The beginnings of a remodel....

Here is the room when we started (except we had started clearing some stuff out already before I remembered to take pictures).







Little miss took the opportunity for a tea party with Betsy using a picnic basket we got for our wedding LOL.

Let the painting party begin - the dogs were in a constant state of observing and fear that they were being left behind or something - they were constantly underfoot .... they were exhausted by the end of the weekend! LOL

It's starting to come together. Mikayla was organizing/playing as we moved in.

Getting closer......

Here's the closet :) I love the big closets we have, it holds all the clutter! Even the market fits in there!

I highly recommend the stuffed animal chain if you have a lot of animals or "parts"... they have a place to hang where they can be seen and up off the floor and out of a bin.

here are my clearance Target bins :)

Her little library..

She calls her porcelain dolls her "important" dolls, here are some of them. These were all my sisters dolls that she had collected and I have some more to add to Mikaylas stash of dolls too. :)

Here's her old room.... :( I'm sad to take her nursery apart

I wasn't going to show this...but seriously - why does cleaning up/painting make such a mess!!!! The huge mess in this room is driving me seriously insane but it doesn't really make sense to move it back into the room it will go in, just to move it out again to paint...just to move it back in again...ya know!

I then took this little table.....

and revamped it to look like this..... (fun bedside table, right?)

Here we are so far... there are still some fun things to do in there, I have a shelf to hang, pictures to make, flowers to put back up, a ballet bar to add in... and don't forget some tea sets :) when it's all done, I'll take some new pictures.

oh....and the final verdict.... Mikayla LOVE LOVE LOVES her new room.... I do too, I can't wait to get it done and make it a little girls dream come true :)

Little Flower Girls Club

What fun we had at our little club meeting. This is a mother/daughter club at church where we (the kids) craft/learn/sing and there is a list of qualifications to meet each month to earn "petals" for their flower patches. We went to our first meeting on Friday and had a blast. There are about 25 little girls (and their mom's) participating.

Here she is all ready to get going on her first assignment.

She worked very hard. The virtue for this month is Friendliness :) here she is making a special card for someone who means a lot to her.

Here they're singing and learning the moves to the song.

It really was fun. I'm looking forward to getting to know the ladies and their beautiful daughters :)

Howdy Pardner!

Good Morning (says our little cow girl). She has decided that since it's fall now...it's cool outside so she needs to wear her jeans/boots.... (usually a sweater/sweatshirt too) I guess that's what happens when you get used to 100+ degree weather and drop into the 80s.... LOL

We did a small tour and ended up going here for dinner.....

Isn't that hysterical - we weren't going to go in but then there were soooo many people that we decided to give it a try and boy are we glad we did. It was fantastic!! We will go back for sure.

Sunday we had our friend come over to play for awhile (all the guys went to the football game)!!

Here are the two girls, what fun they had!!! I hope D had fun too becuase I know that M did.

Here was snack time and a movie ;) they played and played and played. It was sooo great and you wouldn't believe the amount of work I got done too. My "helper" was otherwise occupied so I was able to get some much needed jobs done :)

They loved the idea of being twins....so naturally they got to have matching shirts...and seriously - I couldn't help myself!!! Little girls are a lot of fun!!

Next weekend - home remodel (well just painting but doesn't remodel sound awesome!) ;) Have a great week!

6 years ago....

6 years ago - my Mom left this world to go to heaven
6 years ago - I was 30 weeks pregnant with our precious Mikayla that my little momma didn't get to meet
6 years ago - I lost one of my life long best friends

I'm so thankful she was my mom and I learned so much from her. Her gentle ways...I find myself thinking a lot about her and how she made parenting seem so easy - if she was as tired at the end of the day as I am...I never knew it.

I am so happy we had the time we did - I really cherish it now. I cherish the silly jokes - remember the laugh attacks - love the memories of it all.



My dad painted us all these shirts...he wanted his girls to match.... now all three hang in my closet.

I wouldn't trade it for the world - just wish that we had more time.... so anyone reading this.... hug your moms, sisters, friends....loved ones tight...because the time goes fast!

Focus on making good memories not worrying about the bad ones.

I really try to do that with Mikayla - do I go overboard on some things...absolutely..... but ohhhh what fun we have!!!

I can't believe it's been 6 years...it's amazing how fast the time goes.

Seriously......

Well....I know we all have to do it... but I really thought this was ridiculous!! We have officially dubbed Monday's as "Move Out Monday".... this is all the gear I need in order to leave the house.... (ignore the cords in the background - we had a bunch of stuff charging) - but we have nap mat, back pack, dance bag (all stocked full of necessary items and lunch/snacks/drinks)... my work bag - grocery sack for the week, lunch, and purse (of course daily to go coffee cup) ... it takes multiple trips to get to the car LOL!

WOW Rockin Weekend

We had a GREAT weekend. It was so nice to be able to enjoy a great boat ride AND get some stuff done around the house, I have quite a project list that we need to tackle and FAST!

Here are some "action" shots - I was trying to capture the splash when we hit the waves.... it really was a great ride- we were probably going around 6 knots with just one sail up, had we put the other one up I'm sure we'd go the max hull speed, it was windy out there!!!

We had such a good time!! After our sail we went to the pool for awhile to cool off, then showered and then went to dinner, we got home around 11:00 pm... oopsie... it was a great day - we couldn't stop!!!

You can see the white sticks sticking out of the water, they mark the oyster reef, there are two of them where we go play and seriously - they should mark it better than white sticks somehow because what if you were coming into the bay at night - and what if you didn't know the reef was there?



This is what Mikayla was doing during part of our ride - she got out her sleeping bag and laid down... well we were heeling over (tipping) with the wind and direction we were going...so she would slide.... she slid from here....

to here.......

to here.......

and over all the way to the wall...she slept through the whole thing (although I'm sure she was HOT with the jacket on too) - it was funny!!!

I took a little video of our ride (turn speakers down because all you hear is wind).

In this video, Mikayla wanted to do a "commercial" but again...turn speakers down because of the wind...

Here's our little cowgirl ready to go do our weekly grocery shopping Sunday evening! I love the boots!! It's her favorite shoe right now!

Rochester, New York

Do you ever think back to a time in your life where you can very honestly say OH WOW that was such a great time!!

When we lived in Rochester - it was awesome, we had Lake Ontario at our finger tips (complete with sail boat for daily rides all summer long), beautiful spring, summer and fall weather. We were soooooo happy living there. (Now I'm not at all suggesting that we're not happy here I'm just doing a little reminiscing and thinking back to some really great times).

The roads are awesome.... just imagine them all snow covered and wintery - beautiful!

Our Lake Ontario

When we were in New York in July, we made a point to drive back through Rochester.... and it made me realize again how awesome it was to live there.

Especially when we saw this....

It was Barry's Crescent Beach the day of our wedding reception. I don't know why but when we were there, it sure went into my memory bank and brought one of the most awesome days of my life back to the forefront.

Here is is now.... the most precious wedding reception spot in the world!

When I looked at this gazebo...


This is what I saw.... and felt...and remembered!

here we are - 13 years later

Here is the house we lived in....

again...this is what I saw and felt and relived when we drove past it.


We went to one of our favorite restaurants for dinner - we even sat in the same booth we used to sit in.



It was soooo good to be back there... so fun remembering... it was one of those moments/times in life that I would freeze frame it so that I don't ever forget, I'm glad we've moved and Texas has been very good to us, it was just really fun to go back in time for awhile and even more fun was that we got to take Mikayla with us and show her something incredibly special!