kennedy rae.

our little princess, total drama queen, incredibly tender hearted, baby girl.

a few quick things about sissy at 2 1/2 years old:

*she thanks me after every meal "thanks for making me this dinner mommy!"

*she loves her brother, every time we pick up jaden from school she immediately hugs him, and all the way home tells him, "I really missed you at school Jaden" and "how was your school? what did you do?"

*she's potty trained... this girl never ceases to amaze me. she basically potty trained herself, and i LOVE her for it ;) no more diapers = a very happy momma.

*she loves her school, and loves reporting everything back to me about her day... my top 2 lines about school, she said "we were on our nap mats, and i was talking, and my teacher said SHH!" and "i went poop in the potty, and my teacher said Good JOB!!"

*she gets her feelings hurt very very easy. if you discipline her, or raise your voice even a notch, she starts crying so hard she'll stop breathing. it is impossible to stay mad at her with that sad face, and when we ask her what's wrong, she'll say through her tears every time, "You REALLY scared me!!!" she'll always say "i need a hug to make me feel better" or "i need a kiss to make me feel better"

*she doesn't like scary things... she hates anything even remotely scary in movies, so halloween time isn't turning out to be her favorite season for going to the store. every time we are at the store, she starts asking "Mommy are there scaries in Walmart?" (or whatever store we are walking into) then she is in an entire panic all through the store. poor girl. she will definitely NOT be a girl that loves haunted houses ;)

*she falls... a lot. she never watches where she is going, and so she is always falling, poor girl :( because she falls a lot she cries... a lot.

*she loves to give foot rubs & back tickles. especially to daddy. she loves to take care of her daddy.

*she loves to help clean up toys, do the dishes, and do the laundry... i love having a little helper.

*she loves reading, our weekly trip to the library brings her so much happiness, and she spends time on the couch every day reading books.

*she loves to color pictures, and is trying to keep up with Jade by learning to write letters.

*she loves all things pretty. bows, flowers & headbands for her hair, earrings, bracelets & necklaces, pretty skirts, costumes, and "comfy" underwear. she gets really really excited any time she tries on new clothes, and loves feeling pretty.

Feeding the ducks

This week has been a little bit of a hard one. I don't even know why, I have just been out of funk, and having a hard time focusing on work, having a hard time finding projects and fun things to do with the kids, and it feels like I'm just out of ideas on what to do everyday.

So I decided to go for a drive and just at least be out of our house, sissy screamed until she fell asleep, and after about 20 minutes of driving around town, jade said, "mommy where are we going?" i realized he was bored out of his mind, so we stopped by a little river and went and fed the ducks.

It was actually perfect. We needed the fresh air, and sunshine. Even though the ducks wouldn't eat our goldfish (that's all I had in the car) we still had a great time watching them, and a few even came and said hi to us.

There was a park right there, and we played for a minute, but it was just too stinking hot, so we hit up happy hour at sonic, and got some half priced drinks :)

By the time we were heading home, I think we were all feeling a little bit better.


- Posted from my iPhone

scenes from the weekend.

we had a perfect relaxing weekend. sissy started potty training last week. she is doing incredible. she is so ready, and i can't even begin to express how THRILLED i am about this. she is still wearing a diaper at night, but that is it. YAY! almost finished. wahoo!! she has been a super easy potty trainer. she just gets it. i think it comes from watching jade... and she is just so ready. i was trying to get her to pose for a "big gir

l undies" shot and trying to get her to show me her bum, all i got was the shot above.. very cute.. just no undies...

jade also wanted to do a "big kid undies" shot he wanted to pull his pants down and show his underwear, but settled for just the pose. :)

oh, and this pose is while i was trying so desperately to get her undies shot, and asking her to at least smile... this is what she gave me... seriously?? you call this a smile!? oh my funny girl.

last night was the season opener for the cowboys. it was SO fun watching them again, too bad they lost. let's just say we were a sad house last night.

