Sweet Sleep

Last night I worked on the computer for 5+ hours trying to get caught up on work so I don't have to worry about unfinished business here at home while we're in Charlotte for the week.

While I was working, Tony and Emma were supposed to be on the couch watching Percy Jackson and the Olympians.

This is what I found when I was done working.

So sweet.

Daddy's Home!!

Tony's home! Woo Hoo! :)

So nice to be a family again as opposed to single mom to two rowdy little people, business owner, house keeper, freelancer, car pooler, and daughter, grand daughter, neice, and cousin. Many, many roles that all become remarkably easier and more managable once the other adult returns home. ;)

I'm not going to make this a long one for obvious reason, but here are a few of my favorite pictures from our reunion day today.

Enjoy! ;)

What I love about Kindergarten

The back of the above pictures reads: "For: you the one I am tocabhou (talking about) is mom I love hr (her) and my dad Emma."

This picture reads: "I love my mom and I love love love hr (her). I love my dad and I love love love my dad. I love Noah."

She is so stinkin precious. I guess Noah's naughtiness is what earned him only one love since Tony and I each got four and he only got the one. Poor naughty Noah.

I'm not sure if it's her age or just HER, but Emma is constantly and I do mean CONSTANTLY drawing pictures like this. Every single school assignment she has where she has to draw something and write sentences about what she drew has to do with me, Tony, and Noah. It is the sweetest thing. I just love seeing what she brings home each day. I have so many drawings that are all about us... her family.

And as if the ones she does at school aren't enough, she also draws them for us at home. At the end of each week, I have a huge new stack of beautiful drawings that she's made for me and written how much she loves me on all of them. I am going to miss these days so much as she grows older and grows to love things other than just us... her family.

My Gentle Soul

Emma is a rare soul. And I'm not just saying that because she's mine. She cares about every single living thing on the planet. She gets tears in her eyes when my dad mows over the weeds in our yard... you know... the ones that look like flowers? She ran into my room one night recently with one of her books on wildlife (she loves animals) and I could tell she was on the verge of a breakdown and I asked her what was wrong... that's when she showed me what she was reading about in this book. It was a section on lions. And there were pictures of lions hunting. And a lion taking down a zebra. As soon as I saw it, she burst into tears saying that poor sweet zebra, why was that lion doing that? She just could not understand why that lion would kill that poor zebra just to eat. Couldn't it eat something that was already dead?

And she's really like that about everything. Thank goodness she's okay with me killing flies and wasps, because I do that often around here. And she's not a fan of snakes and spiders. But pretty much everything else... if it's alive, she loves it. And that includes flowers. She brought me a beautiful buttercup from my grandma's yard last week and I put it in a cup of water and it was beautiful for several days, but finally yesterday, it was slimy and dying and she got very sad and all she could say was how beautiful it was and she couldn't believe we had to now throw it away. She has a heart of gold and she's so very gentle.

My grandma has a bunch of cats. We live on a farm and the cats are a plenty. They just multiply around here. There is one cat, however, that is so precious. We love him. He follows us home every time we go to my grandma's house and he just loves both my kids and they love him. I wish he would stay at our house, because I have a feeling he would end up being a house cat and that's what he wants most... to be a house cat. He's the one who jets in the door every time you open it, but you can't get mad because he's just so sweet. My cousins call him Tanji, but we call him Garfield. My kids love Garfield and that's what he looks like, so that's what we call him! :) Friday, I had a photo shoot and we went over to my grandma's because she has that gorgeous yellow bush you see down there and it's already blooming, and I wanted to use it! :)

While we were waiting Emma and Garfield were loving on each other and I just couldn't resist.

You can see that Emma is so gentle. Garfield was loving all the attention Emma was paying to him. And toward the end, he actually started licking Emma's hand. It was the most precious thing. And I think it truly personifies how very gentle Emma is. Inside and out.

I am so lucky that God chose me to be her mother. I only hope that I always nurture that beautiful spirit of hers.

***

I wrote the post for Noah's second birthday today also, if you'd like to read it, click here! :)

Interview with a 6 Year Old

Yesterday I engaged Emma in an interview. I don't want to forget these lovely things about my children as they grown older, so I decided to journal their answers to the things that we talk about all the time.

Emma goes first, because... well, she came first. I'll probably wait until Noah's birthday in May to try to interview him because yesterday when I was asking him questions, every answer was MOMMY. While that's incredibly flattering... I'm going to wait until he's three and then if every answer is still Mommy... well, that will be A OKAY! ;)

This interview consisted mostly of questions about her favorites. And this, I'm sure, is much more interesting for me than it is for you guys, so just indulge me. ;)

All of Emma's answers are in... what else... Pink!

