Halloween 2012

 We have seriously had one of the most fun days! Harper had a "fall Party" at her school this morning and I went and helped.  They had all kinds of game stations set up and the kids rotated through.

 I manned the "find the toys in the corn" station.  It was a lot of fun!

 My little pumpkin had a great time!

 The girls got a ton of mail today - lots of fun cards from their grandparents and great aunt! 

 The girls were Bumblebees this year.  I loved these costumes - so cute! 

I should probably just go ahead and give a disclosure that we do celebrate Halloween - we love it for a fun family holiday and it's fun to dress the kids up cute and get candy! I just love that it's a fun family activity and the kids have so much fun.  We don't do scary costumes or Halloween decorations or ouiji boards or worship witches.  

 Our plan was to go over to Laurie and Steve's and take pictures and see the girls and then go to our church's fall festival and then end up at our neighborhood to trick or treat.  Our church this year had mini festivals set up in two different neighborhoods. This was planned as an outreach to the community.  We ended up deciding to just stay at Laurie's house and trick or treat their neighborhood with them. 

AND WE HAD SO MUCH FUN!!!!! 

 Our family - the little bees, the Queen Bee and our Bee Keeper. 

(I LOVE having a family theme. Not sure how long I can keep this up - but it's my favorite thing!)

In full disclosure - I only got this outfit on Scott for a few pictures.  He took it off to walk the neighborhood.  But at least it made for a fun picture! :-) 

 I kept saying "I think this might be the best night of Harper's life".  She had SOO much fun.  She was the first to run up to every door.  She kept saying "I LOVE candy!!!!" 

 We had so much fun with our friends.  I think we may have a new tradition together.  They live in a fun neighborhood and everyone was outside and it was just a great time!

 Sweet Emily stayed with me and Hollis.  We took up the rear most of the night but Hollis wanted to walk.  She did SO good!!! She didn't have one meltdown. She walked the entire time and would go up to every door and say "trick or treat" and always said "Thank you!" 

 I would say "Hollis are you having fun??" and she would say "YEAH!!!"

 It's no secret that Harper thinks Laurie is the best thing in the world and she insisted on holding her hand the whole night.  

 I LOVE these girls!!!

 What a BEE-autiful little baby I have!

This was a lot of pictures but I wanted to remember our fun night and let the grandparents see! 

Now I have to go hide all that candy! (and maybe eat a little!) 

The Holiday season and a new baby (an awkward VLOG)

So I'm continuing the series with Huggies and BlogHer on the baby's first year. We are approaching the holiday season and this brings a lot of stress and chaos to families with small children. I decided to do a little "VLOG" and just share my thoughts on how to handle the holiday season with your baby or children! It's just a quick video on my best advice for getting through the next few months and ENJOYING Them!!!!

For Women

I know you are all aware of Hurricane Sandy. Please remember to pray for all those affected. I know it has devastated so many.

I took this picture this morning. It's a little fuzzy because the subjects are busy. :-) 

Why does Harper look 5 feet tall in this picture? She looks so grownup.  I just started working on her photo book for 2012 and I'm just in January of this year and she has changed SO MUCH in one year.  Hollis has too.  It's amazing how fast it's going.

I took this picture before we left for Bible Study this morning.  It's my favorite day of the week. I love getting to study God's word with other women and to hear them share about what God is doing or has done in their lives.  It's just a great time of fellowship and learning.  Afterwards we had a meeting with our women's council and it got me thinking.

I had a request to do this as a SUYL Friday topic but I'm just going to ask you today.  If you are active in women's ministry at your church - what are things you have done that you have enjoyed or have impacted your life? 

Your favorite Bible Studies you have done?

Ways you have served your community or the women in your church?

Who are good speakers you have had? 

What kind of activities are your favorite?

Or what would you like to see your church do for women? 

How are ways maybe older women mentor the younger women? How do you get all ages to mingle more?

I thought we could share ideas and I'd love to get some for my church! 

My Sunday School class has actually been doing a study separate at night on a subject no one usually talks about .......marriage and {s-e-x}.  It's a study by Kay Arthur but we have also been just talking about protecting our marriages and making our husbands a priority and also just preparing for how we want to guide our children.  I think it's something we thought maybe no one would show up for but last night we had a woman from our church who is a marriage therapist come talk to us and we had 20 of us there and we didn't want it to end.  I think it's been impactful on all of us and hopefully God will help us keep our marriages strong and give us wisdom to know how to talk to our kids.  That was a little out of the box for most of us - but it seemed to be really needed.  