so as always we all wore our cowboys attire. :)

in other news, jade decided what he will be for halloween! super exciting... he has been pretty convinced for the last week that he is going to be a bee.. okay first of all, he can be whatever he wants to be... honest... but when i google "bee costumes" its all cute girl tutus & baby costumes, so we tried really hard to find another option. enter buzz lightyear...

um, yes please! he will be the cutest buzz ever. he is SO stoked... i don't think he realized he could be buzz, but we were looking at different costumes, and he saw a buzz costume, and just about lost it. super exciting! he woke up this morning, saying "okay let's go get my buzz costume" not quite bubba. oh and by the way halloween is still a month and a half away... we will be living in anticipation until then :)

meanwhile... sissy is still trying to decide what she will be... she was pretty sure she would be a witch (which by the way i think would be ADORABLE) but now that jade is being buzz, she is thinking about being Jessie from Toy Story... she goes back and forth... we will probably wait a couple weeks to decide for sure.

so as we were looking for halloween costumes, we came across this little number...

we were dying laughing ALL day yesterday... jade is pretty convinced that since he is being buzz that cam should be woody... ohmygoodnessgracious.. i cannot imagine anything more hilarious... so maybe... just maybe... ;)

after the sad end of the game last night, i got online with all of my tno besties and we had a gchat shower for my cute friend Em. she is having her first boy any day now, and we can't wait to see what he will look like!!! it was fun to feel like we were kinda all together, or at least all doing the same thing at the same time. i miss those girls...

moving is SO hard... and i feel like i will never ever be able to make friends as amazing as that again. love them.

_____________________

today was spent hanging out with my little "dude" and the "cutest girl ever"

they were cracking themselves up wearing giant socks all morning.

today we went to the park & the library with sissy wearing underwear and ZERO accidents!! I have been so nervous to take her anywhere, because that just adds complications if anything happened... but she did great. did i mention how excited i am that i am almost finished with diapers... forEVER?!?!?!

no? okay, well i am. :)

Writing his name.

Jade started this week not knowing how to write his name... Thanks to his sweet teachers, and a little extra time spent with momma at nights, he signed in to class today... All by himself...


I'm so proud of my sweet boy. He has been such a brave big boy this week, he is already learning so much, and loves his teachers. Everyday when he comes home we ask him about school and he usually says "oh nothin" or "I ate my snack" it takes the rest of the day of prying for info and by bedtime we usually know most of what's going on. I seriously am the most proud mom right now. He is loving it, and hasn't been nervous at all.

I love my baby boy.

- Posted from my iPhone

first day of school.

today was one of the hardest days of my life.

we have been preparing for this day all summer... yesterday we peeked into their backpacks 6 million times, and named all the school supplies they had all ready for school. they were ready. i was not.

last night i got just about ZERO sleep. it was miserable. i tossed and turned all night worrying about all the things that would go wrong, and how they would take it all.

this morning we got up, got ready, peeked into the backpacks one last time, packed a special lunch for Sissy, took a couple pictures, and head out the door on our way to school...

we got to school, and went to Sissy's class first. she has the cutest 2 teachers ever, and i could not be more thrilled about them. cute kids were surrounding her, and she was feeling a little bit shy at first... her teacher walked over and starting talking to her, telling her how cute her skirt and flower were, and that was it. she was fine. i gave her and kiss, and me & jade headed out the door. she didn't even watch me leave, she was already to busy playing.

then we went over to jade's class, his teacher met us at the door, and jade gave her all his school supplies, he was really excited to show her all his things, and she seemed equally excited...

then he turned, looked at me, and said goodbye.

