Lets train

CC,

You are stunningly beautiful. I'm not just saying that because I'm your mom, but you truly do take my breath away with your extraordinary red curls, giant baby blues, and little doll face. In a world that places heavy emphasis on the superficial, I hope you can take your beauty in stride.





Because soon enough you will have a complex relationship with your exterior. Your body, your hair, your skin, your smile....all of these may be under fire from your self at some point. They could be under scrutiny from your peers, too, but I want you to be confident enough that you let other's opinions roll off your (beautiful) back. And confident enough that negative self-talk is a rarity. Build yourself up, rock those red curls, and know that your true beauty comes from within. We love you no matter what.







Your innocence is another thing that makes my heart ache. You are so trusting, so curious, so innately good. I wish I could protect you from all of the heartache and pain you are sure to encounter in this life, but since I can't I will just tell you that I'll be here for you when you need me. Which is a lot right now, and hopefully you'll still need me quite a bit in the future, too. Never lose that sparkle in your eye. Never forget that we love you no matter what.





At just fifteen months, I find myself giddy with excitement anticipating your journey into adulthood. There are just so many awesome memories to be had. But in your short life you've already provided us with some amazing moments. Your first smile, first time saying 'mama', first unprovoked kiss for your brother, first run-and-reach for your daddy...I could go on, but I won't. Oh, you bring such joy to our lives, little girl. I'm both excited for you to grow and sad that it's going so fast. I honestly would not trade a moment of this crazy life for anything and feel incredibly grateful to be your mom.

Your great-grandma sewed this vintage pink tatting onto this new green dress.


The tatting was made by your great-great grandma, Sweetie, and her favorite color was pink (I think it runs in our family). I wish we could have had a few years of five generations of women in this family, but four will have to do for now. And I can't help but think of how much my mom must have loved me when I was your age, and Memaw before her, and Sweetie before that. Becoming a mother myself has given me a new appreciation for my own--something I hope you get the privilege of understanding one day.

I love you, sweet girl. Sorry that I'm a sap. I can't help it sometimes.





xoxo, Mama

If you follow me on Instagram (MrsJuliaGoolia), you might remember that a few weekends ago I roped Nate into hanging eight picture frames on our dining room wall. This whole measuring and leveling and planning thing is right up his alley and totally not up my own. I prefer to guess and hammer a nail wherever my eyeball so desires. And since I knew I wanted these eight frames to be centered and symmetrical, I knew my husband was the correct choice for this project.







We used to have two canvases on this wall and it recently started to bug me because this wall is huge and the two canvases just didn't fill up the space well enough for my tastes. I knew I wanted a lot of BIG photos on this wall and am really into the repetitive look of identical frames hung at the same distances, as opposed to a variable pattern like we used to have at the duplex.

(This is the best picture I could find without searching my Flickr for years. Kind of love this one of Truman with me and my parents, when Nate graduated PT school. Over two years ago!)


ANYWAY. Enough reminiscing.

I am really into the clean, symmetrical look on my walls now. So I bought these eight white frames from Michaels, after looking seriously at Crate and Barrel and Pottery Barn. Nate told me to 'splurge on nice frames for a change' but I just couldn't do it. Because these from Michaels are not total crap, they were BOGO FREE, and $35 a pop. The ones I really loved from Pottery Barn were $40 and not buy one get one. Michaels speaks to my inner tight wad, I suppose.

The photograph is going to be 11x14 and the frame itself is probably 13x16 or something. Pretty huge. And I'm really excited to pick out my eight images to hang in these babies. I decided to go all black and white after some debate and all of the images will need to be verticals, of course.

This is where I need your help, my friends.

I can only choose eight pictures. I want one of those to be a wedding photo and I cannot, for the life of me, choose which one. I had a lot of fun pouring over the thousands of images we have on DVDs from our photographer. Probably a little too much fun, actually. Gah, over six years ago!!

Which one do you like the best?

A: From when we first saw each other in the hotel room, before the ceremony. Would convert this to black and white.


B: In the hotel still, before we left on the trolley for pictures (all before ceremony). Love this one.


C: From the 'around the city' shots we did before the ceremony. Would convert this one, too. Very posed but still pretty classic.


