Best most awesome/exhausting trip ever!

Wow. Where do I even begin...

I {heart} Californ-EYE-A.

And even more, I {BIG puffy red heart} my family.

We spent 6 days completely surrounded by some of my most favorite people in the world doing my favorite things.

Thanksgiving...



Uncle Rick always showing some humor



Apple pies I made under the wings of my artistic Aunt Gwen



Relaxing and playing...

Story time with "Lolo" and Aunt Gwen

playing in the backyard

Disneyland...




Kensie and her three aunt's walking down Main St. for the first time.

 



First rocket ride with Daddy!
(She didn't cry but didn't look like she loved it either...this was her face before and after.)

 

Pluto!

Kensie has been talking about Mickey Mouse ever since...



My favorite shot of the castle...it was stunning.




Disneyland during Christmas time = Uh-mazing.



 

Celebrating my Grandpa Woody turning 90...



Four Generations (minus Kensie)



The community he lives in decorated his golf cart and made a parade in honor of turning 90.
He's a kind of a big deal. :)

Terry and my Mama. Such a happy couple.



 

Aunt Gwen goes all out for parties. Over 80 people came to celebrate! Most of them being family.



Yes, there are 90 candles.



All FIVE of us siblings together again!! This pic means SO much to me.
From left to right--Katelyn. Lauren. Ryan. Me. Gretchen.



  

Meeting lots of "new" relatives and making friends left and right.

Grandma Bebe and Grandpa Woody. They just never seem to age! Love them.

 




My dear Aunt Gwen who I look up to so incredibly much. She's my aunt, my friend and my mentor.



The title of this post says it all. Never has a vacation been more fun and yet more exhausting than this one. 

And after squeezing all four of us into the tiny room pictured above, I've never been more thankful to be home.  

Traveling with kids...

We are leaving on a plane tomorrow.

Excited? Umm yes.

Stressed? Umm yes.

Packed? Uh kinda.

I'm the kind of gal that starts making lists weeks before a trip and then wakes up in the middle of the night remembering to add "bibs" or "DVD player" or "zip lock baggies" to it.

I start making piles of neatly folded clothes all over the house and go back to weed out the items I don't think we need every day leading up to departure.

See the Mickey Mouse ears? *wink*

Yet, somehow with all this "planning ahead", I'm still looking at empty suitcases the night before we leave...

There's something about remembering everything we possibly need for a 6 day vacation that forces me to plan early. But, it's actually putting them all in suitcases that freaks me out. Once I hide everything behind those closed zippers I can't see it and simultaneously check it off my list! I know. I'm weird.

We have an afternoon flight tomorrow so I'm not too worried.

And we've been prepping a certain little girl about the sleeping arrangements we will have on our trip.

Some friends loaned us this blow-up toddler bed. We'll see how it goes. She has never slept in anything BUT her crib. Mason will have a pack n' play. Did I mention we will ALL four be in the same room?? Yeah. Pray for us.



Getting aquainted with the "new" bed in the living room while watching some VeggieTales.



Flying with a 2 year old and an 8 month old will be interesting. This will be Kensie's third plane trip and Mason's first. They have both proven to be good travelers...but they only last so long ya know? So, I will leave you with this cute idea I found via FB through a friend through a friend.

I took some leftover Halloween candy and put them in zip lock baggies.

Then you write this cute little rhyme on a card and stuff it in each baggie.

You give them to the strangers you end up sittting next to on the plane.

Because I remember that feeling before I had kids. You know...where you're quietly sitting in your assigned seat on the plane all comfortable with your purse in the open seat next to you....then you look up...and you see a clumsy Dad tripping down the narrow aisle holding a bulky carseat...and a Mom holding a wiggly baby in one arm and dragging a toddler with the other...making their way closer and closer....and the Dad looks up with eagerness that they have "finally" made it to their seats...and kindly pauses, "Excuse me Miss, I think we are right there next to you....

...and I vividly remember thinking in that moment, "Oh crap!"

