long hugs and snugglesauruses

You can now find me at bluehousejoys.com

Go check out Astrid’s blog to see a guest post tutorial I did for this nifty little item!

Last month Michael was going to be leaving town for a week to play drums at a camp with our friend Ross.  I decided I did not want to stay home all week by myself with both kiddos so I headed to Conroe.  The first couple days Michael’s parents (Nana and Poppy)  kept the kids and I got to hang out with my mom and sister and her baby Eliana.  It was so fun.  We did all the things that are really hard to do with 4 little ones like shoe shop, go out to eat, go to the mall and work on crafts!  Then Jackson, Isabel and my sisters two year old Lilly came back to Conroe and we spent the rest of the week all together. It was a really fun time.  The girls had planned a few crafts to work on while we were all together, but I also planned one special project with my dad!  We have a small group that meets at our house once a week that we do not have enough seating for.  So every week we pull out a bunch of old metal folding chairs and wait in anticipations to see who the lucky ones will be that get to sit on the couch and comfortable chairs. Ever since we moved into our house Michael and I talked about getting some benches to go against the wall in the living room over looking the back porch.  For one reason or another we have never gotten around to doing it.  So I decided while I was in Conroe (the week leading up to Michael’s birthday)  I would get my dad to help me make some benches!  Back in high school I remembered helping him measure and saw some wood to make a little door to our back yard fence.

I had a very simplified rough idea in my head of what the benches might look like, but anyone that knows my dad knows that you either do it all out, made to last, with attention to detail…or you just don’t do it.  We had a great time looking though some ideas he had printed off on line and modified our favorites into something that would work for our particular vision and space.  On Sunday we went and purchased the wood that we would need.  I spent the next couple days sanding them during small bits of free time when my mom, sister and I were taking breaks from crafting and taking care of the little ones.  Then on Friday my dad took the day off and we worked from 7:30 am – 7:30 pm straight in order to get the done before Michael’s plane arrived.

The saw that I became quite the expert with

My Dad

First we cut the legs for the benches

Our captivated audience

It was way too hot in the garage, so we created a sweet little set up on their porch under the gazebo with a fan blowing right on us. (You can kind of see the gate my dad and I made years ago in the background :))

Here I am with the handy Speed Square

We made boxed frames out of the 1" by 4" boards with the rounded edges to go as a casing around the outside of the benches

We did two of each as we went so the benches would be the exact same

Then we made a second smaller box that woulf fit perfectly inside of the frame we built that had a piece of plywood on top and two support beams down the middle.

glued and screwed!

Someone came out to say hi

This was the hardest part we did. Instead of just screwing the legs straight into the sides we notched them and made the flush with the inside box. This helped to create added support for the benches

Getting the legs on

Here it is with the frame put on and screwed in place and legs attached!

Jackson turned out to be quite the engineer with all the little scraps we had lying around

The day before my sister Lori helped me pick out some great fabric at Joann's to make a slip cover to go over the tops of the benches. (we also put a thin cushion on top to make them a little more comfortable)

My mom was amazing and made the slip covers since I wouldn't have a chance to do them before Michael's plane landed! All while watching both my kids and making dinner....wow.

And last, we painted them.

Here they are in the living room.  They could not have come out a better size!  They also work great as a coffee table since I sold ours in a garage sale while Michael was out of town on a previous gig 🙂

They fit perfectly into the cut out in front of the windows with plenty of walking space.

Thanks for all your help Dad!  You were wonderful and they came out so perfect.  I couldn’t have done it without you.

Isabel loves to climb, go down steps, bend over backwards to try and fall off of things etc.  The one good thing is that she is pretty good at it and doesn’t hurt herself very often.

Here I caught her doing one of her favorite things.

I’m so so excited that Michael and I were given a new camera from his parents!  I have wanted a nice slr camera for a long time and can’t wait to start learning all about how to use it.  Here are just a few fun pictures I took yesterday and this morning. 

Michael and his dad stained the deck this weekend!

Jackson got a maze book

Isabel is 1 year old.  I can hardly believe it.  She seems so small and baby like to me, but nonetheless….her birthday is here.  I don’t even know where to begin on summarizing the last year.  It has been amazing, rewarding, difficult, draining, fun, full of new adventures, the most of I have ever had to depend on God, and all totally worth it.

One year ago I was in the hospital being induced after waiting 16 days past my due date for you to arrive, Baby Girl.  I remember my friend Amanda asking “what do you think this is going to mean about her personality…her making you all wait this long?”  Well I can definitely say your desire to wait and do things your way and in your timing has been quite the trend for this first year.  Here is a picture of you when you were first born and one taken on your birthday.

You have developed quite the personality over the last year.  You are very friendly and love attention.  You like to wave at strangers and babble to people you do not know.  Jackson and you are so so opposite.  It is always evident when we go out to eat or are at the grocery store and strangers come up and talk to the two of you. Jackson will stare them down with a skeptical glare and you will wave, smile, talk, blow kisses, or try and play peek a boo.   Yet at the same time together you two have the most wonderful time together.  Your brother can crack you up like no one else can.  You have started talking a lot.  It is funny because you really didn’t even babble until you were 8 months old.  Occasionally you would say a couple new syllables for 2 days and then nothing but dinosaur cries for a month.  Then around 8 months you started jabbering and never turned back.  You say, “No!” in a high pitched voice that sounds as though you are highly offended.  You point to anything you see and say, “Wha’s That!” Wha’s That!”  Some of your other words include, “this, Mama, Dada”  You are awesome at signing.  You can say, more, all done, thank you, please, help, and one you made up for when you want to be tickled 🙂  You like to sleep from about 7-7:30 and take a morning and afternoon nap.  You love food more than any child I have ever met.  Some of your favorites include, chicken, hot dogs, turkey, ham, black beans, corn, avocado, banana, watermelon, apple sauce, pancakes, bread, graham crackers and that is honestly just the tip of the iceberg.

