Wedding weekend

Last weekend our very dear friends got married!  Ben and Chris have been friends since they were short little boys with squeaky voices!  It was so nice to see them stand side by side as the groom and the best man.  Ben was honored to have that title, and our sweet girl got to use her flower girl skills again!  She is quite a pro now!

You got some splainin' to do...

Let me explain.  What had happened was...

So things got busy.  Crazy busy it seems!  It's rather sad that the last time I posted was in November, and even then I was doing a catch up post!  So allow me to attempt to compress the last 4-5 months into a single blog post, shall we?

We celebrated Christmas, (duh) and boy oh boy was it eventful this year!!  Santa visits, gingerbread houses, lots of baking, tons of shopping, lights at the zoo, parties, sick babies, an elf in our home, lots of sewing, and presents galore!!  We really had a wonderful time celebrating the birth of our Savior, and I loved that Audrey "got it" this year and spoke of the reason for the season many times.  Walker got sick 2 days before Christmas, so that made things a little more...whiney...but it was all ok!  Here are a couple of pictures from the 896 I took throughout the month of December.


This little guy showed up on our doorstep when he saw us bringing Christmas decorations down!  We named him Cooper, and while there were a couple mornings where Ben and I flew out of bed because we realized we forgot to move him, he really did add lots of excitement to our house this year!  We look forward to bringing him out again next year!

 Our annual Christmas Eve church service picture.  They were excited but so tired from a busy day!

At the Wilson's Christmas party

No tears this year!!

Blessed beyond belief!

As a Christmas present to Ben, I surprised him with tickets to see his favorite band.  His best friend was going, but Ben assumed we would never go because I'm not one to leave my kiddos overnight.  I decided I could do it for 1 night, and we really did have fun!

We had family pictures taken again by the lovely Kayla Wilkes!

 In February, our sweet girl turned 4!! We made a special trip to Atlanta to pick out her first American Girl doll, and it was a great trip!  Funny how much my kids love staying in a hotel!!

 We had a baking/cooking party this year and the kids loved it! They made their own pizzas for lunch and then decorated cupcakes!! Lots of fun and lots of mess! :)

How cute are these little chefs??

4 years have flown!!!

These 2 decided they wanted to bunk together...

 It's actually working out well, and we're all getting reasonable amounts of sleep for a change!!

And that brings us to March...when we got some exciting news that we've been praying for....

We are over the moon excited to be a party of 5 in November!!!  God is so good!!

I think that catches us up for the most part! I really will do my best to update more often!  We have about 7 weeks left of school and then we'll be in the thick of summer with lots of lazy days spent by the pool and at the beach, so I should be able to update a little more frequently!  

October Catch Up!

Um....I'm clearly in over my head.  It recently occured to me that I haven't updated in a "little while."  Now I get on here and see my last post was September 4th.  What the whaaaa??  My apologies.  Allow me to catch you up!

We've been busy.  Like, crazy end of the year, holiday season, hooray fall is here, kinda busy.  I love it!  First up-September started like this.

Why yes, yes that is a giant tree laying in our yard.  One of our pecan trees was just overloaded with pecans and had a very large dead "limb" that fell right next to/on top of our back deck.  I was standing in the kitchen when it happened and saw it coming.  Not cool.  Luckily there wasn't any damage...just a lot of clean up!!

Next we took the kiddos to a Carolina game.  It was Walker's first game and he loved it!

Next on the agenda was the annual Heart Walk in Charleston!  All the money raised goes to the American Heart Association to fund research for congenital heart defects!  In the 2 years we have participated, our family has raised $1750.00 for them!!

 The next fun thing we did was surprise the kids with a trip to see The Fresh Beat Band in concert!!  They had no idea where they were going and didn't figure it out until the band ran on stage! It was a blast!!  And yes, I sang every word to every song.  Don't judge.

In early October we joined my inlaws on our annual mountain trip!  We stayed in a cozy little cabin and enjoyed the pretty leaves and crisp cool air!

We went on lots of walks.  This girl thinks she is a model...

                 I did lots of this....

We took the kids fishing again this year and Walker got to fish too!  Audrey is a pro and caught 3 fish!! 

By the way, can someone please tell me how in the world she got so big?

This picture is one of my all time faves of my men.

Mountain beauty.

The next week was the state fair.  The kids had a blast and rode everything they were allowed to!!  Walker's favorite part was the snow cones....