D: The Kiss!


E: The first dance. Love how we are laughing and so happy here. Such an amazing day in our lives.


F: Another first dance shot. It's blurry but it's always been a fave.


G: In front of the red brick wall that is gray here;)


H: Kissing in front of said wall. I would lighten this one up a bit. Not sure why it's so dark.


I: Another posed one, would need to convert.


Opinions on the wedding picture to be hung on our wall???

So, it's August and I have been wanting to attempt the unfathomable for awhile now. I really want to write a post every day this month. I know, I know---that's about 20x more than I usually post in a given month. But here me out.

Sometimes it will probably be a single picture with a slightly wordy caption. Sometimes it will be a hodge podge of thoughts, as if I was emailing a girlfriend. Other times, if I'm lucky, it might actually be a cohesive 'meaty' post. But I figure now is the time because it's the start of a new month, life is somewhat settled right now (don't jinx me, blogging gods), and this glass of wine makes me feel chatty.

I don't have any guide or list of topics, though. Is that bad? Oh man, I hope I can pull this off. I am far too competitive to admit defeat so I'm afraid you might have to deal with a lot of posts in your Bloglovin/Feedly from me in the coming weeks.

Why am I doing this? To capture my thoughts better. To break through the 'I don't feel like blogging' barriers. Because writing is my journaling and it helps me sort my thoughts. Also, I take a lot of iphone pictures so this would be one way to document those apart from IG ;)

Right now, I do have a few things on my mind, too. Is it cheating if I just list one thing right now and then draft the other thoughts for different days? I think so.

Did I ever mention that we just had a lot of family visiting us from out of town? My mom was just here for 10 days, Memaw was here for 7 days, Pepaw was here for 2 days, and Nate's brother Jon was here for 7 days. So these four family members represent Colorado, Missouri, and Oregon and we get to see some of them only twice per year. Amazing that they all happened to plan a trip to WI around the same time.

Mom was here because Dad traveled back to MO for a golf trip, so she figured it would be a good time to visit me the grandkids. (Just figured out how to do the strike through thing after almost 7 years of blogging). Pepaw always flies up his own two-seater plane every summer for a big air show in Oshkosh, and Memaw flew commercial this time to see Mom/help with the grandkids. Also, I had a light-bulb moment after Cecelia's first birthday party. I came up with the idea of hiring Andrea for a 'four generations' photo shoot. We are so blessed to have Memaw in spectacular health and I don't plan on that changing anytime soon. But I still want to capture the four of us girls right now because I know we will all cherish these pictures forever. Both my mom and Memaw were really into the idea, too, and both of them requested that Truman be in the pictures, too.

So we did the photoshoot two days ago and I am dying to see all of the images. The teaser Andrea put on FB was adorable and I feel like the shoot went really well. I spent too much time attempting to coordinate the outfits of three women with completely different styles/generations along with two children's outfits, who are easy to dress but difficult to predict when it comes to photo shoots. We went with a 'cool tone' theme, meaning I said 'pick anything that has shades of blue and green and let's see what happens.' I think our outfits came together very nicely and was relieved with how the kids behaved. Also, an exorbitant amount of fruit snacks/chocolate chips are my special secret for maintaining attention spans past 2 seconds. For Truman and Cecelia, that is. My mom and Memaw were fine without bribery;)

Anyway, the photoshoot and the visit with family in general leaves me feeling rather emotional. See also: glass of wine. But seriously. I love when my mom and Memaw (and Pepaw and Jon, too) visit. But I HATE when we have to say goodbye. The last time my mom left Truman came to the airport with me. Very bad decision. He cried the entire way home and thus, I cried as well. Nothing like hearing my sweet three year old say, 'But I miss GoGo, I want to go to Colorado nowwwwwww.' Ugh. So last night Truman did not make the airport trip with me and the goodbyes were slightly less horrific. But still really sad. Same with telling Memaw goodbye today. It's just hard knowing they live so far away and although we are really blessed to have them visit so frequently, it's just not the same as having my family in the same state. They are the best. They do so much for us when they are here, and when they are away. I literally changed Cecelia's diaper about 4 times total in the past 10 days and my mom got Cecelia each morning when the child woke at 5 or earlier, bringing her downstairs to play so mommy could sleep a little longer. I mean, what? I know. They are amazing helpers and are so engaging when they interact with my children. Thank you God, for these women in my life. I do not take it for granted.