What is your favorite thing about Kindergarten?

Doing choice centers and my favorite one is ART!

Oh yeah?!? What's your favorite thing about art?

Drawing and coloring and my favorite thing to draw is CATS!

What's your favorite color?

Mooommmm!! It's Pink!

What's your favorite day of the week?

Sunday, because I don't get tired on that day. (She's a sleeper like her Mama and she likes that she gets to sleep as much as she wants on the weekends.)

**Emma just asked me to please add that her favorite day is also... Tuesday because it's my ballet day!!!!

What's your favorite thing to do after school?

Going to McDonalds and getting some nuggets and fries with Ranch and a sprite or a milkshake!

Who's your best friend?

Garrett... and Kora... and at school it's Lana and Alex!

What's your favorite thing to do with your family?

Play on the trampoline!!

Your favorite movie?

Wall-E!

Favorite Cartoon?

Pink Panther cuz he's PINK and I like him.

What's your favorite store to shop at?

Target!

What do you want to be when you grow up and are big like Mommy and Daddy?

Ummmm..... a doctor!!!!

Really?? What kind??

Oh Mommy... I don't know, I just wanna be a doctor!!

Okay.... which books are your favorites?

Go Dog Go and Green Eggs and Ham

What's your favorite game to play?

Super Mario Brothers

What's your favorite thing to do with your Daddy when he's home?

Hug him and play with him.

What's your favorite place in the whole world??

The beach cuz we can play in the sand and swim in the pool and it's warm outside!

I know you love the beach, Mommy does too. What's your favorite animal?

Horseys!

What's your favorite song?

Boom Boom Pow! (she's a big Fergie and Black Eyed Peas fan)

*Then I asked Emma what her favorite things were about the people she sees all the time.

Noah: He loves me

Mimi: She lets me sleep over at her house.

Granny: She hugs me

Daddy: He plays with me

Papa: He likes me

Mommy: You take care of me and you love me

Cody: He lets me play ball with him and watch Garfield

Amber: She comes over to our house and she loves me.

Pepper (the dog): She gets so excited about everything

Mama Peggy: She cooks for us and I love that beef and rice stuff she makes!

*Last question cracked me up!

Okay, Emma, this is the last one... What is your favorite thing about your life?

My heart because I can feel it *beeping*.

A Day of Ballet

Emma is a dancing queen, for those of you who don't know her well. Emma is one of those girls that will probably take dance classes throughout her childhood and adolescent years. She loves it and savors every minute.

As much as it sometimes inconveniences my Tuesday schedule and Noah's nap schedule, I truly do enjoy watching her. She is in her element and she loves it.

Yesterday was parent observation day for us parents to come and sit in on the class and watch as they practice their recital routines. Emma was so excited about mommy sitting there and watching her for the entire hour and a half. She was just giddy with excitement the whole way there.

When we first arrived, I had to get a shot of her getting out of the car, because she was just too cute in her ballet outfit, North Face jacket, and cowgirl boots. I mean... REALLY. Could she BE any cuter? She's mine, I'm allowed to think she's the cutest thing to ever grace the floor of a ballet studio. ;)

Contrary to the way these pictures appear, Emma is NOT in private lessons, there are other girls in her class. I was just hesitant to take a lot of pictures of the other girls, because I knew they were coming straight here... to the blog.

Emma takes Jazz, Tap, and Ballet, so that's why the shoes change in the pictures. ;)

The picture on the right is such an Emma look, so that's why it HAD to come to the blog.

Here's one with some of the other girls pictured. There are other girls on the other side of Emma as well, it's just a really big room so they have lots of room to spread out.

Of course, I took tons more pictures, these were just some of my favorites. I'm sure I'll do a more lengthy post on my photography blog later in the week. :)

This week on my phone...

head on over to the hussy's page and link up! ;)

noah is always the star of the show when it comes to my phone pictures.

why?

because he's a stinker and he's always into mischief and

THOSE MAKE THE BEST PICTURES.

so please don't be fooled and think i play favorites.

i totally do NOT

it's just that emma always looks like this...

and noah always looks like this...

and this...

and this...

(do you see his cute pottery barn chair in the kitchen? you know what he mainly uses that chair for? climbing onto things to... yup... get into mischief... he also uses emma's for this purpose... see above )

this is just one of the reasons you are CRAZY if you don't enter my GIVEAWAY

i made those wee mary jane slippers. aren't they precious?

here's noah bein bad again.

