5 Year Anniversary Celebration

Saturday, June 2nd was Matt and my 5 year wedding anniversary:) 

Here's us on our wedding day:

Here's a picture of us 5 years later, on our anniversary:

So much has happened these past five years, including two houses, new jobs, health concerns and most importantly, two wonderful children!! 

The Lord has blessed us these last 5 years!


We decided to celebrate our anniversary by spending the afternoon antiquing!  We both love antique shops (and searching for treasures at bargain prices), so it was the perfect afternoon adventure.  We visited five shops and didn't have much luck, but we did each find one little treasure.  Matt found an old hard shell suitcase that he will use for his pedal board for his electric guitar.  I found a glass punch bowl.  These may not seem that exciting to you, but we had a great time!  And we got great deals-the suitcase was $3.50, and the punch bowl was $1.50! 

Wow, look at us bargain shopping!  We had a nice dinner out, then came home and watched a movie.  What a perfect, low key anniversary celebration. 

Happy Anniversary to my wonderful husband Matthew!  I love you more than words can express.  I pray for many more years of happiness and celebrations together:)

Cheers to you and yours!

Say What?

Bella is becoming such a little talker.  But her language is still at the point of needing quite a bit of interpretation.  Since I am the one home with her all day, I am usually the one who understands what she is saying and interprets for everyone else.  I thought I'd write down a few of her most interesting phrases while I still remember them-someday she'll say everything correctly and her cute little language will be only a memory.

What It Sounds Like----What It Means
Oceans---Lotions
Jah Jah---Elijah
Ceem---Cream
Tsiide-Outside
side---Slide
wing---Swings
Gampa---Grandma and Grandpa
Out---Up, Down, Out, In, etc.
Ana---Ana and Cayman (our two pugs)
Bangtees----Blankies
Baaa---Bath
Woof Woof---Dog
pay---pray

I'm sure there's more but that's all I'm remembering for the moment.  She also says lots of words correctly and is becoming easier to understand every day.  One of her favorite things to do is "Cheers" at the table with everyone's drinks.  She also loves saying her prayers and sometimes says the prayer before dinner for us.  She is so sweet about it, usually mentioning Grandma, Grandpa, uncle Shawn, auntie Erika, etc.  I just love this age for her-she is so entertaining!

Bella and Elijah in May

Well it's been quite a while since my last post, sorry about that to anyone who is following my blog!  It's been crazy around here with my two little munchkins:)  Anyway, here are some updates in case you were curious. 

1.We moved Bella to her own room!  She was sharing her old room with Elijah, but she would wake up so much during the night when he woke up to eat that she was always tired and crabby.  We decided that she needed her own room, so we made the move to a downstairs room.  She loves it, and is a much happier toddler now! 

2. Elijah is 6 months old, sitting on his own, and rolling all over the house!  We have also gotten to know his personality a bit more now, which I must say is simply delightful.  He is the happiest, smiley-est little guy I've ever known!

3. Bella's language is just exploding.  Every day she is saying new things and learning how to speak more clearly.  She understands even more than she can say, but it is very exciting to hear her using language!

4. Elijah's eczema is almost completely gone, Praise God!  We are hoping that it was just a phase and not a more serious food allergy.  He is also doing great with his physical therapy for his right arm.  Our therapist thinks he is ahead of schedule and should be able to crawl just fine!  We are so thankful for all of your prayers for him, they are being answered:)

5.  With all this nice weather, we have been outside a lot, which is Bella's absolute favorite thing in the world!  I'm pretty sure if she could eat, sleep, and live in our backyard, she would.  She loves playing in the sandbox, swinging, going down the slide, blowing bubbles, playing with the dogs, and just wandering around discovering things.  Oh to be a two-year old.  She can find pure joy in anything.  I miss that as an adult, when do we lose that? 

So that's a brief catch up with us.  I hope to post more often, but no guarantees!  Have a wonderful day!

Sweet Tooth

Every morning when my daughter, Bella wakes up, we brush our teeth and go into the kitchen to find something for breakfast.  And every morning, without fail, she goes over to the freezer, tries to open it, and asks innocently, I Cree?  (Ice cream?).  Every. Single. Morning.  She has yet to have ice cream for breakfast, but you gotta give a girl credit for trying.  For example, one morning recently, I offered her a waffle, and she said, "No.... I Cree?" 
Then I asked, "would you like some cereal?"
She replied, "I Cree?"
I smiled and said, "No, not for breakfast.  Would you like some yogurt?"
She smiled sweetly back and said, "No...I Cree?" Wow, she is persistent!  We finally settled on yogurt, but you could tell it was her second choice. 

