A day with Rapunzel

As much as I was NOT a girlie-girl growing up, my girl K is the complete opposite. The frillier, puffier, bigger the dress, the more she insists on wearing it. Last Saturday afternoon, she decided she would be Rapunzel to go out and play in the yard. As I watched her from the sunroom windows, I couldn't help but want to go take some pictures of her. She is so beautiful and so innocent. I am trying to treasure these memories and store them up in my heart. What a blessing this little ball of fire is in our lives!

As is true for any true Southern Belle, an outfit isn't complete without our flip flops!

Fishing...

While away on our Anniversary trip, we wanted to bring the kids back a surprise. We finally settled on fishing poles. Barbie for Karsyn and Spiderman for Mack.

To say they were thrilled would be a massive understatement. In fact, I think these two items have been played with more over the past two weeks than any other toy they've gotten before. These rods came with a practice fish made out of rubber that allows the kids to cast their line over and over and reel in their 'big fish'. Here are some pictures of my little fishermen enjoying their new rods!

One on One Dates

Each month, we have started trying to take a one on one date with each kid. This doesn't always happen, but is something that the kids are starting to love and really look forward to (as are we!).

At the beginning of February, we took our first Mommy and Mack date and Marcus took K on a date (they have been on several dates before). It ended up snowing that afternoon, so we got a bit of a late start.

K dressed up in whatever she wanted to wear (only her poofiest, fanciest dress would do!) and Mack decided what he wanted me to wear. Out of all the things in my closet, he picked a scarf, lol.

 The only rules that we have are: Each pair only gets to spend $20 and we have to be home in time from our dates to have a little family time before bed.

Mack wanted to go somewhere for supper that he could eat fruit, so we went to the chinese buffet close to our house. After that we went to the Dollar Store where he got to pick out anything he wanted and then we went to Sweet Frog for ice cream.

Karsyn wanted to go to a 'fancy restaurant' so they chose Naganos (a fast food type Japanese place). She loves their rice and sauce (which is really a bowl of shrimp sauce with a little rice if it's up to K) and feels like she is eating a super nice place when we go there. After that they went to Wal-Mart to look at toys and then went to Udderly Delicious Ice Cream.

For our next round of dates, K was with me, and M was with Marcus.
Here are our pictures before we went out:
K picked one of her dresses plus her jewelry, favorite hair bow, and sparkly shoes. Mack only insisted on both he and his Daddy wearing their work boots.

Mack wanted them to show their muscles here.

K insisted on wanting pancakes for supper, so she and I headed out to IHOP.

She ordered a chocolate pancake with chocolate chips, whipped cream and cherries along with a Sprite. Sugar overload.
We kept ourselves occupied while waiting for our food by taking whatever pictures K wanted to.

We had a blast!!! She was such a little lady and loved ordering from the menu for herself and then thanking the waitress for her help and service. After IHOP we went looking for K a new raincoat. After visiting three stores, we arrived at Target. After trying on many, many of them, she finally settled on a pink one with a green lining. We were so sugared out that we just went home after that.

Marcus and Mack went to the same Chinese buffet again (per Mack's request) and then headed to Walmart to look at the tools (again, Mack's request). They finished up by stopping at the park and playing for a bit until they were too cold.

I hope that these date nights are a tradition that we continue for years to come. Such sweet, special memories. The kids get so excited before the date that they spend the week before planning what exactly they want us to do with them. They love the undivided attention they get and also getting to enjoy doing some fun things that we don't normally do.

I wanted to be like you, Mommy!

I have been silent for a while on this blog for a few reasons. I'm not going to get into them now, other than to say it's good to be back!

Yesterday was a busy day at our house. Marcus had to work so I had both the kids as well as a to-do list that was a page long. We are in the process of getting our house ready to sell and so there are a lot of projects that need to be done. I frantically went through the day trying to knock out as many items as I could. When it was nap-time, I knew that I was going to have to convince K to stay in her room. Lately I've been letting her have quiet time and usually end up letting her come out to help me with something or to play. With so much to do yesterday, it was necessary for her to stay put in her room.

I explained to her that she'd need to stay in her room and then got out some of her favorite things to play with: Her Barbies, her baby doll, her doll house toys, some crayons, coloring books, preschool worksheets and some kid scissors. I left her in the room alone for approximately an hour and a half.

When I returned, this is what I found:

I wondered what in the world had happened and which of her Barbie dolls had that much hair. I said "K- what happened?!" and then I noticed this:

At this moment it began to dawn on me what had happened. I looked at K and realized that most of her hair that used to be down to the middle of her back was now cut short up above her shoulders. It was even for the most part and luckily, she hadn't chopped off any really short.

