mycharity: water

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This week is always a week of reflection for what I am thankful for.  God’s grace never ceases to amaze me and we could never thank Him enough for all of our many, many blessings.  It is so easy to get caught up in all the things that we don’t have living in a materialistic society, until the holidays approach and everywhere you turn, there are people asking for help.  This is the first year of my life that I honestly cannot think of one thing I want for my birthday or Christmas.  It’s not because I have everything, but because I don’t need anything.  This year I have so much to be thankful for, but here are a few specifics…

My relationship with God that continues to grow.

A wonderful, loving husband that is pretty easy on the eyes.

A precious little 4 year old that loves to pretend like she is pregnant.

My wild little Slowla that loves to color all over herself.

Another precious baby on the way to complete our family.

Good health.  (this is big in the eyes of a hypochondriac)

A messy house full of love and memories.

A great church where we grow and build relationships.

An awesome family and friends that we love so much and could not manage without.

Last, but not least, Zofran and a heating pad.  I would not be able to function without the two lately.

We hope your Thanksgiving is full of good food and love!  We are off to the farm for a few days and then to my Nana’s on Saturday so I will post pics when we get back!

We have had so much Fall fun the past few weeks.  The weather has been wonderful, most days, and there are so many fun things for kids to do leading up to Halloween.  We visited the Pumpkin Patch, we went to our churches Fall Festival, the girls had Fall parties at school and we planned for the biggest 1 and 2 year old birthday party you have ever seen!  Their party invitation read…Two little pumpkins sitting in a patch.  One named Lola, the other named Jack.  Jack said to Lola, “How do you do?”  Lola then said, “I’m turning two!”  Jack then shouted with all his might, “I’m turning one on Halloween night!”

Lola just turned 2 and her cousin Jack is a Halloween baby so we had a combined party for the two little pumpkins.  We had it outside at my parents house in the country where the kids enjoyed the coolest bounce house there ever was, chili cheese dogs, smores and pumpkin spice cupcakes and a candy bar.  We all sat outside on hay-bails and enjoyed all the kids in their cute Halloween costumes!  Here are a lot of random pics from the past few weeks!

My sister and I were the "Mummies" to the pumpkins!

It’s official, I do not have a baby anymore.  My sweet, cuddly, loving baby Lo has turned in to Miss Independence.  We have been working for weeks on teaching her how to hold out two fingers and say that she is two.  No luck on the fingers part, until this morning.  We woke her up for school and asked her how old she was and she held up the ‘rock on’ fingers and said, “I’m 2!”  Now she is a two year old rock star, which fits her personality to a tee.  After school we loaded up the girls and headed to the State Fair.  The weather was perfect.  It was in the low 60’s, with a cool breeze and cloudless sky.  We had so much fun!

Here are some random facts about Lola…

*She has a fantastic vocabulary, is speaking in sentences, and we can tell what she says about 95% of the time.

*She is still a complete daredevil and tests her physical boundaries on a daily basis.

*She crawls in and out of her bed with ease.

*She insists on doing EVERYTHING “all by myself”.  (this includes dressing and undressing herself about 15 times a day, which is slowly killing me)

*She is in 3T clothes.

*When she gets a spanking, she hits us back.

*She is not a fan of the dentist.

*She is in love with her paci and bunkie.

*She is the slowest moving child that ever was and does EVERYTHING at her own pace, no matter what kind of coaxing we try to get her to move a little faster.  Keith started calling her Slowla.

*She never meets a stranger, will walk up to anyone and introduce all of us to them.

*She colors on anything besides paper, and has some nice artwork all over our house.  Like on the couch, some walls, her sheets, a chair, baby dolls etc.

*She is adorable and makes us laugh all day everyday.

Here are some recent pictures with our crappy camera, so please don’t judge the quality!  Our “fancy” camera is on the outs for some reason.

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Keith and I recently went back to Las Vegas for a little get away.  One of Keith’s clients had a big trade show there and offered to take us, so we jumped on it!  I love Las Vegas.  It is one of those places that you just have to visit on a regular basis.  The shopping is incredible, the food is magnificent, the shows are unbelievable and the hotels are like nothing you will see anywhere else in the US.  We had a blast, but unfortunately only got a few pictures.  We were too busy to remember to take any.  If any of you are going anytime soon I would definitely recommend seeing Cirque du Soleil Love and eating sushi at Yellowtail in the Bellagio.

Thursday was a big day at our house.  Sophia went to Pre-K and Lola started Mother’s Day Out!  I had debated on whether or not to start Lola this year.  Having one on one time with her every Tuesday would have been a lot of fun, but she is definitely ready for some fun with friends her age.  It was so funny to see so many Mom’s dropping off their 1st child for the 1st time.  Most of the kids were fine, most of the Mom’s were crying.  I remember getting a little teary eyed when I dropped Sophia off two years ago.  My how things change with your second child!  I expected her to cry, as she did, but this time it did not bother me.  I know now that even though a new place is a little scary, she will stop crying within minutes and forget I exist until I come to pick her up.  Being a more experienced Mom brings such a peace on days like Thursday.

Both girls woke up very excited.  They got dressed, threw on their new backpacks and were ready to go!  They even let us take several pictures before loading up.  Sophia did great, walked right into her class, found her cubby, sat in her seat and basically told us to leave.  My how she has changed in such a short amount of time.  I am not quite sure how I feel about her independence?  Lola clung to me for dear life and screamed bloody murder, but was smiling and playing with her new friends when I came to pick her up.

