A new summer experience

Today was a Tuesday which means that both girls are home with me. I decided it might be fun if we checked out the farmer's market, which is now conveniently located near the hospital. What a neat experience to take the girls to check out the produce that local farmers had grown. Granted there weren't that many tents, but I loved it. I loved how Jenna asked about peppers and beamed when she said she now likes sweet pepper. Or how Peyton asked if she had to buy the business card and thought the bunch of carrots that were orange, purple, and white with the greens still on them looked funny. Then tonight we had Jenna's swim team practice, which is always a joy to watch. Jenna is blossoming. After dinner Jenna, Peyton and I cuddled in our bed and watched some of the girls' shows. These are the memories I will cherish forever.

These are the days to remember

Wow the girls are growing up and growing up fast. So much so that I am scared I am going to miss something. Little Peyton is a character of her own. Full of fire and spunk, yet full of love and sweetness. Sometimes she catches me off guard when she yells at me just to tell me she loves me. Jenna, sweet Jenna, is a young lady. She has graduated from preschool and is ready for Kindergarten. She has started swimming on a swim team and has competed in her first meet. I was so proud of her. She never quit and gave it her all. She has also lost her first tooth! At five years of age!!! I will have to post pictures of her tooth fairy door and her tooth-less smile. Today I also took five minutes out of paying bills and working to dance in the rain with my baby girl. Seeing Jenna's smile and her eye bright from doing this was just priceless.

Counting my blessings...one...two...three

As I lay in my bed and try to unwind from a chaotic day, I am reminded of all the things I need to be thankful for.
* I have an amazing husband who may not be perfect, but he is perfect for me. And that is more than anyone can hope for.
* I have 2 healthy, vibrant children who grow and develop each day into the amazing little girls that they are becoming.
* I have a roof over my head, food in my cupboards, and do not worry if I will be able to make ends meet before our next pay day.

So many times I am guilty of feeling as though my life is tough. While there are aspects of challenges, I cannot really say it is tough. I have been blessed in so many ways. Sometimes I think we all can benefit from stopping to smell the roses and realize all of the blessings we have rather than focusing on the negatives.

So....to my family and friends whom I have not called lately or enough...I love you and am thankful for you. Once my laptop is up and running again I hope to add posts more frequently to our blog.

So life has been slipping by at a very rapid pace and I have found myself struggling to keep up with the blog. This is not fair to little Peyton since I captured all of Jenna's moments, yet it is a product of Peyton as she has been keeping me on my toes.

Since my last post, we have adjusted to Josh taking on his new role with Stanley Black & Decker, which resulted in much more travel.

Jenna finished her first year at Discovery Village Preschool and was home with Peyton & me all summer.

My Brother's family, my folks and I planted a 30 foot by 100 foot garden on my folks' property. We planted 3 types of lettuce, radishes, brussel sprouts, okra, bell peppers, banana peppers, squash, zucchini, acorn squash, butternut squash, Japanese eggplant, corn, 59 tomato plants, 2 types of cucumbers, cantaloupe, and watermelon. The garden was HUGE and a lot of work as the weeds were out of control!!! We had great success with some crops, failed with others, but enjoyed a great harvest of vegetables! We learned that we really like roasted butternut squash and eggplant. I learned that a radish picked right out of the ground is 100 times more potent than one from the grocery. We learned a great way to saute okra so it does not get slimy. I learned that I can make pickles!!! In fact I have over 50 pints of dill/bread and butter pickles and 18 quarts of Kosher dill pickles down in the basement cabinets (that doesn't include all that were passed on to my folks, brothers family and friends).


Josh and I traveled to Southern California in June for my cousins Shane's graduation, but mainly for a vacation for just the two of us. The girls stayed with their Grandma and Grandpa Cowley in NJ. Everyone had a blast!

Our niece Brianna finished her first year of kindergarten and was going to spend the summer hanging out with my folks on the farm. So to make things more fun for all of the cousins, we spent a lot of time down there too so the girls could play. We also had Brianna come spend a couple of days a week at our house too. I'll definitely have to post pictures of all of our fun times.

