BarelyControlledChaos

Dear Gracie Girl,

Apparently you have started to look like your Mama. I don’t know if that is a good thing or not, but we have been hearing this sentiment from a lot of people lately. I have never doubted for a minute that you are my girl. You are stubborn (like your Mama), a little bit type-A (like your Mama), and the last few nights I have caught you reading under the covers long after the lights were supposed to be out (er…not that your Mama ever did that! Hi, Mom & Dad.)

Last night I was in the backseat next to you and Daddy was DJ-ing during our ride home. He said, “this one is for Mommy,” and it was The Good Life by Kenny Chesney. While we were listening to it, I told you the story of how Daddy had given me that album to listen to, specifically that song, when I was pregnant with you and driving from Michigan to Aunt Meesh’s house, and how I listened to it at least 50 times that trip. When the song got to the line (that always makes me cry!)…

“Cos the one thing stronger than the whiskey: Was the sight of her holdin’ my baby girl.”

I felt your little hand slip into mine and you gave me a little squeeze. With tears streaming down my cheeks and you gently rubbing my hand the exact way I often do, I offered up a prayer of thanks for you. My girl.

Thank you for holding my hand, and my heart, sweet girl.
Love you,
Mommy

Grandma Moffat taught JB and I how to make pie crusts today! So my Snapshot Sunday is a little late this evening, but the pie crust was delicious!

Any fun Sunday activities that I missed while I was in the kitchen?

It is the littlest of things that sneak up, grab me and squeeze my heart just a little too hard.

Like the girls coming down from the shower all squeaky-clean the other night and climbing on the sofa with me. They still shower together mostly for ease and efficiency, but I am no longer needed for the “is all the shampoo out of my hair” check, they (most of the time) happily check each other for leftover soap. But the showering and getting ready on their own bit of independence has been coming for quite awhile now – that wasn’t the little thing that sent me reeling. This was…

Addie says to me, “Look Mama – we cut our all of our toenails and even our fingernails. All by ourselfs.” (Yes…she did say ‘ourselfs’ instead of ourselves. Cuteness that I know I should be correcting, but just can’t for a little while longer.)

Now, mind you, I didn’t relish the chore of cutting their nails, clearly not a job that was top ‘o the list for me. But the fact that they don’t need me to do it anymore? That was just one of those little things.

Those little things that remind me just how fleeting that time is when we have the girls all to “ourselfs.”

Remember way back in May when I announced the new arrival to our family…the cow?

Well she finally put out. The cheese arrived today! Yum.

Thwarted again! This week I missed out on the fabric run in downtown LA’s fabric district because I was sick! I had my list of fabric I need – no, really! I do need some fabric, although after cleaning out the stacks of fabric and moving it up to the sewing room, I’m pretty sure I’ll have a hard time convincing anyone that I need anything. But, I do need some fabric for the roman shades I’m dreaming up for the bathrooms and kitchen. I have all the supplies – and hopefully I can find what I need this week.

Meanwhile, I’ve been pinning stuff on Pinterest like crazy, but haven’t actually done any of it. I have so many ideas for Valentine’s day…I gotta get started. And my house project to-do list just continues to grow. I think it is so large right now that I’m thoroughly overwhelmed. Every room needs paint, some sort of furniture, new flooring or rugs, LIGHTING…it is just too much. So I’m trying to tackle the “little things” – things that not many people would even notice, but I do and it makes me feel like I’m making some sort of progress. Things like – cleaned out linen closets, re-populating photo frames with new pics, culling our book collections and spreading the stacks out throughout the house. All things that seem to take a few hours…but I notice it when I walk in the room.

Oh…I do have one thing to share – a most excellent recipe! After many, many years I finally realized that J. would really much rather have cheesecake than real cake for his birthday. (I think I just couldn’t believe that there are people who wouldn’t like a big piece of chocolate cake on their birthday!) So, I have on occasion made the quick, no-bake cheesecakes for him – or grabbed one from the Cheesecake Factory. See, I am not a fan of cheesecakes – eh. I can take it or leave it and would usually just leave it. But then I found this recipe for Company Cheesecake.

