Mountain I

I miss my husband.
I really love that this is his idea of a trail.
If you were there in this photo with us you would be able to hear me saying "Libby, don't touch that leaf, I'm sure that it is poison ivy"  I said that about every leaf I saw. I can be obsessive about things I'm nervous about like sharks, enrolling my daughter in pre-school, and poison ivy for example.

The Little got fed up with the trail and decided that my back was a better place to blaze Daddy's path.

I had big plans for this blog this week, but somehow it is Thursday and I haven't posted a thing.  I have approximently 1.8 million photos from our fall vacation this year...but a girl's got to prioritize. Single parenting leaves me with little to no alone time.  I've been choosing sleep during my alone time, and when I say sleep, I mean lying awake wondering where my husband's been the last month.
Let me give you a rough idea of his schedule lately:
3-4 weeks ago Kev goes to LA for two days
He comes home drives to DC to pick up his Mum
Following day we all go to Neverland
Next day Kev goes back to LA for a week
Jumps on the red eye and we all pack up for 5 days of relaxing in the country
(Note the picture of Mommy finally relaxing)

5 days later, we all drive home
The following day Kev drives his Mum back to DC arrives home at 11:30 pm and leaves the next morning at 6:00am for KT
He stays there until Saturday and arrives home at 11:00pm
Sunday morning he leaves the house at 6:00 am to run the Tough Mudder (do not leave this post until you click here to see this picture of him running through live wires...Why would anyone pay to do that?)
He arrives back at Case de Jones at 8:30 pm mumbled a few words that sound something "I'm not 20 anymore" and went to bed only to depart our homestead again 5:30 am the next morning.
Currently, he is still away and I feel like doing this

Strangely, I kind of love these pictures of Libby...they feel very authentic

I'd like to go back to the mountains when I was sitting on my mountain deck, while my children and husband and mother-in-law and friend were frolicking around me while I sipped coffee and thought about pretty things.

One of these days my husband will get to come. Hopefully,  I'll get to post about the rest of our mountain trip before I forget all the fun we had.

Until then, here's one more picture of my family together to prove that it does happen sometimes.

Here's to Kev! I miss him and missing him is worth a post full of whining.
Sorry about that, I promise to be more chipper in my next post...will that statement be more believable if I end the sentence with an exclamation point and a smiley?  Like this!:)
Grace and peace

Blue Skies and Sunshine

I often walk around and think  really poetic thoughts about blue skies and sunshine and then I think, I'm going to blog about this later- it would make a great story.  Then something happens, and something else happens, and by the time later comes around  I can't remember what I was going to say about blue skies and sunshine.

I'm sure that on this day that Kev's mom and I took the girls to do a corn maze, I had some of those thoughts but seeing that it was two weeks ago now, I have no idea what they were.

I know the sun was out and I know the sky was blue.  I also know that for October it was unseasonably warm.  I know that a lady bug landed on Libby and Maggie and Grandma caught the sun on their cheeks.  I also know and think that perhaps we'll wait for both girls to have the ability to run before we do a corn maze again...not sure even the Little understood the point.  If nothing else, it was good use of energy for everyone involved.

This past week has been good for me. I was still pining for summer probably up to Libby's party...So besides the corn maze, I bought a couple of more pumpkins (I decorated the living room with them and the Little hides them behind the TV every day), finally made my pumpkin cookies(actually Grandma and Libby made the cookies), and we went on our annual mountain trip(I'll blog about that later). So now, I officially feel like autumn is here...well, all that and it finally is not 80 degrees outside and the leaves are starting to trickle of the trees.

Alledgely, there were four monsters hidden in this maze. We walked, and walked, and walked and only found three. I  heard about a family getting lost in a corn maze and actually calling 911 for help. If I had thought of this I may have tried it. If Kev had been with us, he would used the GPS on his phone.

Speaking of phones, did I mention that I have a new phone? Did I mention that technology hates me? After 2 years of muting all of you with my face while chatting, Kev decided I needed an upgrade so he got me a "smart" phone. My "smart" phone pretty much just makes me feel dumb every time I use it... I'm losing my smarts as I type and it is all b/c of my new smart phone that could probably, all by itself, call all the people I'm friends with on Facebook, create a detailed grocery list for me and navigate me from here to Dollywood, if I could only figure out how it works. Oh, and figure out how to not hang up on everyone that calls me.

Sorry about that digression from fall stuff, but part of my fall has been trying to figure out that stinkin' phone.

One of these days, when I have one of those blue sky moments, I'm actually going to write the things I'm thinking about when I take a picture like this one...

I'm sure it had something to do with fall or yellow things, or something artsy like that, but until then ignore these useless words and enjoy the pictures of my little autum girls having enchanting autum days...

Pictures are better than words anyway...
Grace and Peace
xxx

Finding Neverland

"It is frightfully difficult to know much about fairies, and almost the only thing known for certain is that there are fairies wherever there are children"

JM Barrie

Hands down my favorite party to date!

I have always loved the movie "Hook," and "Finding Neverland," so when I saw a party with a Neverland theme, my mind started churning.  I thought that if I could con Libs into thinking it was a Tinker Bell themed party I  could maybe get out of having a Disney princess themed party!

I had so much fun planning this year.  I poured over pictures of fairies, wild young boys, and pirate ships to get inspired.  Then I checked out JM Barries, Peter Pan from Library and fell in love with his whimsical writing.  I'm hoping she'll look at the pictures one day and say, "Man, I have a cool mom."  Maybe I'll look back and say, "man, I wasted a lot of time planning those parties!" Ha!  Maybe we'll just looked back and remember that we had a great time.  

