I was saying to Josh yesterday that 7 years and 1 day ago we were just Amy and Josh. We weren’t Mom and Dad yet. How crazy is that to think about? Now there are days that it seems that is all we are! All those years ago we had no idea what being a parent actually meant.
Yesterday Caleb, my very first baby boy turned 7. And it has gone by in a flash. As I do for all my kiddos in honor of their birthdays, I’m sharing some fun facts today about the sweet boy who made me a mommy!
He takes his job as big brother to 3 very seriously. He reads to them, he helps them find toys, and he explains life to them. It’s really the most beautiful thing to watch.
He loves art and wants to be an artist when he grows up. He has this amazing artistic and creative ability that reminds me so much of Josh. He has an eye for patterns and can just sit and sketch for a really long time.
He has such a sensitive soul. When he feels things, he feels them HARD.
This kid can RUN. Josh and I always say that he’s going to be a cross country or track star. Those little legs can go so fast! If only we could put a small track inside our house for winter use. 😉
Some of my favorite moments are sitting and having long discussions with him. He has so many insightful questions and has learned so much this past year. The difference from 6 to 7 is seriously amazing.
I can always count on Caleb to eat and love anything I make. I can probably count on one hand the number of things he doesn’t like which is such a huge blessing to balance out our Eli who is the complete opposite. For his birthday dinner he chose chicken pot pie. 😉
I see myself in him so much. He and I just really understand each other. I think we process and feel things the same way so I can understand the things he goes through differently than Josh can. I hope we always have this unique kind of bond that we do now.
I know that seven will be a big year and I know he is ready! I can’t wait to see what this year brings for our sweet boy.
Oh and if anyone figures out how to slow down time… you let me know.
I feel like I’m sort of cheating this week because we only had a two day week! That doesn’t make me any less excited for the weekend though. I think I’ll take it.
It’s birthday busy season in my house and we will have a brand new SEVEN year old on Monday. He’s kind of bummed out that his birthday is on a Monday this year but we plan to spend our weekend celebrating his last days of 6!
Today, I’m linking up with Erika, Narci and Andrea for the first Friday Favorites of the new year!
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All you fellow Gilmore girls out there are going to love this. For Christmas, my sister gave me this coffee. And I was pumped because obviously I love coffee. She had to stop and explain that this was no ordinary coffee! Scott Patterson (who plays Luke, the diner owner and pourer of the coffee in Gilmore Girls) came out with his own line. So, in other words. I’m drinking Luke’s coffee. 😉
Such a genius idea. Plus, it’s actually smells and tastes amazing. I loved this gift! (Luke image - not mine! I only wish. Found on Pinterest.)
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On a random whim on Black Friday, we bought our older boys a 4-in-1 game table. It has Foosball, Slide Hockey, Ping Pong and Pool. It was kind of a spur of the moment gift that I found on major sale. Turns out, it has been their very favorite gift this year. Our boys are (almost) 5 and 7 and they play with it non-stop.
Even the little ones play with the hockey part if we bring over chairs for them and they LOVE to watch their brothers play foosball. We’ve had many a tournament that went late into the night over Christmas break this year. (Excuse the background, I’m working on refinishing a desk for my new work space.)
It has been so much fun! This is the table we bought from Walmart but I do have to say: we had trouble with the shipping from them. We ordered on Black Friday, had it shipped to store for us to pick up and still had not received it mid-December. They assured us it would be fine, that it was on it’s way but the tracking information showed it never moved. We finally had to call and insist they cancel our order. They wouldn’t reorder it themselves so we had to place another order and hope it showed up on time. Thankfully, this time it did. We loved the brand of the table though and I found the same one on Amazon but just the foosball part (which truthfully is the favorite anyway!).
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In my confessions post this week, I explained why I have a serious obsession with jigsaw puzzles. If you are a puzzle lover like me, you should check it out. They are my happy place! My post also talks about my latest obsession that may even replace my puzzles on the table. 😉 Maybe.
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Last weekend we got some serious snow in Iowa. It came at the beginning of a windchill warning, so the kids and I sat inside all day playing and watching the snow. I just thought it was way too cold to take all of them out by myself. (By the time I got on boots, hats, snow pants, mittens, etc x 4 they would all want to come in!)
