snow in TEXAS

We got snow AGAIN! I can't believe it! We have lived here for 3 winters now, and we have only seen it snow twice, and both this year!! This was WAY more snow than we saw last time, so it was even more fun!! We spent a good part of our day all bundled up, playing outside!!

Jade had a snow cone last Saturday, so he definitely had it in his head that snow was for eating... and he ate a LOT of snow! :)

With Cam gone there was a lot of pressure to make the snowman awesome without him...

I think he's awesome!!! Pretty much the best snowman EVER!!

He might just be a little more girly than Cam would have made him ;) Sis thought it was so funny that he was wearing her tutu!

One of his grape eyes fell off, so Jade picked it up...

and ate it!

seriously though... don't you think he's the best snowman ever!?!!!

my babes.

Oh, how I love these two children.

Cam has been gone this week taking the BAR in Dallas, and even more than before, I am realizing how in love with these children I am. I don't even have words to describe how much they mean to me. I just love them. And I just wanted to do a post, just to remind myself of the feelings I have right now.

It's weird because they are just growing up so fast, I feel like we just FLEW through the baby stage and now we are entering the big kid stage. Weird.... They are learning to communicate themselves better, which is making it SO much fun. It's no longer just sitting around not talking all day, but we are ALWAYS talking... They are so sweet.

Jade always likes to remind himself of things he is concerned or worried about, and since Cam left he keeps saying "Daddy is taking the BAR" (except one time yesterday when he said Daddy is GOING to the BAR... lol.) Anyway, tonight he was talking about Daddy taking the BAR, and being gone and telling Sissy that he'll be back (he feels a little bit like a parent to her, and likes to teach her, and boss her around a little bit) Anyway, he's talking to Sis and I realize, he has been saying "Daddy is taking the BARN" because then he rambled off off to Sis about all the animals, and how Daddy is going to see them!! AHAHA! I love what a cush life they think their Daddy has... reading all day, and then gets to go on a 4 day trip to the barn to see all the animals!!!! They crack me up.

Sissy has started to really express herself. We are discovering more and more that this little babe has quite the attitude! She has started saying things like, "NO WAY!!" when we ask her to do something, and the other day we were at the park, and from the moment we got there she was running around the playground, going up and down the slide shouting, "I'm NOT done yet! I'm not done YET! I'm not done YET!" She usually wants anything Jaden does, if he asks for something she just HAS to have it. She is a total Daddy's girl, and will go running to him ALL the time... I love it, and Cam does too.

Okay, i didn't mean to go off with all of that. I actually want to do a whole post for Sissy next week for her birthday! I can't believe she is turning 2!!! CRAZY! We are celebrating her birthday tomorrow, and having a PINK party!!

Anyway, I wish I was a writer and could express myself better with words... but this will have to do for now...

My family is my whole world. I am missing Cameron SOOO much, I HATE being away from him.. it is so hard on both of us... but I am just so glad I have these two with me, to keep me happy, and loved.

And to keep me silly! :)

Learning Days: A, 1, Cows, Square

So, with lots of time alone with the kids lately, I have become desperate for things for us to do together. So after lots of thinking I decided to start a Learning Days program with them. We are starting with a 5 day a week program, just a little something each of the days. I searched and searched online for the perfect program for us, and I really like bits a pieces of many different programs. I really wanted something that would help Sissy learn, Jade is already getting a little bit from his Preschool program, but I still want him to be learning as well. So I needed something right in between.

So, the main schedule that we are going to go by though is the Letter of the Week Curriculum. And then we will add in some different art projects, and our own little personal touches! :)

Every week we will have a theme (this week was Cows), a vocabulary word (this week was calf) a letter of the alphabet, a number, an alternating shape or color, and a nursery rhyme. Each day we will focus on one aspect and review the rest all week. I'm going to try to blog at the end of each week what we talked about, and what we did.

