Thanksgiving

We are so lucky Adam and I live so close to each of our families. It makes holidays easier and fun. We had a great time with both of our families and we love them all so much! It was a pretty normal Thanksgiving though, except Avery was old enough to understand the concept of bowling which I was super excited about. The Vanderpools go bowling every Thanksgiving so I was anticipating how Avery would react this year. She LOVED it! I got so many cute photos.

Avery was so excited each time she bowled! It was pretty much this much enthusiasm every time. She didn't care if she knocked pins down or didn't! There is so much to learn from children :)

This is her watching the ball haha

Yes, that's her giving the #1 sign with both fingers!

My Girls

I love my girls! Lately it's been awesome because they have actually started interacting with each other within the past couple of weeks. It's been a lot of fun to watch too! Avery has been wanting to include Abigail in play time and will specifically ask for me to bring her into their room. She can't do much but Avery has been enjoying her company which is just so sweet. She doesn't like it when Abby cries and will stop whatever she's doing and say "awww bebe!" And will immediately rush to her side. And she absolutely can't wait till Abigail wakes up in the morning. I have to say I noticed a big change when Abby and Avery were bouncing together. There was some real interaction between the two and I think it was just what Avery needed. Before she would just kind of ignore her, but still be super protective.

 

I'll be doing an update on Abigail soon. She just looks so darn cute in her little doorway jumper! Avery however is growing so fast! Everyday she surprises me with a new word or expression. And she knows exactly what she wants! It's a good thing and a bad thing. She surely doesn't like when I tell her no. It usually results in something like this.

Hahaha I LOVE that second face! Oh man and she loves to give it to me when she doesn't get her way. But she is a sweetie pie. She's a shy girl and I love that she loves to cuddle. She is a good big sister that is getting better at sharing too :) I love my girls!

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween! We had so much fun this evening! We started off the festivities by going into Chipotle dressed in our Halloween costumes to score a tasty meal at a discounted price :) We were definitely not the only ones who took of advantage of this deal. We saw some super cute costumes while we were there. After dinner we immediately went trick-or-treating, because Avery could not wait any longer! She was so excited to go trick-or-treating and it was so fun seeing her get excited. We had some of our friends join us tonight too and we loved taking our children door to door. When we got back to our house, it was fun to pass out the candy and watch our little ones try to get in the bowl and get more candy for their baskets! I love these moments. Our theme for costumes this year was pirates. Adam and I were the pirates. Avery was our mermaid and Abigail our parrot.  

This was from a few nights ago, but I love their Halloween pajamas, so I had to include it :)

 So cute!!

The best picture we could manage to get of the four of us.

This was taken at the trunk or treat in Fort Worth.

Trick-or-treating

Happy Halloween!

Fall crafts

If any of you have been to Hobby Lobby lately you have probably seen their beyond cute fall decor. I love it! And it gets me so excited for the Fall season, though it definitely doesn't feel like fall here in Houston. Any way I saw some of these adorable pumpkins there and Adam and I were like wait, we can totally make these for a fraction of the price... so we did! And I kind of love mine better than the ones at the store. I definitely see Adam making more in the very near future. Not only were they fun to make, but they were SUPER easy too. On Adam's part he needed wood and a jigsaw. Boom. Done. and I just needed paint. I also added some super cute sparkly stickers to complete the look of my pumpkins.

At Hobby Lobby there are also some way cute table center pieces. I didn't opt to buy the pre-made ones simply because I didn't want to pay the price. They are kind of pricey even with 40% off. So I made mine :) It was also super simple. Just pick out a basket and pick out some flowers. And you NEVER need to buy anything at full price ever at Hobby Lobby. I also liked the feeling of accomplishment when I make my own things too. Definitely worth it.

Another super easy and inexpensive way to decorate is to add ribbon to different things. And depending on the garland, that is also a great way to bring fall into the home.

Happy Fall!

My 2yr old

I wouldn't call them the terrible two's, although trust me we have our days. I would say they are more like the mischivous two's.  There have been plenty of times though, when Adam will come home and I will do some retail therapy at Target soon after so I can breathe a little. Especially lately. Last week for instance she got into my lipstick... She got it all over the carpet, my bedroom mirror, she pulled the white pillows down and made sure to got the lipstick on them and not to mention all over herself as well. I'm pretty sure this was in response to me putting her in time out. Considering she closed my door and couldn't stop smiling when she called me in. The closed door should have been a dead give away. Also she finds it amusing to get into my "feminine products" which she thinks are boo boo's or band- aids and put them in different spots in the house.

In this instance the TV cabinet.

Along with lipstick and clear lip gloss over my bedroom mirror lotion seems to be her medium of choice in the following picture. All of these items have since found new homes out of her grasp.

Avery likes to paint and color a lot. We have since switched from normal paints and markers to color wonders that don't show up on anything else except the paper used with the color wonder products.

It's not unusual for her to get two or three baths a day... but she likes baths... so I'm thinking these messes might be on purpose. She definitely keeps me busy and on my toes, but I love her so much! It's awesome to see her grow. She has her sweet side too and that makes it all worth it!