Then, Daddy got off work early before the holiday weekend and surprised us all. He is wayyy more fun than I am and insisted we all head outside. We seriously had the very best time. We barely got any snow last year so this was really Reid and Luke’s first time playing in it.
We stayed outside way past the point of being frozen, but they could have cared less. Thank goodness for Daddy. 😉
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Finally, these are some of the brand new calendar designs I have up in my Etsy shop for the new year. We have ours printed 24 x 36 in our kitchen and I write everything on it! Even the kids love to come look and see what is going on for the week or count the number of days until something special.
Print + frame = instant dry erase! You can use code NEWYEAR18 for 18% off your order now through January 10th. And as always, any calendar can have custom color requests or additional fields/phrases added.
Click on the picture below to be taken to that calendar listing or click here to be taken to the shop where there are even more listed!
Those are my favorites this week! I hope you have the best weekend and if you are anywhere near the Midwest - I hope you stay warm!
Happy Thursday everyone! Today is my kiddos first day back to school after Christmas break. While I’m ready to get back into our routine, I will miss those lazy pajama mornings hanging out with my crew. Thankfully it’s already Thursday, so I’m thinking we can make it through our short week. Maybe.
I’m linking up with Amanda from This Inspired Chick for her monthly Confessions link-up on the first Thursday of every month. You can find my November confessions here and my December confessions here. If you blog, you should join us! It’s so much fun to see what everyone has to share.
This month, I’m going to confess my secret nerdy hobby. I am a die-hard jigsaw puzzle fanatic. Seriously. Give me a Friday night, a glass of wine and a puzzle with my husband and I’m living my best life. 😉
I don’t remember doing very many puzzles when I was a kid, so it hasn’t been a lifelong thing for me. My degree is in Biochemistry and before I had my twins I worked in a research lab for 8 years. I love science and there are so many things I loved about working there. Anyone who has worked in that kind of medical research for a long time can tell you that there are far more failures than there are successes. Research is SO, SO important and every day amazing strides are being made. However, meaningful discoveries take tons of hard work and years to find.
After a few years, I started to get a little discouraged. I felt like I was running into a lot of dead ends at work and not making much progress. My husband is in finance and his job is to make everything add up the way it is supposed to. He can see the end of projects, accomplish them and move on to something else. And I SO envied that! One day, I sat down with an old puzzle and I found it so incredibly satisfying! Everything fit together and everything had a place. Working on a puzzle started to be what I would look forward to after the really tough days in the lab.
Even after our twins were born and my days were so far out of my control, Josh and I had this gigantic puzzle on a table in the corner of our room. Every night I would fit a few pieces (because it was all I had time for before collapsing in a heap) and it made me feel accomplished. I know it’s probably crazy, but I still do it today.
I put puzzles on my older boys Christmas lists for our families this year. They love them too, especially my Eli. I will admit though- it was a little for them, a little for me! Haha! We spent a bunch of our break with 750 piece puzzles all over our kitchen island and it was the best!
My mom got Josh and I these super cute BRXLZ sets for Christmas and they may be my newest obsession. They are basically teeny, tiny Lego sets but they give you a small instruction book of how to put them together like a puzzle. They have so many different themed sets and I’m excited to break it out.
So, that’s my confession. I’m a crazy puzzle fanatic. Life with four boys is pretty chaotic but a puzzle is my calm. Everything has a place.
Except this Toy Story puzzle Eli got for Christmas whose last piece did NOT fit. I know it looks like it should fit but it did not. #apuzzleloversnightmare
Go ahead and make fun of me but I’ll be over here with my puzzle and my glass of wine. Not caring at all. Haha!
Any other puzzle lovers out there?
Thanks for stopping by! See you tomorrow for Friday Favorites!
We’ve had a quiet few days as we seriously hibernated from this insane arctic blast going through the Midwest. It’s been too crazy cold to do just about anything outside which has meant a lot of movies, a lot of new toy playing and a lot of hanging out trying to stay warm. This morning, one of our pipes in the kitchen froze! Apparently it’s towards the outside of the house without much insulation behind it but luckily we noticed right away and Josh was able to thaw it and add more insulation before it caused a huge problem.