Jade knows his alphabet completely, but I would LOVE to start working with him on writing. We haven't done that at all, so we'll see how it goes. He is definitely interested, and we had a lot of fun with A. We traced it. Tried writing it on a blank paper.

and drew A's in rice!
Sis now knows the letter A!! This is her first introduction to the alphabet, and she is SO intrigued! All week she pointed out A's that she found all over the place in books, signs, food packaging, everything. It was adorable.

The theme for this week was cows.

Our first cow project was paper plate cows. It was another first for Sis. I have never let her glue before, she did it so carefully, and loved every minute.

They turned out so cute, the kids loved their paper plate cows!!

Every week we are going to try to make an animal letter, so we at the end we can put together an alphabet book of them. This week we made an Alligator A!

Our nursery rhyme this week was Hey Diddle Diddle.

The kids both learned it, and we said it together many times all week.

So, to learn a little more about cows, and our nursery rhyme, we went for a little drive out in the country to find some cows!! After a while we had luck!!! There were some cows right by the road, so we pulled over and said hello!

Our last project of the week, was to use our shape (squares) to make a cow. Kind of a freaky looking cow, but the kids had fun! :)
So, some weeks, I'll do more, some weeks I'll do less, it will just all depend on what is going with us every week!!

all by himself.

Jaden has officially gone to preschool all by himself 2 1/2 times now. It's weird because I have spent so much heart ache over the past year worrying about him ever being able to go to school/nursery/sunbeams all by himself, and now he is ready and going all by himself and it just about killed me.

The first time I left him, I told him I just was going to go out to my car, and I'd be right back in a couple minutes. He said, "Okay, and don't be sad!" (telling himself not to be sad) and he gave me a kiss and I left. I just left. What the heck?! I thought for sure, that before I would get to the door he would be chasing after me, begging me to stay. Nope, he just kept doing his thing. AH! I slowly walked out to my car, and just sat there for like 10 minutes. I couldn't leave. I sat there freaking out, praying my baby would be okay. And he was. I came back about 10 minutes early and he ran to me, "Mommy, you came BACK!!!!" I guess every 5 or 10 minutes he would say to his teacher, "Mommy will be back!" basically reassuring himself. So he did it. And I did it. I'm not sure which is the biggest accomplishment... But we've done it.

Here is a pic Lindsey got of him while I was gone. Such a punkin!

So the second week I had Sissy with me. We dropped him off the same way, except I really only took him inside, and I immediately left. Sis was DEVASTATED. She apparently got the idea that she could go to preschool too (usually she stays home with Daddy) but we were obviously just dropping him off... so she bawled and bawled and bawled. Poor girl. She kept crying "MY FWENDS!! MY FWENDS!!!" :(

last week and valentines day.

It has been overwhelmingly cold here for the last couple weeks so we have had to find LOTS of things to do inside. It's been fun, Cam is here studying all day everyday anyway, so if I can't be with him, the next best thing is to be in the same house as him.

I'm not sure what day we did what, but here are the pictures I have to remind me of a few of the things we did!

one of our FAV things to do is always painting. Usually I just strip them down to paint, so their clothes don't get messy, but this time we cut holes in garbage bags and used them as smocks. Jade had done this once before in school, but this was Sissy's first time "wearing a garbage bag" she was totally cracking up about it!

Jade went to preschool ALL BY HIMSELF!!!!!! (a whole separate post on that later)

we played dress up one day...

I always get lots of cuddles from my sweet boy.

yes she put this outfit together.

not supposed to be sitting on the coffee table and just got CAUGHT!!

Kennedy had been sick for the past week, and JUST as I thought we were getting over it, Jade got sick. AH! It seems like one of them is ALWAYS sick!!! Anyway, so we haven't even been able to enjoy being cold inside with friends, because we don't want to get them sick too!

It has been exhausting, but at the same time relieving. Sometimes it is nice to get a break from the kids, and be able to hang with another adult. But, I love these kids SOOOO much. And it is so fun to watch them play, and just be chill together...

I have given myself this month off of work, and it has been WONDERFUL. I have had a few small things to work on here and there. But no appointments or shoots, and no major sessions or weddings to edit. I miss it all, it gives me such a huge release in life, but I really needed this break.

