The First Day of Preschool!

I did it. I sent my little boy off into the real world. My little 4 year old is in preschool.


Last year I did a joy school type of preschool with another mother from our church. It was good. I liked it. I thought about trying to get a group together this year until I realized that I could enroll Marshall in kindergarten NEXT fall. I bout died! I still am about to die! He is my only baby! He can't possibly be old enough to go to kindergarten!


I have been having a serious debate with myself. I have asked every mother about her opinion so I welcome yours as well. Marshall has an August birthday, which means if I enroll him next year he will be one of the youngest in his class, or I can wait another year and enroll him when he is 6. What should I do???

That is why I decided that I had to enroll him in preschool so I could gage his progress. So far, he loves loves loves it!
He had no problem walking into school and waving me goodbye. He (nor I) cried at the departure. I did hold my breath as I watched his teacher point him to his hook. He looked puzzled and from the door I wanted to rush in and explain to him that he needed to hang up his backpack. But I didn't, I followed the instructions given to the parents by the teacher to not go into the classroom. Iwalked away knowing he'd figure it out.

We sure love our little Marshman!

The before, during and after pictures

I am not even going to make any sort of reference to my blogging absence cause that'd be about as lame as my absence...
Let's see, last you heard we'd purchased a townhouse. Alright, so we did in fact move into our very first "home". Not so much - renting, but moving as much as we have, we were very excited to move into our first home.
Now Mitch and I - we're not a afraid of a little work, we're not even afraid of a lot of work. SOOooo, we took about a month making our updates -you know, adding our personal signature to our home. Let me tell you, it was quite a bit of work but totally worth it! The townhouse wasn't in terrible condition when we purchased it, but it didn't look like our home. So we made a few major changes. Happy to say, "It's home." Here's some before pictures, the work in progress, and the after...

dinning room

front room

The work in progress...(even Marshall was put to work painting the basement!)

the basement

dinning room looking into the living room

tile work in front entry and bathroom

wood flooring in dinning room and kitchen

The after...

the basement/Marshall's territory

the dinning room

the kitchen

the living room

Well there you have it....(several months later.) Our first home.

Here it is... our first "home."

I'll make this brief because I should be packing but needed a break. So we're in the middle of the long and at times overwhelming process of renovating our new home so we can move into it. Now you see, this will make our tenth move in the almost six years of marriage. This is the first time we feel like we are moving into our "home". Very big deal for us. (I should capitalize that to emphasize just how significant it is to us) VERY BIG DEAL FOR US. (There, that's better.) We purchased our townhome as a short sale. It was left as is. Now it was not as horrendous as you might imagine, or like I might exaggerate at times. However, since this was our new house we really wanted to make it "Our Home" by adding our touch. Since we've purchased our home we've ripped out the carpet on all three levels, and removed the lynolium (ugh!) in the kitchen and bathroom, primed THE ENTIRE HOUSE, then PAINTED the ENTIRE house and baseboards, put new wood flooring in the kitchen and dinning room, tiled the entry, front closet and front bathroom, installed new lighting, new door handles, and blinds, and we are patiently (hm huh?) waiting for our new carpet to be installed on Thursday so we can move in of Saturday. Needless to say, this has been a lot of work! However, some people don't know that I use to watch Bob Villa with my Daddy-o on Saturday mornings growing up, AND I am a die hard fan of HGTV. So this has basically been a dream come true. Now I know what you are thinking, cause I would be thinking the same thing. Okay, so you can talk (type) a lot of work, WHERE's the pictures? I promise there will be pictures coming. Probably next week sometime. I've got a lot of packing and unpacking to do.

A Mother's Day Story....

Okay, so I love funny stories. I got this forward a while back...I mean a while back, like a long time ago. Normally I just delete those forwards right after my mother sends it to me. (Yes, my beloved mother is the woman that almost single handedly keeps forwards like the below going. Really? Don't we all want to believe if you forward on a message to 15 people you would earn a laptop or have something amazing appear on your screen. Gosh, I just love my mom! I really do! If you've met my mother you'd love her too!) This forward was pretty good though, and since it's Mother's Day just around the corner I thought I'd share so, enjoy!


