Happy New Year

One thing I miss about working is the Annual Review. A time when you sit down and think about what you did good last year, what you could have improved on and Goals for the next year. So I thought today - I would put together my own personal Annual Review. (and maybe after reading it - Boss Man will give me a raise. ha ha ha!)

FIVE THINGS I'M THANKFUL FOR IN 2009:

1. That I carried a baby to full term and even though her beginning was VERY hard and scary -

I'm so thankful she went from this above

to this little 22 pounds of PURE joy!
I have never been more thankful for anything in my life!

2. I'm thankful for my best friend/husband/soul mate who helped me get through the roughest years of infertility and first three weeks of Harper's life. I couldn't make it without him. I thank him for letting me stay home with Harper and for helping me so much with her. I'm thankful for the love I see in his eyes when he is with her and how much that is returned in her eyes! I'm even thankful she looks just like him. ha!

3. I'm thankful for both of our families and especially for how they supported us so much after her birth. We would have been lost without them. I'm thankful for how much they love our daughter. She has NO idea yet how lucky she is.

4. I say this a lot - but I'm SO thankful for our church family. I can never put into words how much they mean to us. I can't express to you how important it is to find a body of believers to join and to have fellowship and worship and to love and support one another!

5. I'm thankful that God never leaves us or forsakes us. I may not always understand what He is doing but I know He is always with me.

FIVE THINGS I WANT TO IMPROVE IN 2010:

1. I could be a lot better wife and mother (and Scott is saying "Amen!") I was a very rookie mom this year and I have to admit - I had a lot of hard days. It's a LOT harder than it looks. And there were days Scott came home and probably wish he hadn't of because I took it out on him. I just want to enjoy every moment with Harper this year and realized the days are long but the years are short. I want to focus on giving Scott more of my attention. He deserves it.

2. I want to be a better friend. I probably dropped the ball on a lot of my friends because I just felt up to my eyeballs most days this year. I want to do better at sending notes when I know friends need it. Or doing favors and not expecting one in return. I want to go back to having people over for dinner more often.

3. I want to be a better Christian. I want to spend more time with God. I neglected Him a lot this year. I loved and worshipped Him every day - but I didn't always spend time talking to Him or reading His word or trying to KNOW HIM more.

4. I want to be more healthy. Yes - I need to lose 20 pounds and I just can NOT put down the chick-fil-a and oreos. I want to exercise this year. I want to feel good about myself again.

5. I want to be a better daughter/DIL. Our families have done so much for us this year - I want to be better at doing for them and showing them I love them.

FIVE WAYS I WANT TO GIVE AND HELP OTHERS THIS YEAR:

1. I think the most important place your money should go is to your local church. Everything we have is God's and He deserves our first fruits as a sign of our faithfulness to Him. I want to give more than a tithe this year.
Malachi 3:10 says "Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this," says the LORD Almighty, "and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it."
My life in the last couple of years is a testimony to that!

2. Obviously my new passion is COMPASSION. I want to do anything I can to help those children. I want to do good at writing our two children letters. I want to do more to help. And eventually at some point I want to go on another trip with them. A sponsor trip this time.

3. Our family has a heart for the Arkansas Baptist Children's Homes. This helps children in our own state who need love, a home, food, shelter, etc. I want to continue to help them and also the Promise House - home for teen moms. I'm hoping to send them a package SOON! On my side of the family this year we all gave what money we would have spent on each other and gave it to the ABCH. I hope this a tradition we can continue! My parents also did that for my first Mother's Day and it meant the world to me!

4. I want to do more random acts of kindness this year. Paying for a meal in a drive thru. Helping a mom struggling with several kids in a store. Sending a note when you know someone needs encouragement. Sending anonymous gifts. Lord - open my eyes to people who need help and direct me!

5. I want to earnestly spend more time in prayer for others.

What about you? What are your goals for 2010?

New look, grandparents and Show Us Your Life

So did you notice I got a new look? Christmas is over a little early at our house and I'm beginning to pack it up and start preparing for Harper's birthday so I thought our blog should go along with that! Danielle at The Design Girl did it and she is AWESOME! I'm pretty sure I might leave it this way all year!

My parents have been in Dallas visiting family and they stopped by on their way home today to see their girl! Harper was SO excited to see them! She LOVES her grandparents and knows them all! I love that!