WHAT THE HECK?!?!

where did my baby go? this is the baby boy that just last year i had to stay with at preschool for 6 straight months.... and now he just turns and says goodbye??

i stood there, a little confused (i was honestly ready to sit there with him for an hour or two until he was ready to leave) and then the teacher asked him to sign in, and write his name (he doesn't know how to write his name) he confidently walked over to the sign in sheet, "wrote" his name (wrote some cute little characters) and said to me, "that's a 'J'" it was so sweet, then he looked at me again, and said "okay bye!"

so i left...

well sort of. i walked out into the hall, and spent the next 5 minutes, pacing the halls/peeking in at him. he was fine.

it was the strangest feeling.

both my babies went to school. i was all alone.

i went out into the hall, and saw the sweet preschool director, she asked me how it went (because she knew how worried i was about it all) and i seriously could not get words out of my mouth. i said, "i can't even talk about it right now" and ran outside... barely made it to my car... and burst into tears...

i cried all the way home, ran in to the house, and cried harder.

did i mention they were BOTH at school?? like here I am 25 years old the mother of 2 children, and somehow I am already alone at home... how did this happen? how did they grow up so fast?

the house felt SO empty.

i forced myself to work, and actually got a ton done. it's amazing how much easier it is to work when the kids aren't around. this will be really good for me, give me some time to get work done without distraction... give me a minute alone to breath, today it was just hard, but i know it will end up being such a good thing.

also i know how absolutely amazing this is going to be for the kids. jade took a huge step today, and i know it will only get better.

cam & i picked up jade at noon, and he had done AMAZING. he had so much fun, and told us all about his day. he read books, colored, glued, learned about the letter A, played at the playground, played with the kitchen, he got a special pencil that says "welcome to school" from his teacher, colored a booklet about the first week of school, and got his first homework assignment. it was awesome.

then at 2:30 we went and picked up Sissy. same thing, she had so much fun, her school is more playing than jade, and she gets to stay longer, and eat lunch and take a nap because she only goes once a week. so she took a nap on her little nap mat, ate all of her lunch, she told me about her little friend that is a girl, but she doesn't remember her name, and they played with a bouncy ball together... it was sweet watching her try to remember everything about her day.

so it was a hard day, but wow, this is going to be such a great thing...

for all of us...

discovery center.

we have a fun little discovery center in amarillo so me and the kids went and checked it out on friday morning.

it took a lot of convincing to get sis into this dark room with this freaky ball. it was pretty awesome though!

they had lots and lots of hands on things that the kids loved

one of the "scientist" worker guys came over and taught jade about this strobe light machine... he sat there for about 15 minutes after just absolutely fascinated!

they stood in front of the green screen and watched themselves dance on tv with the flowers

there was an awesome play house which the kids called Grandma's house.

it's called the d.h. discovery center, and jade thought the letter h was pretty neat and wanted to do a special pic with it :)

it was awesome because we had the whole place to ourselves... we definitely will be going back soon!

meet the teacher.

last thursday we went to the kids school to "meet the teacher night"

sissy's teachers are miss shanna & miss amanda

they let her play with the toys for a minute, and become familiar with the room... she especially loved the babies

jade's teachers are miss karen & miss nancy

he did a scavenger hunt to find all the areas of the room...

his very favorite is the kitchen.

all day today they have been packing and unpacking backpacks, talking about school... wishing it was right now, going over that we won't be grumpy or sad, just happy!

they are both really excited...

for right now i am just a little bit of a nervous wreck...

tomorrow will be hard for sure. but also exciting. for all of us.

everyday things i heart #3

playdoh.

i have a love/hate relationship with playdoh.

i love playing with it, love the kids playing with it. but i hate the tiny pieces of playdoh all over the floor, smashed into the table and chairs...

i still heart playdoh though... and so do they...

jade's favorite cutter.

the end is near.

summer feels like it is ending waaaaay too soon this year.

maybe it's because we have lived in 3 different cities this summer.

or maybe it's because we live in a colder place this year, and summer is just really ending sooner...

or maybe it's because my babies start school next week, and i feel like that day is coming much too fast, and the closer we get the more nervous i get.

either way... the end is near. we went to the pool this week and just about froze! the water was stinkin cold, and when we got out, the air wasn't much better.

it was still fun. we love swimming. i just wish this summer could last a tiny bit longer! a few pics from our swim afternoon.... notice the kids are like barely in the water... but for the record me and sis did get all the way in and swim :)

jade's loud laugh. i love it.

helping leo learn to back float

they play together like this all day everyday... no matter where we are...

they are the bestest friends