Harrison 1/2 Birthday

With Harrison's birthday falling just 3 days before Christmas, we decided this year to let him celebrate his 1/2 birthday as well. It's a long time to go without a special "him" celebration and it kinda stinks for him that he gets all his gifts/celebrating in just 3 days....then has to wait another 362 before it comes around again. To make it fair, we toned back his birthday in December and set aside some gift for June 22.

He certainly was counting down the days until the big day! We didn't celebrate like in December, but he did get to open some gifts. He opened his new scooter that afternoon so he'd have time to try it out. 

We had chocolate chip pancakes, bacon and cinnamon muffins for dinner as he requested. :) I think we all enjoyed that!!

Then he got to open a few more gifts -- Chipwrecked Movie, a new nightlight and the Toy Story 3 Dump.

We ended the day with chocolate cupcakes.

A few things about Harrison at 5 1/2....

He is still so so sweet. He loves to cuddle and snuggle with us. I keep waiting for him to outgrow that, but so far he's just as sweet and cuddly as ever. :)

He's gotten to be a better eater lately, although his favorite food is still hamburgers. He asks for them almost every day! He still will only drink chocolate milk, but will now eat plain milk in his cereal. His favorite cereal is what he calls his "special cereal" -- Special K fruit and yogurt. He is also such a funny eater -- he doesn't like anything combined, ie. casseroles, but he'll eat all the ingredients separately. For lunch, he likes turkey/ham, cheese and sandwich bread, but not all together in a sandwich. He'll eat them separately. It's going to make packing a school lunch interesting this fall. ;)

We found out Harrison has a peanut/tree nut allergy in December. We have epipens and benadryl that go everywhere with us. We've had to be much more diligent about what he eats -- nothing process near nuts or that "might" contain them.

Harrison loves to play and has such an imagination! Last week he'd taken legos and strung yarn between them to create power lines. Then his "mean guys" were getting electrocuted on them. Lovely, huh? His favorite things to play right now are -- toy story, cars, legos and wild animals. He's created zoos and worlds of his own out of blocks. His imagination is just incredible. He and Madeleine will haul up in one of their rooms and play and play, doing "stories" together that have such intricate plots to them. I love to listen to them and see what they will come up with next!

He loves to read. He's not reading yet, but still like for us to read to him. He's constantly asking me what a word means. He knows most of his letters, can write his name, can count as high as me and is soooo ready for kindergarten. At least, he's ready for the challenge, he doesn't want to go anymore. We'll see what happens when the actual day arrives.

His favorite phrase right now is "guess what" and I bet I hear it 597 times each day! He doesn't know a stranger and will talk to anyone.

He is very concerned with right and wrong. He's determined to be on "God's Team" as he calls it and is quick to tell his sisters when the are on the "devil's team." We actually rarely have to punish Harrison. He's has such a heart to do the right thing and is quick to take correction. I love his sweet and tender heart most about him. I pray that he will always have it.

He is such a good brother, especially considering that he has 2 sisters. He is so sweet with Charlotte most of the time. :) He will chase her around the house when she takes his stuff, but will never grab it back from her, even though he could. He's too worried he'll hurt her -- I think she's got him wrapped around her finger! He talks to her in the sweetest little voice and loves to tuck her in and kiss her goodnight. Charlotte is going to miss him this fall!! And, he and Madeleine play so well together. He's gotten pretty good at playing princesses, too. Ha! I think he'll make such a good husband/daddy one day because he'll be so used to being around girls.

He likes to get out an go and is my often companion at the grocery store or running errands. He's gotten to be such a good helper with that, and I'm going to miss him so much this fall!!

There are so many other things to write, but that's all I can think of right now. He's growing and changing everyday it seems. Growing up too fast right before my eyes!

Home Renovation {Part 2} Breakfast Room

Our biggest project so far has been the breakfast room. We decided that if we were going to do beige in the rest of the house, we'd like to put a splash of color on the walls in this room. Our house is very open and since you can see this room from the living room, I decided to do a green on the walls. We also decided to add bead board. It wasn't a super easy project, but it was fun to do and turned out so so pretty!

I don't have a great before picture (the pom-poms were left from Madeleine's birthday party)....but, it was dark, dark, dark....

 And, the after. It's like a whole new room! I love love love it! I was so much work, but oh-so worth it. It turned out even better that I'd imagined and Matt did such an amazing job -- with a bit of help from me. :)

 I bought the curtain fabric when we moved into the house. It was like $1/yard and I think I bought 20 yards. I used some and made short curtains, but decided to redo them and use the rest of my fabric and make long ones now.

 I repurposed one of the old short ones and made a curtain for my backdoor.

I think this might be my new favorite room! Matt is a super-star to me for using his (short) vacation time this summer to re-do our house! More pics, more rooms to come...

Home Renovation {Part 1} Master Bedroom/Bathroom

We have been, and still are, in the middle of doing some updates to our house. When we bought our house 4 years ago it was new but had sat empty for almost 2 years. Our first year was spent doing some of the things that had to be taken care of (gas line, dryer vent issues, etc.). Then Ph.D school started and Matt got so busy and we just put off doing the rest. Until this summer. I've been looking at paint samples for a year. We knew we wanted to paint the entire house, but I also knew that I had to pick a color that I love before committing to such a big project.

Our house has 5 different shades of brown in it. Five. Five. It's like the builder took the entire color strip of brown and just slapped it up all over the house. And, brown is just not my color. I'm more of a beige, yellow, green gal.