Oh my.  You guys…I might have to make it for my birthday now. It.Is.AMAZING.  We had chocolate, berries and homemade whipped cream to douse it with…but it doesn’t need a thing. It is delicious. It has pecan crust – instead of graham crackers. Mmmm…it is so good. It is a little time-consuming and I’ve found a bunch of ways to try to not get any “cracks” in the top that I’ll file away for next time.

Oh, there most certainly will be a next time!

Love you, Daddy & Uncle Jeff!
-Em, Ad & Bear

I don’t usually say too much about J. on here – just a tidbit or two, mostly funny stuff and a photo here or there.  Not that I don’t have plenty of fodder and other things I could write about, but partly because I started this blog about the girls and also because I’m a little superstitious. We have a really good thing going here, and I am not going to mess it up by broadcasting all the details.

But the biggest reason I don’t write a lot about him is that it is just too hard to put into words how incredible he is. As a husband, father, friend and love-of-my-life, he is indescribable and just very, very special.

I hope your day is spectacular and this year is even better than the last.

Love you with all my heart, baby.
-c.

A little Sunday Snapshot Series today – what we did on our Saturday.

We bought 50% off flowers…

We gardened our own flowers…

And we channeled our inner comic nerds…

All in all, a pretty good way to wrap up the week.

How about you – any snaps from the week you’d like to share?

I can’t do Friday Love today because I’m feeling under the weather and so do not LOVE that. So you get all kinds of weird – some funny – but mostly just weird stuff that is floating around in my head over here.

• I have been in my pajamas and sleeping on and off for the past 17 hours. THAT is weird, especially for me. I seemed to have contracted the plague that Em had a few weeks ago, only in reverse. Earlier this week I had a sore throat and was willing myself to not get sick and I actually felt better on Wednesday, plus it did not progress to the dreaded cough. But then, literally as I was walking to the car after choir last night I started to feel not so great and by the time I got home I was shaking with the fever chills, nauseous and every joint in my body just ached with exhaustion.

• I’m so thankful for Daddy running on home and taking care of the girls and even getting them off to school this morning. I’m also so happy that we are at a stage that the girls can get their own dinner (it was a cereal-for-dinner night!) and take care of themselves for an hour or so. They got to watch an hour and a half of TV (during the week!?!) and I felt just rotten enough that it didn’t even worry me. I’m sure they are wishing that I was sick more often.

• I thought initially that my joint aches were due to my long run yesterday morning. I had a rather weird out-of-body experience while I was running, too. I have a playlist that I listen to every day when I run, so…same songs, same order everyday, why yes, I am a creature of habit. But I must’ve been zoned out because as I was running I realized that I didn’t remember my favorite song being on (Faster – by Matt Nathanson, good running song!) and so I stopped to see if I was on the right playlist. And when I looked up? I had one of those moments when I wasn’t quite sure where I was, or how I got there. I kind of didn’t remember running the 6 or 7 blocks up to that point. Please tell me that this has happened to you before, or that it is normal to have running blackouts? Anyhow, little weird.

• We hardly ever watch commercials any more (thank you, TiVo) but the other night while we were speeding through a break one of the commercials caught our eye and J. said, “Well, I might have to go back and see what this is all about…” And it is my new favorite commercial. The girls L-O-V-E it! Have you seen it?

Oh, especially the ewok and Princess Leia – so genius.

• The girls are also loving these Annoying Orange videos. The current fave is the Valentines one:

“You are tickling me with your words!” Hee hee hee hee….

And on that note…I’m out of here, back to possibly taking a little nap. Happy Weekend!

Capes. That is the only thing I got off of my sewing table last week. Two little SuperCapes for my friend’s little birthday kids!

I do however have some cool pillows that Birdie #2 made last week and I’m attempting to do some roman shades for a bunch of windows in our house this week. So I’ll update you on how we did all that next week.

I KNOW there has been mention of craftiness over the weekend, so make sure you share with us.