swinging into garage sale weekend

this morning i had a MOPS steering meeting, then we gallavanted all over town picking up plastic utility tables from our friends who were willing to let us borrow them for a garage sale. woo-hoo! it's good to have friends with tables!

after we picked up M from school, we headed out to Landa and Papa's house so the kids could vacay there for the weekend.

mama and daddy have a garage sale to manage. yay!

on our way to get M, i had to giggle at rosie's 'skinny jeans'. poor tiny thing can't even fill them out the way she's supposed to. :0)

i promised the kiddos a treat on the way out, so we stopped at a gas station for goodies. we had to wait a few minutes on the grandparents to get home, so we played outside in the sunshine and ate.

tried to get a good picture of the sweet littles, but the cards were stacked against me. :0)

then when they got home, we moved the party to the backyard. i knew traffic wouldn't be my friend anyway, so i stuck around and snapped. :0)

stinkerman was trying to kick me. notice his two different shoes! couldn't talk him out of it.

bless my kids' hearts...they just love having pictures made. haha!

had to document stu. he ate skittles on the way here, and when we arrived he was coated from head to toe in skittle-dyed sticky slobber. can you tell he was loving it?!

sticky fingers.

pretty rosie!

that boy loves his landa. :0)

i left finally, sat in traffic, brought home a romantic whataburger dinner for J and i, then we set out pricing and organizing the sale in the garage. (i kid about dinner...but it was really kind of nice! when the kids are gone, we usually eat out. but it was a little sweet to be at our table together alone. and since we don't eat out much anymore, the food was a treat!)

this sale is going to be so fun, i think! it's not all spread out yet like it will be on the driveway in the AM, but it looks so great so far. everything is organized like a department store, and everything is up on tables since we have so many. so i think it'll look nice! and it really wasn't that much effort. i'd been collecting stuff in the garage for months, so all we had to do was price it (made easier with pre-printed stickers) and group it. i hope it'll be good!

of garage sales, teenage museums & twilight windows

today after school, we went to my daddy's so i could go through 'my room' and collect stuff for a garage sale we're having this weekend.

'my room' is the room i grew up in in our house, and it pretty much looks the same as the way i left it on november 16, 2001, the day before we got married. except the center of it is filled to the gills with furniture and boxes of stuff we don't use or need.

my sweet, long-suffering daddy. he's lived there 10+ years now without all that space to use! haha! i love him so. :0)

so i was able to let the kids roam free and play with grandpa and barbara while i sorted through boxes and collected things for the sale. gosh, there's so much stuff! but the job went a lot smoother with my built-in babysitters. :0)

i couldn't help but get nostalgic while i was working. so many memories in that room! it's like an adolescent museum! not many kids' childhood rooms are still intact. it's as if time froze there. i love it. i'm so grateful i was able to keep it that way.

the afternoon sunlight coming in was so pretty, too. beams coming in on my cluttered dresser...

(which, for the record, was never that cluttered when i was growing up. it's become sort of a dumping ground this past decade.)

that photo on the right? my dance team photo for senior year.

the framed white thing with corsage on the left? that's the corsage J gave me at our junior prom when he was my date. and the framed paper is a poem he wrote me about us growing up together. he gave it to me when he brought me back home after prom. that's our picture from when he picked me up in front of our house in the bottom right of the frame. it's all been there since the day after our prom. so april or may of 1993. i'm so thankful he got me a silk flower corsage. it never died! :0) so prophetic, really...that's the only silk one i ever received. any other one from any other boy was real flowers that eventually died.

that yarn braided head hanging on wall to the left? my mother's mother made that for me when i was a little girl to hang my bows on. M fell in love with it, and she brought it home tonight. it caused me to recall how crafty my grandmother was. always knitting, crocheting or crafting something. and she sent me her works all the time. so it's no wonder i love to make things!

the lovely white dresser? from the white canopy bedroom suite many, many little girls of the late 70s and 80s had. :0) i hope to one day put it in an entry way or use in the girls' room.

when i made it around to the closet, i could not resist spending time with my dance team uniforms. i knew it was time to introduce my girls to these...

oh, the sacred pom-poms. and oh, how they loved them!! made my heart so happy.

i worked until dinner time, and J joined us about that time since he works nearby. daddy and barbara ordered pizzas, and we all sat together in the formal dining room and ate, talked and laughed. the dining room windows were open, with curtains now sheer--a new barbara touch! i've always loved sheers!

i couldn't stop looking toward the window. i've always had a thing for passing homes in the twilight and being able to see into the house with their lights through the open windows. always a bonus when you can see the families interacting, too!

it made my heart happy tonight that we were one of those homes. we rarely used that dining room growing up since there were only three of us, but i always, always longed to use it. so it was special for all of us to be in there together tonight. anyone who passed by would see a happy family like i like to see.

i couldn't help but think that it would be ours sometime soon. i cannot wait to have people over in that same room, and perhaps at the same table. nothing's more meaningful to me than a house full of people, food and laughter. that spirit lingers on long after the company has left. i can't wait.

i love my family!

new year, new way of doing things

today was M's first day back at school after the holiday. time to get back in the swing of things!