Here is a quick summary of you over the last year 🙂

24 hours old

1 Month Old

2 Months Old

3 Months Old

4 Months Old

5 Months Old

6 Months Old

7 Months Old

8 Months Old

9 Months Old

10 Months Old

11 Months Old

1 Year OId!

Craziness!  Isabel’s 11th tooth broke through today.  It has just barley come through, so I’m sure she will still be suffy about it but nonetheless this little 11 month old has 11 teeth! front 8 (4 top, 4 bottom) and 3 of her 1 year molars.  I know I should have picked her up rather than snapped a picture with this pitiful face…but I opted for the latter of the two.

Also here are a couple of pictures my friend Astrid sent me from her daughter Tilly’s 1st birthday party.  This lady is one CRAFTY mamma!! You have to check out her blog!! Astrid’s Blog!

I definitely would not say that Jackson ever disliked Isabel.  It was much more of an indifference towards her when she was born.  He just sort of went about his business peering at her out of the corner of his eye and pretending that she was not there.  After about a week he seemed to understand that she was saying so he allowed her to co exist in the house with us.  Over time he enjoyed helping me with things here and there for her and making observations…”Baby Girl need Paci!”  “Baby girl loves Milk!” Baby Girl Crying!!”  Once she became mobile with her ever so efficient army crawl (7 1/2 months) he became a bit fearful of her.  Screaming, “MOMMY!!” and quickly gathering toys and placing them up on something high anytime she moved towards him.

Over the past few weeks however a new trend has started.  They enjoy playing together!  It is the sweetest thing in the world to me and makes me so happy that we had them close together in age and get to watch them be little buddies.  I was very close with my brother when I was younger (still am) and we were also about 17 months apart.  He still is not a big fan of her wanting the toys he is playing with.  He will say, “Baby Girl, play this (points at a lame baby toy) not this (points at his cool dump truck), or Play Mommy, not this (another cool toy.  I’m not quite sure I like the relationships being linked there 😦 , does mommy=the lame toy in this dialogue??  Regardless they are super fun to watch interact.  And we had a major milestone last night.  Michael has been in West Virginia the past few days doing a music gig with Ross. So it has been just Mommy with the kiddos.  Last night after feeding Isabel which Jackson waited patiently through so we could read books, he suddenly had a change of heart.  He no longer wanted to read books.  He wanted to hold her!!  For those of you with two kids and a girl is the eldest of the two you are probably thinking excuse me??  She is how old and he just now wants to hold her?  His little girl friends have asked to hold her many times and many of them have held her.  Jackson however has NEVER had ANY interest in hold her.  We had this one posed moment right after she was born.

Looks adorable, but I'm pretty sure we were just cracking jokes to make him look like he was happy

Then there was the pictures Steph Lee took for us.  We tried to have him hold her…that did not go over well.  So instead we opted to put them in a chair together and let him squirm away while Steph quickly got a pic of us.  I think it turned out so adorable and I love this it captured Isabel interest and Jacksons lack of.

Last night I was going to set her down on the floor to crawl around but he said, “I take her??” with arms outstretched.  I quickly said OK, and let him take her in his arms while I helped to support her.  He was very pleased.  I asked if he wanted to get in the rocking chair and hold her and he said yes.  So he climbed up and I sat him in her lap.  I had to restrain her arms to keep her from clawing his face, pulling out his hair, and traumatizing him to never want to touch her again, but other than that they both loved it!  He has already asked to hold her 3 more times since then. I am so happy to see their relationship developing.  Moments like that make all the hard ones worth it.

Playing on the porch

In their fort

In her room

At the store (first time to share the front baskets!)

Greeting her awake after naps

I love you two so much!  I know you will go through times when you fight and argue and don’t want to be friends, but I hope that you will always be close and have each other to turn to and lean on through good times and bad.

Today marks 3 months that Michael and I have been eating healthy.  Michael kind of had a jump start and was already trying to eat better, but he kicked it up a notch and joined me when I was ready to make some changes.  My sister Lori, her husband Jeff, my mom, and our friends Amanda and Jeremy were all doing weight watchers and we were seeing them losing a lot of weight and yet not having a diet control their life in a negative way.  Out of all of them only 1 is actually doing full out weight watchers where you go to the meetings once a week and pay for a membership which made me even more interested that it was something I could do with a low budget and not a lot of extra time.

Anywho, I knew I needed to do something to help me make better choices about portions and cutting back desserts so 3 months ago we decided to give it a try.  We are not going to meetings or paying for a membership.  We pretty much just have a point “slider” that tells you how many points different foods are and an app on our phone to let us know how many points we have left throughout the day.  I have never been a fan of diets that make you think about food all day long, count every calorie, avoid all sweets, or all carbs, etc.  I also knew however that I needed some help with portion sizes, cutting back on fatty foods, and desserts.  So we decided to give it a try.  I have to say I am really loving it.  I love that I can still eat dessert if I want to and most nights we do have something before bed like a couple cookies, popcorn, or cereal.  I also love that I am learning to make better choices for myself and the foods I cook for my family.

As of today I have lost 15lbs, and almost 10″ overall on my body!  I am not one to brag about my weight, but we have worked very hard and I am very happy about the results. I am also about to start a month membership doing Zumba.  I will let you all know how that goes. 🙂

I didn’t really have a before shot, but I found a picture of me and Jackson at his birthday back in February a couple weeks before I started, and one from Thanksgiving.

Before

Back at Thanksgiving

After

I got Michael to take one for me

And of course I will let you see a couple pictures of the kids.

Real men drink from pink cups.

Playing on the porch

Playing while Isabel naps