the "multiple posts" post

So much to catch you all up on that this post is going to be a combination of lots of topics/posts.
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Let's start with a craft project that Sam and I did last week. I got the idea from here but she got the idea from here . I put the tape on the paper myself and started out thinking that I should try and make it look like Sam did it, but then I decided that maybe it would be more fun to do some cool stuff with the tape! This was probably the best painting job Sam did; she had a great time with this craft.

This was Avery while we were painting!And the finished products!

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Sam is changing super fast right now. She loves to sing with me and is starting to remember the words and motions to certain songs. She can count to 15 fairly consistently. Although sometimes she likes to jump around with her numbers. She is also giving up her nap it seems, throws tantrums daily and loves to completely ignore my instructions. But her fake smile sure is cute!

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We had a wedding last night in Milwaukee and had a great time. Avery came with us but we got a nice break from Sam, who stayed at the apartment with Chris's cousin Amanda. We got all dressed up, saw friends we hadn't seen in a while and ate amazing food. We couldn't stay over night in Milwaukee so we didn't drink that much so that we could make the almost two hour drive back. We were exhausted when we finally got home last night and are pretty tired today but all-in-all it was great to have a date night.

Our friends Mike and Mel!

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In other news...
I started running this week and it feels amazing! I love taking just a little bit of time for me to do something that makes me feel so much better about myself. My legs are sore and my lungs hurt because it is still pretty cold here, but who cares I am determined to lose this baby weight!

I am meeting with the moving company at our house in Point on Tuesday to do a walk through of our house and see how much it will cost to have a company come in and pack up the whole house, store it for us until we have a new house and then move it into the new house. We just decided that even though this is not the way that I wanted to pack up our house it will be the easiest since trying to pack ourselves with the two kids and no family in town would be way too tough! But the good news is that after just a few more "hoops" to jump through our house should be SOLD! We will close on March 19th if things work out. We are so happy to be moving on.

We have found a house that we love outside of Madison but I don't want to talk too much about it yet because I don't want to jinx anything! When we are a bit further along in the process I will fill you all in.

Avery will be two months in just a few short days! The time has just flown by. Is it horrible that I still haven't sent out a birth announcement?

Okay, I think that is all for now. Hope you all had a great weekend.

Quite a look!

So amused at the combination of clothing on our way out the door to swimming tonight that we had to take a picture!

puzzle MANIA!

Tired of doing the same wood puzzles over and over again? I was! So today I decided to mix things up...literally! Sam has mastered her wooden puzzles pretty well and I am bored with them so today we took all of her puzzles and dumped the pieces into one big pile. Then I would point to one spot on a puzzle and ask Sam to find that specific piece in the pile. We did this for a while and then I just kind of let her go finding different pieces in the pile and then matching it with the right puzzle. We have several puzzles that are animals so doing the puzzles this way made them a little more difficult and more fun for both of us.
It worked out great and is definitely something we will do again.

I feel blessed today.

I got to sleep in this morning! Sam slept until 7:45 am which reminded me this morning just how blessed I am. Not just because I have a daughter that doesn't get up at the crack of dawn but for many other reasons.

I feel blessed that Sam and Avery have cousins that love them and are so much fun to play with!

I feel blessed that even though neither of my parents have parents left in this world I still have a "grandmother" that loves me and could not wait to meet the newest member of our family.
I feel blessed that the biggest problems my daughers have are the occasional tantrum, baby acne and a bad bald spot!


I feel blessed that my family has the ability to let us invade their lives for over a week. We had so much fun during our long visit to St. Louis and got to spend a lot of time with the family.


Thanks for the escape from the apartment mom and dad! And thanks Aunt Jojo, Bailey, Parker and Grayson for all the fun play times!

two is enough

Please do not misunderstand what I am about to write about...I LOVE my nieces and nephew. I LOVE spending time with them, playing with them and watching them play with Sam. BUT after having all five of the kids all day today I am glad that I only have two kids. Two will be enough for me. None of the kids were bad today; actually they were all very well behaved. And now that I am remembering the day the two older ones were at school for three hours this morning! So nothing went wrong today, we did craft projects, made cookies, ran errands, took a four kid bath and had a great dinner, five kids is just overwhelming for me. It is 7:45 and I sort of feel like I have a hang over. You know that body aching, head aching, noises and light hurt your head kind of feeling. I just want to sit in a dark room in perfect silence and be very still for a very long time!

Two IS enough for me! Chris I hope you feel the same!!

How to burn energy!

A Puppet Show - By Bailey!

For the few of you that may not know, Bailey is Sam's oldest cousin. We had a blast watching the imagination of Miss Bailey come to life the other day through her puppet shows. So cute!

