Toast 2 Mom

Since A Long Time Ago….

So many events have happened since my last post. It's been bonkers-ville. We had company, lots of cookie orders, teacher appreciation week, my blog 6 year anniversary, girls in a play, wedding anniversary, mother's day and fun, warm weather social events with friends. It's just been hard to keep up with all types of tasks. But I never want to not have these memories. So here is my much-abbreviated version of the past couple weeks. 

Grammy, Papa and Grandma Iva came for a visit. We went to a fun burger place downtown and to view the bats. This photo of Sydney was taken at Guadalajara for breakfast - one of our fav spots.

Cinco de Mayo weekend. Miss Cheeks got her face painted at a festival we went to downtown.

The girls were in a play - Peter Pan. Sydney played the role of Peter Pan and Natalie was Wendy. It was FANTASTIC!

 

 

 

Happy 12th Anniversary celebration dinner with the Hubby. 

 

The girls had Field Day at school - lots of fun activities. So glad I could be a part of it. 

 

 

 

Happy Mother's Day (and anniversary too) to me. The girls brought my presents in this morning by wearing them when they woke me up. I got a cute new shirt and a pair of earrings (Tiffany's nonetheless). I went for a nice long run today. The girls and I went to lunch and then to a movie. A perfect way to spend a day. Cheers!

A Goal

Truth be told, I'm just not sure what to say anymore. I miss my girls while they are at school all day greatly. I hate it that they are growing so fast. I want my little baby girl side-kicks to hang with during the day at home and at Target and the grocery store. But this is life - and I've been writing about it for years. 

Now my big girls go to school every day. They learn. They play hard. They make new friends. They experience life. I get to hear their stories at the end of every day. 

I'm not bored while they're away. Not even close. Now I'm figuring out "me" time again. "Me" time happens to involve a whole lot of time working on my business. I also have begun substitute teaching - just one job so far. I am a home room parent and school volunteer. And if all those jobs and the house and our animal friends weren't enough, just trying to catch up on the pile of projects that have added up over the years is what I do to fill in any remaining gaps of time. 

So with all that, it's left very limited time and priority in my day to capture one more soccer picture. Or one more sob story about my growing girls. But I still don't want to miss any documentation either. So with that, I'm going to try and set a goal for October. I'm going to do a photo month. My words might be brief, but hopefully I'll find some ways, maybe creatively, each day to capture our world - the girls, mine, ours, all together. 

When a goal is set, it helps. 

Where Have We Been?

Good question..... The girls and I took off to Illinois for our summer trip to visit family. We were there for a few days. Then Grammy and Papa drove back with us to hang in the summer sun of Austin for a few days. Now are travels are over. Our household is settling back to normal and we're in our last week of summer before school starts... My seven year old will be in second grade and my five year old will enter Kindergarten. Uh, my tugging heart. 

We have tried to make the most of this summer - like all summers go. I'm not sure we hit all of our goals, but we were sure busy - or so it seemed. We had some lovely vacations, a wonderful swim team season, a great party, several fun playdates, relaxtion, reading time, project time and family time. That sounds like a good list - must have been why it all slipped by so quickly. 

Here are a few photos from our most recent travels.

A Fast Five!

It's hard to say this and believe it...but see this picture below, I think when that was taken life was actually less busy? I don't know, it's hard to imagine that with a three month old and a two year old, things were easier than today. I do know one fact for sure, the days these days feel like they fly by WAY faster than they did back then. For it seems that all the time time now I miss a milestone here and a milestone there simply due to the fact that the days just race by and I lose track of time. 

There is another reason I have chosen this picture to post today. It represents the very first photo I had on this blog five years ago. Yes, three days ago marked my five year anniversary to starting this blog!! Very exciting! I thought about it about a week ago. And like most weekends, our past weekend was a whirlwind. So come time to celebrate my blogging milestone - well I missed it. 

A LOT has changed in five years. Look at these babies I used to have. Then it was diapers, nursing, ABC's, stroller walks, and daycare. Now it's grade school, swim team, math homework, reading and sleep-overs. 

When I began this blog five years ago, I was late to the blogging world. I saw it as an opportunity to keep my writing juices flowing. I wanted to network with others like myself. I hoped it would become a reading favorite to many - and perhaps be successful in some way. Though as it turns out, while my creative ideas were big, the best part to this blog has been my opportunity to snapshot and capture, as best as I can, how fast this little life we have goes by. I've been able to cherish each precious moment with my precious babes. 

