Growing pains...

So it's been forever and a day since my last entry in the blog world. I find blogging a bit difficult to keep up with because there are so many I love to read, so I find myself getting overwhelmed and not reading or writing any at all. I know, strange right? You would think I could just pick a few to read each night when I get a free moment or update my own for that matter, but I find myself on Facebook instead or messing around in Lightroom, editing my pictures. It's been an interesting summer, pretty uneventful, but interesting still. Life with 2 three yr. olds continues to keep me on my toes and challenges me everyday to want to be a better mom. Some days I feel like I fail miserably while other days I feel like at the end of the day I can lay my head on my pillow and not have a thousand thoughts race through my head of what I wish I would have done or said differently. I still constantly have to remind myself that I will for sure make mistakes (everyday!) and just pray that God covers them, just do my best and let Him take care of the rest! I find 3 to be some what of a difficult age, more so then 2....at least for me it has been. Strong wills, sassy mouths and more time outs then ever! Everything baby is behind us now except for pull-ups at bedtime, oh and....did I mention they are still sleeping in cribs? I know, I know....get them in big boy and girl beds already! But....they don't try and climb out of their cribs and it's so nice to know that when we put them to bed, they are going to stay there, sooooo, we just leave them in cribs for now! Actually, every once in a while we will ask them if they want to sleep in a big bed and be in their own rooms and each time the answer is "NO!!!! we want our cribs"!!! I think it's because they know when we do this, they will not be sleeping in the same room anymore because it's not big enough for two twin beds. They really do quite well in the same room, so for now we are leaving it alone, at least until they turn 4 which is just in a few months! ((((sigh)))).....I feel like I am sort of in this place where I need to do some growing myself. My status on FB last week was something like..."I am feeling a bit out of sorts lately"....it's not a real fun feeling to have, but I do believe God will lead me thru it. I want to grow in my relationship with Him and it may require a lot of changing along the way, so I have to prepare myself for that. I have a tendency to shut down when life is too much for me when I should just run into the arms of my Creator. So I want to grow. I want to put this list I have created in my head, of who I want to be, to good use and quit saying "maybe one day..." Anyway....enough about me, Lilly and Asher are going to be 4 in just 5 short months, how is this possible?! Oh and it shows that they are getting older when I hear things like "it's no fair"! or "he started it" and "it's your fault"! Sometimes I think they need a break from mommy and mommy needs a little break from them as well...would love for them to go to preschool at least one day a week, but it's just not in the cards for us right now. (cards meaning budget ;) We'll see. I adore them more then ever. My favorite part of the day would have to be right before we put them to bed we all 4 snuggle up in our bed and we let them watch a little nick jr. while we cuddle. I wouldn't trade that moment for the world no matter how completely squished Brad and I are and ready to fall off the bed...after the snuggle time we usually read a story and pray and recently we have been asking them what their favorite part of the day was. The answers are so sweet and always make Brad and I smile. Here are a few recent photos of the little darlings.

Big boy and girl turn 3...

We celebrated Lilly and Asher's birthday on Jan. 10th since their actual birthday was on Monday. Just had family and a few close friends over to have some cake with us. It's amazing how you can blow up a bunch of balloons, put them in a room and kids just think it's the greatest! No need for birthday games, just let them throw the balloons up and hit them around. This also causes excited high pitched screaming, so it was for sure loud! I should have known that the 5 dollar umbrella's I picked up at Walmart, at the last minute would be the biggest hit as far as presents go. Since Sunday, Lilly and Asher both have taken their umbrella's (rain or no rain) with them wherever we have gone. My babies are 3 now....they are fun, sweet, beautiful blessings. They make me laugh, they make me cry, they make me want to be a better mommy. I look so forward to seeing them grow this year and what new things they will do, say and learn. Lilly already talks like she is 10 yrs. old practically! They say things now that just amaze me like "I miss Simon" (our dog that we had to put to sleep about 6-8 months ago). They ask about God and Jesus and say He lives up in the clouds in Heaven and Lilly will also add "and He lives in my heart". Their favorite words are "why" and "because" and they will say them even when it doesn't make sense to say. It melts my heart when they say "I love you mommy" and I know it does Brad as well to hear "I love you daddy". Asher's giggle is infectious and Lilly's hugs are priceless. The 4 of us snuggle in Brad and I's bed every night before putting them to bed and watch some Nickjr. Most of the time we all end up laughing and wrestling around but it's nice when we are all just quiet and snuggled up to each other. I hope and pray as they get older, they will still want to do that... They had a ck up the other day and Miss Lilly weighs a whopping 24.5 lbs and is 35 inches tall. Asher weights 32.5 and is 39.5 inches tall. I love you my sweet 3 yr olds!