So, finally, I found my perfect color. It only took about 25 samples of beige/tan on our wall, over the course of a year to find it. :) But, now I'm one happy gal.

Our first project was our master bedroom/bath. The bathroom was sooooo dark. So, here are the before shots...

 And, the after. We painted one accent wall my favorite shade of blue.

 It made our bathroom seem bigger and brighter! Yay!

Then we moved on to the master. We upgraded to a king size bed in the process and, yes, it has changed my life. :) Now I think -- how did we ever survive in a queen!! ??

Master before....

 Master after...

I love our room now! I found the bedding at the last minute and it's exactly what I wanted.

Fabulous 4th

We had such a wonderul, relaxing 4th of July this year. We hung out at home, when to the pool and ended our day by grilling out and watching the kids play in the yard. Perfect in my eyes.

I did some little decorations for our table. 

 I also made this sparkler cake which the kids loved! It was so easy and turned out so cute that I think it will be a new tradition on the 4th. I topped it with sparkler candles and the kids loved watching those pop and sparkle!!

 I also did some red/white/blue strawberries which they gobbled up!

 We ended our night doing some sparklers in the yard. We are under a major burn ban right now, so sparklers were all we dared to try. :) And, while we didn't get to sit outside and watch the golf course owner do his cool fireworks display just behind our house because of the burn ban, it was nice to go to sleep at a decent hour and not be constantly awakened by the boom-boom of the night owls out there celebrating. Ha!

Cousin Fun!

Ryan, Jamie, Emery & Garner came to visit us at the end of June and what a fun time we had with them here! My kids were thrilled to have their cousins at our house for a visit -- and Matt & I felt the same. :) We had a fun filled couple of days....played in the blow up, ate at Red Robin, got some deals at Old Navy, and hit the pools.

Thursday when they got here, Matt was still at work. We had some lunch and then the kiddos played on the blowup until naptime. Just thinking about Garner going down that big ol' slide still makes me smile. And, Madeleine, Emery & Harrison played so nice together. Emery is such a little mother with Charlotte -- who loved all that attention! 

 

 

 After dinner that night we went back to their hotel to swim. Before we knew it -- it was after 10pm and the kids were still going strong. :)

 The next day we hit our pool and then everyone but me and Garner went out to the driving range to hit golf balls....I think I see some future family golf outing when we're all together. Maybe I need to pick up golf?? So, Garner and I chilled at the house. He is such a sweetie! We sat and read books and before I knew it he was asleep.

 Loved that snuggle time with my nephew!

We had such a great visit! Can't wait to see you guys again!

Father's Day 2012

We celebrated Matt in fine style this year for Father's day! The weekend started off with Matt going to play golf with some buddies from church on Saturday morning. I hadn't been feeling good, and by the time he got home I was ready to head to the doctor. Thankfully we have a weekend clinic close to us and I was given lots of good meds. Note to self: don't let a sinus infection go untreated. I was so stinkin' sick! They sent me home with a Z-pack, Zyrtec for 14 days, Mucinex for 7 day, nasal spray and tylenol. I was loopy by that evening. :)

On Sunday, Matt took the kids to church and let me get rested and feeling better. After dropping them off when church was over, he headed to the office to finish up work on his PD sessions that started the next day. While he was gone the kids and I went to work getting ready for his big dinner. Matt had decided earlier in the week that he wanted to repeat what I'd done on Mother's day -- a big dinner at home that night.

By the time Matt got home at 6, we were ready! The kids had helped set the table. Madeleine and Harrison had each filled out a little sheet where they answered questions about their dad. They gave that to him as we sat down for dinner. We had steak and chicken, rosemary roasted potatos, salad, corn on the cobb and bread. For dessert, Matt asked for his favorite ice cream dessert. YUM!

 The kids were soooo excited to give Matt his gifts! Charlotte got him a new travel Razorback mug.

 Harrison picked him out a new golf shirt.

 And Madeleine got him a new mug to replace his favorite one that had broken a couple of weeks earlier. I added a pound of his favorite coffee (that we can't buy here) and a new CD.

I hope he had as great of a day as we had planning it! We are so blessed to have such a wonderful Daddy that works so hard for our family!

Catching Up

Summer is official flying by and I'm so behind on keeping up with what all we've been doing! I guess that means we've been busy and having lots of fun!! And, we sure have. I have tons of pictures. :)



We've been spending lots of time at the pool again this year. Madeleine is finally swimming on her own and Harrison is well on his way. He can get around with just arm floaties. We've been trying to go for a bit in the morning and then again after Charlotte's nap. The weather has been so hot the past week or so --- and we've been the only people at the pool most of the time! Crazy! But, it is kinda nice to have it all to ourselves and it makes it much easier to keep an eye on the kids when I'm by myself.

 The second week in June, I helped out another parent from our school and watched her 2nd grader for the week. It was certainly a busy week with 4 kiddos full time and Matt working long hours, but Madeleine loved having a classmate here with her during the week. Courtney was a great swimmer and we spent many hours at the pool that week!

 Harrison is all over the place in the pool now. He and Madeleine play so well together at the pool and are so sweet in include Charlotte in their play when they can.

 This year we bought Charlotte a Puddle Jumper and it has saved my sanity! She can go all over in it and I just have to stay right by her -- but she's not actually hanging on me. She loves loves loves to jump in off the side and then I can turn her around and give her a push back to the stairs and we do it all over again. And, again. And, again. Madeleine and Harrison love to hold her hands and take her around the pool in this! She can also wade in and "swim" herself over to the stairs. She's so much happier with this new independence.