I’ll take mine to go.
With a few of these on the side.
Yea! Our first tangerine. 
Lemons are out of control, as always. This tree produces year round.
Lucky for me I have an amazing lemon picker. And he has two amazing assistants.
While Addie enjoys sorting and studying the lemons…
Ellie likes to take the funky looking ones and make homes for snails.
As for me, I just use them to decorate. :)
Last time I did a post on my lemon tree it was because my mom and I made Pioneer Woman’s lemon pasta, but it reminded me that I don’t love the taste of lemon. I do, however, love my lemon tree. And I love lemonade. I’m thinking I may have to give that a go. Too bad I don’t have a tree that produces rootbeer year round. Tis the season! For LOVE. And for making a Valentine box. Was Valentines not the BEST holiday when we were all in Elementary School!? I have great memories of decorating my box every year and being SO excited to get Valentines from everyone. I remember the year my dad helped me turn my Valentine box into a typewriter (I loved typewriters and wanted to be a journalist when I grew up). We went all out – conversation hearts for all the keys – it was cool. I remember how fun it was to deliver Valentines to neighbor friends. The thrill of leaving the Valentine on the porch, dinging the doorbell and running and hiding…do kids still do this? I remember in 4th grade a boy had a crush on me and he would throw candy at me when I got off the school bus because his stop was after mine. (I hated it – I was always SO embarrassed). For Valentines he threw a rainstorm of candy and stuffed animals. I thought I was going to die. My sister laughed her head off. Aside from that memory, my Valentines memories are great ones. Fun to think about Ellie starting to make her own Elementary School Valentine memories. She doesn’t ride a bus so we can hopefully avoid crazy candy launchers.
While she got to work attaching stickers to her box…
I made this little fella.
And soon her box was done. She was SO excited about it. Today she got to stamp and sort mail, model the mail truck, and wear a hat and carry a bag of letters around to deliver. 
I sure love these three.
Spray painting with my sweet niece, Claire. (my dad is also a very good grandpa)
All I had to do to finish the mail truck was add some letters.
Thank you so much dad! The truck turned out darling. I know the Kindergartners will love it! Ellie and I sure do.
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K – I’m having a hard time with this whole boy thing. I’m excited about having a boy, but not having much fun shopping for one. I went to the mall last week in an attempt to get some sleepers/clothes for our little guy and came home with these:
matching tutu skirts and flower headbands for the girls. A little Valentines Day surprise – cute…right? Anyway, this isn’t the first time this has happened. I venture to the stores on a mission to buy stuff for Kole and come home with more stuff for the girls. I hope I’m a good ‘boy mom’ because so far I’m failing miserably.
So here’s my dilemma. I’m having the hardest time finding new crib bedding I love. After Addison moved out I turned half of the nursery into my scrapbook room. I’m not willing to give that up.
The other half of the room still looks like this:
but I’m not in love with it. So my question to you is: do any of you know of any websites with cute boy bedding? Any San Diego stores I might be missing? Your help will be much appreciated!
I tipped over today. At church. In front of people. I was bending down getting Addison a water bottle out of my bag and the weight of my stomach pulled me forward and off balance and I just tipped over. Talk about embarrassing. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Kenny’s good friend was close by and he laughed – in a nice way – and helped me up. It was pretty comical I guess. I’m just a bit front heavy these days.
My doctor is going to induce me at the beginning of April so I’m down to just two months left. YEA. I was induced with Ellie because I was almost a week late and then she was big (8 lbs 8 oz) and broke her collar bone during delivery. Broken collar bones for babies have to just heal on their own. Made for a VERY fussy newborn (poor thing). My doctor said Ellie was way too big of a baby for me to deliver, so with Addison she induced me a week early. Everything went MUCH smoother (she was 6 lbs 10 oz) so the plan is to do the same with this little one. I don’t want to have him on April Fools Day, but we’ll pick a day soon after that.