Harper had fun showing them what Santa brought her and playing with everything!

She did NOT have fun later when I made her gnocchi pasta (made with potatos and soft) and let her feed herself. She loves to feed herself but this was a mess - especially when she was tired and rubbed in all in her face and hair. Good thing a bath was already planned next. ha!

So if you are new to my blog (or if you have read for a while) - We started doing "Show us Your life" Fridays here last summer. We started by touring our homes and then did all kinds of different things like wedding shower ideas, baby shower ideas, kid parties, pets, fall and christmas decorations. You can see the past posts at www.kellyskornershowusyourlife.blogspot.com.
Ya'll gave me GREAT ideas and I have put together a schedule for 2010 (until June and then we'll go from there). I will post it on the SUYL site also. We start back Friday the 10th!!!
You may only want to join in on some of these but it's a great place to get ideas and I keep them all stored on the SUYL site so you can go back and keep getting ideas and finding great blogs to read!

Jan 8 - New Year Resolutions
Jan 15 - Weight Loss Tips, Diets, Workout Ideas
Jan 22 - Favorite shopping spots - stores and on-line
Jan 29 - Fashion Tips
Feb 5 - Beauty Tips - favorite hair and makeup products
Feb 12 - Valentines - Favorite date and/or gift
Feb 19 - What do you collect?
Feb 26 - What is your typical day like - I'd love to hear from single girls/Working moms/SAHM's/grandmothers! (If you read this post earlier today or yesterday - I MEANT it to say Working moms (instead of work at home - but want to hear from those too!) but I was really tired.......I thought it would be helpful for working moms to connect with other working moms!!!)
March 5 - Favorite Charities
Mar 12 - Share your mission trips
Mar 19 - Best Cleaning tips
Mar 26 - Best Organization ideas
April 2 - Idea for Teacher gifts
April 9 - How you met your husband/fiance
April 16 - Tips for saving money
April 23 - How you picked your kids names/future names
April 30 - Favorite books/ children books
May 7 - Show us your town
May 14 - Show us your Favorite Things/Things that make you happy
May 21 - Random Acts of Kindness Ideas
May 28 - Show us your china pattern
June 4 - Tell us your proposal stories (single girls - send your boyfriends to this post!)
June 11 - Activity ideas for kids
June 18 - Show us what you make (etsy/crafts/website shopping!!!)
June 25 - What is your favorite Bible Verse and why?

I'm looking forward to Fridays and Hope you will all join in!!!!

This and That

Harper and I had lunch with our friend Melissa today. It was a lot of fun. Melissa is pregnant with her little miracle baby in May. In a week or so - she and her husband are having a "gender reveal party" to share what they are having with all their friends. Everyone is supposed to wear pink or blue - whatever your guess is. I think that will be so much fun and I know which color I plan to wear!
Melissa gave me the prettiest scarf and this amazing necklace for my birthday. I did NOT expect her to give me a gift - so I was very surprised. I thought that was so thoughtful and I can't WAIT to wear that necklace (and the scarf!!)
Speaking of wearing.......for the last two years I have been wanting a pair of cowboy boots SO bad - mostly to wear with dresses for a fun look. I have not been able to find any I liked but I recently found a pair on e-bay for a great price and got them for a little birthday present to me. I got them yesterday and wore them today and I LOVE them. If you know me in person - you may start seeing them on me pretty much every day.
Harper has been refusing naps lately. She usually only takes a morning nap but she will NOT take one and would not take an afternoon nap either. I'm hoping it's just the holidays and that I can get her back on schedule. It may also be that she is VERY close to walking. Today she kept acting like she wanted to so bad and tried over and over but just couldn't make that first step. But she would laugh sooo hard every time she even thought about it. We are close.
Of course - she may not be sleeping now that I have started letting her drink diet coke.
(just a joke)
I'm trying to get out of a rut of eating chicken breasts every night so I tried a new recipe tonight. I'm a HUGE fan of Gumbo. I LOVE it! So I saw Paula Deen make this one day - it's a Gumbo Casserole (or as I told Scott "Gumbo Bake" because he wouldn't have eaten it if I said casserole). I thought it was really good. It doesn't taste so much like real gumbo because there was no roux but it had similar ingredients and was really good. I put the recipe HERE.
(and I'm sure some of you are going to ask me what Gumbo is - it's a soup common in the south, especially Louisiana, that has seafood or chicken, sausage, okra and rice. It is YUM-O!)

