This is what you really didn't know, this is where the truth don't lie.

In a time when nothing is more certain than change, the commitment of two people to one another has become difficult and rare. Yet, by its scarcity, the beauty and value of this exchange have only been enhanced. ~Robert Sexton

What a whirlwind week! Great times with my little family and my daddy got married to a sweet, wonderful woman. I have to be honest, my husband is what's gotten me through this past week and a half. I generally try not to rely on him for every single thing that stresses me, but it just comes natural when he becomes the only really dependable person in your life. Had some major freak outs- military ID missing, which means being treated like trash trying to get on post, making me late for my hair appt. Emily being cranky for the entire thing. Stressing about little details that in the end, didn't matter but felt frustrating when it was one thing after another. Blah. The wedding (and rehearsal) went off without a hitch, everything and everyone was gorgeous, my kids made me proud and walked right down that aisle without a fit or a complaint (even though I was concerned because neither of them care for large crowds). I got busted vandalizing the get-a-way car with chalk and "just married" decals. lol. I'm so happy for them and am excited to move forward as a combined family. :)

Before the rehearsal dinner.

Hair!

Daddy took little man shopping- he cleans up pretty good. :)

bubbles!

my handsome ring bearer and gorgeous flower girl.

before the wedding. :)

reception food!

cropped for identity purposes- but this is post-reception.

On the flipside of that, I love them (my family) and will miss them. But I want to move. We miss my love and I accept military life, but he is my home and that's where we all belong. He made a really good point this weekend that while my life would change, it really wouldn't. What's the point in hanging around for friends and/or family who don't spend time with you anyway? (Some, not all. I have to give credit where it's due) "Oh, I'm going to miss you so much" is pretty empty when effort to make up for future lost time is a one-sided thing. I, personally, have other things to do. When someone or something is a priority, you MAKE time for it. I haven't spent as much time with a few family members as I'd like. It's going to be really hard to leave my grandparents and some of my cousins. Everyone has a life... and what you do with the time you're given does show what's important to you. As an adult, I can still make the effort to keep in touch and I think it will be fine. But what about the years that will be missed with my kids? And the years that have already been missed just by lack of effort (or caring). Eventually the military will take us somewhere else... and it's going to be hard to sympathize with people missing them when I -know- there were missed opportunities. Something or someone else was more important. So, it's time to start making the most of the time I have here... but I'm still wishing and praying to be somewhere else. Guess we'll see. But instead of stressing over the bad, I'm thankful for the support system we've had and for the people who are constantly there for all 3 of us. If you have -one- true friend, you're blessed. I have a few more than that. :)

Hmmm... what else? Hubby got us a pool! We got a great deal and the public pool prices here are INSANE. So, buy a pool for a really great price, get swimming AND I will never pay for tanning again during the spring/summer/early fall! That thing paid for itself. (I'm darker after my 2nd day in that thing tha nafter a whole 2 weeks at Celsius!) And it makes my babies happy (and so tired, thank you J!) so I'm looking forward to making time fly by the pool. Ready for our next visit to Texas (I was ready to hop in the car with him and get out of here, but there are things to be done). Hopefully we'll be spending our anniversary there!

Happy day-late 4th of July! Favorite holiday but obviously with my pyro padre on his honeymoon and my hubby back in TX, it was just me and the little man. My princess is NOT a fan of fireworks (but loves fire itself, go figure). I think it's the noise. Anyway... we had some fun the night before and did a few on the day itself... Kface made mama and daddy proud, for sure! Held his own sparklers and even a Roman candle!

"I could write a blog. I have thoughts."