Cam has seriously been studying NONSTOP. Ugh, I miss him, but even more, I feel so bad for him, it has really been hell for him.

BUT, a week from tomorrow and this will all be over... and we'll be headed to Europe together in 10 DAYS!!!! We could not have planned this trip at a better time... I can't wait to be with him, and be alone... and just enjoy each other.

moving on...

Valentines Day was a perfect lazy day. Jaden was at the peak of his sickness (he's starting to feel a little better now... 4 days later) so we couldn't make it to church.

We woke up, and had some delicious chocolate milk...

and Jade and I made some scrum-dilly-umptious pink chocolate chip heart shaped pancakes!

he loves anytime I let him into the kitchen to help me... I really need to do it more often.

totally out of focus pic, but you get the point.

later that day we did some MORE valentines baking, and made sugar cookies!

They were TOTALLY into it, it was so fun...

she is SUCH a Daddy's girl! She was so very proud of her shirt! Don't be surprised if you see this in pics often. She absolutely LOVED sporting her love for her Daddy!

My poor baby. So sick... I was trying to steal a kiss, but he wasn't going to have it.

I kept looking at him, and noticing how sick he looked, so I'd say, "Oh baby! I'm so sorry you are so sick!!" And he kept saying, "NO! I'm NOT sick!!" LOL. I don't know why, but he was in total denial. He cracks me up.

Watched our new fav show Team Omizoomi on NickJr

cookies were baked and cooled and ready to be decorated!! Sissy was very detailed in decorating her cookie.

Jade just mostly wanted to eat it.

I let them take a cookie and milk into Daddy (who was of course studying). They were SO excited, and walked in proudly, and told him Happy Valentines Day. It was neat to watch. They love him, and love every moment they can get with him lately.

During their "couple five minutes" together, I walked by and Jade had set himself up a little bed inside of one of his toys buckets. You can't see the bucket, but he is in it. I started laughing, and told him how cool it was, and he said, "Do you want to take a picture of me?" ABSOLUTELY, I do. I love taking pictures of him, and I love even more that it was his idea.

It makes me sad though, he looks so sick in this pic!

SO, that is what we have been up to!! :)

Graduation!!

So after 2 years and 9 months, we are finished with Law School!!! Yay!!!! It was so nice to finally be able to celebrate all of Cam's hard work! Such a happy day!! The graduation ceremony was at Waco Hall on the Baylor campus.

The kids loved the balloons they had outside!!

We were so lucky to have both sets of parents there to support us!

Cam's parents reading the program together.

The program was really neat... they let each of the graduates write a couple sentences in it. I hadn't seen what Cam wrote, and it totally teared me up as I was sitting there reading his message. This was his:

"To my wife Nicole, thank you for all your support, encouragement and unconditional love. I love you. To my two beautiful children Jaden and Kennedy, I love both with all my heart. You can do anything you put your minds to. Do Justice, love mercy, walk humbly."

So sweet.

And here are my parents with Sis.

And the ceremony started. It was really, really neat. And I seriously could not keep my eyes dry. I am such a baby I know. It has just been quite the three years for him. I'm so happy it's all over.

Jade watching his Daddy graduate. So proud.

Cam being hooded as a graduate from Baylor Law School!!!

SO COOL! Like seriously so cool. Me and the kids were SO PROUD!!!!

Cam with his parents (and the kids)

Me and my LAWYER hubby! :)

Yep, that's my husband. I love him.

Then we headed over to the law school for a reception, some yummy food, and to socialize!

We have given Baylor Law School a LOT of money. So we told Sissy to eat all the cheese she could!! ;)

just the 4 of us again.

Everyone!!

Then we walked around the law school to check out where Cam had classes and such.

Jade thought it was pretty neat, and decided he wanted to be law student too!

One of the classrooms. This is the one he had PC in.

Playing 1, 2, 3 weeeeeeee!! with grandparents.

That night we all went to Johnny Carinos for some delicious food and good times!!

It was an awesome weekend!

Have I mentioned how proud I am of him??