And finally:
I just wanted to briefly share that one of my resolutions for 2010 is I’m changing a few things about my blog. I mentioned this yesterday and it’s nothing earth shattering - just a few personal adjustments. I started my blog to “scrapbook” my life and that is still my main goal. The great thing that has come out of it is being able to share my faith and to try to encourage others through prayer. I LOVE that! And I plan to continue that. I will continue my prayer blog but I’m also starting to work with www.prayergates.com and that has been an answer to prayer for me as a good way to keep up with and organize prayer requests. More on that in the next coming days!!!! (I’m also EXTREMELY behind on prayer requests (and praises) and hope to get it all updated by the first of next week!)
I will no longer be doing any giveaways or any form of product or website recommendations (there may be a VERY few exceptions). I never wanted to have a “big blog” and I have never sought out to increase my traffic. I found myself getting very stressed out about a lot of aspects of blogging this year and I feel like it has taken away time and energy from Harper and my life in general. So this year I’m just going to focus on documenting our lives. That’s what I’ve really tried to do recently but I’m just putting that back as the pure focus of my blog - my life and faith. That may mean that most of you quit following and I go back to having 10 readers and I’m okay with that. I do LOVE all of you who daily leave me comments. You have been an encouragement and a community to me as I stayed home this year. I’m thankful you have chosen to share our life with us.
I am going to do the Show Us Your Life Fridays because I think that is a great way to find other bloggers and it gives me a blog topic every Friday! Ha! And I will try to do as a part of that - show us your business once every few months so everyone can get their creative things featured. I love being able to help with that - but one on one - it has just become impossible.
I just wanted you to understand why some things might be different this year. There may possibly be an occasional giveaway through BlogHer if it is REALLY fun but other than that - I’m just going to write to preserve my memories and thoughts. I get SO many requests and I just have come to a point where I can’t keep up with them. Hopefully you can all understand that! I'm not trying to be selfish - I'm just trying to be a better wife and mother.

Sweet Cheeks

Our day today pretty much consisted of driving across the state, hauling our stuff in, feeding Harper, giving her a bath, putting her to bed, giving Dawson a bath, me going to Wal-Mart and re-filling our food supply and now I'm sitting down to do a few things before bed. Not a lot to talk about.
BUT I had to share these pictures I took this morning before we left:

I realize I am SUPER partial

But I think

these are the cutest little cheeks (and nose and eyes and smile)

I have EVER seen in my life! :-) Maybe it's the little personality that goes along with them.

I am so crazy about her.

I have a project I'm furiously working on that I wanted to get done by Christmas and didn't and now I have a short deadline and then I have to get Christmas down but I'm going to TRY and have the "Show Us Your Life" Schedule for 2010 up sometime this week so your wheels can be churning and then I'm also going to share about some changes I'm going to be making to my blog. I've decided to do things a little differently in 2010 so I want to share that also!

Hope you have a GREAT night! We are supposed to get snow again this week and my fingers are crossed and my Chili ingredients are bought and waiting!!!

Tis the Season to be Jolly

We have continued our Christmas fun over the last few days. Harper's favorite toy this week is her toothbrush. ha! She has always LOVED brushing her teeth (and since she has had 8 teeth for a WHILE and at least 2 since she was 4 months old) - we have been brushing them for a while. She found it in her bag and has chewed on it ever since. I had to go buy her a new one today.
Yesterday a lot of Scott's extended family came over for Christmas lunch. I guess we were too busy eating to take many pictures. This is us getting ready to chow down.
This is Harper's plate. The girl can put away some food. I think she's starting to chunk up a little. ha! I'll be interested to find out her stats at her 1 year appointment (which reminds me I need to schedule that).
Harper got a few more gifts from her great aunt and uncle last night and she was so excited!

( You may notice that right now I can not get Harper to keep a bow in her hair. We had to quit wearing the big bow bands because she would rip those right off. I know that was her signature look and I LOVED it. So when she finally got hair I started putting little bows in her hair and I'm working with her to keep those in. As she gets older and gets more hair - we will be bringing the big bows back!!!)

We will have a lot of fun playing with all her toys when we get home. I bought a big basket today to keep toys in in our living room to try and keep thinks a "little" organized.

We gave Scott's little cousin gator golf and he really liked it!