It's been awhile, I know. Truthfully, I'm writing this so I can procrastinate moving my bedroom furniture around (making room for the new bed, hooray!). Let's see... what's happened since last time? Well- we went to "A day out with Thomas" the train for K's birthday gift from his Nana & Papa. We left at 9:30 p.m. on that same day to head to TX and arrived at 8:30 a.m. I'd been up 26 hours and crashed HARD. I think I napped more in that day than I had for the collective 6 months before it. We had a good week... went to the beach, spent tons of time in the pool and just enjoyed family time. Before I get ahead of myself, I'll throw in some photos from THAT. :)

It was a good 8 days. The drive back was really long, but considering we had 6 children, was alright. We've stayed pretty busy since getting ready for a wedding in the family. My princess is the flower girl and little man is the ring bearer. And I'm a bridesmaid! It's wedding week so things are crazy here... I can't wait. :) I need to start preparing the house, etc because we also have my hubby for a long weekend! 4th of July is my favorite holiday (yeah, yeah... I'm a pyro) so it's happy faces all around.

What else? I've been kicking butt at the gym with my bff and am down 6 lbs! A lot of that also has to do with portion control and less caffeine (I have toddlers, it'll be awhile before I can completely give it up). Hmm... what am I missing? I found a home for our 3rd Jack russell that I was struggling with and from what I hear, he's adjusting well. It was difficult but it was the right decision.

"Friendship isn't about whom you have known the longest... It's about who came, and never left your side."

I don't make temporary relationships. I make them for life. My husband, my kids, my family. Even the close friends I have are more like family. So when you just bail without a word on someone who's like family, I can't respect that. How much worse is it when someone IS family and you abandon them? I can't imagine deliberately avoiding them. Then one day you wake up and just decide you -deserve- the opportunity to be part of that family without ever acknowledging your deliberate absence? I'm all about forgiveness, but no one is entitled to a relationship that others have -worked- for. You have to BE in it... it's a constant effort. I don't need people in my life who don't need me in theirs. There are others far more worth that time and effort. Moving forward, thankful for my family and my friends. I'm so blessed to have such an amazing support system. :)

Ohhhhhh! And I had my hair fixed for the wedding. She just trimmed by bangs and did high and lowlights... but I've NEVER loved my hair more! :)

faster than fast, quicker than quick. I am lightning.

... She lives. Not really too busy, just not really inspired. April wasn't the best month of my life, May flew by with our little man turning 4. His party was a HUGE hit, but I didn't end up having the time or desire to mess with fondant when the time came. I always order a big cake and get stuck with tons of extra. Not conducive to my health goals.. at all. It worked out perfectly- perfect amount of finger foods, ice cream and cake!

Pictures from the birthday bash:

It was great fun and our little man was so happy. We are so blessed with great family and friends. The bounce house was the biggest hit, I think. A must for our future parties! Already reserved the one for our September Princess party. :)

Oh my mama told me, there'd be days like this.

Yesterday was dreadful. Awful. Horrible. My charming son decided he would paint a small spot on his wall and brand new dresser with purple nail polish in the five minutes it took me to run downstairs, switch over laundry and shuffle around a few boxes. How did he even manage to get a hold of it? My sweet, ornery daughter stole it from the bathroom and left it in a common area. Normally K knows better and would NEVER do anything like this- I'm sure he just felt creative and didn't want to ask me for the art set he doesn't really remember he has. Yikes. So I went into my kitchen to cool off because I was extremely frustrated and my dog brought me -another- present to the back porch. I'm not sure how his mind works or why he wants to bring me what he seems to think is "food", but I was in a position that I had to be the one to deal with it and I definitely was already ready to pull my hair. Then the kids napped late and didn't want to go to sleep. Thankfully, today was better. MUCH better.


So I went a little crazy... got a pedicure and chopped off 5 inches of my hair in one week. haha. I haven't had short hair in a couple of years (not this short) and I haven't had a pedi since I was pregnant with my son. Time flies and all that jazz.

Before hair:

 After hair!

I wasn't sure at first. From the first picture, which I LOOOVE, I'm sad about it being gone. But summer is coming and life is crazy so the short hair is just better right now. I fully intend to start growing it out later in the year and through the winter. Plus, am I the only one who's hubbs has said "It looks great honey, but what did they do to it?" haha. Not every time, but I fell into a pattern with the same style and cut and I can't blame him for not being able to see the difference in the past.

In other news, I've started the spin classes again. Loving them and definitely planning to start doing them more regularly! I hurt my shoulder so it's been difficult to push myself in other parts of the gym, but I'm working through it so I'm not -too- disappointed.