Before this crazy cold snap while I was taking a blogging break for the holidays, our sweet Eli turned FIVE. Five just seems like a big one doesn’t it? His birthday is a couple days after Christmas and it’s one of my missions in life to make certain that he always has a wonderful birthday like all of our other children. Even though it is close to the holiday, we make sure we are back from any holiday travels and we leave Christmas behind and celebrate BIG.
This year we had donuts for breakfast and went to a local Children’s museum in the morning. We had pizza at one of our favorite restaurants and played at an indoor play gym until everyone was tired, sweaty messes. He finished the day with gifts and his favorite chocolate cupcakes. I’d say he had a pretty good day. 😉
Plus, now he can show his age with his entire hand which was incredibly important to him. So in honor of his very special 5th birthday, I’m sharing some fun little facts about my sweet Eli!
He loves (LOVES) the number 45. It’s the most hysterical and bizarre thing. If we are watching sports and a team scores 45, he gets so excited. He always guesses that people are 45 years old and tells them it’s his favorite number. It is so funny!
He has a truly amazing imagination. That kid can play and play with his little action figures all day long. He invents stories and makes them talk to each other and solve problems.
You will not meet a happier boy than my Eli. He has a constant giant smile on his face and finds joy in everything. It’s hard to be unhappy when he’s around. 😉
He’s just now starting to find things that HE really loves to do. He loves his big brother so much that often he has just blindly followed Caleb into activities and things he enjoys. I love seeing him really explore his own things lately like playing basketball, making his own friends and taking the lead on games at home.
Whenever a commercial comes on about a charity that needs help (this week it was for sheltered animals), he so desperately wants to help. His heart is SO big and I love to see how much he cares about others. We’ve been encouraging him to take action and do little things he can to help and I love to see how he has responded.
Eli has always been our earliest riser and continues to be. Even when everyone is up late and the other 3 boys sleep in the next day, Eli never does. I honestly think he just needs less sleep than most people. It’s kind of frustrating now but I bet in college it will start to pay off for him. I’m a little jealous! 😉
I’m so proud of all he has accomplished this past year. We love him so very, very much. Five is BIG. Five is kindergarten and homework and big kid stuff. I can’t wait to see what five brings!
Happy last Friday of the year everyone! We are over halfway through Christmas break and I think I speak for everyone in my house when I say we are NOT ready to go back. We’ve been enjoying some lazy pajama mornings, sleeping in later than usual, and playing like crazy with our new Christmas toys. The temperature in Iowa this weekend is not supposed to even reach zero so I sense a lot more of this in our future. 😉
As always, I’m linking up with Erika, Narci and Andrea for the last Friday Favorites of the year! I decided to highlight the ‘most read’ favorite posts of 2017. Maybe you saw all of these or are seeing them for the first time but it’s fun for me that some of your favorites were some of mine too!
In the first ever Confessions link up, I shared my super embarrassing addiction. It’s so bad for me and a terrible habit that I cannot seem to break. Turns out from the comments that I’m not the only one. 😉 I love that link up to find other souls that understand me. Haha!
During my birthday week in September, I filled my Friday Favorites with fun birthday gifts I was loving. Super cute boots, an apple watch, cardigans and more! So many readers shared my love, especially with this double hooded sweatshirt from Mindy Mae’s Market that I’m still keeping my eye on.
This Twin Tuesday post on how to survive the first months with newborn twins was a favorite of mine too. When we found out we were expecting twins, the lack of resources on literally just ‘how to survive the day to day’ stressed me out! I hope that by sharing what worked for us, other mommas expecting twins will find encouragement and practical tips.
I put together this gift guide before my twins turned two based on what my two older boys loved at that age. Anything on this list was perfect for them this year. It was one of my most fun posts to put together!
Hands down, this was my most popular post of 2017. All of these are tried and true easy meals to bring to new mommas who just had babies or for any reason you may want to bring someone a meal. I’ve gone back and looked at it so many times since I posted it when I needed a meal to bring!
Those are my favorites this week! Thank you for following along and being a part of my first year of blogging. Thank you for reading, thank you for commenting and for your encouragement! And THANK YOU for your business in my Etsy shop.I love this community.
I have some exciting things planned for 2018 and I hope you will join me. You can follow me on Instagram here and on Pinterest here.
I hope you have a wonderful New Years celebration and enjoy a long weekend with your family!
