It's Been too Long!

It's been way too long since I've posted last!  There are so many things are are going on right now it's just been crazy.  

First off, I've been SO SO busy with these three little kiddos!  It's been completely different for me to be at home with all the kids.  I love them to death but some days have definitely been hard.  We've kept busy doing things outside, and investigating our new home.

I'm going to share with you a few of the highlights from the month of July.  

Olivia had her first taste of baby food at the beginning of the month.  She really liked it and has enjoyed eating everything ever since.

We celebrated Brett's birthday.  Me and the kids made him an ice cream cake.  I think it turned out pretty good!

Then of course it was the 4th of July.  Such a fun holiday around these parts.  The kids just love the parade and all the fireworks.  It was a fun filled day for everyone.  We actually had fireworks a couple of days.  Alyssa really loved the snappers.

Next, my parents came to town.  It was so great to see them as usual.  And since Brett has been working pretty long hours since we've gotten here, it was extra nice to have some company.  While they were here there was a big storm and Luke pulled up some chairs by the sliding door to have a front view.  Alyssa has really gotten into frosting decorating, so we decorated cookies together.  The big project was fixing up Alyssa's dresser.  This was a garage sale find a long time ago, and was painted black.  Now it's so adorable!  

Brett and I have had a couple of moments to ourselves since getting here too.  We got to see the new Independence Day movie (which Brett is a huge fan of), and we've been out and about checking cows.  For most people, this is a super romantic thing...

Besides all that, we've just been having a ton of fun around the ranch.  Things have been getting better, and we've been settling into our new home.  I'm still searching for a job, but I'm really trying to just enjoy and treasure the quality time that I'm getting to have with my kids.  Some days its been really hard, but I know I'm going to be a little sad when I finally do find a job.  I'm not going to ever have this kind of quality time with them probably ever again.  How weird is that to think about?  

I can understand why women and men decide to stay at home with their kids when they are young.  It's such a magical time.  They love you unconditionally, look up to you and just want to snuggle and be with you.  

Olivia - 3 weeks and Newborn Session

I can't believe Olivia is already three week old!  Time really does fly by.  It's been a pretty good 3 weeks with a newborn too.  She's been pretty sleepy still.  I think just now she's starting to try to stay up a bit more, but she just gets herself over tired and then it's not so much fun for mom.  At least typically, she has these moments during the day and not in the middle of the night.  She's been giving me 2-3 hour stretches of sleep, which isn't what I want, but I can definitely deal with it most of the time.  

The big kids have been so excited about their baby sister, or as Luke calls her, baby sissy.  Alyssa loves to help take care of Olivia.  When she's crying, Alyssa loves to sing to her to comfort her.  It's very sweet.  Luke also loves his baby, but he's had a lot of fun playing with her stuff...or sitting in it.

When Olivia was 1 week old, we had newborn pictures taken by RGB Photography.  She did such a wonderful job!  This time instead of just getting pictures of our newborn, we opted to get a few pictures with the whole family.  I think it was definitely worth it.  

Since Olivia was supposed to be here in February, I planned to have Valentine's Day themed pictures with the kiddos.  I think they still turned out really nice.

These two are a few of my favorites.  She captured a smile.

And this picture with Brett is just adorable.

Those are a few pictures from our photo shoot.  Olivia also had her first bath when she was 2 weeks old and LOVED it!  She was so calm.  The other two kids hated their first bath and just screamed.  Olivia thought she was at a spa or something.  She just closed her eyes and enjoyed.

We went to her 2 week well baby check up on February 17th, and she now weighs 7lbs 6oz and is 20 inches long.  She's doing really well!  She had to get her heal poked, and wasn't a big fan of that.  It was one of those sad mom moments, but we made it though.  

Now here are just a few pictures that I like from her first few weeks of life.

Olivia at 1 week and again at 3 weeks.  She's getting a little more pudge in her face, and now I'm starting to see her siblings in her more and more every day.  I'm excited to compare pictures of all three kids in the future.  

Valentine's Day Projects

For the past couple of years I have decided that we would make our Valentine's for the kids to hand out at school because it's just one more fun craft that we can do together.  Alyssa has really enjoyed it.  Luke on the other hand...really could care less at this point.  Plus he's just not as into crafts as Alyssa is.

This year I asked Alyssa what she wanted to give her friends for Valentine's Day.  She told me all of her friends need candy hearts.  She LOVES the candy hearts so obviously everyone must love them.  I went out on Pinterest to see if there were any good ideas for candy heart Valentine's.  I found this website/blog where she put these Valentine's together for her kids with free printable.

To make them, I obviously bought candy hearts, which you can buy anywhere.  I bought little Valentine themed zip lock bags from our local Dollar Store, and printed the free printable out on some card stock.  I spent most of the time cutting out the bag toppers.  

Alyssa was so excited to help, so I got her a little scope to scoop up the candy hearts and put them in the little baggies.  We had a great little system going on!  Towards the end she was getting very creative and trying to put "boy colors" and "girl colors" into each bag.  It got interesting. 

Next, I wanted to find something fun for Luke.  He is 2 and doesn't really care so much about these things right now, but his name is Luke...so why shouldn't I do a Star Wars themed Valentine's Day card?  Duh.  I came across this article on Pinterest that had a bunch of really great ideas for kids along with free printable!  It was definitely what I was looking for.   I went for the "Yoda Best Valentine" printable at this website.  

