Hellooooo and Happy Monday! Hope your week is off to a great start. 🙂
I have a fairly short (and sweet) slice of life that I’d love to share with you today, if you’re interested. 🙂 As usual, I grabbed a handful of pictures from life lately to give you a small glimpse into a few things we’ve been up to as a family.
We celebrated Hadley’s 4th birthday a couple weeks ago, and I realized that not only are cards getting mega pricey ($5.99+?!), but they’re also getting quite fancy! We sat to open all of her cards together, and one of them could be made into a crown and another was a “paint with water” activity. Hadley loved them nearly as much as the gifts themselves, so I’d say that was money well spent by the senders. Thanks, family!
Some of my favorite pictures of our kids are the ones that aren’t from any special occasion, but just from everyday life that I spontaneously captured. This series of pictures cracks me up because they’re Sadie to a tee. Maybe only our families will appreciate these, but here they are anyway. 😉
Here’s her curious face.
…and sweet face…
…her happy face…
… and ultra silly face.
All we’re missing is that classic mean mug that she’s had nailed down from birth. 😉
Sadie had to get her set of 18 months shots recently (five weeks late – whoopsies!), so we decided to go ahead and do Hadley’s flu shot at the same time. I took this picture originally as a snapchat to send Jamie updating him with what we were up to, but Hadley’s sudden “stink face” about the surprise of getting a shot too was just too funny. 🙂 Also, Sadie’s little hemangioma on the upper left side of her chest is slowly but surely fading away, just like everything I’ve read online said it would. I’ve come to adore that sweet little birthmark on her because it’s so unique to who she is. Jamie and I both felt a little melancholy when we really started to notice it rapidly fading. Parenting emotions are weird, I tell ya.
I’ve been one of Aldi’s biggest fans for about 18 months now, and I snagged a couple flavors of these soups when I saw them recently. Holy moly – go get you some! They’re pretty low in calories, have no preservatives, heat up in minutes, and are absolutely fantastic! I sent this picture to my mom because she’s also a big soup fan, so when I found it on my phone, I had to share it with y’all too. 🙂
For Advent this year, we’ve been working through . Hadley is at an awesome age to do it because she understands the concept of opening a new door each morning. Yesterday morning I went in her room to snuggle with her around 7 when I heard her starting to rustle around, and the very first thing she said to me when she rolled over was “Can we go read a bible verse, Mommy?” If you know my child, you know that for 3+ years the first words out of her mouth are always “MILK!” Now we’re shifting gears to Jesus temporarily. 😉 Right now Sadie only likes it because she sees how into Hadley is. Otherwise there would be 0% chance she’d sit through reading it.
Seriously though, if you want to  get a late start on doing an Advent calendar this year (or order it for next year), I’d recommend this one! There’s an ornament you hang on the paper tree each day that correlates with a bible story. There’s also a prayer at the end of each lesson. I spent $24 on it on sale, but when I wrote this post, it was only $20.99.
As far as this past weekend goes, we had a nice one! Didn’t do anything too fancy, which is just the way I like our weekends sometimes. On Friday, we went downtown to watch the evening Christmas parade. The girls loved (!) it and were exceptionally well-behaved during the parade, not moving an inch from my lap, which was good since I was wrangling them in the dark by myself! Immediately before and after the parade was a different story though. Sadie wanted to go this way, Hadley wanted to go that way…. ah. But we survived and thoroughly enjoyed the parade itself.
On Saturday I wanted to surprise Hadley by going to Chick-fil-A for the “Breakfast with Santa Cow” thing, but we didn’t get our acts together in time. Sometimes you just need a slow Saturday morning at home. Once we finally made it out the door, we browsed the mall for a while hitting up Bath and Body Works for their $8.95 candles and then the closing sale at Gap (Hadley got to try on clothes in the dressing room for the first time, which she thought was weird and fun at the same time. “I can’t take my pants off in the store, Mommy!”) They played hard in the kids’ area after we shopped before making our way home for the rest of the day.
One of my very favorite parts of the Christmas season is one of the most simple, and that’s sitting near the light of the Christmas tree every night. I turn the TV off, rotate on the couch to face the tree, read magazines or work on the computer, and just relax in peace and quiet with it in my view. It’s my favorite way to end the day lately.
Coffee update: I’m obsessed. Literally cannot start my day without a cup of it. I never ever ever ever thought I’d learn to drink coffee, but man… I’m a happy girl now that I have. 🙂 Also… I drank from Jamie’s favorite Bama mug yesterday morning while crossing my fingers and toes that they’d would be going the play-offs. Aaaaand they are, so Roll Tide to that! Excited to watch them play Clemson (again!), especially because I think they have a heck of a coach. Dabo Swinney is definitely my third favorite coach in college football (behind Nick Saban and Jeff Monken).
Yesterday we went to church, played at our nearby state park playground like usual afterwards, and then enjoyed another chill day at home. I had this thought on Saturday about how I better soak up and appreciate the quiet now because I know in a few years our kids will by coming and going constantly. I look forward to all of that too, but having them under my wing and being in charge of how they spend their time is nice for now. 🙂
Oh yeah… Daddy will be home soon… for good. <3
After 29 months spent overseas throughout the last six years (who’s counting…?), it’s surreal that the deployment chapter of our life is about to be over. GOOD RIDDANCE. 😉
Well, that wasn’t so short after all. 🙂 Love you all! As always, thanks for reading! xo
Hi! I’m Erica, and I absolutely adore sharing my life on this website with you! I come here almost daily to blab about all of the things related to being a regular wife and mother in today’s ever-evolving society. I share about our new home, what’s on our kitchen table, what we’re hanging in our closets, where we’re traveling to next, my crazy 5 a.m. work outs, how I make time for girlfriends, our faith, and much more. We always have a lot of balls in the air and somewhat thrive on the chaos. I believe in the power of story-telling as a form of inspiration and entertainment, so I’m here to do both! I was born and raised in north Alabama and recently re-planted roots here again after my husband transitioned out of the Army (he is now in the Reserve and it’s going so well!) I’m a super proud mom to three little girls (ages 7, 4, and 1) who seem to be the stars of the show around here (for good reason – they’re pretty great!) I’m so glad you found me and are here reading! I hope we can get to know each other here on the blog as well as Facebook and/or Instagram. xoxo