From our family to yours, we wish you a very blessed Christmas. I hope you spend yours with the ones you love and all of us mommas are able to focus on making memories- loud and imperfect ones! 😉
Happy Tuesday everyone! There is only 5 days until Christmas! And I’m just going to pretend that I’m 100% joyful and 0% stressed about that fact. It’s for the best. 😉
I’m linking up with Erika and Fancy Ashley today for a little ‘everything goes’ Tuesday Talk.
Since we are nearing the end of the year, I always start thinking about resolutions. I feel like mine almost always follow a similar pattern: pray more, exercise more, read more, etc. Which are always things I need to work on and although I consistently do a little better each year they are still at the top of my list. I read a book by Matthew Kelly with a small group this year called Resisting Happiness. He talks a lot about habits. Changing your habits is what makes you a better version of yourself. Whether it’s starting better habits or getting rid of bad ones, your habits make you who you are. I’m really focusing on that when I think about 2018.
So, along with that theme I’ve been thinking a lot about better habits I can develop. One of those is getting rid of ‘clutter’ in my life. I’m very conscious of the need to get rid of toy clutter, counter clutter, closet clutter, etc. but I tend to ignore the little stuff which in the end make me crazy! For example, I’m a person who doesn’t deal with annoying promotional emails as they come in, so they build up until I have an inbox of over 3,000. It’s ridiculous and a BAD habit.
I also struggle with photo organization. I have all of our photos backed up for sure, but I have never taken the time to organize them with a better method than just by date. Some photos are for sure on there multiple times which is probably just a waste of file space. When I want to look for photos, it takes me a long time to find what I am looking for! I have all our photos backed up on our external hard drive and found out the other day at my mom’s group that external hard drives can just fail without warning. Especially those older than 5 years. This was me.
So. This brings me to my Tuesday Talk question - how do you organize your photos and how do you store them?
Do you ever print photos or arrange them into physical albums you have printed? Another mom at my meeting said that she uses the Groovebook app and prints a small book of photos every month to store. She said her kids love to look at them which is such a good idea! I have thousands of photos stored but they aren’t available to my kiddos to look at when they are just in storage.
As I sit here writing this post, this is what my Santa’s Bag app is showing me.
10 days until Christmas! I have all the gifts purchased and hidden away in our closet but I’ve only wrapped five. FIVE. I think Josh and I are signing up for some Christmas movies and hot chocolate wrapping dates this weekend!
I’m linking up with Erika, Narci and Andrea for Friday Favorites! I’ve got a random bunch of fun favorites this week because that’s what you do 10 days before Christmas. 😉
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This has to be the first one this week because there isn’t much I love more than festive Christmas snacks. This Caramel Christmas Treat Mix was a huge favorite in our house. The cinnamon caramel Chex mix is amazing by itself but adding in caramel m&ms and these fun ‘Santa hats’ puts it over the top. It’s perfect for family Christmas movie night, bringing along in the car to look at lights or to bring to your holiday parties! Plus, it’s so simple that my kids made most of it themselves!
Also, if you missed my Twin Tuesday post this week on my tips to make it through your newborn’s NICU stay you can find it here. Those families unexpectedly spending the holidays with their new babies in the hospital are in my prayers this season.
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After every single one of my boys were born, our family and friends would always immediately say each of them looked like Josh. Every time. I obviously carry them for nine months, birth them and they come out looking nothing like me. I found a picture of myself once that looked just like Luke and excitedly sent it to my Mom, who then told me it was actually a picture of my sister. Sigh.
BUT. There is hope for me yet. I took this sweet pictures of these two cuties Wednesday night and saw my smile in Luke’s.
My mom sent me a picture of this Christmas ornament of me close to the same age and I absolutely see it. Right? It’s proof my genes are somewhere in there after all.
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Our neighbors have the very best light display show every year. The weather has been so nice lately that we’ve been outside watching the shows constantly. When we aren’t outside, our boys are at the front window watching all the shows and all the people that come to see. I don’t know how you see all those beautiful twinkling lights and not feel the Christmas spirit!
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Josh’s aunt always sends the best creative gifts every year. This year she sent us this sweet welcome mat for our entryway from Personalcreations.com. I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what our four boys look like every meal time! It’s perfect for Christmas time but also all winter long since it’s not holiday themed! It’s a favorite for sure!