Once again, I printed out the Valentine's on card stock, and cut them all out.  Alyssa wanted to help with these too, so she practiced her cutting skills.  She did a really great job actually!  I am a proud mommy.  Then I bought glow stick bracelets from, again, our local Dollar Store.  They came in packs of eight, so I thought that was a decent deal.  

Then I used a knife to cut little slits in the Valentine to place the "light saber" in Yoda's hand.  I also taped the glow stick onto the back to make sure it stayed in place and we didn't accidentally break it.  I didn't want them to glow before the kids got them!  

Our last project was making heart shaped cupcakes for the kids here at home.  I saw this on Pinterest and thought it was a great idea, and plus Luke loves cake!  Again...I bought my supplies at the Dollar Store.  I have to say that I hardly ever actually go to the Dollar Store, but man it was a successful trip!  I bought cupcake papers and marbles to complete this project.

We made red velvet cake, because hearts are read, right?  Alyssa helped me put the marbles in place to make each cupcake look like a heart.  She also helped eat some of the cake batter.

Then we put them in the oven and waited.  I was actually really excited to see how these would turn out.  When i pulled them out of the oven I was super impressed!  They look just like hearts!

Once they cooled, which was a long and torturous event, we did the decorating.  Of course there had to be a TON of sprinkles involved in this activity.

We had so much fun doing these projects for Valentine's Day!  I love all holidays and I think I'm passing my love for them off to my daughter.  Next up...Easter.  Alyssa is already anticipating the festivities!  I can't wait to dye eggs and do all the other fun Easter activities.  Stay tuned!  

Getting ready for #3 - Stage 1

This project is a multiple stage project.  Our current house is starting to get a little bit on the small side.  It's just a little over 1800 square feet total with 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms.  It has been a great house, but now that there are going to be 5 people living in it we have to change things around.

I've decided that I'm breaking down this huge project into a few parts because it's just easier for me to grasp and handle getting a little bit done at a time.  We waited until after the holidays to get things ready for baby #3, and there's a part of me that's very glad that we did and a part that isn't so pleased about my decision.   I really got to enjoy the holidays with my family which was amazing!  And we got to do some fun projects and baking.  But at this stage in the game (36 weeks), I'm not as ambitious as I once was.  I'm getting tired a lot more quickly and my body just aches.

Anyway, no more whining.  These are things we need to get done!  So here are my stages:

1. Move Luke into Alyssa's Room 
2. Find Baby Things
3. Clean Baby Things
4. Set Up Baby's Room
5. Wait for Baby 

This past weekend we tackled the crazy task of moving Luke into Alyssa's room in the basement.  

We started out with Luke upstairs in what I'd like to call the nursery still, and Alyssa downstairs in our 3rd bedroom.  

Disclaimer: There is a lot of mess and clutter while we are moving things around so I apologize in advance.

Alyssa's bedroom in the basement just kind of became that out of the blue, so we've VERY slowly added a few things here and there to her room to make it feel more like hers.  We also had a lot of our stuff in there too.  Check out the left corner of the room for example.  It is a stack of pillows, blankets, and computer towers.  Talk about an awesome storage spot lol.  

First we had to find a new home for all the "stuff" in Alyssa's room before we could even think about moving Luke's bed downstairs.  So we got to packing.  The awesome thing about having another house is that we can store things in it :)

In February, the in-laws are going to be heading to to see the new baby and to bring their annual shipment of beef.  It's become a big deal around here, so they bring down a trailer.  Let me tell you, that trailer is NOT going to be empty heading back up to the ranch.  I've got big plans to get rid of things around our house that we don't currently use or is just taking up space in this house.  We need as much room as we can possibly make!

So we moved out all the toys, pillows, and other things.  We were able to keep the printer in the room by just simple rearranging.   Now they share a room together!  

It's actually a perfect size room to fit their beds and books.  Luke was so excited when he saw his bed downstairs in sissy's room.  He climbed right up on it and snuggled it.  It was very adorable.  

Here is Luke in his bed in sissy's room the first night!

Let's just say they did ok.  There was a lot of coming out at the beginning, but once they fell asleep it was smooth sailing.  Now that it's been a few nights, Alyssa completely ignores Luke and just goes to bed.  She's such a sound sleeper anyway that it doesn't really matter what he does.  Thank the Lord!

As for the nursery, now that Luke's bed isn't in there I can start organizing what is in there.  I previously have spent some time doing a bit of restructuring in the closet.  I took out all of Alyssa's clothes and brought them downstairs, so now I have room for baby's clothes.  But this is where I started.  So much random stuff.

So I took most of it out and put a lot of it in storage, or threw things away.  I know it's not an amazing transformation at this point, but we're making progress.  That's what I'm happy about.  

When we were cleaning things out to move Luke's bed I also ran across a few baby things that I was excited to find, like my Boppy pillow.  I definitely will be needing that.  

Currently, I've been throwing things into the crib that I need to keep out for baby, and still need to clean.  Next stage is a TON of laundry.  I am looking forward to finding everything, but I for see a lot of cleaning in my future. Plus we are just going to be making a bigger mess before we can get things organized for good.  Good thing we have 4 weeks left!...hopefully :)