I'm not going to include a ton of pictures in each post, but I guess this one turned out to be my 'family visit' recap. Except I didn't even say what we truly did for these 10 days (pool, zoo, playground, driveway, eating, laughing, running, pedi/mani time, eating, etc etc). But anyway, a few pictures from our amazing visits with family.

Last night, hugs from his buddy MM


Before the photo shoot, helping the ladies with our hairspray


I actually wore 'real' makeup for the shoot.


I think we nailed a few shots.




Oh, I hope all of his forced smiles were like this


Doing a 'treasure hunt' with Truman in the back yard


Some of the out-of-towners, Sunday. Down right chilly!








Playground with everyone


Watching TV together


One of many awesome 'group effort' dinners. At the most, we had 8 adults and 2 kids at this table. Love it!


Pool time!




Zoo time!


Kissing with popsicle sticks


Off to the playground we go



What a fun 10 days, huh?

Crap, August has 31 days in it, doesn't it?

Way back in April of this year, I was a part of a blogger busy bag swap and have been meaning to post about this for oh, about five months now;) I'm not sure any of the other girls blogged about it either! Shame on all of us;)

If you haven't been bombarded with the busy bag concept from Pinterest and other internet sources, I will explain. You have a small activity that can fit inside a small bag. You show your child how to use this bag-o-goodies appropriately one time, but then hopefully it's something they can do all by themselves to keep busy when mommy can't be right there interacting. In theory, it's an awesome idea for some quiet time, for when a sibling needs 1:1 attention from mom and the bigger kid must fend for themselves, or just to teach them a little independent play skills.

Megan from Girl Meets Life organized this cross-country swap. The other bloggers were Kristal from Mama at Home, Meredith from La Buena Vida, Erin who is TeamCorbin on IG and used to blog doesn't anymore (tear), Leslie from The Diary of a Half Black Woman, and Jill from Happy Hopefuls. We all exchanged FB messages and figured out what bag we could contribute, then we made seven of the exact same ones. We sent them all to Megan, she organized them, and we got 6 new bags back in the mail plus our own busy bag project we made for everyone else, too.

Pretty fun, right?


1. Frogs and Numbers (by Megan)

One of Truman's favorite busy bags. The laminated cards have pictures and a number on each. There are a bunch of cute plastic frogs and the kids are supposed to match up number '1' with one frog, etc. I found it hilarious that Truman put the plastic frog right on top of the picture of each frog instead of putting it on the blank part of the page, like I did above. He loves these frogs and it's good to practice counting and numbers.


2. Magnetic bottle (by Meredith)

A bunch of pipe cleaners, googly eyes, and metal shapes inside a soda bottle means tons of fun when you add a big magnet to the side of the bottle. Cecelia gets really mad when I won't open this bottle for her but Truman digs sliding that magnet around.


3. Wooden miniature memory matching (by Erin)

We love matching games, and this is no exception! Love how simple it is. Would be good to throw in my purse for dinners out or something.


4. Foam shape matching (by Leslie)

I was shocked that Truman could actually do this one! One side of each foam page has a shape arrangement stuck to it. Then on the other side, the child is supposed to find the loose shapes and make a mirrored arrangement. Really fun!

5. Popsicle stick puzzles (by Kristal)

Kristal did three different puzzles here by printing out images appropriate for each child, then cutting them into strips and glueing onto popsicle sticks. Truman likes his name the best, followed by Thomas and then the trucks;)

6. Felt flags (by Jill)

Truman requests to do this one occasionally, and although his flag is never 'perfect' it's always interesting and fun to see him toy around with the different shapes. He likes the buttons the best.


7. Felt butterflies (by me)
Truman already knew about these, and I posted about them here. But he still likes to make his butterfly in whole form so I have yet to cut it in half, so he can work on mirror images. I love felt!

And that's it for our busy bag swap. So many fun ideas out there. I foresee a lot of busy bags this winter when we can't get outside to play.