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Finally, if you are looking for a last minute Christmas gift - don’t go out to the crazy, crowded stores in the cold! Order a digital print from my Etsy shop with code NOTTOOLATE20 for 20% off through Christmas Eve. Also, if you need something quickly add my NEW Christmas Rush option to your cart with your item. For only $3 extra, have your proof sent to you for approval the same day you order (for all orders placed before 9pm CST). Once you receive your print, send it to a local 1-hour photo (like Walgreens) grab a frame and you’re done!
Those are my favorites this week! We are spending our weekend making Christmas cookies, seeing lights and preparing for the last few days of school before my kids are on Christmas break! Happy weekend!
Before Thanksgiving, our PTA put on a big ‘Ladies Night Bingo’ event. Tables and tables of moms came with snacks and drinks to play lots of rounds of bingo and win fun prizes. The grand prize for the last game of blackout bingo was $250! I have never won bingo in my life (and that streak still stands!) but I had a great time catching up with other moms at my table in Eli’s preschool class. One of the mamas brought this amazing Caramel Cinnamon Chex mix which really might have been the best part of the night. I had to consciously keep stopping myself from grabbing more.
I begged her for the recipe for the chex mix and decided to make it a little more festive for the this time of year with caramel holiday m&ms and chocolate dipped ‘Santa hats’. This is the perfect treat to bring to holiday get togethers or to make for your family to enjoy with a cozy Christmas movie! I made this for my Advent small group study last week and went home with a completely empty bowl. 😉
It’s easy enough to make on a weeknight and my kids loved helping mix the Chex mix together and dipping the Santa hats!
1/2 cup light corn syrup (spray the measuring cup with cooking spray before you put in the corn syrup so it doesn’t get stuck!)
1 cup of sugar
3 tsp. of cinnamon
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Measure cereal into a large bowl. Over medium heat, heat brown sugar, butter and corn syrup until the mixture comes to a boil. Let it boil for one minute while stirring constantly, then remove from heat. Add to the bowl of cereal and gently mix well until the cereal is coated.
Combine sugar and cinnamon. Pour half of it over the cereal and mix well.
Pour the cereal onto a greased cookie sheet and sprinkle the rest of the sugar/cinnamon on top. Bake for 5 mins then flip and bake for another 3. Remove from the oven and let cool. Then break apart and mix with the rest of the ingredients!
For the Santa Hats
You need:
Bugels
Wilton red candy melts (OR White chocolate + red GEL food coloring)
mini marshmallows
Melt the candy/chocolate. Dip 25-30 bugels with a fork into your chocolate and place on a cookie sheet covered with wax paper or parchment paper. (It would not be a problem if more bugels than this were made. 😉 This was everyone’s favorite part of the mix!)
Place bugels in the fridge for 10 mins to let set. Once set, remelt the chocolate if necessary and dip just the tops of the bugels into the chocolate. Place a mini marshmallow on the end. Let dry!
Mix together Caramel Cinnamon Chex Mix, a 10 oz bag of holiday caramel m&ms and your Santa hats! Store in an airtight container until ready to serve.
You better pull some out for your family because if you take this anywhere, I bet you come home with an empty bowl too!
About a month ago, I included my feelings on World Prematurity Day in my November WUW post. Looking at those pictures brought back so many memories of that time in our lives and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it! Today the older boys and I made some Christmas cards to send to families with babies currently in the NICU. I know firsthand how isolating it can feel when life goes on around you but you feel just stuck and helpless. These families and sweet babies are in my prayers this holiday season.
Thinking so much these past few weeks about our experience after our twins were born gave me today’s Twin Tuesday post. I’m going to share the things we learned while we were there that helped us get through our experience in the NICU. While our babies were only there for a short time in comparison to babies born much earlier, I hope that the things we learned will help other mommas facing a similar situation. Please know that you are NOT alone. This is part of my Twin Tuesday series but whether you have one baby or two or more, this is for you!
It’s okay to not be okay.
I woke up the morning before our babies were born at 35w4d with no signs of labor, assuming that they were in the same optimal position they had been in to try a vaginal birth. I went to work just like always and around 11:00, I just started feeling weird. I worked at a hospital so I walked over to labor and delivery just in case. Our babies were born via c-section and whisked away from me for emergency medical care accompanied by my husband by 2:25pm. I was so completely unprepared for every moment of that almost 3 1/2 hours.