We did some punkin picking...and carving!

Jessie and Woody had a blast TRUNK or treating and TRICK or treating!

 

Holy cow, I am tired just looking through this post!  I think this may be the longest post in history!  With every single free second I have had, I've been sewing, sewing, and sewing some more to prepare for our craft fair on November 9th!!  If you are local, please come support my sister and I as we launch our new sewing business!! More to come on that!  Hope you all had as wonderful a September and October as we did!!  Happy November!!

Playroom

Welcome to our playroom!  Finally!

I had the hubs hang some roman shades on the insides of the doors for one purpose only-hiding the mess! :)  It works like a charm.  Until I open the door and nearly fall to my knees in horror at the mess, or a neighbor comes in and says, "Oh what lovely doors, may I open them?"  No.  No, you may not.

When the doors are opened, this is what you see.  Well, after I spend an hour cleaning up that is.

I painted the walls a nice light aqua blue.  I believe it is called Tropical Spray?  Or maybe Island Mist?? I've forgotten already, but it's a Valspar paint from Lowes. :)

In the corner tucked behind the doors to the left is their easel.  I hung the handprint canvas' we made at Audrey's 3rd birthday party.

In another corner we have the art table that came from Ben's grandparent's old house.  The benches open for storage of coloring books, paper, crayons, stickers, etc.  They love to color!

This is the little kitchen area.  The bins beside it hold the play food, dishes, and kitchen utensils.  They also love to cook! :)

I got some vinyl stick on letters at Target and made a cute little alphabet wall. 

These cubbies came from Target and house most of the small toys.  I mean, the quantity of toys in this household is just insane.  See the canvas bins?  Yea, they pretty much empty every single toy out of these.  

Ok, now prepare yourself for what you are about to see.  The sad part is, I can't even blame this on the kids.  This would be my mess.  Here we have my craft table I built with my dad, and some storage units.  This hot mess is a compilation of scrapbooking supplies, school supplies, sewing supplies, and pretty much all craft items I have.  Surprisingly, it is actually organized, it just looks messy because I have more stuff than I have room to store it.  So....it piles up. I'm working on this.  

You'll also notice our art wall.  I've always planned to have a place in my house where I display all my kid's artwork.  Well, not ALL of it, but the favorites that they are proudest of, or that mean the most to me.  

I still need to add one more frame in the upper left corner.

You may be noticing the clothespins.  I removed the glass from all the picture frames, and hot glued two clothespins to each frame.  I did this for two reasons.  

1.  Have you ever watched kids play with balls in the house?  If you have, then you've probably also witnessed them bouncing/throwing the ball way too hard, sending it flying to your picture wall and knocking the frame off the wall into a shattered mess on the floor.  I didn't quite think that was safe for the playroom.  So....no glass in these.

2.  If you have kids, you know the amount of art projects they make.  Both of my babies love to paint and color, so I wanted to be able to switch their masterpieces out quickly and easily.  Now I don't have to remove the back of the frame to switch a picture.  I don't even have to take the frame off the wall!  Just slip it in the pins!  It's working great and we all love seeing their precious masterpieces on the wall.

One little funny to add.  Here is a picture Audrey Grace did for her dad for father's day.  It is a picture of him.  See the 2 circles on each side of his head??  Those are ears.  And the one circle right below his chin?  That's his belly.  hahaha!!  I love little minds.

I was quite impressed with Audrey's version of Rapunzel.  She forgot arms, but she got the purple dress. :)

Our playroom also has the calendar and weather charts that I use with Audrey.  We don't do very much scheduled school work yet because she's still 3, but we do try to talk about the calendar and the weather each day.

So that's our playroom.  I'm still debating window treatments.  I love the natural light, but the windows do look bare to me.  I don't want blinds or anything hanging down that the kids can get ahold of, so I may do some sort of valance.  It's not a priority though.

This room does give me hives because of the constant mess and clutter, but I'm still really glad we did it.  They spend hours in there each day, and I like that it eliminates toys and clutter from spilling into other rooms of the house.  I'd rather have one crazy room than 4 rooms with toys and clutter in all of them.  I saw a quote somewhere that said, "Please excuse the mess, the children are making memories."  I'm thinking I may paint this above the doors outside the playroom.  Or come to think of it, maybe just outside my front door before people even enter my house. :)