First big snow of the year...

Lilly and Asher were beyond excited to wake up and look out the window and see snow on the ground...after Christmas of course :( As a matter of fact, it was 2 days after Christmas on my birthday, so that was a nice surprise! I woke up to Brad, Lilly and Asher singing happy birthday and laying two presents on my belly. ...so sweet. Later we bundled them up to go out for just a few minutes because it was super cold that day. Asher ate the snow, which didn't surprise me at all and Lilly just giggled and tried to catch snowflakes on her tongue. It's so fun to see them so excited about something. I feel so blessed to have these two little ones in my life and have an amazing husband to help me keep my sanity! hehe.

Happy New Year!

2010, a brand new year and time for brand new goals. I had set a few for the babies (guess now that they are 3 I can stop calling them babies....neh!) one goal being potty training before their 3rd birthday! I'm proud to say, even though I waited until the last minute, Lilly and Asher are both almost completely potty trained! Lilly caught on in 3 days while Asher took a bit longer. Not that he didn't catch on as quick, he just flat out didn't feel like going on the potty. Let me tell you potty training two toddlers at the same time was a bit overwhelming the first few days. My sister stayed with me to help get started and by the end of the day we wanted to give up and wait another couple of weeks! We put them straight into undies, no pull-ups, so we spent the first day cleaning up accidents. Day two was better and by day three Lilly was doing both on the potty and has never looked back! Asher just started going #2 in the potty the last few days so I am really hoping this is it! They both do wear a pull-up at night, then undies all day....I'm so proud of them and incredibly thankful to be done with diapers! We are hoping to try and use whatever money we save on diapers to put them in preschool 1 day a week this spring....we'll see if the savings add up to be able to do it. We spend New Years with Grandma Chris and Papa Hoz, Aunt Shelly and Brennen joined us as well. We laid Lilly and Asher down for a nap at 4pm so they could stay up to ring in the New Year with us...it worked out quite well because I snuck off and took a nap too! Our little celebration started with pizza and yummy snacks Brad's mom brought. We got out the party hats and horns at about 10pm and had to hear Lilly and Asher blow those horns and say "Happy New Ear" for two hours straight...yes....they both called it "new ear". After ringing in the New Year it took them about 45 min. to settle down and be ready for bed....the good thing about a late bedtime means they didn't wake up until almost 11am the next morning! So here are a few photos of our New Years celebration and hoping this year brings wonderful things ;)

I have got some catching up to do!

Ahhh...Christmas...it was a really fun one this year with the babies being almost 3. They were very excited about putting the tree up and helping decorate it, talking and asking lots about Santa and singing along to the "Elf" soundtrack every time we got in the car! Brad and I got so sick of hearing that cd we once loved, we were happy to put it away for another year. We took them to see Santa at his house in the mall ;) of course on the way their they were so excited and couldn't wait to see him and tell him what they wanted for Christmas. They had both practiced it so many times...when asked...Lilly would say "I'm gonna tell Santa I want a barbie"! Asher would say "and I want Handy Manny"...seemed simple enough. As you can see from the pictures, this is as far as they got! Lilly didn't sit on his lap nor did she tell him what she wanted, instead she held onto Aunt Shelly for dear life and cried. Asher got as far as standing in line with daddy...he wouldn't even walk up to him, let alone sit on his lap! Oh well, maybe next year. Christmas morning was also lots of fun, Nana, Aunt Shelly and Becky and cousin Brennen all spent the night so we could all wake up together on Christmas morning. It was so cute to see the look on their faces when they came down the stairs to find presents under the tree, some wrapped and some unwrapped and to see that Santa had eaten his cookies we left out! Unlike last year, they tore open their presents with noooo problem and most importantly they were old enough this year to some what understand why we celebrate Christmas and asked lots of questions about baby Jesus too.