Now, coming down from post-partum twin hormones is NO joke paired with struggling to come to terms with an unexpected c-section and the fact that my babies were not with me. I spent the first few days in pretty much constant tears. My twins were my third and fourth babies so I knew how to be a mom and I knew what to do after my babies were born. But this situation was so far out of my control, I literally just didn’t know what to do. It was really, really hard.
It wasn’t until weeks later after our babies were home that I was talking to one of my neighbors and she innocently asked how I was doing with everything. I said I was doing “just fine!” through tears. (Lies. ALL lies.) She said “It’s okay to grieve the birth experience you thought you would have. It’s okay.” And I realized then that’s exactly what it was.
I was so sad that the birth my doctor and I had hoped for went out the window with no warning. I was so sad that I wasn’t able to be the first one to hold my babies after they were born. I was so sad that I didn’t get to place them on my chest and look at their tiny fingers. Yes, I was unbelievably grateful for the immediate care they received. Those doctors literally saved their lives. But it was okay to grieve the loss of the birth and the days following that I had hoped for. If you have those feelings too - it’s okay to grieve that loss.
Ask questions!
When members of your health care team are in the room, ask your questions! If they say something you don’t understand, ask. If you don’t know what one of the monitors or machines do, ask! It’s incredibly intimidating to walk into a room full of machines helping your baby but understanding what they each did helped me feel better.
I became overwhelmed with all the different stats they would collect and possible problems they would find on a daily basis. We found it so helpful to be in the room when the healthcare team came around for rounds so that we could hear the report and know what questions to ask. I became close with one of the residents on our team and asked her to explain what each thing meant and what that potential problem or success would mean for us. It helped me process what was going on and feel more involved in their care.
Mom as much as you can
For the first few days when I would visit Reid, I mostly sat in a chair and watched him. It was such a weird feeling to have to ask someone else for permission to hold your own child. One of the night nurses asked me if I wanted to change his diaper but I was nervous about all the cords and monitors. She taught me how to move everything properly and how to hold him when I wanted to. She said that as nurses they love when parents get involved and honestly, I didn’t know I could! From then on, I changed his diaper whenever we were there, Josh or I tried to be there for every feeding and I cuddled him every chance I got.
I immediately started feeling like his mother again doing those simple tasks to care for him. It helped us bond and helped my mindset so much. Certainly it depends what level NICU your child is at but ask the nurses what you can do to help. Ask them to teach you!
Take care of yourself
I know this one is hard. I sucked at it. Try to remember to take care of yourself too. Drink water. Eat something that isn’t donuts. Take a breath for a few minutes. Rest when you can - especially if you’ve had a c-section. Your healthcare team is there for you. Trust them to take care of your babies when you leave the hospital or try to get some rest. Our hospital had a phone number that we could call to check on our babies or tell them that we would be there for the next feeding. Ask if your hospital has something like that.
You have babies to take care of but you can’t do it running on empty all the time. You’re a better momma and better able to handle this emotional situation when you take care of yourself too.
Take advantage of family programs
Our NICU offered a lounge for parents with good snacks, couches and a tv. They had signs for support groups, free meals and they would give you a free pass for the parking garage. We didn’t know about some of these things until Reid was almost discharged so ASK! If your hospital offers some of these things, don’t be afraid to use them. In these difficult situations, every tiny helping hand makes a difference.
Allow other people in
Having your brand new baby in the NICU can be all consuming and no one really understands what it is like until faced with that situation. I found it exhausting to explain the details to anyone what was going on so I just didn’t. I thought it would be easier but in the end it was actually incredibly isolating. By not letting anyone in on what was going on, I had to bear the burden and stress alone.
When Luke was released to come home and was having trouble gaining weight, my doctor talked about him being readmitted to the hospital. I reached a total breaking point and called my mom to unload. It helped me so much that I started calling her multiple times a day when we would have updates. It’s not like she could really do anything to make the situation better but just knowing someone else was thinking about us and praying for the specific problem changed everything for me.
Let people in. Lean on your spouse and support system and try to talk about how you are feeling. They can’t completely understand but having people in your corner makes a big difference.
That’s Twin Tuesday for today! There is so many things on my prayer list these days, but those strong NICU mama bears are sure towards the top.