I love being induced. Obviously I don’t know any different, but it’s right up my planner personality. I love that I wake up in the morning and know – today I’m going to have my baby. My bags are packed, house is in order, out of town parents are in town to help, Kenny has arranged his work schedule so he can be there. And I feel ready and anxious and excited. Guess I’ll never exclaim “I think my water just broke!” in the middle of a restaurant (which always looks so exciting in the movies), but I’m ok with that. I’m a planner.
This baby is moving around so much and I LOVE it. It’s a constant reminder to me that everything is ok.
I’ve gained 20 pounds so far. Good times.
I’m always hot. Kenny and I are sleeping under separate covers because I can’t stand our heavy blanket.
I’m not quite as hungry as I have been the past few months. I feel full for at least 45 minutes now instead of 10. Rootbeer sounds good all the time – full or not.
I miss sleeping on my back.
Because of my first trip to the ER I was put on “pelvic rest” (great term) and couldn’t exercise. My doctor told me I could start exercising again just in time for my second trip to the ER over Christmas. My knee still isn’t completely healed and this has been the longest time I have ever gone without exercising. I miss it. I really miss it. I miss aerobics. I miss my treadmill. I miss my workout mix on my ipod. I miss the regulars at the gym. I miss the kids club. I miss that 45 minutes of sweaty me time that made me feel good the rest of the day. Very much looking forward to being able to exercise again.
I’m puffy. I’ve entered the retaining water stage and everything is getting swollen. My feet, my fingers, my face. I so despise this part of the third trimester. Like it’s not enough to be gaining weight in every part of my body – but my face too? Can’t I just keep my face the way it is? Can’t I just look in the mirror in the morning and have one thing look normal? Apparently not.
My back is really starting to hurt. Especially by the end of the day. Back pain during the third trimester is the hardest thing for me about being pregnant. I feel lucky that back pain is the worst of it, but still, not fun. It’s getting a lot harder to do things like bathe the girls and bend over to wash their hair. They might not smell as good as they usually do during the next two months. :)
Speaking of my girls, they are so excited about this baby. They talk about him and to him non-stop. I seem to have little hands on my stomach all day long. This baby boy will have three mommys and more love and attention than he’ll know what to do with.
So…two more months. I can do that. We are all anxiously awaiting this little guy’s arrival!
This week we’ve been missing the rain. Last weeks’ showers were a nice change from our always sunny always the same weather. Plus kids look so cute in their brightly colored rain gear. I love taking Addie to preschool and seeing all the fun patterned rain boots lined up.
Rain boots make great accessories, even with ballet tights.
Although it’s nice when your rain gear actually fits.
BUT…not much rain this week. Nope. It’s been nice and sunny… again. I took this picture at Ellie’s school when I went to see her become “Star Student of the Week” for her birthday.
She made an ‘All About Me’ poster that she was awfully proud of.
It included some of her favorite things, one of her least favorite things (snow), what she wants to be when she grows up (a whale trainer at SeaWorld), and a picture of our family. And no, we aren’t a family with exceptionally large ears…those are our shirt sleeves.
She had fun sharing her poster, making a b-day crown, and being the line leader.
She also had fun sharing the Valentines/Birthday cupcakes we made the class.
This week we’ve started getting out some of our Valentines Day decor. It’s easy to make my house look festive during Christmas and Valentines because I already decorate with so much RED. Love it.
This week I have been amazed that my red Target rug from this post is still holding up so great.
This week the girls have been racing around in pillowcases,
and playing a whole lot of “restaurant.” They’ve been serving up all kinds of yummy food like (quoted by Ellie) “hot chocolate stew which tastes just like hot chocolate only a little more cakey.” If you count all of the fake food I’ve been shoveling in I can pretty much say that this week I’ve been eating non-stop. A good friend of mine (who must really really love me) brought me several Cadbury Eggs this week. I love Cadbury Eggs and as this post shows, if they are in my cupboard I have an incredibly hard time resisting the urge to eat them all. I didn’t do so well resisting the other day and when I was down to one egg left I decided it best to just eat it as well and conceal all evidence that they had even been around. This way Kenny wouldn’t see it and wonder if there had once been more. Made sense at the time.
Then I felt so guilty for eating all the eggs in one day that I decided to have just broccoli for dinner. Baby Kole didn’t like that combination too much.
