Happy New Year

Yet again, another unintended hiatus from blogging. You know, I plan to blog regularly and I do really well with it for awhile and then something comes up and I miss a day. Or two. Or a week. And the longer that I break from it, the harder it is for me to come back from it. I wait for the perfect project or the right theme to come back to or whatever. And that frustrates me. I don't need a theme or a project to blog. I just need to take a few minutes whenever I want to and just sit down and write something. Funny, I shouldn't have to give myself permission to skip a day without feeling guilty. Yet, that's the way that I feel. I'll work on it though. :)

Well, I have lots to tell you all about to catch you up with life as we know it. Cephas is now a full-ranked Boy Scout. He has had his Court of Honor and received his ranks and is ready to begin working on his Merit Badges. Way to go Cephas! He has also developed a major passion for photography, film-making, production and videos.

Koren's birthday was October 6th (the day AFTER my last post here) and my brother-in-law married his fiancee that day. They had an absolutely beautiful wedding and a great reception - during which all the guests sang Happy Birthday to Koren. He also received his own personal birthday cake (made by the caterer). It was wonderful! He was embarrassed but he loved the attention too. And sweet boy that he is, he maintained that the best birthday gift this year was his newly acquired Aunt.

Oralee. Wow, she was all sassy and spice the last time I blogged about her and she has now settled down quite a bit into a very sweet and mostly compliant, helpful and caring person. She has also gone very girly girl in a not-so-little girl way. Not that she's six going on sixteen or anything like that. But she's honing in on her own personality more and her own sense of style. She prefers her hair long and curly (and she has very straight hair!) and she prefers leggings and wearing long layers that can mix and match to the little girl cutesie matching outfits. I hope that makes sense. She's just so much older in some ways than she was just a few months ago.

And then there is Jeriah. He is excelling wonderfully at school. It is just amazing how much he has changed and how far he has gone academically. No matter how much we questioned whether we were doing the right thing with him in regards to enrolling him in Kindergarten a year early, I am absolutely certain that we made the best choice for him. He loves it! He's reading on a mid-first grade level or maybe slightly higher. His math skills are around the same level. He has even done his sister's homework for her. (I thought it was an extra, skipped over on purpose lesson from school but apparently, it was Oralee's current homework assignment and she was VERY offended that Jeriah had done her homework!) His social skills are coming along quite nicely as well. We have all noticed some instances of him "scripting" some behaviors of other children. But as long as we can nip that one in the bud, we should be fine. Thankfully, he has an amazingly wonderful teacher and he'd had an amazing practicum student from the university working with him as well (she is gone now, though, and he misses her.)

Hubby's job is going well and all that. I'm still babysitting for his co-workers, although not nearly as frequently as I had been. Angel's mom and dad have gotten back together and now her dad is working at the same place as Angel's mom. Their schedules are mostly opposite, so they haven't needed me to babysit and the best part is that Angel spends her time with at least one of her parents.

I have an interview set up to meet with someone about taking care of her son part-time in her home while she is working. It's a great set-up. She lives close to me, the hours she needs me are while my children are in school and she has another provider as well for the opposite days who is able to be flexible and switch with me for days that my kids don't have school. I'm excited to meet both the mom and her son later this week. Hopefully, it's as good of a fit as it seems to have been so far via messages and such.

But for the most part, I'm really digging this stay-at-home mom thing. I'm getting better about keeping up with all of the daily tasks. The biggest thing has been consistency with the kids' chores and bedrooms and for me doing my daily and weekly tasks. I still struggle (constantly!) with laundry, but I'm pretty sure that I can overcome that issue soon.

I also had a huge lightbulb moment the other day while looking at some newly-acquired cookbooks to have the family sit down together once a month - most likely the last Monday of the month - to have each person look through and pick out at least two main dishes and two side dishes and one dessert to try out that month. I figure that would provide us with at least twelve full meals, so that would also alleviate the pain of trying to menu plan. Plus, if it is something that they pick out and choose for the family to eat, the kids are going to be more willing to try new foods and new recipes. Then, at the end of the new meal, we'll determine if we liked the recipe. If it was a hit, it will get written into my recipe book that contains all of our favorite recipes. If it wasn't so hot, I'll put a sticky note in the book that we tried it, when we tried it and note who didn't like it. Or something like that. Because our kids' tastes change so quickly, six months down the road, whatever ingredient they didn't like in the dish may be something that they now just LOVE. For instance, in the past few months, Jeriah has decided that he doesn't like ketchup, but that he loves mustard. A lot. His cheeseburgers? Mustard only. 100% of the time. No ketchup, no pickles, no onion. Just mustard only.

