day 2: books and a fall

Marley would read literally all day long if she could.  She will always ask for "one more book" before bedtime or quiet time.  She is starting to sound out words and has a lot of interest in what each word says.  One of her favorite places to be is the library.  I have to stop her from grabbing 20 books to bring home with us.  I hope her love for reading only continues to grow as she does.

Vivi is usually really good on the playground and every time we go, she gets a little more independent.  So, I trusted her enough to crawl up the steps of the playground yesterday while I turned around to watch Marley do a trick.  I turned back to Vivi with just enough time to see her land face first on the ground.  Luckily she only scratched her nose and cried for a moment until she saw Marley going somewhere exciting.

Oh, and I realized today that she is getting 2 molars!  That explains the not sleeping lately.

365 project

I started a new project today.  It's a big project.  A picture of each girl, every day for an entire year.

There are a few reasons I want to do this.

First, I want the pictures and memories that this will provide me with.  I want to remember special things the girls do and I want them to have these memories to look back on.

Secondly, it will encourage me to get out my camera every day and take pictures of something.  Most days, my camera sits alone and I want to be using it more.  This will hopefully help me learn to use it better and help the creative juices flow.

Lastly, I think it will be fun!

I will probably not be able to post them every single day, but I will take them every day and may end up posting several days worth at a time.

Join us!

day 1: sleeping perfection

Neither of them are good sleepers.  Neither of them are easy to get to sleep.  Neither of them stay asleep all night.  Neither of them are easy to cuddle up next to because they move around too much. 

But, gosh darn it, they are absolutely precious when they sleep and I can't stop photographing it.  Perfect girls.

some of our favorite moments from michigan

 

Over Labor Day weekend, our little family of four traveled to a place we had never been together.  Most of Asa's family on his dad's side lives in Michigan and he used to spend time there every summer.  Asa has always told me that I would love it there and I hadn't met most of the family members that live there!  So, when we got news that he would get a four day weekend for Labor Day, we knew we wanted to plan a trip to Michigan.

The drive there wasn't so bad.  We got started in the late afternoon and drove two hours with the girls asleep most of that time.  Then we stopped at Chipotle and got some dinner to go and ate it at a local park.  The girls ran around in between bites of their dinner and the weather was nice enough to enjoy the sun and breeze.  Then we loaded back up in the car and started the drive north through Illinois.  We stopped at a rest stop and found a geocache, and then shortly after that both of the girls were asleep for the night!

Here are some of my favorite pictures and moments from the trip.  There were so many more exciting moments that I didn't even get pictures of.  It's hard to always have your camera ready when the perfect moments happen.

Visiting the Meijer's Gardens, including letting Vivi explore and watching the girls play together.

Marley's concentration while drawing

Rolling down hills (all four of us!)

Visiting the local zoo, where both girls pet sheep and goats.

A bird landing on Marley's head.

Getting to know family that we don't see often.

Riding a camel!

Playing in the dirt kitchen.

Ice cream dates and finally trying Asa's favorite ice cream of all time.

Exploring the adorable town of Ada, Michigan.

The beautiful weather and relaxing outside at Dave and Mary's house.

Abby reading at least 30 books to Marley during our stay.  Marley has finally found someone who loves to read as much as she does.

The beaches of Lake Michigan!

Climbing to the top of a lighthouse.

Just getting to know new family members and loving everything we learned.

I would love to go back soon.  It was so pleasant there and Asa's family was so welcoming and loving to me and our girls.  Marley and Vivi both had a great time and I loved seeing them explore and learn about new places.  I love going to Texas and seeing our family there, but it is nice to go somewhere new also.  Hopefully we can plan another trip up there before we leave Missouri, because everyone there is so worth it!

time and getting things done

I have been feeling very overwhelmed lately with all the things I want to do during the day and the small amount of time I have to do it.  I feel like I go and go all day long, doing dishes, playing with the girls, folding clothes, making dinner, reading books with the girls, and then all I can think about at the end of the day is all the things I couldn't get done.  Working out, blogging, reading, crafting, and relaxing are all pushed to the back burner, unfortunately.