…is going to be a really good thing.
Our good good friends from Utah, Ryan and Josie, came for a much anticipated visit to help us celebrate Ellie’s birthday. Kenny and Ryan have been best friends since High School and Josie and I hit it off from day one. Plus our kids are the same ages and get along great. Doesn’t get any better than that! Pierson (their 6 year old son) and Ellie are best buddies and all she wanted for her birthday this year was to go to Disneyland with Pierson. She was so excited for them to come that she spent the week before drawing all sorts of pictures for them and talking non-stop about everything we would be doing for her birthday. It was like Christmas round two! Ellie has learned from her mother the skillful art of milking your birthday for all it’s worth and then some. :)
Addison was clearly just as excited as Ellie to have our friends for a visit.
We decided to hit SeaWorld while they were here too. We never get tired of the place. Clearly.
{Kiddos on our way to church} Sunday was a fun day in between the theme park days. We relaxed at home together, celebrated Ellie’s birthday, had a BBQ and let the kids play play play while we talked talked talked. I love days like that.
We got hotel rooms and spent two days at Disneyland. I think the kids had just as much fun playing in the hotel rooms with their new toys as they did at the park!
We had heard that the two days we were going to be in Disneyland were going to be full of rain. More rain than Southern California had seen since 1950! Massive downpours. So we were prepared. We packed rain gear for everyone and hoped for the best. It definitely rained on us, but it ended up being the best thing ever. The park cleared out and we were walking on all of the rides. I’ve never seen the lines so short! The kids had fun splashing around in the rain and when it got really bad, we headed to our hotel for a break and then came back to an empty park when the sun came out. I’ve decided that all Disneyland trips need to be planned during rain storms.
I know. We’ve seen the princesses probably ten times this year, but it’s usually a 1-2 hour line to meet them and there was NOBODY waiting. Just us and them. The girls were in princess heaven.
The Monsters ride at California Adventure is another ride the girls love. Because there was no line we went on it again and again and again…
Small World was still decked in Christmas decor which was a fun change. Made me wish it was Christmas again.
Such a fun four days spent with friends! We had the best time. Such a great time that I wish we could do it all over again for my birthday. Which is in 47 days. (not that I’m counting) 
My sweet Ellie turned six yesterday. We have spent the last four days celebrating with good friends and have partied non stop! She had a great birthday and is so excited to be six years old. Mom, on the other hand is not so excited. We got home from Disneyland last night and once the girls were in bed I started to cry and didn’t stop for a long time. Partly because our fun party was over, partly because I’m ridiculously hormonal right now, but mostly because Ellie is growing up way too fast and I want her to stop. Ellie is all the best parts of me and Kenny and there is nothing that beats being her mom. If I could freeze her in time right now I would. I would spend the rest of my life listening to her play pretend with her barbies and stuffed animals, watching her take care of her little sister Addison, hanging her creative artwork all over the walls, and listening to her laughter that fills our house every day. In 2004 (our first year with Ellie) Kenny and I started sending out Christmas cards. That’s also the year I started saving all of the cards I received from family and friends. I LOVED having pictures of so many loved ones and I wanted to keep them. Now (six years later) my card collection was getting out of control. I knew I couldn’t keep everything so I came up with this solution. Each year I’m going to pick a handful of cards and scrap them (one layout per year). I took the pictures off of the cards and cropped them and then arranged them around making a little collage of sorts. I tried to use different families each year so that at one point I’ll have everyone we receive cards from in our Christmas album. Here’s how they turned out…
I kept it simple so it’s easy to do each year. This honestly didn’t take me long at all and I’m so excited to finally have a solution for what to do with my cards! I’m trying to decide if I should type each families name on a little square to put on each picture or just leave them like they are. Anyway, thought I’d share this idea in case any of you are like me and don’t want to part with Christmas cards, but can’t keep saving them all either! I love that now they will be out in our Christmas album each December for our family to remember and enjoy along with pictures of our past Christmases. The best way for us to stay in touch! Sign up for my newsletter so you’ll never miss a post! You’ll also gain access to all of my home and organization printables.