I'd love to hear from you!

(And if you aren't involved in a church - what would make you WANT to go? What could churches do to reach out to you?)

Humbles and Mumbles

I feel like the last few days have held a lot of humbling moments for me.

This wasn't a humbling moment but a happy moment - Scott and I don't go on a lot of dates these days but we had a lunch date Friday and it was so fun.  We went and voted early (which I have to admit - I teared up a little at the voting place.  Just the privilege to vote and the patriotic feeling - love it!) and then we ate at our favorite place in downtown Bentonville - Table Mesa. Yum! Guacamole!


Anyway - back to the humbling moments.  Friday morning I went the gym and took a zumba class. I was leaving the gym and looked my absolute worst - really sweaty, no makeup and I ran into my very first boss when I worked at the Wal-Mart home office. I hadn't seen him in 12 years.  He lives in AZ now but his kids all live here and he just had his first grandbaby.  I was so mortified to see him after all these years looking a big mess.  He is a Godly, hard working man who was so encouraging to me.  He really helped me get started on my career path and I have always been thankful God let him be my first boss. I was glad I was able to mumble out how he had encouraged me.  (and his sweet wife Julie who I always loved reads my blog - which is so funny! So hi Julie if you see this. Thankful for y'all!!)

Friday afternoon - I took the girls to run a few errands.  We went to Lifeway.  I wanted to get the girls this storybook Bible because I've heard a lot of good things about it.  Harper was wanting to look at something else and I showed her this book and said "Look - we can read lots of stories about Jesus" and she shouted out as loud as she could (and we were the ONLY ONES in the store) "I DON'T LIKE JESUS".  Awesome.  I'm surprised the workers didn't come over to take the chance to witness to us. ha!

We are on the Baptism committee at church and we rotate with 3 other couples.  Today was our Sunday which means we have to leave our house at 8:15 to get there in time to meet the pastor and the people being baptized.  I TOTALLY forgot about it until 8:00 when we were all sitting around in our pj's eating breakfast and I suddenly said "OH NO - we have baptisms. We have to leave in 15 minutes."  To say it was mass chaos and possibly a little yelling at our house over the next 15 minutes - is putting it MILDY.  But we somehow managed to get there and everything went smooth from there.  I feel like I forgot more things than I remember these days and I have calendars and notebooks and lists everywhere I look.


This morning totally reminded me of this video. Have y'all seen this? It cracks me up.  Does it remind you of your family on Sunday mornings? Or is it just me? This was us this morning only 10x worse.


Sunday Morning - IgniterMedia.com from ignitermedia on GodTube.
Am I the only one or are your days filled with HUMBLES and MUMBLES too?

Pumpkin Patch 2012

My favorite season is fall. I LOVE fall. I love everything about it. 

EVERYTHING!

And my favorite thing is now getting to take my girls to the pumpkin patch!

 The bad thing about the pumpkin patch is finding a day to go as a family.  Every Saturday conflicts with hunting or football or it's raining.  So we finally made it today.  It was a little chilly but we had a great time. 

 Of course what I really wanted was a good picture of my girls in the pumpkin patch.  Well today was the last day of the season so all the pumpkins were gone. And then there is the fact that probably the most frustrating thing in the universe to me and the thing that makes me lose the most patience is trying to get a picture of an 18 month old.  It's impossible.  So this is the best we got. At least she was in the picture. ha! 

Here are my pumpkins last year - they have grown and changed so much. 

 Once we got past trying to take a picture - we had a really fun time.  The girls loved it! I knew they would.  The place we go is called Farmland Adventures and it's out on a big farm.  They have a huge petting zoo and pony rides and a big corn maze and wagon rides along with pumpkins.  I love it!

 Harper's favorite thing is the pony rides. If it hadn't been so cold - we would have let her ride a zillion times. 

 Hollis rode once and that was all she wanted. 

 I love this picture of my girls and their daddy

 LOVE

 We went on a really fun wagon ride and got to feed chickens and cows. The girls LOVED it. 

It was my favorite part of the day. 

 If you can't tell - Harper is SUCH a daddy's girl.  

I love this picture of them. 

 Harper even rode all by herself. 

I think the look on her face says it all about how much fun we had today.

