Ambitious much?

It all started off great.  This morning i woke up, proceeded to lounge around in my housecoat for awhile, enjoy my coffee, get my butt kicked by Cindy Crawford, take a hot shower, clean the kitchen.  And then. 

This is how it went down.
First, me thinking aloud: "Hmm, let's see what we should bake today for Christmas this weekend."... "nanaimo bars, gingerbead cookies - the kids will love decorating them!  sure... let's see... oh, those cute peanut blossoms with the hershey's kiss on top, and.. well that should be good... I wouldn't want to over do it or anything". 
Or anything.  (Rolling eyes).

So, now here it is, 10:15pm.  My kitchen counters and island are finally clear of bowls, baking sheets, & caked on royal icing.  The nanaimo bars never did come to fruition, since I was out of the bakers's chocolate squares, (which was, obviously a blessing in disguise - I would have been baking until midnight.)  It might have been the overzealous idea to cook up a stock pot of hearty meat sauce (good for three meals) that put me over my limit.  I'm finally sitting with my feet up, and my whole body is tingling from the virtual marathon.  Note to self:  Go easy on me.

Hope you all have a stress free, and balanced few days ahead.

Don't be like me and cram too much into one day.  That's just silly.

Samson

Beach Day.

It's true.  Lucas has never spent a whole day at the ocean.  Well,
actually wait a minute.. he has been to the Atlantic ocean, once.  On a
family holiday we took to the Netherlands.  We spent a day in Katwijk on
Zee when he was just 10 weeks old.  But not that he remembers.  So,
finally after living on the West Coast five whole years, he finally got
his day at the beach.

Carter - 2 months

Seriously.  I can’t believe I’m even typing this.. two months?? How on earth did they fly by so fast?  Sigh… we are enjoying you so much.

In the last month you have:

Sat around your first campfire.
Gone for plenty of walks in our new stroller.
Celebrated your first ever Father’s Day with Daddy.
Kept us awake in the middle of the night cooing and smiling.
Attended your oldest brother Lucas’ preschool graduation.
Went camping for the very first time.
Slept 8 hours straight through the night.

So sometimes when things seem bleak, when we’re all not getting enough sleep, and Daddy has got a fever of 102 and sleeps all day, and Mommy is trying to keep your brothers from destroying the house, (and each other), and it feels like you’re eating non-stop, and it seems the to-do list and work around here just keeps piling up, and for the life of me I cannot figure out what to make for dinner, you look up at me with those eyes, and all those worries fade away.  We love you little guy.  So much.

Great mail day :)

This afternoon, as were were enjoying our long awaited summer weather in the backyard, we heard the brakes of a FedEx out front and the faint sound of a doorbell ringing.  Anticipating this package for days now, I was delighted to open it up and find our twelve brand new diapers from winning the Fuzzi Bunz photo contest.  Thank you everyone who voted, and thank you Fuzzi Bunz for having the
contest, and offering such a great prize.   We are so excited to have won!

We talk to him.

We talk to
him.
We tell him how happy we are that he is in our lives.
How we are thankful for him and love him so.
We tell him stories about the places he will go, people he will meet.

And he responds
with sweet innocent stares. 
Pursed lips. 
Wide open mouth grins. 
And sometimes wailing.  (well, he is a
newborn after all).

But the lines
of communication between us are steadily growing, and all the countless hours of
changing, feeding, burping, repeat, seem to finally be responded to in very
welcome & adorable newborn like manner…

even if only in a lopsided, cross-eyed, half grin… I’ll take it.

Cloth Diapers?

Since Carter has been 1 week old, he's been full time in cloth diapers.  It's likely not something I would've considered before the older boys were born.  But I have this sister, and she did a great job at making it not only look easy, but absolutely adorable on her 8 month old little boy.  (That's him second from the right.. Carter is at the end).  It's wonderful to have a sister who's been cloth diapering already for awhile, so she could fill me in on what works, and what doesn't.  She introduced me to FuzziBunz One size diapers.  It's a pocket diaper, which means it has a microfiber insert that you take out to wash, and insert before diapering baby.  It fits babies 7-35 lbs, so no need to buy multiple sized diapers.  We have a few, and so far we love them.  They are super absorbent, and nice and soft.

Recently, the makers of FuzziBunz posted a photo contest for their 10th Anniversary on their blog.  The criteria was to capture your baby with other babies in their FuzziBunz, or outside in the garden, or with a pet or testing out their new walking skills.  We decided to get a shot of a few babies together, and show off their different sizes and colors of diapers.  Two of my sisters babes (second baby from the left is my niece), and a friend's baby (cutie on the very left) and 2 week old Carter made the perfect subjects for our photo op!  The photo above is a result of our efforts, and also a top ten finalist in the contest!  The winner gets 12 brand new FuzziBunz diapers, this would be a huge blessing to us if we won.  The most votes wins, so we're asking for your votes!  The contest closes at 3pm PST tomorrow.

Here's what you have to do:

Sign in to Facebook (you need a Facebook profile in order to vote)

Go to "FuzziBunz Cloth Diapers" fan page,

"Like" the page

then "Like" the photo!