Tag: family

Upcycled Entertainment Center – Winebar

Upcycled Entertainment Center – Winebar

  This piece of furniture has been hanging around our house for ages. It started out as our very first entertainment center and I remember measuring the big space to make sure that our tv would fit in it. Not the width of it, but […]

Caeden Room Make-over

Caeden Room Make-over

If Lael’s room is the one that is constantly changing, Caeden’s room never changes – except for the dirty cups and bowls that accumulate! But now change has come. He has a new bed, desk and shelves, all built by me with my always helpful […]

Mother’s and Father’s Day Gifts

Mother’s and Father’s Day Gifts

Mother’s Day and Father’s Day always present a great opportunity to make something cool for my awesome parents. They don’t need anything and if asked will usually say “I don’t want anything.” So, I try to come up with something cool and crafty to make their day special.
This is definitely not the best pictures to show off how cute this lantern turned out! I tried to get a picture of it at night when it was lit up and glowing pretty. But, that didn’t work out so well. So, you will have to imagine how that would look.

I got the lantern at Aldi, yes the discount grocery store. They have one aisle that is full of seasonal merchandise. Usually I try to avoid it because I don’t really need any of it. But, sometimes I cruise by (if I remembered my quarter and have a grocery cart) and see what kind of great deals are there. This was a definite score, it was only $9.99!  I wish I had bought several of them.

After I got it home I used my Silhouette Cameo to make it pretty with a vinyl monogram and design.

My Dad is infinitely harder to get a gift for. He almost always has a fund going for some new toy. It could be a drone, a tv, computer, ham radio antenna, a tool…….It could be anything. But, I still like to make something cool for him to get a physical gift.

 

This year I picked up an outdoor rug at Target. It is one of the really wide ones that is perfect for the French doors that lead out onto Mom and Dad’s deck. The rug had to black border and the word Welcome on it already. I personalized it with the GPS coordinates for their house. That is the type of tech geeky thing that my Dad totally gets!

I got the GPS coordinates from Google Earth and then just used my number stencils and black acrylic paint to add the coordinates to the rug.

I love the way it turned out!

 

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Spring Break Geocaching

Spring Break Geocaching

We didn’t do anything fabulous for Spring Break like go to the beach or the mountains or anything like that.  What we did do, was spend a lot of time outdoors.  We headed to Birmingham to spend a few days at my parents house.  One […]

the Refuge

the Refuge

Chace and his friend Dylan have been going to the refuge Wheeler Wildlife Refuge for quite some time now.  They go out there to fish, to hike, to swim or just to hang out.  I had never been until my parents came up for one […]

Double Digits!

Double Digits!

Hello Double Digits!!  The twins are 10!  A decade!  Hard to believe it’s been ten years since Lael decided it was time to enter the world!  I have recorded their birth story in scrapbooks but not here on my blog, so here goes.

I had a textbook pregnancy, it was so easy and everything went according to plan.  I was worried when I started getting really really big in my 6th or 7th month that I was going to have to go on bed rest or something like that.  But, that wasn’t the case, hurray!  I remember buying a maternity dress in my 6th month and the sales clerk saying something like, Oh honey – that’s a beautiful dress, but it looks like you won’t be able to wear it much longer.  She was either implying that I was about to drop the babies that week or that I was already as big as the side of the barn and would need a much larger size very soon, lol!  Not exactly what you want to hear when you are only 6 months along!!  We had a midwife/doctor team taking care of me and the babies.  They were both really fabulous, I couldn’t have asked for a better experience with the doctors and hospital.  They had told us that as long as everything was still going well and that we made it to 36 weeks, the delivery would be at Madison Hospital (about 5 minutes from our house.)  I really wanted it to be there instead of the other option in Albany, about 45 minutes away.  It was also a much smaller hospital and I already knew all the nurses because I was going weekly for those blasted stress tests.  Once a week I had to go in and lie there while they monitored my belly for an hour at a time – BORING!!  But, a fair price to pay to know that everything was going well.

Ok, so on day one of Week 36 around 2 am, I started feeling those twinges of real pregnancy.  Ladies, you know what I mean, they feel different than the fake ones you’ve been sweating over for the past few weeks!  I woke Todd up and he was immediately wide awake as if he had just downed a whole pot of coffee.  He said, Is it time?  How do you feel?  Should we call the doctor?  Where’s your bag?  Do you want me to call everyone? Ummmm, I didn’t know!  So, we started with calling the doctor.  They told us that we could wait around the house and work through the contractions there.  But, I really wanted to be at the hospital where they could watch over us and tell me exactly what was going on.  We got to the hospital and they showed us into a room, I got settled in to wait and wait and wait a bit more. Nothing much happened for a while, labor progressed a bit slowly, but any progression is good!  When daylight finally arrived, Todd started making phone calls to the family.  Chace was already there with my parents, he was supposedly going to stay there until the babies arrived in a few weeks, but since they decided (or Lael did) to come early he was only there for about a week.  They started making plans to come back along with my sister and her girls.

