My birthday...because i am so grown up

How do you celebrate the slow marching of time?  If you are me, you go shoot a gun for the first time and then go out with your great friends and end the night at a formal Christmas party. I enjoyed every minute of my 33rd birthday.  I rang in the new year by trying something new and spending time with great friends. Thanks for helping me feel young even though I know I am getting old. 

Shooting my first gun ever

Zombies were the targets

My friends "supporting" me on my birthday

The very formal party.

Preparing for Christmas with the kids

Christmas means decorations and prep work and goodies and fun.  Kids offer an added twist to getting ready for the holidays.  This year, I aimed to have fun instead of stress out.  Here is our Christmas tree.  Most of the decor on the lower part of the tree because that is where the kids can reach.  I decided this year not to re do it.  It look every once of self control not to "fix" the tree, but the kids enjoyed it. 

Here are my bigs "helping me" with the Christmas candies.  No one really cares if these things are ugly.  That is a good thing because the almost all are.  I hope we don't have a cold that we are transmitting with these yummy treats.  

Matt has told me more than once to "just calm down" but it is easier said than done.  I will use this pictures to remind myself again when I start losing it when the dishwasher is loaded wrong. 

Cecilia can walk now

1.       Look who is walking!

Darn C, could you get any cuter?  No, no you could not.  Wait, then you stood up and walked!!!  You got cuter!

Yes, I know that I have seen three other children stand up and tottle around on their fat Perryman legs.  Without fail, I cheer, clap and celebrate those first baby steps like it is a baby miracle.  I tell everyone at work who will listen. I take pictures. 

Each time it is so cool to be the one that those babies are reaching out to and walking towards.  Soon, too soon they are running away from me.  C, don’t walk  away too fast. 

Selfies

1.       Whenever I pick up my phone, I am not surprised to find multiple selfies on my phone.  

Abby and Harper and Will love to take pictures of each other with my phone.  The pictures are usually blurry and I have to scroll through them until I find one that is not of the tv, the couch or a favorite toy.

My favorite pictures that I find are the selfies.   Check out the great faces! 

Harper age 4

Happy Harper!

Abby, age 6

Abby's favorite

Why do they like taking selfies?  I know why.  It is plain fun.  As I scrolled through my phone looking at the pictures that the kids took, I found multiple selfies of me!   My excuse?  Mainly these are pictures of my kids right?

Right…..

A car trip recorded

1. We had a wonderful thanksgiving in Charlotte!  We got to travel for the first Thanksgiving in year thanks to Matt’s new job that allows him time off around the holidays.  We packed up the kids and all the things we needed to make it through a weekend away from the house and hit the road.   We went to my mom’s house in Charlotte and had an awesome time with my family.  We did the traditional thanksgiving activities of eating and shopping.  It was just what I wanted.  How many pictures did we take?  I took…one. 

And it wasn’t even at Thanksgiving!  It was in the car on the way there.  So this post will not be about Thanks giving.  It will be about the car trip.  The ONE picture is all of the kids sleeping in the car.  I call it a Thanksgiving miracle.

To compliment the one picture, Will took a sound recording.  Don’t look at the picture, it will make you batty, but listen to the words.  Can you hear the edge in my voice?  Yea, I am out of all patience (kind of ironic sense I am lecturing about it at the beginning).  I am sure I was talking to Abby. 

That’s why that picture was a miracle.  Because God knew I needed quiet.  

A bad thing with my credit card and DSW

It started when Matt was out of town for 10 straight days.  Yes, that is correct.  He decided to LEAVE me with all these crazy kids for 10 days.  

Okay, it really wasn’t all bad.  We ate a lot of easy meals and the kids are really good.  I also have a great sitter for the kids, great friends to keep me sane and a great football coach who would pick up and deliver my child home to me. 

Also, I bought boots.

My only message to Matt was a text that said: I did a bad thing with the credit card and DSW and I needed it. 

Worth it. 

Sisters

I have great aspirations for my girls to be great sisters.  Yes, they are related, but being sisters can be so much more...a friend, a secret keeper, a person who knows when you need help and when you need a kick in the butt.  Right now I am seeing mostly butt kicking.  And screaming.  I know that I have at least 10 years before they appreciate the sisters in their lives, but until then, I can appreciate these budding relationships for them. 

Before and after I took this picture, they were fighting over the ipad, clobbering C with their overly excited hugs and running around the sports practice like crazy people.  But for this one moment during this one picture, I can dream about these little girls calling each other on the phone, sharing their grown up lives and discussing their life plans.  I am sure they won’t ever complain about their crazy mom or the hard times they had growing up.