There isn't anything on the list that I want to sacrifice.  The health of my family and the foods we eat are important to me.  So is teaching my girls about the world and playing with.  I don't actually want to do dishes or laundry or cleaning, but it's something that has to be done.  So, I feel like I am so busy doing those things during the day, that I don't have any more room in my schedule for the forgotten things.

(As I am writing this, after I have carved out a time to blog while the girls are asleep, of course the maintenance men finally come to fix our door and wake Vivi up.  So, now I have a helper.)

I think the biggest ways to help this problem would be to use my time more wisely and get organized with what I want to do each day. 
- Waking up at 5:30 with Asa has really helped, and I get to use that time to do whatever I want to do for me, child-free. 
- I am going to start making a To Do list each week with all the random tasks I want to get done.  I love making lists.  I used to make them all the time, and I have no idea why I got out of the habit.  That step has already helped me.  My brain is running out of space for things like that. 
- I am also going to purge our house of all the things we don't need.  I am so much happier when my house is clean and organized.  I think our days run smoother and I can think more clearly.  The clutter around our house is getting out of control and I am ready to get rid of it.
- Another goal is to stop wasting so much time on the internet.  I love ready blogs and checking facebook, but it is such a time-sucker.  I will literally waste an entire nap time on facebook, and I always regret it afterwards.  So, I am going to limit myself to only getting on facebook and blogs when everything else is done.

Lastly, I am going to make myself a list of goals for the fall.  These are things that I want to get done before Thanksgiving.  Some will be easy to find the time for and some will be a little more challenging.  But, I will feel better when they are all done.

Personal:
lose 15 pounds
run a 5k in september
run a 10k in october
write three blogs each week
get in bed, without my phone by 10 pm
make the time to exercise at least 5 times per week

Family:
go pumpkin picking
start asa's application on USAjobs
go camping as many weekends as possible
get outside more
go to the library at least once a week
make my mama's chicken pot pie

House:
put up some rain gutter bookshelves in marley's room
clean out every room and closet in the house and donate as much as we can
organize my printed recipes

Crafts:
sew my first diaper (and hopefully a few more)
sew each girl a pair of pants
organize marley's artwork into a notebook

Books:
the happiness project- gretchen rubin
the unschooling unmanual
teach your own- john taylor gatto

I will probably end up adding more things to this list, but for now this seems sufficient.  I hope making an official list will give me something to look at and work toward instead of it all feeling like a jumbled mess inside my head.  I need organization to make my head happy.

learn from my mistake

Everyone, go right this second and back-up all of your important pictures and videos and documents.  Even if your computer is less than a year old.  Even if your computer has been acting totally normal.  Even if you think it won't happen to you. Go, now, and back everything up.

Because I didn't.  And now it's gone.

I had been organizing all of our pictures and videos for about a month.  It takes a long time to put them all in iPhoto and separate and combine them all and move them onto our portable hard drive.  I had been working on it slowly but surely, and getting it all done.  I had done everything up until January of this year.  But January through August of 2012 were on the computer still, waiting to be transferred to the portable hard drive.  And then the hard drive in the computer crashed.

We took it to the Apple store, but there was nothing they could do for it.  I was devastated.  I was crying in the Apple store and then crying in the play area at the mall.  And then crying in the car.  I am still brokenhearted.

We are sending the hard drive to a data recovery company in hopes that they will be able to salvage something.  It makes me so sick to my stomach to think about.  If they are able to recover some things, it will cost us an arm and a leg to get it.  How much are they worth?  How much do we have to put towards this?  Why couldn't this have happened one week later, after I had backed them up?

I am just a mess about it all.  It makes me so upset.  But, I hope that this motivates someone to go back up their computers.  It's worth the extra time, I promise.