Anniversary Reflections: The Engagement

Eight years ago today, I walked down the aisle and married my best friend. But since I’m fully aware that that phrase sounds too sentimental for me, let me tell you more about that day and all the crazy that led up to it.

 

 

Mr. Bug proposed on February 19, 2005 (I really need to write out how he did that because it was so cool). After the down-on-one-knee moment and my six-tear acceptance, we headed to Perkins to iron out some details. It was late at night and I like Perkins hot chocolate. Don’t judge.

Something important you should know: I grew up watching old movies. I told you a while ago about The One and Only Genuine Original Family Band, and I listed The Way We Were in my favorite movies post here, but I don’t think I’ve told you about another old-time favorite—Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. I grew up on this movie. Adam, Benjamin, Caleb, Daniel, Ephraim, Frank and Gideon. If you don’t get that, you NEED to watch this movie.

 

 

In that movie there’s an entire song dedicated to June brides. “OOOOooohhhh, they say if you marry in Juuuuunnne…you will alllwaaays beeee a briiiiiide.” You’re welcome.

 

 

Once Landon knew that I needed wanted to have a June wedding, the big question was whether we wanted to plan a wedding in four months or if we wanted to wait 16 months to get hitched. As two virgin kids with the honey glow in our eyes, we decided on the four month route. ;) So June 24 was the date set, and I was absolutely positive that God would NOT let it rain or be ridiculously hot on my wedding day. He just wouldn’t. Ah, to be 21 and naïve.

The next four months included dress shopping (thank God for floor models!), putting together bouquets (silk flowers save the budget!), wedding registries (no dear, you cannot register for that Star Wars spaceship), and deciding on a location for the big event.

 

Dress shopping. Apparently I was saving all of my cheesy smiles for my wedding day.

 

 

Why yes those ARE giant underpants! Our wedding shower gift from Mr. Bug's parents :)

 

My sisters and I before the wedding shower. I don't know why. I just don't know.

 

I knew I wanted something a little less traditional than a church building, and I found this beautiful bed & breakfast in a little Nebraska town that was perfect. (Note: Their website has music on the home page so don't let that scare you. Sorry!) The wedding would be outside—which would be fine because of my previously mentioned deal with God—and we could have the reception there too. Jackpot!

 

 

 

So there you have it. The lead-up to the big day. I’ll tell you all about that later this week, but I will let you in on one little secret: if you’re planning a wedding and hope everything goes off without a hitch, take a deep breath and get ready for a ride. It ain’t happenin’ sister. But it usually all works out well in the end : )

Found Treasures

Something hit me tonight as I got up to use the restroom before bed. First, let me tell you that Adaleine has this apparently unfixable problem with getting her toilet paper in the toilet. I’m sure it’s that she’s not paying close attention and she’s just trying to get back to her game. But so often when I go into the bathroom and see a little wad of TP on the floor, it frustrates me.

So tonight when I walked into the bathroom and automatically grabbed the tissue off the floor and tossed it in the toilet, I was struck by how funny the things are that we find on a daily basis. I wanted to share them with you, because the more I thought about it, the more precious these little ‘discoveries’ seemed. Some of my favorites are:

-Hot Wheels in the bottom of the hamper

-a dozen school lunch notes from Mommy tucked neatly in Eden’s backpack

-used Kleenex stuffed back into the tissue box

-the gift of a carefully drawn picture resting on my pillow

-a notebook filled with Adaleine’s unsteady handwriting

-superheroes in my purse

-colorful little hair clips in my shorts pocket at the end of the day

-cars parked in a line on the coffee table

-the crusts of the sandwiches in Eden’s lunch box

-dozens of books pulled off the bookshelf by a little boy wanting to read about trains

-a new toy clutched in a little hand at bedtime

And then there are my favorite discoveries, my little babies. There are mornings when I wake up to find a sweet face sleeping next to mine on the pillow, or find two little sisters snuggled asleep in one twin bed. I’ve found Judah on the floor between his sisters’ beds and once asleep teetering on the foot of Eden’s mattress.

 

 

 

As I tossed that wad of tissue into the toilet tonight it occurred to me that I am so blessed by the little treasures I find every day, even if I feel exasperated at the time. I was reminded of The Nester’s mantra; it doesn’t have to be perfect to be beautiful. Such a true statement and one I hope to keep in the front of my mind when I step on yet another Polly Pocket in the middle of the night. Enjoy your treasures!

