happy birthday laurel babe

How this little girl is already 3 blows my mind. Literally. I was looking through pictures of her as a baby and I feel like it was just yesterday we were living at my parent's house waiting for her arrival so we could move to California. 

We sure love our Laurel Babe! She has the biggest imagination ever, has an idea to fix every problem, loves belle and elsa, sings and dances all day every day, is so polite and loves Blake so much. 

vlog || family video

Here is the video I made of our fun weekend at the beach. I sure love this little family of mine!

happy (late) valentine's day

well happy late valentine's day everyone! we sure did have a fun day. full of making sugar cookies, pictures and trolls.

laurel loves making cookies so even though i can't eat them right now i decided we would make some and just give them all away. she is hilarious when she is 'helping'. with every new ingredient she thinks she needs to taste it and says 'it's delicious'. butter and sugar 'it's delicious'. straight flour 'it's delicious'. rhett and i were having a good laugh because she just kept saying it over and over. and sometimes she doesn't understand the whole baking thing. once the cookies are cut out she likes to take them off the cookies sheet and just eat the dough. but i mean if i wasn't on this whole30, i would have probably been right there eating that dough with her. i mean 'it's delicious' after all.

weekend wonders

another week has gone by. rhett and i are both struggling from the crab flu... thanks whole30! but hopefully it should be getting better this week. fingers crossed. oh and the contract rhett was working on got extended so no overtime! woohoo!

weekend wonders

the past couple weeks have been really crazy i feel like. rhett has a contract at work that needs to get done by this friday. what usually takes months, he has only had a couple weeks. so lots of overtime hours going on around here. he usually gets off at 4 and has every other friday off, and man i guess i didn't realize how much he really gets to be around. we sure miss him.

this last week:

we still had lots of fun this last week. we got out of the house everyday this week, which is a big deal for this mom who has some anxiety issue. but we did it! the park, a few stores and even a surprise visit to dad.

rhett was waiting for some things to get reviewed so he didn't have to work late friday or saturday at all! we were so excited to had him all to ourselves this weekend. we went for a hike, and played outside in the nice weather. did some shopping and just relaxed.

two year old photography

i guess we have a budding photographer on our hand. laurel is always wanting to take pictures. with our phones, camera, ipads. everything.

nap time

it's raining here. it's raining a lot, which is unusual for the desert. but i'm enjoying the peaceful sound it brings, while also enjoying the rare moments of having both girls asleep. i think its more than rare... i don't think it has ever happened before. blake isn't really a sleeper.

i don't really know what to do while myself. so, of course i'm just looking at pictures of them. i don't know how i got so lucky to be their mom.

finding elsa

laurel is obsessed with elsa. she is the first thing she prayers for when she says prayers. she wants elsa to follower her around all day. if something exciting happens she needs elsa to be right there with her.

holiday wrap-up

i feel like it is always hard to me to get back in the swing of things after the holidays. but we are slowly, getting back into a schedule.

but we had such a fun holiday season. we knew we wanted to try and make it up to idaho to visit family, but we didn't know how the roads would be. needless to say we didn't decide to go up till the wednesday before christmas. we left thrusday after noon around 1 and drove through the night. we had a snow storm to beat!

we hit some fog through the mountains and rhett's eyes were getting heavy. so we pulled off the road to about an hour before we got there so he couple take a little nap. just so happened that both girls had pooped 😒 so here we are sitting in the middle of nowhere at 1 in the morning, rhett is asleep in the front seat and i'm suffocating in nasty poop in the back seat.

finally after the 12 hour drive we arrived! it was so fun to be with family. it gets a little crazy sometimes because both mine and rhett's parents live about 20 minutes away from each other. but it was so great to get to spend the holidays with family.

laurel loved the snow! she would tell everyone that it was elsa making it snow. she was on cloud 9 with all the attention she was getting.

and of course we didn't take nearly enough pictures!

christmas dresses

i have been loving taking pictures of the girls by the christmas tree this year. we have been trying to decide if we will go up to idaho for christmas or not, so this last sunday i had the girls wear their christmas outfits to church just in case we are gone.

seriously, i love having these girls match. i never thought i would say that, but it is so fun!

but this sunday laurel was not wanting to get a picture. not at all. but i think we still got a few good pictures.

sugar cookie goodness

laurel has so much fun in the kitchen. i can always find her going through the cabinets getting bowls and getting spoons to mix. so we have been loving making christmas goodies lately. and sugar cookies are the best.

i usually love making swig sugar cookies, and i mean they are amazing. but they are meant to scoop not roll out and use a cookie cutter. so we used my mom's recipe and it is seriously so good!