i was so proud this morning. for some reason, the first day back after a break, it feels like we're starting all over again. like i'd had two weeks to unlearn all the old habits and bad practices i'd let us get into prior. so this morning, i got everyone up about 15 minutes earlier than we used to before break, and our morning went so much incredibly smoother than normal. no yelling, no annoyances. we had fun together, and there was even margin left for free time and snuggles when they were needed. so i'd say this year is already off to a great start. time to start new practices and better habits. so we'll be getting up those 15 minutes earlier every day!

after we picked up M from school, we went straight to the park. it was such a beautiful day! i'm loving our mild winter to far! usually we're cooped up because it's too cold to be outside.

i love the faces and expressions this spinning cup elicits! it gets going so fast!

always amazed at how adventurous they are...

what a blessing to have time to go do this. i had a blast watching my babies run free. and i was awash with appreciation for my husband and for what he allows me to do. i texted him almost in tears, sending him a picture of our children having fun outside, and thanking him for the privilege of being home with them to witness every second of their lives.

oh, how i enjoy being a mother. i could not love these children more. thank You, God, for this glorious day!

lots to do on january two!

today daddy had to go back to work after his glorious two-week Christmas vacation. boo hiss! :0) but seriously, we love, love, love being a public school family...all the vacations we get together are marvelous!

so to take our minds off of daddy being gone, and to celebrate having one more day together with M before she goes back to school tomorrow, we had a day of fun. we blew off naptime and had lunch at the mall. then we rode the carousel with my three 'free ride' coupons i'd been collecting. then we played at the play area!

ok, so it was a feat just to get all three in one place. so i can overlook the fact that they're not all looking at the camera or smiling. haha!




i couldn't get over how cute stu looked. and how big! he's beginning to change a little and look more grown up!

then after all this, we went home, changed clothes, packed up and went swimming! and the best part...since there were no swim classes for the holiday, we got to swim longer! they had extended open swim hours for us since nothing else was going on in the pool. lucky us!

we also ran into mrs. moreland and her children, as well as miss patricia from our church's childrens' department. both of whom my children happen to love! miss pat even left her cardio machine to come talk to us as we walked in. and she made it a point to come to the pool to see the moreland kids and us before she left the gym. we love miss pat and the whole childrens' staff at our church! they are so caring and loving, even outside of the church building. it gave me a new appreciation for them all. she didn't have to take time to come see us. but it was meaningful to me, and the children felt very important and loved, too.

we came home and made some nachos for dinner. which is always a favorite for my little people! and daddy came home fairly early, too (or 'on time', i suppose is better put). which he tends to do on his first days back. :0)

needless to say, everyone went to bed easily tonight. what an excellent day!

december daily 2011: as the sun sets on 2011...

when we went to pick up the babies from their grandmother's today, we surprised them and brought their new bikes with them so we could go to their local park for a family bike ride!


in addition to my many photo quirks, i have an affinity for pictures of J putting helmets on. i have no idea why...

i could not keep my eyes off stu tonight! oh my word, he was so incredibly cute! he took to his bike right away. he was rarin' to go. he took right off without the rest of us before the girls could get on their bikes.

i wish i had videotaped him. he was adorable. the way he just zoomed off, and the cute way he 'pedals'! big strides. so confident! he does a great job balancing his bike, and there are times when he has both feet up briefly and still keeps the bike up. this special training bike without training wheels is really working, i think!

our first little collision. we hadn't gotten very far. i can't imagine it'll be our last. :0) rosie had some hesitations braking on her bike. we'll have to work on it.

stu would get pretty far ahead of us, turn his head back to us and call, 'follow me, guys!' oh, how i love that sweet boy.

rosie hung back most of the time. i stayed back with her while my adventurous ones forged ahead.

our first bridge! going up was fine, going back down was a different story. :0) we really will have to work on braking.

then it was run time while J loaded the bikes. we rode around till it was almost dark! the sunset was incredibly beautiful.

my heart in thirds...all running in a row. :0)

have i mentioned how pretty the sunset was?!

none of us were really ready to go home. we had such a good time! i pray this is the first of many bicycling adventures for us. i know it was special to J, as he grew up cycling and racing with his family for many years.

i just love how our children prefer being outdoors and active above anything else they could choose to do. and i love having margin in our life as a family to be able to go out and do fun things like this as we please. i need to be more intentional about protecting our time in this way.

God is good. today was a perfect day to end 2011 on. i find myself not quite ready to leave the comfort and familiarity of this year, but i suppose i have no choice. on to 2012!

last hurrah of 2011

today we took the gang out to J's mom's so we could have a night out. when we got into their town, we met them for pizza at napoli's, our favorite independent pizza place!

i love, love, love small town decorations at Christmas!

a nativity scene. on city property.

LOVE. IT.

stu loved it, too. i was afraid he'd knock something down! haha!

when we got back to landa & po-po's house, it was so beautiful outside that we played out back.

i love these three happy sweethearts!

stu's graduating to the big boy swing.

after we left, we ran some errands and then met up with nikki and thomas in rockwall for dinner at their saltgrass steakhouse. so fun to double-date and hang out without kids! we could actually finish conversations!

J and i ran some more errands after that, then we tried to go watch the MMA bout at a local wing bar. but the crowd was much too large. so we ended up at starbuck's instead, where we read and talked.

i love time with my man, even if it's out marking things off my to-do list!