What are everyone's plans for mother's day as a mom yourself or in honor of your mom/stepmom/grandmother/sister?

Finally throwing our garage sale together this weekend and I couldn't be more excited to purge my life of all this excess STUFF! We have 3 toddler beds (one of which is a Thomas the train that retails for $275 at toys r us!), toddler clothes, adult clothes, kitchen stuff, household stuff, a little bit of furniture. 3 different families are participating so it should be great! =D

Oh how I wish I could say 'Happy mid-week'. Is it really only tuesday?

Promise me you'll always remember: You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.

I wish adults made friends and trusted as easily as children. Maybe it's because we've been given reason to know better, but it's still sort of sad. We took the kiddos to the park this week and another family showed up that we didn't know (actually, the mom sat in the car while her 4 children, including tiny toddlers ran around crazy). Anyway- while I was busy thinking "This lady has a 2 year old (and probably a 3 or 4 year old in addition to the 2 older kids) and she's seriously sitting in her van 200 yards away on the phone. Does she care that they could get hurt and she wouldn't be there to catch them or take care of them?", which is legitimate, my kids couldn't have cared less. To them, it was just a potential friend or someone to play with for the time being. As much as I wasn't a fan of this particular group of kids (or their apathetic mother), I think adults can learn from children about how to treat people.

Tonight K-monster and I were talking on the way home and he goes "I love you, Ash-wee." I looked at him and said "What are you supposed to call me?" He says "Mommy." So I told him he was right and not to call me by my first name. His response? "But my daddy calls you 'Ashley.'" He was so matter-of-fact and had the sweetest, most sincere look on his face like he genuinely was confused. haha. So stinking cute.

My babygirl has come to a point where she almost will NOT wear regular clothes. Do I love having a girly girl? Absolutely. Do I love that I can't throw some capris and a shirt on her and head out the door? Not at all. lol. If I do, she's changing her clothes and digging for a tutu or princess dress. Gotta love her! Sh

It's been really awesome having a workout partner and someone to push me beyond what I would push myself. I've lost 4 lbs since last week and I feel GREAT. Working on my endurance as well as my other goals- feeling focused! Otherwise, not much going on. Trading out my bathroom theme from "Cars" to something a little more grown up- I'm enjoying it more since I found the new shower curtain for $3 when I just saw it for $8 last week, and the matching rug was only $2. I heart Target clearance. Fort-wide garage sales tomorrow with my friend across the street at 0500! I'm a little bit addicted to "greek" right now, and even more addicted to netflix! That's all. :)

“Even though we've changed and we're all finding our own place in the world, we all know that when the tears fall or the smile spreads across our face, we'll come to each other because no matter where this crazy world takes us, nothing will ever change so much to the point where we're not all still friends.”

Life is good.

And thank you for a house full of people I love. Amen.

I have 2 or 3 new projects I'm working on, but there are a few that will be ongoing. Scrapbooking our TX vacation as well as catching up on Em's first year (and after). Last week I went to legends with the babies last week for ice cream and stuff... ended up finding this awesome book for my princess. Some of my favorite memories with my grandma are in the kitchen. I want to share these same kinds of memories with both of my kiddos. This just happened to be for Em and I got one about fathers and sons to read to Kface while J is away.

Front cover

Inside.

There are slots for main dishes, side dishes, breakfast, desserts, etc. with "notes" pages as well as the recipe pages and where they came from! So I can save and pass down MY grandma's recipes to my baby girl and in my perfect sentimental mommy dream world, she would pass them down to her babies. I'm ecstatic to start filling it out.. the hard part is deciding which recipes are worthy. Sounds like a good excuse to test them, right?!? :)

We had my honey home for a week... it wasn't long enough but it never is. I swear, I could spend every day with him for 50 years and it wouldn't be enough. Cannot wait for another roadtrip to Texas for a few weeks! Anyway.. he was here for family reasons, but ended up being sick so we saw him more than planned. We took the kiddos to see "Hop", which was cute but ridicously cheesy. J even watched some "Grey's Anatomy" with me and I'm not certain, but I think he might've kinda liked it. Mayyyybe he just really loves me. Either way, he's the best. Otherwise, it was pretty productive as far as getting ready for the garage sale in 2 weeks and working on stuff around the house. Good family time that I think we all really needed. I'm such a lucky girl. :)

Movie night. <3

This makes my heart happy.