It's good to see family

We got to St. Louis Wednesday evening and it has been great from the moment we arrived. Not having family around us on a daily basis I am always overwhelmed with the love and comfortable feeling of being back around our families.
On our way down to St. Louis we stopped through Bloomington to see Nana. Even though the visit was less than an hour it meant a lot to us and especially Sam to see her. The way Sam's face lit up as we drove into the driveway and then saw Nana come out of the garage was amazing. The visit was great even with the melt down that occurred when we had to leave.
Since we have been in St. Louis Sam has had a blast playing with her cousins, seeing Aunt Jojo, Grandma and Pawpaw. We love watching the three little girls run around. And of course it has been fun to see the little ones meet their newest cousin and get to hold her. This morning Grayson is coming over to Grandma's house while the two older girls have a birthday party to go to. It will be fun to see Sam and Grayson playing without the older ones. They are so close in age but so different. I am going to be sure to have the camera out this morning!

A growing memory

Her mind is growing and growing fast! Sam is starting to really remember things that we read and is then able to recall them later. This new "trick" amazes me constantly. Yesterday while she was drinking a "treat" of some lemonade she told me how Maisy makes lemonade. Maisy is a book character and we have a whole book about how she makes lemonade. We had read this book the night before! Then this morning when I went into her room to get her out of bed she handed me her blanket and told me that Kiki had lost her blankie. Kiki is a monkey that loves her blankie and in the book that we have about Kiki her blankie flies away in a storm. We have been reading this book a lot lately. She has also started to really be able to sing songs, make the motions that go with songs and even remember some of the words that go with certain pictures in some of her favorite books.
It is crazy how fast she is learning and growing these days. I love it!

Avery has a rash.

And I know I am a bad mom for saying this out loud but the rash has led me to take less pictures! Combine that with a couple pretty rough days last week, a lot of house decisions and stress (I don't want to jinx anything so I am not going into details yet but things are looking up!), a visit from family and just a lack of motivation and the result is less blog updates. Of course the mommy guilt is kicking in full force because Avery hit the one month mark on Friday and I did nothing to acknowledge it. Several times that day I thought about how I needed to write something emotional, memorable and sweet to her on here but I didn't have the words or energy to tackle it.

Avery has had this rash for a while now and I truly meant to call the doctor about it on Friday but that was one of my rough days and I just didn't get around to it. This weekend the rash seems to be getting worse and of course it is primarily just on her face. Monday I am for sure calling the doctor.

But we have had a pretty good weekend. Great Grandma and Grandpa Hill came to visit on Saturday which is always nice. The live closer now that we are in Madison so coming over for the day is much easier. They got to meet Avery, play with Sam and we had a nice lunch out. Today we went house shopping! At first it was a little disappointing because some of the houses that looked great on paper and on the computer were pretty horrible in person. But then we saw one that just really got us excited and seemed like a good fit. We have many more to see but will certainly be keeping that one on the short list!

The camera has come out a few times in the last week...

My poor little girl and her rash covered face.

Swim lessons

Avery and I went with Chris and Sam to swim lessons last night. It was so cute to see her in the water and working with the instructor. Pictures weren't working very well with the light so I shot a few videos. I would suggest leaving the sound off cause the pool noise is pretty loud!






And this was Avery during swim lessons!

girl's weekend

While Chris was at a bachelor party this weekend I had my two best friends from college come to visit. One of them, Ellie, I hadn't seen since her wedding two and half years ago! I didn't plan much for the weekend except some shopping and lots of catching up. We got some shopping done on Friday and Saturday morning but the rest of the weekend was spent just hanging out in the apartment, playing with Sam and eating way too much chocolate! Saturday night was one of the best nights I have had in a long time; we didn't really do anything but sit around, have some drinks, each yummy chocolate and reminisce about college. It was fabulous! It's funny how there are so many memories that are forgotten until you get together with old friends and the stories start flowing. We had a blast just laughing about all the crazy things we use to do.

Our chocolate smorgasbord!

My girls that I do not get to see nearly enough.

Thanks so much for keeping me company this past weekend ladies! Let's not wait so long to do this again. But maybe we plan something without my kids!!

quick update

Running late this morning as I try to get us out the door for a library program but I know there are a couple of people out there that are a bit disappointed that I have fallen behind with my blogging!

Avery is doing great. Still eating really well, in fact she is hungry all the time. Her schedule is a bit messed up so that she is up almost every night from about 9:00pm - 12:00am, just wide awake and wanting to be held. We are working on getting her back on track with that.

Sam is also doing great. She is doing swim lessons with Chris once a week and loves it. She is also showing more interest in her potty and has had three successful trips to the bathroom. We bought her some pull-ups so that it is easier to take her to the bathroom to "try". Not sure how we are going to proceed with this whole potty training thing, I don't really understand how to teach this to her, but we are certainly trying to encourage the interest.

Sam asked to be "all-wrapped-up" like we do with Avery yesterday. It was pretty cute.


Be back with more later!