I still wish I had more time to get more information down. But this will have to do. 

So to anyone who continues to read about our little life, thank you for your interest! We are grateful. And I am thankful to have had this platform over the last five years. 

Cheers!

Chinny Chin Chin Cheekers

It's been a long day - and it all began about 9 o'clock this morning when I dropped Cheekers off to preschool. Like a normal day, I dropped her off, put her lunch in her cubby, put her snack in the snack basket, put her water in the water bottle basket, talked to her teacher about the weekend and kissed my girl goodbye. Today the routine stopped at putting the water bottle in the basket. Cheeks was bouncing around the room, ready for Monday to begin. She was balancing herself between two tables, using the tables like parallel bars - swinging back and forth. Then in a flash, she fell flat to the ground, right on her chin. And that's how my day began. 

It was clear right away she'd need stitches. Her teacher and I got her all standing up, washed off and tears wiped. I drove straight to a med-check. It was a long wait, but our girl was SO tough. Daddio joined us to keep us both strong. 

After a long wait, our girl ended up getting three stitches in her boo-boo. That was definitely harder than the fall itself. They never can seem to get the injured area numb enough. And needles are the worst! Nothing is more heartbreaking - EVER - than watching your babies look at you and just sob in pain and you can't do a thing about it. 

But I mentioned our girl was tough. She's amazing. Three stitches later, and she asked if she could go back to school. It was nearly lunch time, and her lunch box was still at school, in the cubby. I took her back so she could hang out with her friends the last hour of school.  

On the drive to school, she asked if I would take her to a movie sometime soon. Sydney had choir today, which made her day longer; and since big sis didn't like movies as much, I thought today would be a great day for that movie request. After school was over, I picked up my trooper and we went to see The Croods. It was just what the doctor ordered. It was funny and cute and loving - like my girl. It was a great way to take the mind off the morning. 

After the moviewas over, Cheekers had one more request - a cherry slushie from Sonic. :) How could I resist?It was Sonic half price happy hour time too. A cherry slushie, a movie, lunch with friends. What turned out to be a bad morning ended up being a pretty nice afternoon. 

We kept things low-key the rest of the day. The stitches will be a part of Miss Cheeks' face for the next week. They'll tell a good story in her pre-school graduation photos being taken later this week.

In light of things happening in the world today, I can handle three stitches. For that only, I am grateful.

My Girlies

Daddio gets back home tonight. And it's been a very busy last 24 hours with my girlies. Last night we joined some friends for dinner at Waterloo. The kiddos played on the outdoor playground, while the parent-folk did some Friday night happy hour. 

Today we woke up early and didn't stop all day. Our day began with soccer. We had the gym and lunch in between and a birthday party all afternoon. Now we're beat and ready to restore some energy for Daddio's arrival. He is always our extra gear of movtivation. 

Some photos from the last 24 hours with my ladies!

Fun with bubblegum

Inbouding the ball


England Wins!

After game lunch at the Guad.

Spring Break Wrap-Up

For the most part this Spring break week was pretty low key and a regular old week. But we sure pulled some things together this weekend to wrap up Spring break with some fun activities. 

Friday night we had some friends over for a back-yard camp out. Our friends joined us for dinner, s'mores and tent sleeping. 

Yesterday we joined those camp-out friends over at their house for brunch. Then we went to the Humane Society to look at the pets. We spent some time with a puppy named Josh. He is a whippet mix. If I only used my heart and not my brain, I'd have that dog on my lap right now as I typed this. But my brain kicked in, and we're just not ready for a dog yet. We love our cats and our cat-home lifestyle. But Josh was SO cute. 

Last night we took the girls to the rodeo. It was jam-packed. By the time we got to the front of the line, the actual rodeo was standing room only. So we opted to just walk about the fairgrounds. It turned out really well. We saw a smaller horse riding/roping show. We saw LOTS of animals. The girls fed goats, deer, sheep, kangaroos....yes, you read that right. There were kangaroos at the fair. They were precious. Sydney got to bottle feed a joey. Natalie bottle fed a baby goat. 

We also did one carnival ride, ate a corn dog and drank lemonade. It was a real trip to the fair. 

Today we spent the day outdoors rock climbing. The girls really enjoy it now. Daddio is thrilled, to say the least. The weather was in the mid-80s. It was a beautiful day. We didn't eat any corned beef or drink green beer. But we did all wear green.

The girls are quite tired and now in bed gearing up for the week to begin. What began as a slow break, ended quite nicely.