*sigh*

this is him throwing a fit while thrashing around on top of his poor, sweet, innocent sister on the couch. you can see her legs and feet if you look hard enough.

this is when he's best.

when him's sweepin. ;)

i can't wait to see what's on your phone!! :)

Now don't forget to look below and enter my GIVEAWAY!!! :)

Also, I have a super fun post coming up tomorrow, you must come back to see!! :)

just thursday

yesterday marked one week since I had last left my house... drove my car... saw anything beyond the walls of our home. i thought it was a good time to venture out. unfortunately, i was gone less than an hour when my mom started trying to get in touch with me... noah had spiked a fever and when I got back home and took his temp it was 104. so now my poor boy is very very sick with what emma and i have been battling for the past week.

pray you don't get the flu this year, it is brutal.

in fun news though, this is what i'm currently working on for emma, they're going to be soooo cute!!! can you guess what they are?? ;)

day 3

when i woke up this morning, i knew exactly what emma was feeling when she woke up thursday morning.

wow. it was so bad. every inch of my body was aching and hurting and my lungs felt so heavy and when i would cough, i sounded like an 80 year old who's smoked many packs of cigarettes every day of their life. and for the record i have never even smoked one cigarette. then came the ugly. throwing up for about the first half hour solid i was awake.

all the while, emma and noah are telling me 15 things they want to eat, drink, watch on tv, what they want to wear, etc, then noah set the alarm off and the alarm company called... yes... all while i was throwing up into the kitchen trash can.

gross mental picture. i'm sorry. i just didn't want to deprive you of the gory details.

and also to point out how AWESOME it is being a "single" mom with zero help when i'm dying with sickness.

AWESOME.

so, i ate some bread, drank some ginger ale and as soon as i was sure my stomach had calmed to the point that i could safely medicate myself, i downed 800 mg of ibuprophen and a dose of mucinex. then a few hours later... dayquil... and just a few minutes ago, another big dose of ibuprophen.

so, now i feel vaguely human. a little foggy and my brain is not quite as sharp as it is on my best days, but i am at least capable of posting this blog.

the main reason i wanted to post this blog is because i finished these today...

mine and tony's his and hers hats. ha! :) and he HAS to wear his. ;) like i said... part of the marriage contract. lucky for him, it's super awesome.

here's me modeling mine.

trust me when i tell you that you do not. want. to. see. my. face. at this moment.

i look very droopy with frizzy un-blow-dried hair and my face is super splotchy with no make-up. yuck.

emma also wanted a pink version of the kerchief i made last weekend, so here's that as well.

hopefully tomorrow will be a better, less sick day. however, noah still hasn't had this virus, i'm assuming it's the flu, so i'm sure it'll be coming after him at any moment. i just hope i'm well by the time he starts with it so i can actually function to take care of him. : /

lost in the land of knits and sicks

well, today the kids are a little better.

me, not so much. ugh. my lungs hurt.

earlier when i went to the back of the house for something, I heard the front door open and shut. crap. so back to the front of the house I go to investigate. the two little people who are SUPPOSED to be on the couch vegitating are instead on the front porch, watching the rain.

sigh.

so, i took some pics because really i thought it was cute. ;)

the wal-mart trip the other night where emma started to show signs of being really sick?

we found these caaa-uttttteee cowgirl boots for her to wear to her riding lessons.

$7

yep. love them. and so does she. she wore them all day long laying on the couch yesterday and is doing the same thing again today.

this is where i am so far with tony's project.

i'm looovvviinnnnn' it!!!! it's a spiraling ribbed pattern and looks super cool on. how do i know? because MINE is already done. ;)

greetings from the knit cafe.

my favorite knitting book so far. it's ahh-mazzing! there are three projects in particular that i am dying to make from this book.

also, notice the owlie fabric thing in my bucket. it's my super cool needle organizer i found on etsy. love me some etsy.

these are the three projects i'm salivating over in that book.

the wrap on the left? i ordered the yarn for that one last night. 100% pure alpaca. it's going to be dreamy...

the runner in the center... i just love it and i want it for the wine cabinet tony and i got over christmas. at least... i think that's where i want it.

and the sweater on the right is just so ME! THAT is the kind of thing i love to wear daily. the picture of comfort, yet still very stylish. at least... in my opinion.

anywho... these are the goings on here today in sickie land.... hope you guys are well and happy with beautiful white snow to play in instead of gross wet soppy rain.

blah!

Sickies

Emma is one sick puppy. She's been coughing and kinda droopy for a few days now and yesterday when I picked her up from school, the nice lady who helped her into the car told me that her class as a whole is very sick right now so I should watch Emma. She said they sent home 3 kids yesterday alone. I think they noticed Emma's droopiness and coughiness and warned me it was probably coming.