We are so grateful for both sets of teachers this year.  They are all so very sweet and have a heart for what they do.  I cannot wait to see how much they learn and grow over this school year!

Lola and Jack will be celebrating their birthdays next month!  Last weekend my sister came in and we attempted to get a good picture of the two of them for their birthday invitation.  Out of about 120 pictures, there were only a couple where they were actually looking at the camera and smiling.  Look at these little pumpkins…

and here we all are eating dinner afterward…

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Lola is very in to “fixing” her own hair and picking out her own clothes.  You should see some of the things that we let her walk out of the house in!  I keep telling myself that she is just discovering her independence and that this phase will pass, hopefully.

So this past Friday we were at a friends birthday party outside when Sophia started complaining about her toe hurting.  It looked normal so I just figured she stepped on something or maybe got an ant bite.  She kept complaining and then started crying and within minutes had a swollen foot, her face and ears were bright red, hives all over her body and swollen lips.  We gave her a dose of Benadryl and decided to take her to the ER.  By the time we got there the medicine had started to sink in and she was looking a little better and 2 little ant bites had appeared on her foot.  The doctor said that it looked like a food allergy, but would recommend getting allergy tested and an epipin to carry around.  We will be visiting the allergist next week to start this process which I assume will be miserable for her.  Hopefully we will find out what it is so that we can protect her from it, and hopefully it is not the ant bites because that would be near impossible to prevent as much as we play outside.

Last week Lola started cutting her 2 year molars which has been loads of fun.  Neither of the girls have ever had any problems cutting teeth, until now.  She is fussy, her nose will not quit running, she drools more fluids than she will take in and has had the nastiest diapers I have ever changed.  Hopefully this will not be a long process so that she can get back to her spunky self.

The girls start Mothers Day Out and Pre-K next week and Sophia is so excited about it!  She has been practicing writing all her letters over and over again so that she can show her teachers.  She gets frustrated when she writes her last name because it is not as neat as her first (already a perfectionist).     I want to say, “Sweetie, you are probably the only one that can even write your name, so don’t worry about it”, but instead we just practice over and over and over again.

As for Keith and I, we are doing great and staying very busy!  We took the house off the market, so some home renovations are about to start.  Nothing big, just some rearranging and hopefully new floors!  We are working on the girls new room together so I am really excited to see how all of our decorating ideas turn out, and to see if they will actually sleep in the same room together?  We have another trip to Las Vegas planned in October which we are so looking forward to.   Then Lola and baby Jack’s birthday party on Halloween, and by then it will be time for the holidays again!

We hope you are all doing well and I will keep you posted on Sophia’s allergy testing!  Your prayers are always appreciated!

So I am going to be one of “those Mom’s” and talk about my girls for one entire post.  One, because they are pretty darn adorable, and two, I have nothing else to blog about.  (I am working on my 10 favorite things for Fall, but I am stuck on 9 & 10)  Anyway, here’s a little bit about Miss Sophia…

Since having her tonsils and adenoids out, she is a different child.  She falls asleep fast, she sleeps all night in her bed and she wakes up refreshed and energized.  Don’t get me wrong, we still have those dreaded “Emily Rose” fits on occasion but they are definitely fewer and farther between.  She will be entering Pre-K this year and is very excited about it.  She loves school and loves learning new things.  This will be a big year in helping me make my decision on whether or not to send her to kindergarten next year.  Sophia still remembers EVERYTHING, and is a great help to me when I have misplaced my belongings due to my lack of organization skills.  She loves her little sister and is very protective of her, although she does often put her in danger by telling her to do things that Sophia would never do in order to find out what happens.  She is an excellent listener, a wonderful rule follower and is becoming a little too independent for my liking.  She loves to sing and cannot wait until she is old enough to take music lessons.  Sophia is a nurturer, a fantastic helper, funny, bossy, lovable little girl that makes us so very proud!

Then there is Lola…

I don’t even know where to start with Lola.  She could not be any more different from her sister if she tried.  I think that she was supposed to be a boy that likes to play with baby dolls.  She is rough, tough, wild, crazy, loud, dirty, messy, energetic and has the shortest attention span of any child I have seen.  She loves her sister more than anything and will do ANYTHING Sophia asks her to do, even if it means her getting in trouble.  There is no form of punishment that I have found effective with her and she looks like an orphan about 99% of the time.  I am pretty sure that she cannot feel pain, because she manages to get some type of injury on a daily basis and never even cries over any of them.  She thinks she can swim, even though she cannot…at all.  All of her craziness aside, she is the sweetest little lover you will ever meet.  She still loves to be held and cuddled (which is probably the only thing keeping me from getting the baby itch). Lola will talk to anyone, hug them, kiss them and tell them she loves them even if she has never seen them before.  She has a deep, husky voice and an incredible vocabulary for a 22 month old.  She is obsessed with shoes and will steal yours the second you take them off.  Lola will be starting Mothers Day Out next month, so please say a prayer that she will not hurt any of her classmates.

It was time for our annual family pictures and this year we used Lauren Larsen to capture us in action.  Keith had wanted to use her for awhile because she has such a unique style of photography, as you will see in the following pics…