Pete and Deb came down for a visit and we discovered that we can rent pontoon boats on Lake Norman! We spent an entire day out on the lake boating around, swimming, and tubing. It was an amazing day and definitely worth doing again.

Now we are getting back into the routine of Jenna going to preschool again as she has now started in the 4 year old classroom at Discovery Village. She has had a blast, but it has been hard for Peyton who walks around saying, "I want Jenna. Mommy, I want Jenna." Hopefully soon we will be able to get Peyton into a part time daycare so she can go to school too.

I will try to post pictures soon from all of our summer adventures.

A little broken hearted tonight

My heart aches tonight, even though I know that the ultimate healing has occurred. My Grandpa Ed passed away tonight at 5 pm my time and 2 pm in Oregon. My mom let me know that it was a peaceful passing, that my Aunt Barbara told him it was okay, that he could go and see his folks, his brother and his sister. She left to go to the bathroom and when she returned he had passed. I say that it is the ultimate healing as he has been living with dementia for awhile now and has been on oxygen. He hasn't really been "present" for some time now.

My heart aches as I wish I had seen more of him these last few years. It had been too long since I had seen him and now I won't get the chance to see him now. So please bear with me as I shed some tears and remember an amazing man...

I think I deserve a raise.

We are about to end a very long week of Jenna not having pre-school, Josh being out of town on business, and my folks being in Florida on a vacation. That has left me with both kids, by myself, with no outside help.

Monday we played with friends and I ended up watching 2 of the neighbors' kids in the evening since the parents had an appointment. (That gave me 4 kids to juggle.)

Tuesday we went over to our neighborhood friend's house to swim in their heated pool. That was fun but it is tiring on your own playing pass interference with Peyton as she runs around the pool. Jenna however is fearless with her swimmies on and jumps from the side, slides down the side and goes non stop!

Wednesday we had exterminators come out to the house to spray for bugs and we ended up just playing in our driveway with bubbles and a kiddie pool.

Thursday we ran errands and then all of our neighborhood friends came over to play since it was raining. What a zoo it was with everyone running around screaming.

Today (Friday) we have been playing with play dough, doing puzzles and I have swept the deck since we have been covered in pollen, swept the front porch, changed the light bulbs in both garage door openers and the burnt out lights on the garage ceiling. Plus I vacuumed all of the cobwebs off of the garage ceiling and swept it out. The girls will go down for a nap soon and I am spent.

Thank goodness it's almost the weekend!

Hanging with the girls

Lately I have been spending a lot of time with the girls. Josh has been traveling more for work and with his new position he will be traveling even more. The best thing we do to get through this is to have structure to our days and just trying to find fun things to do. We do craft projects, jump in the bounce house, play dress up, watch movies and hopefully Spring will be here full time so we can play outside more. Last week we had a sunny but brisk day, so we had a picnic at the neighborhood park and then played at the playground with our neighborhood friends. This resulted in a 3 hour power nap by the girls, which was awesome!!! There's nothing better than playing outside.

In mentioning the bounce house, we set it up in the basement so the girls can bounce off steam. They took a quick break to "pose" for this picture! Peyton is fearless in this and bounds headfirst down the slide. This has taught me to ensure there is a foam pad at the base so we don't have any ouchies!

There's nothing quite as fun as eating a blue raspberry laffy taffy that turns your tongue blue!!! Jenna kept running back and forth showing her mommy and daddy her blue tongue. At one point she even tried to lick daddy!

I don't think I could have imagined Peyton wanting to dress up at this age but she gets the biggest kick out of wearing her big sister's dress-up clothes. Here she is sporting the Snow White look. The only accessories missing were the ring, satin apple purse, and ribbon necklace. Not quite sure where those things are at the moment.

Next she wanted to wear the Cinderella outfit. Too funny and as with the previous outfit she is just missing the ring. I have a feeling all of the dress up accessories got put into the satin purse and have been put into a "safe" place that even I cannot find them at the moment!