3 Months

My girls are growing so fast! I love them so much and Avery is VERY protective over Abigail. If we are going to leave anywhere and Abby is in the car seat, she will stand next to it to make sure we grab her when we go. She gives her kisses and it's so sweet! Abby is just getting into her personality! At three months she is doing well at rolling over and she talks a lot! I love having conversations with her in baby talk. She smiles a bunch and laughs which is adorable. She's a chunk already and I LOVE it! Chunky babies are the best :) She loves to swat at her toys on her play mat and she grabbing her toys pretty well too! I love my little Abby! Three month olds don't do a whole lot, but just getting to squeeze and hold them is the best.

One Month

Two Months

Three Months

Kitchen Cabinets

Well it was a long time coming, and I'm glad to say our kitchen cabinets are finally finished! I won't tell you when they were started haha, but I will say major projects get put to a stop when a new baby has just arrived. That's the way it should be too ;) Any way my husband did it again! He is so amazing and continues to make this house beautiful with his awesome workmanship and talents. I love him so much! When we bought this house I knew right away when I saw the kitchen that the cabinets would have to be painted. We knew it was going to be a lot of work. Right around the time when Adam was sanding everything was the worse of it though. UGH! The sawdust got EVERYWHERE! No matter how hard we tried to partition that room from the rest of the house. It had to be sanded though. We tried the non-sanding strip the wood method and it didn't work. These cabinets were so covered in grease and stuff from the years that sanding was the only way. Once that part was over though, the painting was relatively easy. And Adam got to add to his collection of tools like always :) A paint gun is definitely the way to go.

These are a couple of before pictures. Just so gross. I was so sensitive to smells in my first trimester of pregnancy I couldn't step foot in the kitchen because I was pretty sure I could smell these suckers.

This is when everything was all sanded down. And that haziness in the picture...yeah that would be the lovely sawdust.

Almost done!!

Minus the knobs that we are putting on tonight, it's completely done! Major thanks to my awesome husband who did this all by himself. The pictures definitely don't do them justice.

Abigail's blessing

We went up to Colleyville this weekend for Abigail's blessing on Sunday, but the girls and I went up on Thursday and Adam met up with us on Friday after he got off work. It was a super fun weekend. We spent Friday night at Great Wolf Lodge and had fun at the water park earlier that day and most of the day on Saturday. Avery had a blast and she was anticipating it all week. She would take Adam or me by the finger and lead us to her room where she would lie down on her stomach on the floor and pretend to swim, while saying "swimming"! She liked the kiddie pool, but the wave pool was by far her favorite. She liked to jump the baby waves that would reach the shore. And by jump, I mean she liked when one of the family would lift her up :)

During the weekend Abby was able to meet her great grandmother on Adam's side and meet her cousins for the first time on both sides! The rest of Saturday we spent relaxing at the house. Avery loved to jump on the trampoline and feeding Nana's horses. Though when it came time for her to actually feed the carrots to the horses she would take off and start eating the carrots herself :) She cracks me up!

Sunday was such a nice day. It was so special having so much family there to witness Abigail being blessed. We had a nice lunch afterwards with everyone and it really was the perfect topping to end a fantastic weekend.

By the end of taking pictures everyone was pretty much spent. You can definitely see it on Abigail's face, and the fact that we had to give Avery a chocolate cupcake to get this fantastic picture of her! I love my girls <3

Finished!

I'm so happy with the finished product! If you don't want to build one from scratch there are a ton of tutorials on the web on how to upholster a coffee table that you have or buy from a garage sale. It was really easy to cover, just a little time consuming especially if you have children. The tufting I would say is a two person job because if you really want to get the buttons tight it helps if one of you are pushing them in while the other is stapling the thread on the other side. And it made for a great husband and wife project too :)

okay. okay, so we still have to stain the legs, but you can ignore that right now :)

Preview

I have been wanting a new ottoman in the living room for a while now. The coffee table was great but with Avery and now Abigail I was afraid that they would constantly be hurting themselves on the sharp corners. I was looking online for upholstered ottomans but they can be so expensive! So my amazing husband offered to build one! Here's a few pictures of the finished wood product. We just have to finish the tufting on it and it will be finished! I will post pictures soon!

I am so glad I married such a handy man! He did such and amazing job on building this! I don't think he minded though. He was just excited that he got to use the new tools he has been collecting :)

My really late Fourth of july post

I'll keep this post simple like our holiday was :) We celebrated the fourth with just the four of us! It was so nice having Adam home early during the week. He got off early on Wednesday, had Thursday off and got off early on Friday. We hung around the house most of the day and in the afternoon we went to the mall so Avery could ride the merry-go-round (sp?) and Adam grilled us some dinner and we shot off some fireworks. It's so nice just to be with my family. We could have stayed inside all day and I would have liked it just as much! 

I love this picture of Abby and Adam because she is smiling up at him :) He's such a good daddy!