 

 

Summer Reading Plan

Eden has turned into quite the little reader lately, so I'm looking for a Reading Rewards Program that will challenge her to keep reading over the summer. I am also looking forward to spending time reading to Adaleine and working on her letters to help her earn rewards too!

Here are a few different systems that I'm mulling over. There are a TON out there, so you know I'm completely overwhelmed trying to figure out which one is the 'best' one. I give myself more grey hairs...

Yes, I know we're in the second week of June and I need to get on it already, but cut me a little slack. I'm a hard-core procrastinator.

This blog called To The Moon and Back has a list of different businesses and organizations that participate in Summer Reading Programs. Bonus!

This balloon pop idea by Chicken Babies blog seems like a lot of fun, and she's also got other programs she's used for past summers including this bookworm chart!

 

 

 

 Jamie at This Lunch Rox used these Summer Reading printables from HowDoesShe to motivate her kiddos, and she includes a really great list of books to add to you little munsters reading list. Check that out here.

 How do you get your littles to read during the summer? What system do you use? I can use all the advice I can get! :)

Traveling With Kiddos: Popsicle Stick Puzzles

Two days in a row?? There is a pretty decent chance that the world may be coming to an end, but hopefully it’s just a rush of motivation on my part.

I’m back (for the second day in a row—didn’t know if you caught that) to share another little craft idea that I stole from someone and made my own. That’s what Pinterest is for, right?!

 

 

This one wasn’t quite as quick as the Matching Tubes, but it’s one of those things you can do while you’re watching Charlotte’s Web with the kiddos. It gets harder toward the end of the movie and Charlotte dies because everything gets blurry for some reason. But I digress.

For this I had almost everything on hand already and I just printed out the pictures onto cardstock. The only thing I had to buy was the rubber cement, and I’ve been meaning to pick some up for a while anyway.

 

 

Super simple: just find pictures your little munsters will like and print them out onto cardstock. Regular printer paper would probably work too but I make no guarantees. From there I just cut them out and flipped them over so they were right-side down on my TV tray high-tech crafting surface. I brushed the rubber cement on just a little at a time since it tends to dry really fast and just lined up popsicle sticks along the back. Once I had the back of the picture glued and sticked (?), I added a little weight to make sure the sticks…stuck. It sounds like I’m not making sense, but I totally am.

 

 

Once your glue is dry, just take your handy dandy box cutter and slice those sticks apart. I was initially worried that the puzzle might be too hard since I only had the really narrow popsicle sticks, but I gave it the good ol’ college try and was able to put them together with minimal tears. Just to be safe though, I printed out a reference picture for the kids so they know what they're building.

 

 

Wouldn’t it be so cool if I could keep up this momentum and fill you in on a bunch of little projects? Yeah, I don’t think it’s going to happen either. A girl can dream : ) Have fun!

Traveling With Kiddos: Easy Matching Tubes

I know I’ve been gone for a while, but I’m exercising my pop-in rights to share with you a mini project for the munsters.

We’re taking a trip this next week to visit family in Indiana, and rather than play DVDs for the kids the entire 9-10 hour trip I’m trying to find some fun things for them to do in the car. This site has TONS of ideas for fun car activities for kiddos so I’m stealing her ideas. : )

 

 

The one idea of hers that I’m for sure doing is this one. Basically it’s a matching game combined with coercing challenging them to use those fine motor skills. And since all my littles are at different stages in their understanding/abilities, I thought I’d share the three different versions I came up with. Oh, you’re welcome. Leave tips on the table.

 

 

Here is Eden’s Matching Tube. (On her site she calls them Matching Poles but I immediately thought of strippers. Tubes it is!) Since she’s reading and recognizing words, she gets word matching stickers to match with the words on her pole tube.

 

 

Sissy gets numbers on hers. I thought about doing dots on the stickers and having her match them up with the numerals on the tube, but I’m not sure she knows all of her numbers that well and I’d rather she have fun than get frustrated.

 

 

For Judah, I just put a sheet of dots on the tube and attached one sheet. I honestly don’t know if he’s going to be interested or able to do it, but this way he at least has all the same tools as his sisters so he won’t feel like he’s missing out. (P.S. The stickers that I got at the dollar section of Target do not stick to the tubes well at all. If you have extra time you could glue them or maybe pricier stickers would work better. No idea)

 

 

And there you have it. Each one took me no more than 90 seconds, and I may end up making each of the girls another Matching Tube before we leave on Monday. I guess it really depends on how many trips to the loo we take. Isn’t that such a fancy word? : ) Hope you’re enjoying the beginning of your summer!