1 cup shortening (1/2 butter and 1/2 shortening is what i usually do)
1 1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs

2 tablespooons milk
2 teaspoons vanilla or lemon extract

2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

refridgerate for about 2-3 hours and you are ready to go! cook at 425 degrees for 5-7 minutes

i love cream cheese frosting so we made one real quick to use for the frosting

1/2 a package of cream cheese (softened)
a couple tablespoons of butter
2 tablespoons milk
powder sugar to the right consistency
1 teaspoon vanilla
im not always the best with measuring. my family always gave me a hard time growing up about that... whoops haha. but that's pretty close to the recipe for the frosting. it's delish!

my favorite way to eat sugar cookies is frozen. might sound weird but growing up that is what we would do. frost a few cookies and put them in a pan in the freezer till the frosting hardened and add another layer of cookies. then eat them frozen. seriously try it. it will change your life.

laurel had a hay day helping cut out the cookies. she is a bit of a dough addict... she didn't quite get the whole baking of the dough. after she got the dough out of the cook cutter she would start to eat it. haha rhett and i were cracking up.

all these feelings

i took laurel to the park the other day and something happened. something that broke my heart. there was another little girl there, probably about 5 or 6 years old and she did not want laurel to play with her. I understand the whole 'I don't want the little kid following me around' but seeing it happen to my daughter.... it broke my heart.

the little girl's mom kept telling her to be nice and include her because she doesn't like it when other people leave her out. and I think she listened to a degree, but then she got a few other kids to run away from laurel. honestly, laurel had no idea what was going on. she thought she was playing with them by chasing them. but I knew what was going on, and I didn't know what to do.

my heart literally broke.

santa visit

we went to go see santa last weekend. i thought for sure that laurel would love him, but she was terrified. blake on the other hand was loving him. we got some awesome pictures!

this was the closest laurel would get to him. literally, i didn't know how to handle it because she loves everyone and will talk to anyone she sees. maybe next year we will get a picture with both girls on his lap. but for now i would call that a success.

xo - stephanie

picture picture

laurel is obsessed with taking pictures. it really is so cute. she will take my phone and go straight to snap chat or the camera and take pictures of everything. but the best is when she wanted to take a selfie and you hear her say 'cheeeesee'
the other day she was taking pictures on the iPad and rhett had just gotten home from work so they had a little selfie fun.

these two give me all the heart eyes.

xo - stephanie

| ipad: apple |

one of those days

today started out as one of those days. a day that i figured we should just all go back to bed and start over. laurel is like 90% potty trained but she kept peeing on the floor and wouldn't go in the toilet. blake wouldn't let me set her down. and really it was just one thing after another. i just wanted to go lay on the couch and cry.

i laid laurel down for her nap, and she wouldn't go to sleep. finally i went in and rocked her for a while and as i laid her back down i told her that i loved her. she grabbed my hand and said 'i love you too mommy'.

so it might be one of those days. but i wouldn't change all the things that go wrong just so i can enjoy the little tender mercies that my girls give me everyday.

xo - stephanie

little laurel's lines

i can't believe how much laurel has grown up recently. she is so funny and witty. some of the things she comes up with makes us die laughing!

if blake ever cries she is the first to respond "no cry blakey, no cry"

when rhett gets home from work "oh hi dad! it's me! it's me!" while patting her chest

"blakey so cupe (cute)"

every time we take her clothes off she will wave her hands in the air and shake her booty while saying " i nakey! i nakey!"

if she finds her binky or blanket, stuffed monkey or someone comes home. pretty much if she sees something she hasn't had for a while she will say "oh i miss you" while squeezing it. precious.

tell her you love her she says " lo you to"

'i sinking!! I sinking!' she likes to pretend fall out of your arms when you carry her.

she always wants 'one more' of everything

teaching her to count she always skips 1 but she counts 2-5 really well then skips to 9 and 10. but if we count with her she does it 2-10 really well!

she loved halloween and ever since she loves to call things spooky. if you shut off the lights 'ooo it's spooky' or she will put her blanket over her head and walk around saying 'spooky'

if she falls or something happens and i ask her if she is okay she always responds 'i fine. i fine mom'

these are just a few of the things she does daily. she has so much spunk and always keeps us guess. we sure love our little laurel girl

big sister laurel babe

my sister elizabeth brought laurel back about an hour after blake was born. this was honestly wthat i was most nervous about. i really didn't know how laurel would react.

she came into the room and really wanted nothing to do with me or blake. i was kinda sad, but i couldn't really blame her. i was still hooked up to all kinda of machines and she just wanted her dad. she is a daddy's girl through and through.

they hung out for a little while and she finally gave me a hug and a kiss. then beth took her home.

the next day when laurel came to the hospital she was more herself. she wanted to see the baby but not touch her. and she wanted to come and snuggle with me, so i was happy about that! she left for nap time and when she came back after she was obsessed with blake! she wanted to hold her (kinda) and wanted to touch her and look at her.

smitten. completely smitten.

i knew this family of 4 things was going to be good.