Another morning she asked for cake (which was sitting on the counter in plain view-who could blame her!), candy, and ice cream, all for breakfast.  This girl has a sweet tooth!  I must disclose, though, that this did not start with her.

My grandma Margaret, has the biggest sweet tooth around.  Yes, even more so than Bella.  My grandma is a thin woman, but she LOVES her sweets.  She has been known to have cake, cookies, candy bars, and I'm sure, ice cream, for breakfast.  It's the best way to start the day in her opinion.  My mother and I also love sweets, but we don't usually have them for breakfast (maybe a mid morning snack though!).  So you can see how Bella fits into the family line of sweets-loving ladies.  It has seemed to serve my grandmother well though-she is 80 years old and lives on her own.  Maybe I should let Bella have some ice cream for breakfast once in a while:)

Here's a picture of Bella indulging in her biggest love, I CREE!!  (Not for breakfast, but as a night time snack!).

                                           Hope you get to enjoy something SWEET today!

House Projects

When we bought our house in January of 2011, we knew we were buying a fixer-upper.  The house was in foreclosure and needed a lot of work even before we moved in.  We took out all the carpeting on the upper level, painted the entire upper level, and gutted the kitchen and completely re-did it, all before moving into the house.  The rest of the updates have come slowly as we've lived here...and as we've saved up money to do another project.  Thankfully my husband is amazing and can do all the projects himself, so we save a lot of money not having to hire anybody!  I just wanted to share some of the most recent projects we've completed (okay, mostly Matt has completed, but I do help too!). 

Here is what the bathroom looked like when we bought the house (notice the dark red walls in a bathroom with no windows):

Here is the antique dresser we found for a great deal at a local shop (Matt already started getting it ready before I could get a picture):

Here is my husband hard at work:

And...

Here's the finished product!

He also made me this awesome storage unit for towels since we don't have a lot of closet space!

What a great guy, huh?

Well, we are continually doing projects around here, so I will post the newest ones as we finish. Thanks for reading!

We've got a roller!

Well, I just wanted to give a little update on the youngest member of our family, Elijah.  He is not so little anymore-he's 5 months now (and over 17 pounds!), and rolling all over!  That's right, we've gone mobile:)
This means that the baby gate again has to be closed all the time, and we can't just assume Elijah will stay put wherever we set him.  I've got to admit, I do kind of like that short period of time where you can set them down and they don't move from where you put them, but I am incredibly proud of our growing little boy!  He's such a sweet guy and learning so many new things every day!  Here are a few pictures of Elijah's newest accomplishment as well as him and Bella playing together.  I'll share those too, just because I think they are so sweet together!

Playing together

Blowing Bubbles!

Love these two!

Well that's my mini update for today!  Stay tuned for more coming soon:) Blessings to you!

Easter Fun

Well a Happy Belated Easter to everyone, hope your celebration was wonderful!  We had a lot of fun around here.  We started at church on Sunday morning where Matt and I both helped on the worship team.  Then it was home to get ready to host our first Easter dinner!  Yay!  I must say, it went better than expected.  The house looked clean, the food was cooking, the tables were all decorated and...I was so busy doing all that stuff that I didn't get any pictures of it:-(  But believe me, it looked good! 

Bella had a cute little dress on for church that promptly got filthy as soon as we got home.  I think in total for the day she had three costume changes.  So I didn't even get a picture of her in her Easter dress before it was gone, but I do have a few in one of her more 'casual' outfits! I did manage to get a few of Elijah (he actually kept his Easter outfit presentable the entire day-go figure!) and a few pics of all the kids completing the egg hunt!  We had a great time with our extended family and it was so nice to be able to chat with everyone for a while.  Maybe next year we will get to the kickball game we talked about:-)

Elijah in his Easter attire!

Egg Hunting Time!

Little Ava will be ready next year!

My two kiddos as bunnies!  Thanks for the ears Auntie Erika!

Happy Easter!

I know for next year I will get my camera out earlier and make sure to capture the entire day (or at least a little more of it!).  Anyway, I hope you all had a great holiday and got a chance to celebrate our awesome Savior!