Well Lilly and Asher enjoyed another year of trick or treating. (well Asher, not so much....he was super grumpy) we dragged him around in the freezing cold anyways to fill his pumpkin with candy that we knew he would never even eat. When we went up to most houses he would hide his pumpkin behind his back when they would go to drop the candy in and make a grumpy face! Lilly on the other hand held her pumpkin out before we even got up to the house....she is our candy freak....thankfully Asher could care less about it, a roll of smarties or a sucker that he never finishes, every great once in a while and he is good to go. Lilly asks for candy for breakfast most mornings. Over all it was a fun but cold evening. We tried to hurry home in time to pass out the candy we bought but didn't make it, so that candy made it's way into our bellies just as Brad predicted it would. We let them pick out their costumes after many suggestions, they finally decided on these. We didn't try them on until we got home and Asher's was too small. My thought was to exchange it for the very same costume in a size bigger but of course when we went back they didn't have anymore. We offered up other cute costumes but Asher was not having it! He had his heart set on this particular puppy so back home we went, with the same costume that was too small and figured we would make it work for one night. After painting a little black nose on Asher and painting WAY too much on Lilly's face...we were ready to hit the neighborhoods! Face painting on 2 year olds wasn't such a good idea....I felt like we were totally getting on to them the whole night not to touch their faces. After a while I felt really bad and just let it go. Lilly's face was one big smear and Asher's black nose ended up on his sleeve. Love those babies!

Happy fall!

We took the babies (wonder when I will stop calling them babies?) to their first visit to the pumpkin patch this last week! It was a beautiful day to go and they loved it! They had this huge pillow jumpy there and Lilly and Asher had a ball on that. They also enjoyed playing on bales of hay as well as the hay ride out to pick our pumpkins. There was a blow-up little haunted house for kids to walk thru and Asher kept telling us he wanted to go in the scary house, I didn't let him of course, crazy kid! Anyway, after we walked around and enjoyed everything, Aunt Shelly found our big pumpkin to carve and Lilly and Asher each picked out a small one for them. Nana and Brennen met us at home and we carved the pumpkins and baked the seeds! (let me make a correction, Aunt Shelly carved the pumpkins because mommy had never done it before and Brennen made the pumpkin seeds) Lilly loved pulling the guts out of the pumpkins, Asher wouldn't touch it! haha! It was a super fun day! We ended it by going outside and putting candles in the pumpkins and showing Lilly and Asher how they light up. Here are some pictures from our fun fall day!

It's been awhile!...

Wow, it's been so long since my last blog I couldn't even remember my password to get on here, had to try a few before getting it right! I can't believe it's October and the leaves are starting change and the temp is starting to drop! I absolutely love fall and welcome it with open arms, but it's also a reminder of what is around the corner! bbbrrrrrrr.....another Indiana winter! I'm really trying my hand at this photography thing and am happy to say I am getting some appointments! Even did a wedding , crazy. I won't make this blog too long since it's the first one in a while and I will try to stay caught up from now on, I really miss it! The kiddos will be 3 years old in a few months, makes me sad and happy at the same time. I look at pictures of them from when we first moved to IN and they don't even look like the same kids! They were still babies when we first moved! Well, I tried to do their 2 yr. photo session a few weeks ago and it's very hard to take posed pics of them now....so I only got a few. I want to try again in a few weeks but it will be mostly candid shots that I take of them. Bribes don't work well with these two and it was a miracle to get a shot of them both looking at the camera.