Okay, well that was a really random hodgepodge post about nothing and everything all at once. But hopefully, I'll get back to a more rhythmic timing on my posts. Until next time!

Wedding Prep - Flower Girl Dress Shopping - Take 1

As promised, I am back with photos from the dress shopping for a flower girl dress. I have decided that I am going to use this photo (to the left) in every post about the wedding. Because it is a picture that the bride-to-be loves and is a flower that she had wanted to use in her wedding until she discovered that the image was a created one, not a photograph.



 But moving on to the pictures now. I cropped the pictures down to just the dress which is something that I wish I had thought of doing before. It really allows me to see each dress individually instead of looking at the smile that my daughter is surprisingly NOT wearing in most of the photos. You'll have to trust me on this. She was tired and hungry and a little bit shy. Which apparently adds up to not smiling when the camera is near her. Away from the camera, she was bouncing and skipping and twirling. Children.

Okay, this is the dress that we are most in love with at this point. It's gorgeous. And the beading on the sash really closely matches the beading on the bride's dress. I am in love with this dress and am really hoping that this is the one that we end up choosing. In the end, it's up to the bride, but at this point, she is also in love with this dress. I will just have to remind her how much we love this dress when we go to look at other ones. We are planning on shopping other stores over the next few months to have Oralee try on dresses and decide which one we absolutely love.

Oh and yes, you do see a veil in the back of this photo. My mother-in-law was holding it above Oralee's head and trying to get her to smile for the picture. But obviously, Oralee will NOT be wearing a veil (although I totally think she could...)

  

This is another dress that we liked quite a bit. I personally love the thick piping around the bottom hem of the tulle, but my mother-in-law and future sister-in-law were not fans of it and that's okay too. Especially since we are all smitten with the dress above.

One other thing that I liked quite a bit about this dress was the sash. It is tulle material but it has a bow and is decorative. When we took the dress off the rack, the bow was in the front center, but the sash is totally removable and when I put it on Oralee, I positioned it to the side to see how it looked and I quite like the look of it that way.






Due to multiple clothing changes, Oralee's hair got quite static-y and I brushed it and was going to put it up in a pony tail to try and alleviate that problem, but no one had a pony tail holder with them. I didn't even have my wallet with me. I was really flying by the seat of my pants! So in a pinch, I did what I could with Oralee's hair, which was a bun with her hair pulled through to secure it. It lasted until the next outfit change and then it was down again. Of course, I couldn't get it back up again after that, but I just loved the way her hair looked so I had to take a picture. I think I am going to do her hair like this more often. How cute is that?!

We had other dresses that we tried on, but I only took pictures of the ones that we liked the best. Lots more dresses to come though! Brace yourself! You will be seeing a LOT of wedding between now and then! :)

Wedding Prep...

My brother-in-law is getting married next year to the most amazing woman. Dan and Jess have been dating for three or four years now and I am so excited for their upcoming wedding! I had been hoping for a couple of years that he'd just propose already and then last year (I believe) he finally did!

So, now we are on to wedding prep. I get to be a part of it, which is super cool to me. Hubby and I didn't have a wedding, so I missed out on all the fun festivities that Jess is planning. And my little Oralee is the flower girl. Tomorrow, we meet with a florist and a bakery and start shopping for flower girl dresses. Of course, we won't actually buy the dress until next year when they are getting married, because Oralee is only five right now and will likely change sizes by then.

I am just so far beyond excited about this whole thing! Jess is amazing and I love her to pieces! She is my sister, even though she hasn't yet become my sister-in-law. We don't hang out (we live about 50 miles apart and we don't travel each other's way very often) but we get along supremely well!

Next year, they are getting married on Koren's ninth birthday. He is ecstatic about it! I mean, how could he not be? He gets to be a part of a HUGE party on his birthday (it isn't his party, but he gets to go to it), he gets to dress up, he gets to stay up late, and he gets his first aunt! ♥ Love that boy!

Hubby has two younger brothers, I have one younger brother. We have no sisters. Jess is greatly needed! :)

And tomorrow, we shop! Can't wait! May even have some pictures to show for it.