Well, Emma seemed fine other than the two afore mentioned symptoms, so I took her to her horseback riding lesson yesterday and then she went with me when I took my baby cousin Cody around job hunting last night, but when we got to Wal-Mart (last stop on the job search) she started complaining about her leg and foot hurting. Upon examination I found NO reason her leg should be hurting and I asked her if she'd hit it or anything and she said No and immediately burst into tears because it was hurting so badly. She continued to cry the entire time we were there!

I knew something was wrong.

When we got home, I immediately took her temperature. It was 102.1. I don't think Emma has ever had a fever this high. I could be wrong, but my kids are like me... they normally don't run super high fevers. (knock on wood) We have naturally low normal temps. It's weird, but my normal temp is like 97.4, not 98.6. And they are both the same way. So, when Emma's was 102.1, I freaked a little!

I immediately got her settled on the couch with her sleeping bag, pillow and blanket. I don't know why, but when my kids are sick, I keep them on the couch. I guess it's so they're always near me being that the living room is so central and open in our house. And drugged her up to try to bring that temp down.

Well, as soon as the Motrin kicked in, she was much better. Still droopy and coughy, but not quite so achy and deathly looking.

She fell asleep pretty quickly and my worrying subsided.

Then I was stupid.

I didn't wake her up in the middle of the night to re-medicate her.

Ugh. So, about 6:30 this morning, I woke up to her beside my bed saying, "Mommy, I feel really really bad right now" and I swear, I could feel the heat radiating off of her. Omg! I was immediately wanting to slap myself for NOT waking her up for meds. So, for about 20 minutes, she was throwing up and shaking like a leaf until the tylenol finally kicked in and brought her fever down. I won't make that mistake again.

So, for today and probably the next couple of days, this is Emma's perch...

And Noah has been off and on sick for several, several days. Not with what Emma has, but he's cutting molars. Which means he is the whiniest, cry-iest, nasty diaper-est little two year old you have EVER SEEN IN YOUR LIFE!!!!

Which is why I've tried to auction him off several times in the past few weeks...

So, I"m sure this little turd will be getting what Emma has as well, because isn't that what ALWAYS happens????

For now, though, he knows his sister is a sickie and he's being pretty sweet about it. He's heard me baby talking her while sitting at her side rubbing her head and back saying, "My poor sick baby girl". So, I've caught him more than once walking by her saying, "Po babeeee" (poor baby). How sweet is that??

And Noah has decided to perch on the chair beside her.

The next few days, this is what the days hold for them...

at least Nick Jr is somewhat educational, right?

And this is what the next few days hold for ME.

p.s. i do have a newly finished knitted project and i LOVE it!!!!!! I'm waiting though to share it because I'm making TONY a matching one.... are you curious???? The one I've already finished is for ME and the one I'm going to start shortly is a matching one for TONY. Ha! And he has to wear it, it's part of the marriage contract. I've told him everything I knit for him HAS to be worn and worn FREQUENTLY or else it's grounds for divorce (KIDDING... kind of...) because of the shear amount of time and sore fingers it involves.

;)

oh, and another p.s..... not only are my kids sick and whiny and poopy and pukey.... the dang DOG has some stomach thing going on and all of yesterday I spent cleaning up her drippy droppings (this was the most pleasant combination of words I could come up with to accurately portray the horrible word I refuse to type on my blog ;) from every floor and unfortunate pillow that was ON the floor. Gross to the one hundredth power.

Have a good day, friends.

My Girl

Oh how I love you, sweet sweet girl.

Emma's First Riding Lesson

Emma has admired and loved the horses on our farm her entire life.

She and Noah both talk about them every time we pass in the car and want so much to interact with and ride them.

I, however, have very little experience with horses, so I knew I wasn't going to be the one to try to teach them things that I don't know.

So, around Christmas, Emma was talking about the horses even more than normal, so I googled and found these stables that just happen to be 5 minutes from our house!

So, I called and reserved a time (today) to take Emma to her first horseback riding lesson. I wasn't sure how it was going to go, to be honest. First of all, Emma is not one that likes to get dirty. Second, she gets scared kind of easily and she's never been up close and personal with a creature as large as a horse.

Let's just say I was AMAZED. She did awesome! And she loved every minute of it!!

It was really funny at first, though, because when we walked into the barn she immediately commented how dirty and stinky it was in there. hahaha

Her instructor, Charlene, was so great with her! And this is definitely something Emma is going to keep doing. She was so sad to leave, she wants to go back tomorrow and ride again. Ha!

If you'd like to see the pictures larger, go HERE