Playdate at the park!

Searching for bugs!

Em's flowers are growing! Mine and K's.. not at all.

Weekend playdate.

Wearing makeup.. normally not my thing.

My makeup artist slash life partner. Love her!

Easter outfits during their egg hunt.

Does it make me horribly vain to say that my children should be models? Because seriously.. I believe that. lol. I am pretty sure that every mother sees her child and feels her son or daughter is the most beautiful thing she's ever seen. That's the way it should be. So maybe I'm not awful for talking about how absolutely gorgeous mine are? haha. :)

It was an amazing week. Cannot wait til K's 4th birthday... another long family weekend! I have roughly a month to learn to use fondant, plan activities (we're thinking... bouncy castle!) and a menu. Who's excited for a "Cars" Party?! =)

Life is good.

"I'm a mother with two small children, so I don't take as much crap as I used to."

"No one who cooks, cooks alone. Even at her most solitary, a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past, the advice and menus of cooks present, the wisdom of cookbook writers."


I finally made the chocolate cake I'd been planning so I could use the oreo icing I'd purchased awhile back. I didn't have cupcake paper so I decided to just do a giant cupcake cake. I baked it too long but managed somehow not to burn it... set it on the counter to cool (it turned out MUCH better than my last one!) and about a half hour before I was ready to go ice it, Kegan runs up to me and says "Em is eating your cake!" Sure enough, there was a fist-full missing. Seriously. I've been procrastinating this cake for weeks and the day I finally made it... GRR! I could've cried. But, o'well. I can make another cake and perhaps this was my karma for doing it while she was asleep instead of baking it with them. :) I'm headed out soon to go look into these cake classes and I could NOT be more excited! My only obstacle at this point is childcare... I hate not having a sitter when I need one! I never do anything for me so I'm hoping just this once it'll work out. Cross those fingers! :)


A K-face story? Okay. I was making dinner yesterday (a chicken taco recipe that is the creation of a good friend) and K says "Mom, I don't like tacos". Normally I make him eat whatever we're eating because I cannot teach them that they can just refuse to eat what I make. This time, since I had leftover pizza and salad mix, I made an exception. As he's walking out of the kitchen to take it to his room (another exception since Em was napping and the husband still wasn't home) he goes "Thanks, mom. You rock!" He's never used that phrase before so I had to ask him to repeat himself and he said all slowly "You... rock." *smile* He's such a charmer. :)


I need to start cooking and baking more. I miss it... I really need a muse to get excited about it again. Cooking for toddlers who rarely eat or appreciate what they're putting in their mouths isn't exactly "inspirational". I'll work on that too. Maybe they'll enjoy it more if I make them apart of it? I'll keep that in mind when I plan my next menu/grocery lit. :)


I keep having these terrifying dreams that usually end in me protecting my kids from something or someone. I know that's my instinct... but the older and more curious they get, the more I worry for them. The more I am dreading them going to school and being away from me (where I'm unable to protect them from anyone or anything that might harm them in any way). It makes me sick. I know it's a part of parenting, but with K right around the corner from school age, it's starting to really make me aware of things I never had to think about before. I love being a young mom, but I'm almost certain this will give me grey hair before my 30's. lol. They are so sweet and precious to me... I just cannot believe how fast it's going. How smart they are and how much they change every single day... it makes me grateful (even though, not always) that I didn't miss a thing. <3 I'm not sure what I would do without a husband who values these things too, I'm so fortunate.






"Noncooks think it's silly to invest two hours' work in two minutes' enjoyment; but if cooking is evanescent, so is the ballet."Julia Child


"Kids go where there is excitement. They stay where there is love."
Zig Ziglar