My Graduate

Ladies and Gentleman: I have an official preschool graduate!




















The children put on a little show for the parents. They sang some adorable songs and they were each presented with a certificate of graduation, a little lamb, and a silhouette of themselves.



























This is Avery and her good friend Adriah. They make up part of the "A" team.

Congratulations to my first born on your graduation from preschool. Avery, you never cease to amaze me. I learn something new from you each day and I adore you in more ways than I could have ever imagined. You are my star and I am so proud of you! Next year will be all day Kindergarten for you and you are so excited about going to school all day long. I love you Avery Brooklyn.

Oh My Hair

I am what you may call a hair extremist. I never like to have the same hairstyle, cut or color for very long and I am always up for trying something new. I suppose this is much to my hair stylists' delight and/or horror depending on what my crazy request happens to be this time.

I have had all lengths of hair, styles of cut, and every color at some point or other from jet black to high fashion red. I just love using my hair to accesorize! After all, it is the one thing attached to me that I can funk up or tame down depending on my general mood.

I have had the same stylist going on 6 years now. I have followed her from one salon to another because I just love her and she does a great job on my hair. I have gotten so many compliments about my hair that an entire playgroup that I was involved in started going to see her. It is now extremely tough to get an appointment with her, but she has told me to just ask for her or leave her a message and she always finds a way to work me in to her very busy schedule. I am usually the last appointment so we get to "close the place down" which is always a nice thing at the end of what is usually a very long day for me. I enjoy my "me" time no matter how long it may take.

Last night, I shocked her with a request to have uber blonde foils contrasted with honey colored ones. My hair was a light brown with some pretty warm blonde highlights and some dark brown roots showing through. She contemplated on how to go about this task and we settled on super foiling my hair. I think almost all of my hair was in foils. After sitting under the heating lamp and chit chatting with a client that I knew from ECFE, it was time to reveal the results. We washed out my hair and it was the most horrific shade of orange/blonde/red that I have ever witnessed. I stopped breathing...I was FREAKING out! My stylist said calm down, it isn't that bad, I bet when we dry it it will look better...I was thinking Oh my god, it is ruined...why did I ask for something so drastic. My ECFE friend was trying to hold back laughter and not doing a very good job at it so we all started making fun of the extremely awful color that my hair had turned. My stylist started to dry it, got about 1/4 of the way there and said, "Yea, no, this just isn't going to be good." So, on to plan B. We did all sorts of things to fix it and about an hour and a half later, voila! I got exactly what I wanted.

My point here is that no matter what crazy request I have had, my stylist has always done a superb job getting 'er done. I am so fortunate to have found someone who values me as a customer and frankly someone who puts up with my many crazy requests! If you want her name and location all you have to do is ask!

We are off to sunny Kansas City and on to Oklahoma City. Me, the family and my new do!!!

Let's Mix it Up

I have been very bad about blogging lately. Part of this is due to how busy we have been lately, with kid activities, house cleaning, and Chadd being out of town on business. But, the bigger part of this has been due to my lack of motivation when it comes to my blog because I feel that it just is not what I want my blog to be about. Sure, I love my children, I absolutely adore them and want to tell the world how wonderful I think that they are, but I often wonder how many people actually care about my kids' crazy antics? How many people actually want to read an entire daily blog about my three kids and that alone? I know all of my mommy friends who read my blog and have young kids like me actually do care and do want to read these things(thank you all for that), but what about the ones that have no kids? How much potty training, discipline talk, and goo goo ga ga can they take?

So, I am going to try to mix things up a little bit on my end. After all, I am a human being and I have plenty of things to share....I think :) It will take some brain power since my brain is in mommy mode most of the time. It makes non-mommy talk pretty difficult sometimes. I always fall back to this comment that my husband made to me one time after I had the twins, "You used to be so sharp!" Great! Thank you honey. But, you know what? It is true. I used to be very sharp. You would have a hard time getting anything past me. Now? Things fly right over my head multiple times a day without so much as a second glance from me. I wonder if this is simply due to a lack of practice or if something organic happens after a pregnancy and you become permanently slow..er?