 

Pretend Like Easter Was Yesterday

I realize that it is ridiculously late to post about Easter, but I wanted to share some pictures of my little munsters in their fancy clothes. We don’t do fancy around here too often. But when we do, we do it up right. ; ) Enjoy!

Here are the kiddos' Easter baskets the night before. Judah got a truck in his that was actually a birthday present from a week earlier that we hadn't opened yet. Yes, we are that lame.

Eden and Adaleine both got Peeps, Reese's eggs, socks and new panties. What, isn't that what everyone puts in their Easter baskets?

In addition to their already stellar basket contents, we had gotten each of the girls a Karen Kingsbury book. Since they didn't fit in the baskets, we sent them on a little hunt for them. I didn't get any pictures of the girls with their books ('cause I'm awesome like that), but we got this one for Eden and this one for Adaleine.

 

All dressed up and ready for church!

Enjoying the Easter Egg Hunt at church! They all got waaaay too much candy! :)

Is this kid a stud or what? Right? Right?!

Check out that form! He's a natural!

Hope your Easter was enjoyable and you got to spend it with those you love. It's better if we prolong the celebration, right? Like even for a few weeks after it's over? I thought so, too.

Mommy-Daughter Date

I took Miss Eden out on a mommy-daughter date this afternoon. We don’t do this very often, but today was special and I’m so glad we did.

Mr. Bug has been working a lot lately, which means he’s been travelling a lot. This is hard on all of us in different ways. He hates it because he misses time with the kiddos and with me. Sissy hates it because she is a Daddy’s girl and misses him like crazy when he’s gone. Judah is still kind of oblivious to the whole thing at this point, but he loves talking to Daddy on the phone at bedtime.

I have a hard time during these stretches for a number of reasons. For one, my husband is my best friend (sickeningly cute, I know) and I miss him when he’s not here. Second, we have three little munsters and it’s hard flying solo 24/7. I have NO IDEA how single parents and military spouses do it. By the end of a busy work week I simply have no conversation or energy left to expend and I stare blankly at friend’s faces when they are silly enough to try to talk to me.

Miss Eden is getting to an age, I think, when she is becoming more and more aware of how I’m really feeling. She can sense when I’m near the breaking point; she knows these past couple of weeks have been looooong and exhausting. Since she’s in school all day long, five days a week we don’t get much time together to just…be.

After the fifth or sixth day sans ‘Paternal Parent Figure,’ Eden just started coming into my room and sleeping with me. She would snuggle up to me/my body pillow and soak up the mommy-ness. On about day eight she just sat down and said she wanted some time alone with me.

My sweet Eden. She gets a bad rap sometimes because she’s so strong and seems so sure of herself, while Adaleine is so charming and easygoing. Eden will sometimes stiffen in a hug and her sister will throw her arms around you. When Eden holds back, Adaleine leaps ahead with bouncing ringlets and 1,000-watt smile.

But Eden has a heart that is so soft and sweet and longing for connection and encouragement. She is beginning to be quite the reader and takes so much pride in her new skill. She will read book after book to her little brother, and only gets frustrated some of the time. : )

So when I knew Landon was going to be home this afternoon, I told my Eden that she and I were going on a special afternoon together, just the two of us. She started bouncing up and down—a very common Eden response to good news—and said she couldn’t wait.

We didn’t do anything fancy. We made a special trip to the mall to get cookies at The Cookie Company. When I told her she could choose whatever flavor she wanted for her very own big cookie, you would think she’d never tasted sugar before she was so excited. (And she’s totally tasted sugar before.)

After our cookie excursion we headed over to the craft store to see if we could find any butterfly goodies for her birthday party coming up in a couple of months. She ooh’d and aahh’d over stickers and key chains and held my hand the entire time. She was a little sponge and she was soaking up our time together.

My Eden is coming up on her sixth birthday. Six!! And as much as I know that she’s still a little girl who needs to be treated with care and gentleness, the knowledge is creeping in that she’s entering a whole new phase of life. There’s so much complexity in this little girl that it amazes and terrifies me at the same time. Some days I don’t know how to be a mommy and I can’t imagine what I possibly have to give, but I’m reminded that so much of being a mommy is simply ‘being.’ Sometimes that is all they need from me and I can always dig down for a little more to dole out.

My Eden. My delight.