So, we had this great 10 year old cat named Jack who just recently died. Jack was a great cat and the kids would carry him around and sit on him and nothing ever bothered him. He used to hang out and nap all day long on this mat in our bathroom.
Well we have 3 kids and at the time of this story they were 4 years old, 3 years old and 1 year old. The middle one is Eli. Eli really loves chapstick. LOVES it. He kept asking to use my chapstick and then losing it. So finally one day I showed him where in the bathroom I keep my chapstick and how he could use it whenever he wanted to but he needed to put it right back in the drawer when he was done.
Last year on Mother's Day, we were having the typical rush around and try to get ready for Church with everyone crying and carrying on. My two boys are fighting over the toy in the cereal box. I am trying to nurse my little one at the same time I am putting on my make-up. Everything is a mess and everyone has long forgotten that this is a wonderful day to honor me and the amazing job that is motherhood.
We finally have the older one and the baby loaded in the car and I am looking for Eli. I have searched everywhere and I finally round the corner to go into the bathroom. And there was Eli. He was applying my chapstick very carefully to Jack's . . . rear end. Eli looked right into my eyes and said 'chapped.' Now if you have a cat, you know that he is right--their little butts do look pretty chapped. And, frankly, Jack didn't seem to mind.
And the only question to really ask at that point was whether it was the FIRST time Eli had done that to the cat's behind or the hundredth.

And THAT is my favorite Mother's Day moment ever because it reminds us that no matter how hard we try to civilize these glorious little creatures, there will always be that day when you realize they've been using your chapstick on the cat's butt.

Man, my lips feel dry! How about yours?

I've Been Tagged!

The stunning bride in this picture is named Kristen. She tagged me a while back (but since I was on my, you know, blogging vacation I just am now getting around to it.) First, I have got to tell you how freaking amazing Kristen is. Kristen is the type of friend everyone wants and NEEDS to have. She is a girlfriend for life! I can go for months without actually speaking with her, when we do speak it's as if there was never time or distance between us. I absolutely love this beautiful girl! My college experience would have been very different without her in my life! She is the best friend a girl could ever hope to have or be!

Four Shows I Watch:
1. The Biggest Looser - should use it as motivation, however in this household we just watch it for entertainment
2. LOST - I really think there is hope for them to make sense of everything at the end of this season
3. Curious George with the little man in my life
4. CNN with the big man in my life

Four Things I'm Passionate About:
1. My Husband
2. My Son
3. My Religion
4. Finding things that make me happy

Four Phrases I Say A Lot:
1. "I love you!"
2. "I am going to count to three....1, 2, 2 and a half, I serious...."
3. "Talk to you later."
4. "Come and cuddle with me."

Four Things I've Learned from the Past:
1. Trials can be an answer to your prayers.
2. Everything happens for a reason.
3. There is usually a reason behind everyone's behavior; give them the benefit of the doubt.
4. The sooner you can forgive and forget the better.

Four Places I Would Like to Go:
1. Scottland
2. Top of the Statue of Liberty
3. Tahiti
4. The past, not to change anything but just to see what it was like.

Four Things I Did Yesterday:
1. Primed some of the walls in our house
2. Washed, folded, AND put away four loads of laundry
3. Bought new door handles
4. Played volley ball

Four Things I'm Looking Forward to:
1. Moving into our new home
2. Greg's wedding in June
3. Going to the beach again with Mitch and Marshall this summer
4. Girls camp

Four Things I Love about Winter:
1. Christmas - of course!!!!
2. The whole month of December
3. Snowy snowy days
4. Cuddling under a warm blanket with the ones I love most

Four Things on My Wish List:
1. I wish I had 7 hours a day to just work out - no guilt.
2. I wish I had a private airplane and could hop on it to fly anywhere I wanted to visit with family and friends.
3. I wish everything would always go better than I planned.
4. I wish I could have 5 children. Not at the same time. You know, spread out over a period of time.

Four People I Tag
1. Rebecca J.
2. Alison W.
3. Mellisa C.
4. Laisa N.

Let me think, what have I been up to lately? A lot.