I will still post about the kids. If I didn't, I would be shutting out the biggest part of who I am at this point in my life. I just want to be able to talk about other things as well. For instance; We have moved into a new neighborhood, Chadd is traveling A LOT lately, I am training for my very first Triathlon, I have a lot of friends, I have a lot of opinions, I love to read and I am a big fat flake! HA!

Here is to switching it up, mixing it up, flaking it up...you know just trying to have a little fun here!

Mother's Day

I knew the moment that I laid eyes on these precious children that my life was with purpose. It is hard to describe to someone who has never experienced the joy of becoming a mother, but it is a feeling, an experience, a tangible aura that simply settles in. Here to stay and it is forever life altering.

I have never loved a single day in my life the way I learned to love the day my first child was born. I have tears in my eyes just thinking of that moment when the nurse placed Avery on my chest and I stared into the bright eyes of this chubby little stranger whom I loved more than anything. She is

mine. Forever and always mine.

Your perspective on life, the way things work and what your future will now contain is forever altered. Instead of wondering what next week will have in store for you, now you know. It will most likely contain a lot of lounging around staring at your precious newborn. Losing sleep, but loving every minute of it. Changing countless diapers but admiring how simply adorable they are. Wondering how it is that you never realized how functional breasts actually are, but damn they are pretty cool. And a million other things that teach you that what you knew as life before kids no longer exists and that is no longer frightening to you.

I have faced some pretty big obstacles and challenges since the birth of my children. It is no easy feat having three children under the age of 2...trust me on this one! But each challenge has come with a learning opportunity. I have learned to be open and accesible to this type of instruction. I have made mistakes, repeated mistakes but I have also learned a lot of tips and tricks and techniques to make life flow smoothly for a percentage of the time. This is all I can ask for. This is what parenting is all about. Parenting is tough, it is challenging and as you have always been told, there is no training manual on how to raise children. You will make mistakes. There will be apologies. There will be sacrifices to be made. But in the end, it is all so incredibly worth it. It is worth the learning experience. It is worth the trouble because you will have children who know what it means to be loved. Being a mother means loving, and I mean really, truly, deeply, insanely loving these little humans that you have created so much that making mistakes and learning from them only make you better at your job. Being a mother means knowing that it is up to you to create an atmosphere where your children can thrive and in spite of what it may take away from you as an individual you find that it is just the way it is supposed to be. To me, being a mother is everything that I have ever wanted out of this life. If I can have three wonderful, beautiful, bright, exceptional children(as I already do), I know that I have the best job on Earth. I am a Mother. Now and For always I will call Avery, Bennett and Bria as my own. I am so very blessed and so very lucky to have been honored with this wonderful job opportunity!

Give your Mother's a great big hug today and know that you all have been loved unconditionally by the one who calls herself "Mom."

Kindergarten is upon us!

We recently went to Kindergarten round up for Avery. It is a crazy thing when your first born is suddenly, somehow old enough to be starting school. Since moving to Carver, we have met a few friends in the neighborhood who will be going to school with Avery and I am sure over the summer we will work to further strengthen those relationships in hopes that there will be all smiles and no tears(besides mine of course) on September 9th when school for Kindergartners offically begins.

District 112 has its very own Kindergarten center. All of the kids who are being sent to half day kindergarten attend this school. The principal, Mr. Lange is a very nice man who emits joy in all that he does. You can tell that he certainly enjoys his job and has a lot of faith in the curriculum, teachers and the school in general. It makes me extremely excited to know that my girl will be in such great company.

While visiting that day, we were able to check out the classroom, the media center, the nurses office, the playground and of course hop on the big yellow school bus. Avery had so much fun and loved the bus. She is very excited for school to begin and wakes up every day asking whether or not today is the day that she gets to go to Kindergarten. I hope that she retains that enthusiasm throughout the summer.