I stood there for a minute or two with my hand over my mouth not able to say anything. When I asked her what she had done she said "I wanted to be like you, Mommy!" I asked her what she meant and she said that her hair wanted to be short like mine. I think I groaned at this point and she said, "But don't worry, Mommy, I didn't say 'ouch', it didn't even hurt!". I didn't know what to say. After a minute of us just staring at each other, we both started laughing. The damage was done, nothing we could do about it.

This is what it looked like after she cut it:

Most of it was short with a few long pieces remaining. I took her outside to tell her Daddy what she had done and that's when the tears started. She was pitiful. She was worried that people wouldn't know who she was without her long hair and that people wouldn't love her as much.

I took her to get her hair evened up at a local hair salon, and she seemed happier after that. Here's the final outcome:

She looks so much older now! She is still a beautiful little girl and we will have less tangles to deal with now. However, I will never give her scissors to use when she's by herself again!

God's been teaching me several lessons this week through K. I'll share about them later.

Love y'all!

An update...

I know I’ve been a slack blogger lately. In case any of you have noticed, posts have been few and far between and somewhat quite a bit less than stellar. Today I’m going to catch you up on what we’ve been up to lately, and I promise hope, better posts will come soon.

Last week my Dad came over and we painted over half of the interior of my home in less than one day. Pictures and a post coming about this later. It looks SO good!

We are in the process of getting ready to put our house back on the market, so we are moving junk items out of here quicker than you can blink. Things are coming together, but this also means that our house currently looks a M-E-S-S. Seriously.We're talking a MESS! The kids love it, mainly because it's such a wreck already that you can't tell when they have made it worse which means I don't make them clean it up on their own.

Karsyn is REALLY into dressing up lately. You may remember from a post last week that she has stopped taking naps. Well, her new favorite pastime during her ‘quiet time’ is to pick out outfits from her closet and dress herself.

Her favorite one this week has been this lovely ensemble:

Please notice that not only is she mixing pink with bright red, but she also is using stripes, solids, an animal print, and a high-heeled dress shoe. And not any old pair of socks would do…to set off this darling outfit, she needed to break out her Halloween socks. Double win. 

Mack is really into his sword. Still. And his butter knife, which he calls "SHARP! SHARP!". As soon as he wakes up in the morning he asks for his sword and then when we get to the breakfast table, he demands his "SHARP! SHARP!". I have learned to always keep an eye out for where he is because his favorite thing to do to me lately is to say "Ayyy yah, Mommy! Hit me, Hit me! I'm a pirate!!!" and then he charges at me full speed ahead. This kid is ALL BOY. 

The sword in this picture is a new one I got for the kids in hopes of replacing the hard, pointy, plastic ones I got them for Christmas. This one is soft and doesn't cause injury, but apparently, also isn't Osborne proof. They had it broken in two within a few hours. Target dollar bin fail. 

I decided that I would start spending more time PLAYING with the kids instead of cleaning, working, emailing, planning while they are awake. Today that involved letting the kids have a popcorn party, which turned into a popcorn fight. Before I knew it they were throwing it at each other, jumping up and down throwing it in the air, and stomping on it. I ignored every voice in my head telling me that they needed to stop and the carpet might get dirty, and instead, I joined in. It was a B.L.A.S.T. 

It took us forever to get all of it cleaned up, so we probably won't play that game again for a while :). 

This afternoon during quiet time, I peeked in at K who was being super quiet and found her on the floor like this:

I started snapping pictures, which of course caught her attention.

She had taken her shopping cart, placed it in top of her stool, climbed up and reached into the very back of her closet and had found the dress I wore as a flower girl when I was little. 

The little dress she chose is probably about 25 years old. She LOVED it. She not only put on the dress, but also added a yellow necklace, two yellow hairbows, her Easter hat (which was also mine when I was little), and her brown shoes (on the wrong feet!). 

Is she not the sweetest little southern belle you've ever seen?!

I let her keep the dress on and then she promptly dropped applesauce down the front, so we stripped it off after that. 

Speaking of stripping...

Mack makes such a mess of himself when he goes out to play that before I can let him come inside he has to remove all dirty clothes. that basically leaves him with his socks. He doesn't seem to mind it too much.

The last picture for today...

Marcus and I were cleaning up after supper and K came in with this on her nose. It's the ring that is used to hold together our measuring cups. I have no idea where she found it, or what gave her this idea. This kid is hilarious!

Hope each of you are doing well! Love y'all!