Harper liked it too. I would peg her as a future Tiger Woods but I don't think anyone wants to put that label on their child right now. (Just another reminder that we just can't put anyone up on a pedestal - only God will never let us down).
Harper was up ALL night last night. We had a ROUGH night. I don't think anything was wrong - she just did not want to sleep. She didn't nap yesterday either. Needless to say I was WORN out this morning so I took a nap from 7-9 while Scott and his family took care of her. And she was happy as a clam and put on a little show for them.
She has started dancing constantly. It's SOO funny. My favorite thing is when she will get on all fours and put her booty in the air and "shake it like she just don't care". It's HILARIOUS. I really need to get it on video.
Scott, his dad, and Steve have been doing a lot of hunting over the last few days. His dad killed a deer tonight. I'm hoping Scott continues to have no luck. ha! We are headed home tomorrow. We have had a wonderful Christmas but I'll be happy to get home. I'm ready to take down Christmas and get my house clean and organized. I guess that will keep me busy over the next week!
Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and weekend!

First Christmas

We got to Scott's parent's house last night after a crazy drive. Most of Arkansas was flooded and roads were closed all over. Luckily we knew ahead of time so we took a different route. Scott's parents recently changed Scott's childhood bedroom into a room for Harper. Gone is the blue and cowboys posters (ha!) and here are pink walls and princess bedding!
Scott's mom sat in this little chair in Sunday School growing up and so did Scott and she had kept it and had a friend paint it for Harper for her room.

Harper was in awe of her new room! She is so lucky to have a special bed at both of her grandparents houses! I think they want us to visit more often. ha!

After Harper went to bed, "Santa Claus" went to work wrapping gifts and putting them under the tree. I was so excited going to bed last night thinking about Harper unwrapping her gifts. I know she is one and wouldn't really know what is going on but I think I have a lot of visions of future Christmases and how fun they are going to be!

Here is Harper crawling in this morning to see what Santa had left her!

Santa got her this book and I'm hoping one of the words in there is "momma" so maybe she will FINALLY say it! ha!

She didn't quite know what to think but I think she had fun unwrapping her gifts. And we certainly had fun watching her.

At one point - she just sat on her gifts! ha!

She got two more BIG horses! She was pretty excited with this one. I think I need someone to build us a barn since we have wound up with FOUR huge horses. We are leaving one at each grandparents house so she can have a horse everywhere she goes. She really does like "giddying up!"

I guess this little girl must have been pretty good this year!

Santa got her a little mailbox. I figured since I loved mail so much - she would probably love it too! And I was right - she has played with it all day long! We also got her the little teapot and she was real excited but we are saving that in the box for later on.

Harper got in a lot of time with her GiGi

We had a great Christmas lunch of Southern BBQ! It was so good. Tomorrow we are having our actual Christmas dinner with more family.

Harper had a great day but she was pretty worn out this afternoon. She was melting down quick and went to bed really quick!

Our family - Christmas 2009

Harper and her grandparents

I hope all of you had a wonderful Christmas too!!!!

WINNER WINNER CHICKEN DINNER

MERRY MERRY MERRY CHRISTMAS TO LISA BATTS!!!!!!

There were 8098 entries (between my two posts - because I thought the first one got full) and Lisa was #4276 which is what the random number generator picked.

Reading through the comments - I wish I could send one to everyone of you!

Lisa - I'm e-mailing you right now and if I don't hear back by December 27th by noon - I'll have to pick another winner!


True Random Number Service

Random Integer Generator

Here are your random numbers:

4276 

Timestamp: 2009-12-25 03:26:05 UTC

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Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas from our family to yours!!!

May you know the JOY that only Jesus can bring this year!

Jesus came that we may have life - and have it more abundantly! John 10:10

Just a note:

The contest for the free HP TouchSmart Computer ends tonight at 7 p.m. I will pull a winner using random integer generator at some point tonight and then contact the winner. We are travelling and will be mostly without internet so I'll do it as quickly as I can. Please check my blog and your e-mail because the winner will have until Dec 27th by noon to contact me or I will pull a new winner! I'm so excited to see who wins!!!