Here's to vacation!! Whoop whoop!

Saturday projects

I've decided to make my Saturdays more enjoyable by doing something different than my normal routine during the week. While I still take care of the kids and keep their routines the same, I try to switch up my routine. No computer. No TV. All my free time (aka naptime) is devoted to fun projects. It has really helped me look forward to Saturdays (seeing that Greg is gone for most of them). So, over the weekend I got a few projects done that I've been wanting to accomplish for a while.

I'm not the best at tutorials but here is a picture progression of an old window I turned into a fun and versatile chalkboard!



Idea via Pinterest





Now, onto the super easy supplies...



paint



tape





Grungy old window



Clean those nasty windows.

Tape everything but the glass.

Spray 2 coats of paint.

Peel off the tape annnnd....

Voila!

And I couldn't resist setting up my Christmas village I scored for 6 bucks at a garage sale!



***

The next project (which I forgot to take a "before" pic cuz I'm smart like that)...anyway, the next one was supposed to be a chalkboard as well....



I painted the mirror black in hopes of writing "Welcome" and hanging it near our entryway.



 All was going well until,

Oops.

Oh well, guess it will just be an empty frame for a while.



Ahhhh. It feels so good to accomplish things. 

Being thankful and a little about me

I have been seeing a lot of "thankful" posts on FB lately and well...I'm just not feeling it this week. I had planned on doing the whole "30 days of Thankfulness" like so many others starting the first of November.

Well, November 1st came and went. Within two days, my children (as sweet as they are) took every ounce of my energy.  It's like everything happens at once with those kids sometimes. I love them so incredibly much but they take a ton of love, attention, discipline, and work at times. And as you may have read a few days ago the Mr. isn't around a whole lot these days.

So, here I sit reading everyone's posts and thinking to myself, "Wish I had THAT to be thankful for". Why do we do this to ourselves?? Pure punishment I tell ya. I pull out my mental comparison chart and start tallying how much I have to NOT be thankful for. And then I get bitter. And then I get sarcastic. And then my baby has a blow-out on the couch at the most inconvenient time and I start accepting the situation as "Well of course THIS would happen", and the cycle just continues.

When things start to get hard in my life I have an instant urge to respond with sarcasm and an attitude of bitter selfishness. A non-emotional attitude that pretends to let everything "roll of my back" but really just gets under my skin.  An attitude that reduces my world to just me and the small life I lead and all the problems that seem to take over it. I have seen the Lord work in this area of my life and how he can change my attitude when life "strikes" so to speak. But now and then I get caught up in how my flesh wants to react and this is definitely one of those times.

Our small group memorized this verse last week and it's been drifting in and out of my head all week...

"For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich". ~2 Corinthians 8:9

Now THAT is something to be thankful for Shannon. Right there.

I also just finished reading this 31 day series on "Determined Joy" for the past few weeks. Will you join me? Joy doesn't just happen...it takes work. And I need to be determined in finding it.

A newbie and a repeat {costumes that is}

Halloween.

Not my absolute favorite holiday.

Too many scary movies on TV.

Too many scary costumes.

Too much candy.

Then I had kids. And those little sweethearts certainly make it more fun. Have you ever seen a baby or toddler in a costume that wasn't cute??? Me neither. There's just something about dressing up those teeny little people in adorable outfits that make me want to eat them up!

Here's Kensie last Halloween...

Not only do I love the bright red and green colors in this berry fairy costume but I knew it would fit her for a few years.

I was 4 months preggers with Mason in that pic. Crazy what can happen in one year!

So this Halloween, I give you the newbie "pumpkin" and the repeat "fairy". Twice as cute and twice the size!

At least one of them is able to sit still.

And what's better than trick-or-treating vicariously through your children?

{As long as they get 3 Musketeers and Milky Ways that is}

Oh, come on...you know you do it too.

Happy Halloween!