I say this every year but I truly mean it.  Every fall when I was single or especially before we had kids - I would be so sad because I dreamed so much of the day I could go to a pumpkin patch with my "family" and take my kids and put them in orange clothes.  It was one of my main dreams as I waited for a family.  I was always sad seeing pictures of families doing that together because I wanted it to be me.  I just want you to know ........ if you are still waiting - your pumpkin patch days are coming. 

Don't give up the dream of your pumpkin patch! 

Show us your life - Halloween Costumes

The timing is a little weird on this but I thought it would be fun to post past Halloween costumes (kids or adults).  It's probably too late but maybe it will give us ideas for next year!

Harper was a little lady bug when she was almost two.

  On Harper's first halloween - she was going to be this pig and she and I both wound up with the Swine Flu. (Ironic???)

I LOVED last year.  Seriously - that pig costume KILLS me.

For as long as possible - I want to dress the girls in a theme and hopefully Scott and I can join them. We were a farm family last year. So fun!!!

Let's see your ideas.............

Two Parties

Today we had two parties to go to - what a fun day we have had!

 My friends had a Halloween play group today hosted my friend Caryn. The girls are bees this year. I couldn't get a picture of them together today to save my life but I'm hoping for Halloween.  We are going to our church carnival. I'm still debating on if Scott and I will dress up like bees or bee keepers ourselves.  Today I decided to at least wear bee colors! ha! 

 My idea of fall decorations is to stick the same fall wreath I've had for 8 years on my front door and get a few mums that I try hard not to kill and a few pumpkins on our front step.  And MAYBE if I'm feeling fancy - I'll put a few pie pumpkins around inside.

Caryn had her house DECKED out in fall.

Everything was so cute - I had to share pictures.  I don't really decorate for the season because 1. I don't have any fall decorations or spring decorations and don't want to store them and 2. Just decorating for Christmas basically takes me 12 months to recover so I just stick to one holiday to decorate for.  

 We had pizza and Caryn had all kinds of goodies.  

 Yum!

 I loved this wall in her kitchen - how cute is the Razorback schedule and her calendar? 

 My girls had a great time playing and eating

 My friend Elizabeth and the cutest little baby boy ever! 

 I tried to get a picture of these cute 3 and 4 year olds. How awesome is it that not ONE of them is looking at me. 

 And today is a big day in our house! Dawson our first baby is TEN years old today!!!! 

I hung this birthday banner in our kitchen for him.  

I kind of think he knows it's his birthday because he has been extra peppy today and smiling a lot. 

We came home from play group and put on pj's cause it's dreary and rainy outside and it's just a good day for it.  Harper and I made cookies to celebrate Dawson's birthday.  He can't actually eat them but he will get some kind of treat for dinner.  And I got him a new collar and leash.  He hasn't had a new one in probably 6 or 7 years so he deserves it!

Here is the birthday boy in his new pink collar. I know it's pink. And he's a boy. But it was the cutest collar they had and he lives in a princess home. I think he has embraced it. :-)

Baby Carriers

This is another post in the series I'm writing on early motherhood for Huggies and BlogHer.  These posts are all about the first few months in a baby's life.  It's hard to believe that I'm already out of this stage and into toddlerhood so I love looking back and reflecting.

Today I'm asking the question - Did you use a baby carrier and what kind??? And did you like it or did it work for you?

I did not use one with Harper for many reasons. Honestly with Harper I thought it was something only granola moms with birkenstocks did.  I didn't really know any moms who used those and thought it was kind of weird.  Plus she was a big baby and I thought it would be awkward.

But in the months that followed Harper and the year or so after, I noticed a trend that everyone was suddenly wearing some kind of carrier.  And they seemed to love them.

I knew I was having a c-section with Hollis so it became almost a necessity.  I couldn't carry around her car seat everywhere and with a brand new two year to chase also - I needed help.  Luckily my friend Melissa let me borrow two different ones from her.  I liked one over the other and I used it so much those first few weeks.  I wore it pretty much every where we went from the time we started getting out around 2-3 weeks until I could finally lift the baby seat.

I actually loved wearing Hollis in a carrier.  If you get a good kind that is stretchy and tight - it's like a cocoon.  Hollis would sleep so good in there and we could go anywhere. And I still had hands to do things or hold Harper's hand.  I think it's almost a necessity with baby #2 or #3 or on and on.

Scott was never the "baby wearing" kind of guy - but it can be good for dads too if you get a Baby Bjorn or a more masculine baby carrier.

