Happy Birthday Haylee!

My little girl is THREE today! I can't believe it. It has been an awesome, amazing year with her. I adore her so much. She is such a special little girl and I am so grateful to have her in my life. She teaches me so much every day and I am so grateful for her example, love, compassion, tenderness, spirit, forgiveness and patience. I am a lucky mamma. Here are some highlights from this year, starting with her second birthday last year, and ending with the last picture of her two years old, last night.










I love you Haylee girl! Thank you so much for being in my life. I love you more than you'll ever know.

Our Super Fun St. Patrick's Day

We had a great day, and I thought I'd tell you all about it, in addition to recording it for the kids for the future. Haylee is so sweet... she just loves life and loves it when we do fun things. She had such a great time. Makes me want to do stuff like this with her much more often.

The Green Family

We went to Brandon's work later in the day and they loved how we were all dressed up in so much green. Brandon says they called us "The Green Family" for the rest of the day and the next one.

We were going to read and eat Green Eggs and Ham, but Daddy got to come home early so we went to his work with him and out to lunch instead. We got a donut with green sprinkles. Haylee of course loved it.

McKay got to play with a 'pot of gold' at Daddy's work:

Haylee played a game where she covered the letter L's with "Lucky Leprechaun" while I sang a song. She loved it and she got them all right!

McKay got green yogurt! Mmmm...

And played with his green dinosaur... Love the smile on his face.

Haylee did this activity where she helped the Leprechaun get to his pot of gold by tracing his rainbow with colors. She's going to be a tough one to get homework done with. Eesh!

Once Haylee helped the Leprechaun get to his pot of gold, he shared some of his gold with her. She of course loved that. (Click to enlarge.)

After that she decorated a bag for our 'green walk.'

She had a great time on our walk.... gathering green stuff she saw to make a collage out of later.

McKay was on our walk too. What a cute boy!

Haylee used green glue to glue the stuff onto her paper.

She loves doing stuff like this, including her "scapbooking." She's going to be so much fun doing arts and crafts with... Mamma's little girl.

We played a game where she built a rainbow while I sang a song about the color names and ordinal numbers that she was putting up... "The red part goes up first..."

McKay got to eat yummy green veggies for dinner... mmm!

We followed directions to make a special "Pot of Gold" dessert... Haylee is all about anything sugary, so she had a blast.

Smashed up mint oreo's for the pot, mint chocolate chip ice cream, banana slices for the gold coins, green cool whip and green sprinkles... Delicious!

Isn't she gorgeous???

What a face! We had a great day didn't we baby girl? Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

$10 worth of FREE diapers (or wipes, or baby food etc.)! PLUS two free magazine subscriptions!

I just placed my first order with diapers.com and it was great! I didn't have to go to the store, I did it while I was holding my sleeping baby, and they'll deliver it for FREE right to my door! I also got wipes, some baby food, teeting biscuts, and refills for my diaper pail! All without going to a store (which I really hate), within the comfort of my own home, and they'll bring it all to me! How cool is that?!

If you haven't used diapers.com yet, you've got to try it. Use this code: CRYS4014 and get $10 off your first order. Hey, free diapers is always good right?! Plus, you get a free subscription to Parenting magazine, or you can choose to get a rebate for about $15 instead! AND you get a FREE subscription to Babytalk magazine! (Make sure you check the box when you register for the site). Not to mention I get a $5 credit on my account!

If you haven't done this, give it a try! Hey... free diapers (and other baby related stuff) never hurt anyone! And there's always baby showers too!

February Highlights

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Snowday

We went to the snow a couple weeks ago and had a fantastic time. We went with Haylee and McKay's Grandma and Grandpa (My Dad and Lora). I got some great shots of my kids and had fun taking them. It helps to have such adorable subjects. ;)

This is my favorite:

Hands up!

I LOVE this picture.

Grandma, encouraging the throwing of snowballs....

Snowball fight with Mamma... Haylee thought it was sooo hillarious and had so much fun. She was so adorable.

I didn't want to bore you all with too many pictures, but if you want to see the rest, you can here.

Dinner for me!

Haylee came downstairs today and told me to "come eat!" So I followed her upstairs and on the way she says something about "all cleaned up" and I was hoping she meant her room, since it looked like a tornado had hit it earlier. Alas, she didn't mean that, but what did come in to was much more precious. She had set up her little table with three plates of food (play food) and cups for us to have dinner with. She pulled my chair out for me and said "you sit here. I push your chair in." Sooo cute! We started eating and she says "tell me when you want some more okay?" And when we eating, she was going to give me a piece of bread and says "I take the crust off," and started pulling at the edges of the pretend bread pretending to take the crust off. She amazes me at her creativity, observations and smart-ness. Later on, she made us hot chocolate and used her little play wisk to stir it. I have no pictures to show for the story, because I didnt want to ruin the moment by leaving to get my camera, but it was totally adorable, let me just assure you.

Sweet Haylee

Haylee in her new Christmas dress. This little girl is simply the sweetest little thing I've ever met. She just has a genuine sweet, tender heart. I've never seen anything like it. She cares about everyone around her. She never wants anybody to be sad. The other day we saw her on the ground comforting a little girl who was sad... laying down by her and stroking her arm and talking quietly and gently to her, probably saying "its okay..." A couple days ago we were on the way home from her Grandpa's house in the evening, after a birthday party that afternoon, and out of nowhere she says "I had fun at Connor's house. I had fun at Grandma and Grandpa's house. Thank you mama taking me to Connor's house. Thank you mama taking me to Grandma and Grandpa's house." No prompting whatsoever. (I have taught her to thank me for those kinds of things in the past, but I had said nothing that day.) I just couldn't believe it.

Just now her brother woke up and after smiling at him and saying "good morning" she says "want a toy?" and she goes and gets him a toy to play with. She does that all the time... whenever he's crying, or grabbing at stuff when we're changing his diaper... she ask's him if he wants a toy and goes and gets him one. What a doll. I am so grateful to have this sweet little child in my life. She is such a good example to me.

Wedding hairclips

Hairclips I made for the little girls in Cari Cannon's daughter's wedding. My mom did the flowers for the wedding so I used her stuff (ribbon, fresh flowers, etc.) and the hair clips matched the wedding perfectly.

I know that's totally random, but its one of the things on my mental list of things to post, so I'm knocking one thing off that list. :)

Hilary Weeks' Favorite Things

You absolutely have got to see this video. Especially you moms out there. LOVE IT! I've seen her do it live and it's awesome. I promise I'll do a real update soon.


And here's one more.

More Catch-Up... Halloween Costumes

Okay, so since I didn't get any good pictures of the kids on Halloween, and since my mom was in Greece and my grandmas didn't get to see their costumes, I was going to re-dress my kids in their costumes and take some nice pictures and show off their costumes. But alas, as with many things in my life, that didn't happen. And although I'd still like to do it, I figured I needed to go ahead and post the pics I do have now, so I can move onto Christmas!

Here are my adorable little turtle and my pretty little ladybug.

I pieced McKay's costume together from all over... And I painted the shell. I'd originally planned on making Haylee's ladybug costume, but I found this one online while I was looking for ideas, and it was so adorable so I decided to just buy it. We did make her bag and ladybug wand though.







Here's my attempt to get one of them together...





I'll post when I finally get around to taking some nice pictures of them in their costumes... (ha ha ha...)