Picture overload

First time in a highchair at a restaurant

My fat boy

Partying it up for New Years Eve!

Making up our own card games

Making her doll pretty

Liam's flat head is starting to round out! yay!

Date night with my love! We really enjoyed this night!

Of course Parker needed boots on like mommy

Playing a little ball inside

Liam & Sam - 2 months apart

At cousin Kip's 2nd birthday party!

Daddy doing flips

Parker & Laney look so tiny :(

Happy 2nd Birthday Kip! We love you so much!

At Jensen & Deacon's 3rd birthday party!

Love the Children's Museum!

It was a Dinosaur party so this was appropriate ;)

Crazy dinosaurs...watch out!

ahhh....to be a kid again!



Parker Photography

leg & shoe

My legs under the table

Parkers lips

haha

Putting up laundry

Walls..

 Blue cup

Ceiling

Pink cup

haha, I love going through my phone and finding random pictures :)

Fireplace Makeover

I never realized how drab our fireplace was. I mean, I knew it wasn't the prettiest thing but didn't know it was just plain ugly. Tanner & I got this wonderful idea around Christmas time to fix up our house. We even had a contractor come out to get prices on add ons, bathroom updates, etc. In the meantime, we thought we would update the fireplace since that was simple to do.

Of course Pinterest is a big reason...I came across this picture and thought it was a lot like our fireplace. Orange/red brick with the old wood and brass fireplace trim

Our before picture

So we decided on what better day that our Anniversary to start this little project. We got all the supplies and then once the kids were asleep we got to work. First up was white washing the brick. Very easy project. You basically mix white paint with water. You take a large paint brush and put it over the brick and use a wrag to wipe off the excess paint. Once it was all on it was a little too white for us. It was still wet enough to go back over it with a wrap to wipe more off.

Once we wiped it several times we moved onto painting the brass trim. We used the heat resistant rustoleum. I wish I would have taken a picture of the cacoon we made to keep the fumes inside the small area but didn't. Tanner came out a different color ;)

We had also put one coat of paint onto the mantle. I wasn't a fan. The color came out funky and didn't quite match the fireplace trim. The brick was also still too white.

So after a few scrubs and 2 more paint coats on the mantle we are done!! I am still looking for new decor for the mantle...I have had this stuff forever.

What do you think? You like?

Change coming our way

I feel like my brain is in a nasty fog and can't seem to shake it out. This week has been overwhelming and sad and depressing. I took today off hoping I could bring my head back to normal. I couldn't be at work today, trying to work, when in reality I just wanted to cry and close my eyes and act like this is all a dream.

but...

it's not a dream...it's reality and I know I need to face it. But it was nice having today off to get a few things done that have piled up over the past few days....including laundry since our dryer quit in the midst of our crazy week.

Tanner & I had our world rocked this week. As I was  just telling Tanner how blessed we are to not have anything BIG in our lives going wrong...we were content..

Then we got news that will be a huge change for our family. I hate change...despise it. Tanner, on the other hand, loves change and enjoys it. This change is a little different and unexpected so it has  left us both with a lot of stress hanging on our shoulders and bad headaches...

Our jobs, along with the rest of the Midland COP jobs, will be relocating to Houston. I love my job and everyone that knows me knows that I LOVE my job & LOVE my boss...I tell everyone how much I have it made. Who really can say that? I know I am blessed & fortunate for that. But I also LOVE Midland and my precious family & amazing friends here in my good ol hometown. Tanner has his family here as well. Our kids love their daycare. We have a huge support system. But we also will be jobless...not just one of us...both of us.

When Tanner accepted his job at COP in 2011 we knew moving was a possibility and pretty much a must if he wanted to move up. There aren't many Finance jobs in the Midland office. We also thought we would have a choice to stay in Midland if that is what we preferred..stay put...stay content..stay with my awesome job. Relocation never occurred to us honestly. But it's here and we need to deal with it. Everyone keeps asking us..have you guys talked about it? What way are you leaning? You guys can't leave, want us to help you find another job? 

The thing is...we really haven't talked about it. My head has been in a major fog..I can't even think straight. And we just haven't had the time to really sit down and have a serious conversation with 2 little ones. When they go to bed we are so emotionally tired that we just sit, and sit, and try to sleep, and toss and turn, and kind of ignore a serious conversation about this.

How do you decide? How do I know that moving to Houston is right for us? How do I know Midland is right for us? How do I know we will find jobs here if we stay? How do we know we won't be sad and depressed if we leave our family? What if we need this time away from family to focus on "our" family? 

Everything has crossed our minds..well my mind..since I am not sure what is going through Tanner's. We do have time...not a ton of time but we have time. I have been praying so hard the past few weeks to grow closer to God. I felt like since our lives were going so good we had drifted from really focusing our hearts and minds on Jesus. Maybe this is what we needed? To reconnect to him. I need him more than anything right now and I have been listening to this song over and over again and it gives me peace. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOkImV2cJDg

Hopefully this weekend we can suck it up and have a good conversation instead of hoping it's just a dream and we will wake up soon...

Liam 6 Months

My sweet boy turned 6 months on 1/3/13. A half a year down and I have mixed feelings. I love have a baby. We have been blessed with 2 really good babies. I also love that he is learning new things and doing more! We took our little big guy to the dr yesterday for his 6 months check up. I can't tell you how thankful I am for this blog. It allows me to go back and look at things that I would have never remembered on my own. As I was laying in bed last night I looked up blogs I wrote on Parker when she was 6 months old...you can see them here and here. Wow, so many similarities yet Liam is much bigger than Parker at this age.

Liam 6 month Stats:
Weight: 20 lbs 12 oz (98%)
Height: 27 in (68%)
Head: 18 in (88%)

Liam sits very well on his own but yet he does not want to roll over. Seeing in Parkers old blogs she had the exact same problem haha!! I guess I just have chubby babies that can't get that body over ;) So I guess more crying it out on his tummy. Liam has awful cries!! He hardly ever lets it out but when he does...whew...it's horrible!!

We love his daycare & the ladies that take amazing care of him. He doesn't have seperation anxiety yet which is a blessing...that's when it gets real tough dropping them off. I feel like his flat head is progressing as well. Dr R wasn't concerned about it but did say to keep him off his head as much as possible. That really is tricky considering he sleeps ALL THE TIME and when he is awake he is sitting up. I was actually a littel concerened about how much he slept but she said as long as when he is awake he is energetic then it's good. He did get 4 shots :( One being the flu shot since he is in daycare. We will have to take hime back next month for the 2nd dose. Other than that, he is a healthy sweet boy that loves Dr Reese. That is very opposite of Parker...she would scream and cry as soon as we laid her on the table or the Dr came in haha.

~ no teeth yet..
~ sits very well on his own
~ hold his own bottle
~ can pick up objects, transfer them between hands
~ thinks his name is "Brother"...oops
~sleeps 13 hours at night
~ takes 3 naps during the day
~ 5 bottles at 7 oz
~ solids for breakfast, lunch and dinner
~loves fruit, veggies and meats
~ LOVES bath time, especially in his new infaltable duck
~ obsessed with his sister :)
~ sweetest smile in the world
~ sits in his highchair

As Liam is growing he is looking more and more like Parker. As I went through old pics of P last night I couldn't help but just smile...I love that they look so much alike.