and after...

We've still got a few boxes sitting around, and a seriously daunting to-do list, but I've never been more thrilled to be working my hiney off.

Cause... "this is our house..."

sweet hearts.

 

With Valentine's Day quickly approaching, Avery and I decided to make Rice Krispie Treats for her friends at school.

Avery's been watching a lot of Food Network shows lately. Her favorites are Cake Boss and The Barefoot Contessa. She's also a big fan of The Neely's.

Recently, I left her playing games on Sprout Online. When I went to check on her a few moments later, I noticed that she had accidentally maneuvered her way to You Tube and was watching an instructional birthday cake video. When I asked her what she was watching she said, "Mom...Look at this. We've GOT to make one of these."

To which I responded with something vague and cryptic I think like, "Oh. Wow. That's really cool. We'll have to see."
What I was actually thinking was, "Riiiiiight... cause I totally want to spent 4 hours making a ridiculously detailed firetruck cake for no reason at all...I'll be sure to get right to that."

With Avery's new found culinary love in mind, you can imagine how seriously excited she was when I explained what I had in mind for her friend's Valentine Treats.

While Avery and I stirred away, Charlie decided to do his part to by providing a little background music.

 I'm not sure my ear drums will recover.
Thank goodness he's cute.
It helps.
A lot.

As all projects do, the excitement wore off after approximately 2 minutes.
It was up to mommy to finish up.

 Later, we prepared Avery's Valentine cards for her friends. Her fine motor skills are really progressing these days. She worked very hard to write her name herself. For about 2 minutes.

Then... Mommy finished up.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Charlie's Second BIrthday Party

We celebrated Charlie's 2nd birthday in November.
I still can't believe that he's two.
My sweet, cuddly, silly, wild, totally crazy, busy little boy is...two.

Charlie's favorite place on Earth is the zoo.

His favorite toys are trains.

It seemed fitting to celebrate his second birthday doing things he loves, in the place he loves, with the people he loves.

So - we rented out a large room at the zoo. There wasn't a whole lot of decor to work with, and I was on strict orders by David NOT to go too crazy...for my sanity's sake. I complied with David's wishes and, I have to admit - the evening was really enjoyable.
Maybe David had the right idea afterall.

The table decor:

Guest Table decorations

A garland I made from scrapbook papers:

Here's a picture of the totally adorable cupcakes that I almost ruined by dropping them 10 seconds after picking them up from the baker. I almost had a heart attack. I did my best to mend them, but you can see that a couple of them were still kinda smooshed-ish.

Drink container decorated with zoo animal train cut-outs made with my cricut.

Another banner I made out of the pages of a vintage animal train book I bought on etsy.

Animal crackers for our friends:

Another picture of the cute, smooshed-ish, cupcakes:

Charlie checking out the chickens on our tour of the zoo:

Blowing out the candle:

Really enjoying the cute, smooshed-ish cupcakes:

Charlie wore pants I made out of zoo animal fabric I bought from a shop on esty.

Opening presents:

Such a fun time. Such a sweet boy.
I'm one lucky mommy.

And, one lucky friend. All the fantastic photos posted in this post were taken by my friend Sonya.
Thanks, Lady!

how to build a snowman...southern style.

When it snows down here, people completely freak out.
Schools close.
Grocery stores become flooded with people rushing to buy bread and milk and eggs.
Weather Reporters stand on "treacherous" highways chomping at the bit for the first hint of slippery wet stuff, and - with any luck -the real glory shot: an actual bonafide snow-induced collision.

It's crazy.

I tend to be pretty cynical about all the snow hype, but even I have to admit that a real, true, snow is just about as close to Heaven on Earth as you can get.

And even though David and I spent 3 years living in Ohio (where it can snow as late as May), building a snowman is something that we've never done together. Ever. In fact, I think the last time I built a snowman was in Elementary School. It's not that building a snowman didn't sound fun to me, it's just that my nice, warm house, comfy jammies, and Alias re-runs sounded like way more fun.

But now, we have kids.

And live in the South.
Where it never snows...

SO - this year, we built a snowman. With two very excited little guys in tow.

We've been back in the South for 4 years. Which - as it turns out - is just enough time to become totally unprepared for any type of freezing precipitation.

Commence Operation Improvisation.
or Operation Southern Rookies Build a Snowman.
or Operation Freeze Your Fanny Off While You Pretend to Know What You're Doing.

Example #1
Use Ladies' Garden Gloves as protection. Because your manly, warm, Ohio gloves are in STORAGE.

Example #2.
No snow gear? No problem. Rainboots and 2 pairs of socks should do the trick.

No rainboots? Hmmmm...that's a little more tricky...
Mom of the Year says that footed jammies and a some crocs will just have to do.

At first, Avery and Charlie were all about helping us out.

But after about 3 minutes of hard-ish work, they decided that they'd rather do something else.

Like throwing snowballs.

...eating snow.

or just...going inside.

Despite the obvious sting of losing our once motivated "help", David and I stubbornly pushed ahead. By the time frostbite officially started to set in, we figured out a method for rolling giant snowballs.

Because if Charlie Brown and Lucy can do it, so can we.

(side note: at one point in the process, I literally referenced the scene in Frosty the Snowman when the kids are building their snowman for assistance. Because I'm a mommy. And I've seen that movie 1.5 million times.)

 and created quite the curvaious snow...lady.

Hooray.

We admired our handiwork for approximately 2.5 seconds before Avery and Charlie started whining and crying due to the numbness in their extremities.

It felt a little like that scene in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.
You know, the one where Audrey looks like this?

Ellen: Clark, Audrey's frozen from the waist down.

Clark: That's all part of the experience, honey.