Here are the highlights...
All of the children had a costume to wear.  I think that they all tried them on and promplty striped them off.  Except for Libs, she wore her Tinker Bell costume all night.

"I do believe in fairies...."

"...I do, I do!"

"By hook, or by crook..."

"When the first baby laughed for the first time, the laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies."

Last year, part of Libby's favors included making candy bags. I think all the Mom's were angry at me for filling their children with sugar.  This year we gave them a fairy house and they got to stop by the Pixie Dust Station.  I'm pretty sure that the pixie dust made the moms angry too, but it sure was sparkly.

The green stuff in the cups is Pixie Juice to the children...to the rest of us it is white grape juice, soda water, and green food coloring.

The bottle said "For best results, mix with faith and trust.  Think happy thoughts."

I made clever "Neverlandy" tags for the food and drink like "Pirate Pizza" "Smee Tea" "Pixie Juice" and "Lost Boy Smores"....I think I am the only one who knew the signs were there.  I also littered all the tables with quotes from Barries' book...I loved all of them and wish I could paint them on the walls of our house...things like "you know that place between sleep and awake, that place where you still remember dreaming that is where I'll think of you" and "to love would be an awfully big adventure"....I don't think that anyone noticed these either...but they help me feel more like Neverland.

Fairy cakes.  Devil's food with cream cheese frosting, and pumpkin with cinnamon cream cheese frosting.

When the party first started Kev fixed her a drink, and she ran up to me and said, and I quote "Mommy, thank you for my pixie juice at my party!"  Who knew pixie juice  could make a girl so happy...probably one of the best moments of the night.  I love that sound in her voice when she is about to burst she is so excited.

I'm pretty sure that party planning is a ridiculous use of one's time ...but the end result was lovely.

She loved every minute of it.  

As for me, it is late and I'm off to join my girl in Neverland...."second star to the right and strait on till morning!"

Just kidding...
You thought I was done posting, but I'm not.
One more thing.
It is about Maggie Bell.

The other night when I was rocking her before bed,  She laughed in her sleep, then tucked her head into my chest. I wish I knew what she was dreaming about.
I rocked her longer and decided that I need her to always be a baby.

She turned 9 months old this week.
She almost stole the show at the party.

She does pixie with natural ease.

That is all.

Grace and peace.
xoxo 

Delightfully Simple

Despite the countless threats of neglectfully forgetting an engagement, I am continually reminded of how simple our life is right now.  If we want to walk to the park in the morning we can.  If the mood seems right to wear tu-tu's, at 10 am, on a Tuesday, we do.  In the back of  my mind, I know it will end and so I remind myself to be grateful for a cup of coffee that can last all morning, while Maggie naps and my Little plays dress up.  In the not so distant future, I see car line drop off's at 8:00 am, and I see ballet class at 7 pm so you must sit and finish your homework first, and I see a calender full of engagements that I just can not neglect.

So I am thankful for this simple time.  Sometimes I think I cling to it, in an almost unhealthy way. Even now our life is too busy to do anything extra.  I laid in bed last night thinking about all the wonderful little things my girls are doing right now that I am not documenting.  So right there at 1:00am I said to myself "self, before anything else tomorrow I will post about our not so complicated life."

A good example of me not taking the time to document was the Little's birthday. We had such a great day...She was on good form from the moment she woke up. When she opened her eyes I said "Happy Birthday precious girl" and she said "Mommy, iss my birfday? Can I have my princess shirt now?" I smiled, tickled that she remembered the Cinderella shirt I tucked in our Target cart weeks ago and told her that we would save it for her birthday.

When she tip-toed into the kitchen for breakfast, she found that her Daddy had left the room filled with balloons just for her. She loves balloons so this alone would have been enough, but we celebrated all day, by using Disney princess dinner wear at every meal, playing at the park, and getting ice cream after dinner.

You know, sometimes we go to the park and it is just another trip down the slide, but on her birthday, the park was ours...we were the only ones there.

She ran from slide to swing to bridge, laughing all the way, with Maggie's gaze fixed on her and a look in her eyes that screamed "just you wait sister, give me a couple montha and I'll be able to run with you."

Before heading out to meet friends for ice cream, we gave her a few gifts to celebrate her third year of life. She was gitty with excitement and some how knew that we had saved the best for last.

Without any caution, she ripped the paper out of the bag and found her very own Belle costume complete with yellow gloves and a pink necklace...It was one of those life moments that made my heart and eyes well up b/c I know that look on her face...She'll feel it again when she tries on her first prom dress, and then again when she finds the perfect wedding dress. I could just tell, that in that yellow netting she felt beautiful!

I had big plans for my Little's 3rd birthday party, even though I was instructed I could not go over board any more after last year, and the year before that.  Due to circumstances beyond our control, I've been forced to plan it on the fly so that her Daddy and Grandma (along with a few others) can be here.  So this Tuesday evening we'll celebrate, with an intimate crowd, the day our Little danced into our lives.  Some days days she's a pixie, some days she's a pirate, but all days I'm sure that her mind takes her to wonderful places...I only wish I could fully go with her to them and not be the one reminding her that it's lunch time, or clean up time, or nap time...

In the mean time, I'll be laying awake at night wondering how I'll ever make time to write about that special day and all the others in between!

Grace and Peace
xxx