Kisses

Dear Life,

I had such a sweet mama moment tonight when I was tucking E into bed. She didn't take an afternoon nap, she spent the morning with a little one year old buddy, and she had a date with my parents at a Cancer Survivor's picnic tonight... so she was SUPER tired. So I pull her up onto my lap to read stories and rock a little before we say goodnight and every book I pull out she pushes away. She love love loves to read books so I was puzzled, but finally caught on and just turned out the lights and started saying goodnight. She turned her little body around and out her head on my shoulder (as if to say, "thanks mom, I just wanna go to bed") like we do each night, but then suddenly she put her head up again, looked me straight in the eyes, and came right at my lips for a big mouth open baby loving kiss. She zeroed in on my lips about ten more times... if I turned my head to get out of it she turned hers too. Mama melting adorable baby loving. She put her head back on my shoulder and let me rock her a moment more while she cooed and sang the softest, sweetest, baby noises. Then, she gave me her wiggle signal that she'd like to just be in her bed so I laid her down and she sang herself to sleep. Sigh. Every day I feel more in love with that bambino.

That's all.

Sincerely Yours,
Molly

Da-Da

Me: Hey Emberly, can you say mama??

Emberly: Dada

Me: No, mama. Can you say ma.ma?

Emberly: da.da.

Me: How about mommy? Can you say mommy??

Emberly: Daddy??

Me: Seriously???

Canning and Camping and Crazy Fun

Dear Life,

I am eternally behind in the blog-o-sphere. I'll be honest, I just can't find the motivation to sit down and type after E goes to bed. And if you've ever spent time with a just-turned-one-year-old, you know that sitting down to type is most definitely not an option while she's awake. So here I am, at nap time, typing away as fast as I can before E decides nap time is over. She fell asleep about 3 minutes ago (after blabbing for close to an HOUR)... so I figure I have a good twenty minutes or so. (I wish I was kidding.) But the good news is... that at least I had the last hour to accomplish things! And accoplish things (plural) I did not. But I did accomplish ONE thing, and that is making applesauce!

Thanks to a tip from some friends of ours, we found an old apple orchard that had been mostly ruined by the flood a few years ago. Many of the trees are still good though, so people can just pick to their heart's content. Love.Love.Love.

My sweet child loved this as well...

So I had all these delicious apples that needed to turn into applesauce and apple butter and apple pie filling and appley apple goodness...

So I bought this beauty.

Meet Victorio, the food strainer. She's magical. Seriously magical. You cut the apples in half (or quarters if they are really big) and throw them in a pot of water... boil them for 15 minutes or so until they're hot and squishy, and then pop them in this beauty, turn the little handle, and out comes applesauce out of one end, and all the skins, seeds, leaves, and what-have-you out the other end!

Sure wish I would have found Victorio before I made 64 cups of tomato sauce in the blender last week...

Anywho! Live and learn I guess. There is always next year. :)

So anyway... none of those things were the point of this blog post. Serious A.D.D. Those kinder-kids are wearing off on me. (Speaking of ADD... every time one of my kinders wrote the letter "b" when I asked him to this morning he exclaimed, "nailed it!" in a "I'm 5 going on 17" voice. Where do they hear these things anyway?? Either way... kinda made my day.)

Ok back to the point. Jordan and Emberly and I went CAMPING this weekend. If you know me at.all. you know that I am not a tent camping kind of a person. Like... not even a little. So add in the fact that it was the first weekend of Fall, temps reached 34 degrees at night, and I'm a pansy... and you have a recipe for disaster. Except (I can't believe I am even saying this) we had SO.MUCH.FUN.

We woke up Saturday morning and packed up all of our gear. We drove the *cough cough* hunting suburban (that I swore I'd never ever step foot in) and drove to Maplewood State Park. This was year 5 for Jordan and I... year 2 for Emberly. It is one of my all-time favorite annual traditions. The colors were beautiful and we had a picnic, hiked some trails, and just enjoyed God's beautiful creation.

Then... we drove to the lake where Jordan had found this little camping area while four-wheeling, with a fire pit by a secret little lake. It was windy and COLD. But... E didn't seem to mind. She had fun "helping" daddy set up the tent and playing with sticks and dirt and leaves and all kinds of goodies that her over-protective, germ-hating, mother doesn't let her do at home. It was one-year-old exploring heaven.

About 7:00 we drove E back to my parent's cabin where she was intending to spend the night. Too cold for babies to sleep in the tent! So we piled back into the red-neck suburban... (Did I say red-neck?? I meant it.) and took E to grandma Go-Go and grandpa Juice's. I tucked her into bed and we headed back into the freezing cold camping land.

We had the most glorious campfire, made hot ham and cheese "tonka-pies" over the fire, mused at the beautifully clear sky filled with stars, and crawled under our 12 (not exaggerating) blankets to sleep. And believe it or not... we actually slept. Until 8:45 the next morning. Glorious.

We woke up the next day, made some hot chocolate, pancakes, and eggs on our camping stove, packed up our things, and went to get E. All around fun experience. (Jordan, are you reading this?? I'm even admitting it out-loud to the world!)

Sincerely Yours,

Molly

Happy Birthday, to you!

Happy Birthday, Dear Emberly,

Happy Birthday to you...

Notice the progression of the next few pictures to see how Emberly liked her cake...

Maybe the cake wasn't a hit... but Grandma Tracie for the win with the lemonade!

Happy Birthday, Sweet One. I can't even imagine what our life would be like without our speed walking, teddy bear cuddling, tomato loving, all out giggling girl.

Photo credits: The amazing... Kendra Love Photography

Preview... :)

Preview of the happiness...

Months

So apparently I was not on the ball enough to get a one-month picture... but it's so fun to see how sweet Angel Baby has grown over the months! Yikes. Fun and terrifying. Slow down sweet baby girl!

E celebrated her First Birthday on Friday... more pictures in the next post!