Not the Halloween post you were hoping for

Nothing too exciting to report around here these days. I finished my last treatment for my legs last Monday--meaning I spent the next 5 days in an ace wrap with my feet up as much as possible, arms reach from pain killers, hardly sleeping at night, explaining to Kensie that mommy has a "boo boo" on her leg {one thousand times} and trying my best to keep the munchkins elbows, knees and feet from kicking my bruised areas as much as possible. Oh, and we never left the house--not once. Which I'm fine with actually. I'm a home-body and don't mind it one bit. It was just difficult to make the time pass quickly. I thought about taking Kensie to the mall purely for the sake of letting her play on the playground but I didn't feel like hobbling around the mall. So we had lots of friends and playmates come over last week which helped a ton! And if you are wondering why I didn't get child care help...I honestly wanted them around to (a) make the time pass (b) give me something to do (c) they make me happy despite the work sometimes.

Add to that, I think I saw my hubby maybe one night last week? Yeah that sounds right. In fact, besides my recent leg issues, this is the time of year when the temptation to become bitter starts to creep in my life. And I have to go to God with my frustrations and ask for peace and grace in our marriage. It happens every fall. And it boils down to one reason. My husband works A LOT. He works for a family business. A trucking business. A business that he is amazingly talented at. One that I am SO proud to see his talents flourish and be appreciated by so many people. But, it's a business that revolves around the holidays. Basically, their business delivers food {mostly refrigerated} all over the Midwest. And the holidays {as we know} revolve around food. So, as late summer turns into fall they get super dooper busy when it comes to trucking. There are loads to deliver left and right as stores and restaurants restock their shelves for the holidays. He is a dispatcher and office manager and has a looooonnnng list of duties. I don't know how he does it all.

And as a result, my husband tries his hardest to keep up with the madness at work. Meanwhile, I try to keep up with the madness at home. We pass each other occasionally as one heads to bed, or the other gets up, or we attend public functions like church and small group and other get-togethers where we are in the "same place" but not really "spending time together". Weekdays are the same as weekends. No break, no routine. Just a Dad working crazy hard for this family and a Mom keeping things running at home, but it's like they live two separate lives. And the cycle basically continues until January. Where the busyness slowly fades and I feel like I have a husband again. And we can talk about things other than work and schedules.

Thankfully we will be taking a week of vacation here soon. As in, 3 weeks away! We are headed back to Cali {the land where I'm from and the land that I love} for a family reunion on my Mom's side, take the kids to Disneyland for the first time, and to celebrate my sweet Grandpa who is turning 90 this year! Such a sweet old guy that I have not seen in forever...

I love that he's wearing Puma's. He's so hip and young!

A trip like this has not happened since before we had kids. "Excited" does not even describe how I feel about it!!

***

And you might see some pics of some adorable kids in Halloween costumes in the next post....you might.

Mason milestone {self-entertainment}

Our sweet boy has been one giggly baby ever since he was just 6 weeks old.

He squeals when he sees Kensie. He laughs the moment anyone plays peek-a-boo up close with him. He melts into giggles at the slightest tickle...especially under his chinny chin chin (just like his daddy!). It's adorable. Kensie didn't laugh out loud until she was at least a year old. She was a very serious and observant baby. It's so funny how different siblings can be.

I know I've already posted a few videos of Mason laughing.

But, this week was different. He hit a new milestone.

Laughing without the help of anyone. Without anyone looking at him, making faces, or tickling him.

Just him. By himself. Self entertaining.

And thankfully I was close enough to the camera to capture it.

Enjoy...

Some FYI's:

{1}The metal thing he is playing with is not sharp at all (it's one of those cheap puzzles you solve--like the kind you put on the coffee table and let guests fiddle with. Greg loves those things! ). He is teething like crazy and I think he loves the way it feels in his mouth. Always given under supervision, don't worry.

{2} He has not laughed independently like this ever since. Maybe it had something to do with being overtired and close to bedtime perhaps? Who knows...but cute nonetheless.