Miscellaneous

This afternoon while Harper napped I made some red velvet cake balls to take with us to Christmas. The craze is sweeping twitter and it made me and Scott want some. I also made oreo truffles which are basically the same thing but you crumble up oreos and mix with cream cheese and then dip in the almond bark! Try it - you will thank me!!!!
Scott sent me these pink roses for my birthday. Only they didn't arrive until Today. I thought it was sweet. He used to send me flowers all the time when we were dating but quit once we got married. Which was okay by me. He had planned to send me flowers when Harper was born and well - nothing ended up like we planned with her birth. So I think these are what he would have sent me on January 16th. And I think he just wanted me to have a nice birthday. And I did!
Harper's birthday outfit came in today! I just love it. I figure she can wear it all year - not just at her party because she will be "one" all year! The pants are so precious! I had it made HERE.
I've had SO many people ask me about this in restaurants and on-line so let me tell you about my FAVORITE baby product right now. I'm in LOVE. (I have NO connections with the maker of this and they didn't ask me to write this......this is just pure mom love!) Once Harper started sitting in a high chair at restaurants and eating food - I had the new dilemna - how do I let her eat without touching the germy table? I tried using napkins which were awful. Then I started packing an extra burp cloth and she could eat off that which was great but 1. I would have to wash it every time and 2. she would always whip it off the table sending food flying. HUGE mess. So last time I was visiting my in-laws we went to this little baby store and I saw this mat! It has suction cups so it sticks to the table so baby can't pull it off, there is a little tray that hangs over the table that collects all the food babies are always dropping and you can wipe it clean very easily! And it rolls up easy in your diaper bag. Seriously it's the GREATEST thing. Anyway - it's a Kiddopotamus Tiny Diner and I found it on Wal-Mart.com for $10.88! Worth every penny and I plan to start giving this as baby gifts. When you are having a baby - you never think (Or I sure didn't) you would need this because you are thinking tiny baby but this is a life saver if you like to eat out!!!
And while I'm at it - another thing I get asked about a lot is something a sweet friend Mary Katherine gave me when Harper was born and I LOVE it! I carry it with me everywhere I go and put puffs and melts in it for constant anytime snacks. You can also put formula in it. Each of the 5 little holders snap off so you can carry between 1-5 of them and put different things in each one. There is a little hole at the top of each of the containers so you can pour out whatever you are carrying. It's called a Packing Smart. Just something else I'm in love with! :-)j

I feel like I should break out into a chorus of "these are a few of my favorite things".................

Don't forget tomorrow I'm drawing the winner of the FREE COMPUTER!!!!!! So go enter and Merry Christmas!! www.kellyskornerreviews.blogspot.com

Great Day to be Alive

I have had a really nice birthday. Even if I WAS sad about my age - I got SOOOOOO many e-mails, texts, facebook comments, tweets and blog comments that have just made my day! I am so blessed to know so many sweet and encouraging people! And I thought it was funny how many of you left me comments to tell me you shared my birthday! Happy Birthday to you all! I have never known anyone with my birthday except for Diane Sawyer (and I am mourning her loss on GMA big time). (and yes - a Christmas birthday is as awful as you imagine but my family always tried to make it special and as an adult - I think it's fun to have your birthday during such a fun week!)

I had lunch at Gusano's - a local pizza place I love with a new friend Kristen and her little boy Trevor. I had such a nice time with them - they are so sweet!
This afternoon I headed over to Laurie's to exchange gifts for Christmas. We tried so hard to get a good picture of the girls but it was pretty much impossible (on a side note - I used my tiny little camera in all of today's pictures so the quality is pretty poor. I've been spoiled with our nice camera).

Laurie and the girls!

Scott took me and Harper out for dinner. I really wanted Mexican so we went to Abuelo's. Harper was SO good. She just LOVES going out to eat. She is SO much like her momma! ha! She also really likes cheese. In the last 2 days - she has had cheese pizza, grilled cheese and tonight cheese quesadillas. And you wouldn't believe how fast and how much she has eaten of all of those. (She has also had a lot of fruits and veggies so I'm not just giving her cheese. ha!)
As we were leaving - a sweet couple stopped me and the girl, Courtney, told me she read my blog. ha! She knew it was my birthday and that I loved eating at Abuelo's. ha! It was fun to meet her! Thanks for saying hi Courtney!!!
We went and got hot chocolate at Starbucks and drove around and looked at Christmas lights. Harper fell asleep pretty quick so we cut our trip short and came home and put her to bed.

I would say it's been a pretty perfect day!