Thursday, May 19, 2011

my baby girl turns FOUR!

Her birthday kinda snuck up on us... ok, well I did in fact know that four years ago I birthed her and she has been reciting that her birthday is on "may 9th" for about the last six months... but between our busy schedules and my work schedule.. it just came up fast! I had originally planned an blocked of Sat the 14th for her party, but realized when we got back from our Nashville trip, and the invitations hadn't even been designed yet.... um.. yeah that date was not going to happen. So rather then stress myself silly, we just decided to move her party date to June. Nothin' wrong with celebrating for a month right? Her birthday was last Monday, and it worked out great since Mondays are daddy's day off. Except he did have to go into his meeting to find out our future.. lol - Anyway.. I took Tatum downtown in the morning to order her birthday cake. I have never NOT made my kids bday cakes.. even last year.. if you remember Tatum's ginormous weddingish cake! ha. This year, I have sessions booked like crazy, and lots of other things going on with the sale of our house, so I just knew it would relieve some pressure to not be spending 4 plus hours decorating a cake. I think the Yellow Bowl Bakery will do just fine. After we designed her cake, we met daddy for lunch at Tatum's choice- Dog n Suds (drive thru).


Cept we don't eat food in our car ,so luckily the weather was nice and we got to sit on the patio. Below is Beckham holding a tight grip on his sister's new musical card from Grandpa. My grandma started a few years ago with sending my kids these cards and they just go nutz! My dad has now continued the tradition with filling our home and car with the repeated song choice.








My pretty FOUR year old girl.





digging in to a hot dog... mmmmmmm.





while at the bakery, I picked up a special birthday pink cupcake just for her.









after lunch we took her to the pottery place and she got to pick out a special piece to paint all. by. herself.






ok, maybe this control freak of a mama.. had to help just a little... (when she had painted over with the third color.. lol)











the above is her look, when she saw a fun surprise walk thru the door.....



Grandma!!! showed up with gifts and to help her paint too. She had a great time doing this. I am excited to go back and pick it up today. I don't think she'll realize how cool it was that she made it !



















That night, daddy made a spaghetti dinner and we had a very. pink cake. Just perfect for my girly girl.

















The poor girl, did keep asking when her friends where going to come over. and when was she going to get her presidents. (presents... in her 3-4 yr old language.. lol)


I have gotten her invitations out now, and the planning is well underway for her Royal Princess Party. Can't wait for it actually..




the next day at school, Miss T was the helper of the day again . I made some big ol' cupcakes with bright pink icing and lots of sprinkles.





She got lots of great gifts.. including a new bike, that she is just dying to ride, but we haven't been able to get the training wheels on yet. Need to take it in to the shop this weekend. Lots of barbies and other fun girly summer toys have taken over our living room. I think the had a great celebration of her birthday. I am so blessed to have this sweet and sassy girl in my life!
















Tuesday, May 10, 2011

our future is bright..

or something like that.. lol

Our immediate future was finally determined. I haven't mentioned anything here on the blog, b/c I am just not into drama and bringing junk out that we are dealing with.

Basically rumors started at Andrew's company that they could do a number of things, including closing the regional office where he works. It was announced at the first of the year that after a structure study was competed, that an announcement would be made March 1st.

Based on that information, we were set to put our house on the market on March 30th. Well..... the second week of March, the president communicated that they had not reached a decision and it would still be a couple more months. lovely.

People were up in arms.. lots of discontent and uncertainty. The chance of us moving out of state was looking to be pretty high. Every other day , Andrew would come home with a different rumor outcome that had been discussed either by his leadership team or the managers higher up.

As we waited and waited, and got more frustrated about having to put our plans on hold.... trying to figure out whether we continue prepping or just sit it out. Of course I can't just sit and do nothing, so we started packing things up ....our home looks like tote city right now!

We were relieved to get an email from the president last week stating that there would be a corporate wide announcement on Monday, the 9th. (baby girl's 4th bday and normally Andrew's day off)

The managers were told the outcome last Thursday... in order to give them time over the weekend to prepare how to tell their teams. Of course all kinds of rumors started flooding thru the halls. Who knew what was going to happen.

Andrew headed into work yesterday morning.. he was told the mtg could last over an hour. They were bringing all the employees into the cafeteria and if it worked with previous situations like this, then they would be told on a tv monitor.. everyone in 3 states hearing the same info at the same time.

Turns out... they are not closing this office. They are downsizing from 37 offices down to 6, but WL is not one! Andrew's job will not be affected. Praise God. He didn't relay to me until yesterday afternoon, how nervous he was all weekend. How the possibility of him losing his job was pretty real. I am glad he never mentioned that to me. I would have gotten kinda nervous too.