So help out the new moms reading - was it worth it to you? Did you use it? Would you suggest borrowing one if possible? Or skip all together?
Check out the Huggies Mommy Answers Facebook app and find more posts from bloggers sharing their experiences of motherhood on the Huggies page on BlogHer.com.

Noonday

We are entering the holiday season and even though we should be thinking of this 365 days -  I think the holidays always (hopefully) make us reflect on giving and helping others.

I am going to be introducing you to a few ways in the next few weeks that you can give and help others.  I know most of you have churches you give to and probably at least once charity you support.  I don't want to take you away from those or make you feel guilty.  The majority of what I'm going to talk to you about - won't even require much from you.  I know most of us are on tight budgets and one income and the LAST thing I want to do is ask you to give more money.  BUT there are some neat ways you can give just out of the ordinary things you are already doing.  I know this might sound crazy but more to come on this!!!




My dear friend Jennifer from college recently introduced me to something that I think is awesome.  I know a lot of you have Christmas shopping on the mind so I just want to tell you about this and if you find a great gift.........then you will also be doing a great thing!

NOONDAY is a new company that is helping women in other countries have income by having them make jewelry and bags and a few other things - FAIR TRADE items and then they sell them to you! Every item is made by a woman in a country - hand made. And it's CUTE CUTE stuff! This is also a company that has a foundation of supporting adoption and orphans. They give towards orphan care.  And if you are adopting and host a party through them - they will give 10% towards your adoption. I know so many of you are in that process.

My friend Jennifer has been to Haiti a few times and is adopting from haiti and she had this idea originally to buy things and bring back to sell to help and then she found out about Noonday.

Here is a quick video to help explain!

This is an example of a necklace they sell.
 This piece is handmade in Ethiopia using recycled nickel, copper, and bronze melted down from previous war weapons. Most of the artisans who created the pieces are HIV positive and receive healthcare and literacy training in addition to job training.

Or I love this made in Uganda. 

They even have cute belts, bags and scarfs.

I would love for you to check this out! If you are shopping for your loved ones - think about how you could buy something they would love and help people around the world support their families! And help orphans in the same time! 

You can also sign up to be an ambassador or find one in your town to host a party! 

I just think this is a neat idea and I wanted to share!

Click the button at the top or this link to discover more! 

http://www.jenniferfaddis.noondaycollection.com

OH .......

and my favorite part? The name is based off this verse:

When you satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness,

and your night will become like the NOONDAY.

Isaiah 58:10

{love}

Tuesday Tidbits

My college roommate and matron of honor and dear friend Kandi brought one of her daughters up here this weekend to see our museum and have a one on one weekend.  They came to visit me and the girls Saturday.  This is her daughter Lowrey. She is 9. And she acts 18. In a good way.  She's SOOO intelligent and mature. She is SOOO much like her mom.

 This is me and Lowrey when she was about 9 months old.  Lowrey was a VERY prayed for baby.  Kandi waited for her for a long time.  And then she got a little sister less than a year later. I adore this family. It was 21 years ago that Kandi and I moved into a tiny dorm room at OBU together. So thankful God put her in my life!

I started a new Bible Study this morning. I'm doing "Duty or Delight" by Tammie Head. I think it will be so good. Have any of you ever done it?  These are my crazy girls when we got home. They take their shoes off in the car. Hollis insisted on wearing some Olympic medal around her neck all last night and today.  In fact I just took it off before she went down for nap and she was SOOO mad.  Maybe she knows something about her future that I don't. ha!

Me and my two children that need to be at my feet or holding onto me at every moment of every day.  I never am more than 2 inches from either one of them.   I'm in a wardrobe quandry - it's 80 degrees and I know I look dumb wearing a sweater and boots - but what else can you wear in late October? I am NOT wearing sandals.  :-)  (The cracked mirror is just a sweet effect, huh?)

Y'all are always asking me where I shop.  One of my VERY VERY VERY favorite places to shop online is ModCloth. Have you ever been on there? They are offering a $20 off your first purchase if you click here.  Just thought I'd pass that on if you are looking for a new fall outfit. :-) 

One of my blog readers who signed up to write Julee letters had a dear friend that died unexpectantly last week.  She is the mom of four boys ages 1-10.  She is trying to organize a card drive to send her husband and boys.  If you would be willing to send a card to encourage a dad - would you please read here for more info:

http://hartsforhim.blogspot.com/2012/10/a-card-day.html