As labor progressed the midwife wanted me to walk around and work through the pain of the contractions, I was really just counting down the minutes until I could get the epidural!  I’m not a big fan of pain, and childbirth pain is some serious pain!!  Finally, I was far enough along and the anesthesiologist was called in.  Hurray!  But, getting it even hurt, I guess I’m just a wuss!  Anyway, soon after the epidural the contractions started coming faster and stronger.  The doctor and midwife agreed that it was time and we were moved into an OR in case of complications.  Todd was given scrubs and I was rolled into a room FULL of people!  There were several nurses, the doctor, midwife, 2 pediatricians and anesthesiologist.  It was really cold in there too, I remember that distinctly!  It was finally show time, Lael was in position and we were ready to meet her.  I started pushing with each contraction and everyone kept saying push harder, keep going, you can do it!  Ummm, not sure about that – it just wasn’t happening.  Time for an episiotomy.  After that, Lael just popped out, 12:09 pm!  She was swept away to be checked out by the pediatricians and everything was great.  Todd then brought her over to me and placed her on my chest.  I was surprised by all the hair, and how dark she was, she definitely has her daddy’s skin!  I didn’t have time to marvel over how perfect she was because it was Caeden’s turn.  Since Caeden’s delivery was going to be a bit trickier the doctor had already planned to deliver him.  Through all the previous ultrasounds, we knew that Caeden was breech.  The doctor tried to turn him after Lael was out and he had a little room, but it wasn’t working.  A lot of doctors would have insisted on a C-section, but not him.  He was willing to deliver Caeden anyway, whew!  I didn’t want a C-section at all!!  A few contractions later and Caeden met the world hiney first at 12:20 pm!  He was having a tiny bit of trouble getting a good breath, his little lungs weren’t quite fully developed but it all turned out fine.  The size of both of them was shocking for most everyone in the room.  Lael was 6 lb 5 oz, Caeden was 5 lb 14 oz.  Quite large for twins!!  And this was at 36 weeks!  I can’t imagine how big I would have gotten and them too if they had waited a couple more weeks!

Now, ten years later – after entering the world big for their gestational age and being twins, they are small for their age!  Both of them are probably one of the shortest kids in their classes.  Also, Lael was biggest then, but not anymore.  Caeden has her by about 5 lbs and a couple of inches.

A Popular Poppy

A Popular Poppy

I have the best Dad in the world, no really – it’s true!  He is the best of the best.  Luckily this means that my kids and nieces get the best Poppy in the world!  He is a big fan of popcorn.  So, for Father’s […]

The Fam at LaLa’s

We spent a weekend at LaLa’s with some of our favorite people, the Smith’s! Mayson was turning 4 so of course LaLa had made one of her famous cookie cakes, YUM! It’s super simple, recipe is on the back of the Nestle chocolate chips bag, […]

Goofy Golf

Goofy Golf is a mandatory family activity while on vacation!  I don’t care how old you are, how sunburned you are, how tired you are, how far you have to drive to find the perfect course, or how much money it costs!!  Every tourist city has a minimum of half a dozen goofy golf courses, the trick is finding the perfect one.  I prefer the courses with the most gaudy, biggest, silliest contraptions on each hole.  These provide the best photo ops!  We chose Pirate’s Cove this time.  The trash talking started in the car on the way there.  Chace and Dylan just assumed that they would be 1st or 2nd place.  Ha!  They underestimated Mom’s skills!!!  I can’t play real golf to save my life, but I can smack a brightly colored hot pink ball around a goofy golf course with the best of them!  Chace and I were within a point or two of each other throughout the whole game.  Todd made some pretty awful shots on the first few holes so we wrote him off pretty quickly.  That was a mistake.  He quietly made some good shots and snuck up from behind and beat us both!!!!


The Smith’s at the Lake

Traci and Sam brought Mayson and Trey over to the lake on Saturday.  It was not the greatest day to be out on the lake because it rained off and on all day long.  That didn’t stop the kids from swimming, tubing and having loads […]

A New Game & Caeden Skis

I can’t remember whose idea this new game was…..but it caught on like wildfire.  I think they only started with 3 people, then added another and then another.  The object of the game was for the first person to toss the ball up in the […]