So it's been a while...I went on a blogging free vacation. It was nice. Got a lot done. Now I'm back for super long summary. I hope you can post, posts this long. I guess I will find out. So, what have I been up to lately? Well here it is. I guess the biggest thing (which I didn't include pictures of - it will be it's own separate post) was that we purchased our first "HOME". Yea! It pretty much has occupied our time for the last several weeks. Here are some other things that we've done. For the most part the pictures are in order from most recent to not most recent;) But because I am not that talented they're not really in order. However they are actual events and I was present durning them.


There are a lot of things that I love about Virginia. One of them being the springtime here. The weather has been beautiful. The Cherry Blossom festival was exceptional. When the breeze blows through the blossoms it begins snowing pink flakes. It's like walking through a dream. This picture does not do it justice.
We had the best Easter EVER! The Easter bunny brought the most yummy candies and presents for Marshall. Marshall hunted high and low to find all the easter eggs. It was adorable!
I helped plan a baby shower for a fun and great lady in our ward. I don't know if you can tell what's on top of those green cupcakes, but I made them. They're butterflies made out of Chocolate. My very talented friend Alison (Chris and Alison - located on the left side of the screen) blogged about how to make these super creative cupcakes. So I tried very hard to have them turn out just like hers. Well they didn't because her's were amazing. However, if you haven't seen hers then you just might think mine are pretty dang cool.
So speaking of very talented friends, I have another amazing friend, Ginnie. She is in our ward AND lives in my apartment complex. She challenged me to prepare and run for another 5k with her. So three days a week I would go to her house, we'd take turns watching each other's son while the other one ran. It worked out pretty great. My goal for this run was to beat my last time. I ran my last 5k in 35 minutes. So I really wanted to beat that time. Wasn't sure if I would be able to do it. Mitch and I would also go running around our neighborhood in the afternoons when he got home from work. However, the day of the race I was really excited and fostered my inner Shera. I ran the race in 28.52 minutes. That's pretty good for me.
Marshall enjoyed himself at a couple of Easter Egg hunts. The above picture was taken in another amazing friend's backyard. Rebecca was kind enough to invite us over to enjoy ourselves in a little Easter shindig.

We had a really fun time at our Primary activity. Marshall enjoyed the Easter egg hunt. It was a fun activity.

Mitch took us on an amazing family date. I love dates like this. Mitch took us to this super great restraunt, maybe you've heard of it - Chucky Cheese. Pretty much this story spells out F-U-N.
We celebrated Mitch's 28th birthday. Wohoo! He is just getting better with time. We went into DC. Watched a movie, had pizza that night, cake and ice cream. Mitch likes low key. I had a great time. Sure hope he did.
I survived a near death experience. Do you seen anything wrong with the above picture? If you noticed the blow dryer laying in the toilet you observed right. I was blowing drying my hair when my blow dryer took a suicidal leap from my hand and landed straight in the toilet. RIP. Thanks for not electricuting me or setting my house on fire or blowing a fuse as you went.
These two cuties are my students in a joy school that I teach with a friend. Again, another talent friend - Stacey who puts my efforts to shame. She does the most spectcular lessons and crafts! Marshall leaves her house with the biggest smile on his face - he loves school! She is also his sunbeam teacher so he loves church too! Here is a picture from a lesson I taught on plants. The below picture is from when we were learning the letter "T" we had a "T" party. So fun!

December & January mini update

I don’t know why I do this to myself. Life gets too busy to blog, and before I know it almost two months go by before I even remember that I have a blog. Then I utterly dread the blogging update. On top of that I haven't as been as camera happy as I have in the past, it makes noting all the memories that much more difficult. Therefore, this will be a blog of few words , I’ll let the few pictures do most of the talking for December and January…

The Ward Christmas party was fun. Marshall really enjoyed the special visitor and the fact that the dinner was basically all desserts;)




Christmas was by far the best Christmas we've had as a little family! I say that every year, but it just keeps getting better and better! I can't wait for next year. Oh! I got a sewing machine (among some other awesome presents- but that was the highlight)!!! It made me really happy.




One of Marshall's many presents this year was a bike! I'm lucky to have gotten the pictures that I did, he doesn't stay in one place for long. It brings me so much joy to see Marshall so happy. I started to tear up as he was ridding around.