Well , he says that his prayers were answered. I say that mine were not.. b/c I was looking forward to a move. out. of. state. I have been itching to move for several years. Guess God has different plans for us. Yet another lesson in Trust.

We are however , ready to get the process of putting our house on the market going. We have some cleaning and boxing up to get it ready to show. I need to get out in the yard some more. We have a storage unit , and so we are taking trip after trip of totes over and things are starting to come together. The process of packing away the kids clothes is daunting. Andrew is helping, thank goodness.

Tatum's birthday was a great day and we celebrated her in fun ways. More to come in the next post.

a mini vacay-part one

A couple weeks ago, we rented a van(which was super exciting for the kids to be in a new- to- them car!! and it was exciting for us too, b/c we were able to bring drinks and snacks into the car.. something that is not allowed in our own van!) and headed down for a 5 day get away in Nashville, TN. It all started as a guy trip for my husband who had signed up to run in the Rock n Roll City Marathon series.. (in this case it is the Country Music Marathon and 1/2). Then it changed to a wife and hubby get away and my mom would watch the kiddos so that we could have a few days of fun night life and just being together. Ahem.. however in December when we saw those 2 little lines, that changed our lives... our plans were altered. Oh .. yeah.. I don't think I have even shared that tid bid on this ol' blog.... baby #4 is due to arrive in 2.5 months. I'll do a post here soon on that news!
so back to our trip... in talking to his parents, Andrew's mom and dad decided that they would fly from Denver to support their son in his first race and it was a great time to see the grand kids again, since they haven't seen them since we were out there when Beck was 4 months old. This is the night before, A is checking in.. and then below doing the traditional countdown pic... at the big fitness expo.



This was when Brig exclaimed fairly loudly.. "so dad, are you gonna cheat in this race?". We all laughed.. thinking a. why would he even think that and b. how would one cheat in a self drivin -non competition race like this. maybe take some short cuts.. trip some fellow runners?? lol



the above pics were taken when I hadn't realized that my camera settings had been bumped.. too lazy to PS them since they are just snapshots oh well, they still tell a story. Below is part of the expo. we had a lot of fun getting samples and trinkets from the booths and A got a new pair of ear buds for the race. he says they are amazing!






Beckham enjoyed the sample of healthy all natural fruit snacks.. I think he had like 4 packs of them!






Brigham found this guy to be very interesting. Of course we asked if we could snap a picture. Brig was really excited to see him the next day running in the race. This guy was fast.. and I pretty much want to know how he got his legs to look like that! lol










this is actually the last pic at the end of the race.. lol- it is reenacted as well.. b/c we got to mile 13 thinking that we would have a perfect view of him and could follow him the last 10th of a mile... well we missed him, as he finished much sooner than he or us thought he would .. yay! he was down celebrating with his friends and we were up waiting and high fiving all the remaining runners and mostly walkers. little did we know that we totally missed him! lol







the above is cute, b/c we were texting Andrew through out the race trying to figure when he would come up to the place where we were waiting.. and just to see what is pace was. here is Brigham thrilled that he could run a bit with his daddy.. Andrew crossed over from the main drag to run and chat with his dad . Brig thought it was funny that he was 'winning'.. on this stretch!




Beck had the best seat.. and loved cheering for everyone too!








It sure was a hot day.. perfect for the runners.. we probably walked about 3 miles as we followed along.


In the end. So proud of Andrew for setting a goal and finishing ahead of it. He has kept endurance as he trained for this race. He has really found a love for running( I didn't know that was possible!) and is already signed up for another one in November. We have a list made for all the races in various cities that he/we would like to make it to. some will be family vacations, others will be couple vacays and a few would just be guy trips.







and I just deleted the pics of the rest of the kiddos and grandparents cheering! ugh.


We did do lots of fun things on this trip too, so I'll be back to post part two of this mini vacation!






















Tuesday, May 03, 2011

and so it goes...

week of May 2nd-

Monday- Brigham has a soccer game
Tuesday- I lead a women's bible study at church
Wednesday- baby Dr. appt, Tatum's preschool program and Brigham has soccer practice
Thursday- BNI meeting, photo session, cub scouts for Brigham
Friday - Tatum has a birthday lunch to attend, Life Group for the family at night.
Sat- Brigham soccer game, Photo session
Sunday- photo session, Mother's Day!! (celebration with the family!)

********
and throughout all this, I need to bake cookies for T's program, place client orders, finish filling client galleries, complete a biz project, make invitations for T's birthday and mail out, and shop for T's bday (which is May 9th.. um yeah. 6 days!!) however, we are having her big party on the 14th , so I have a bit of time...

This is the crazy, busy, life I lead... and we don't even have T-ball in here yet.. or our summer schedule- which is packed to the max already and school isn't even out!! lol

I love my LIFE and feel so incredibly blessed!

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