Sisters...and makeup

 

Pigtails

I LOVE Pigtails on little girls! And I love that I randomly have pictures of both of my girls when they wore pigtails for the first time. Below is Breanna and Deci. Yes, that blond hair teenager fixing Deci's hair is the same dark hair Breanna that lives with us. :) We spent the afternoon with some friends at Cherokee Rock Village and Breanna wanted to fix Deci's hair. I'm not sure why I had never thought to put Deci's hair up in pigtails before but this started a trend. I still love Deci's hair in pigtails but she rarely lets me put her hair up these days.

 Yesterday I was holding Journey and playing with her afro hair and realized it could go up in pigtails!! It took me and my mom to accomplish getting her hair up and entertaining her with my phone to actually get these pictures.  Her hair was up no more than 2 minutes before she figured out she could pull them out and I doubt she will let me put them in again but look how cute!

Notice it took both of these girls playing with cell phones, which I rarely let them play with, to hold their attention long enough to get their hair up!

"I will NEVER let my kids..."

         Have you ever said those words? "I will never let my kids"...and fill in the blank.  I will never let my kids eat fast food, especially before they turn 1 (or 2 or 8 ha!).  I will never let my kid fuss in a restaurant and disrupt other people while eating. I will never let my kids make me so mad that I scream. I will never let my kid sleep on their tummy because back to sleep, right? I will NEVER let my kids sleep with me! NEVER! Hahaha! I laugh at myself now at all the times I said things like these above.  I took this picture below a few days ago.

   These girls are in mine and Quinton's bed. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do and when it comes to sleep I'm all about making that happen.  When Deci was younger we were really strict with not letting her sleep with us.  When she woke up in the middle of the night and climbed in bed with us we always took her back.  We figured if we let her once that she would keep coming back.  It's funny how when child number 2 comes along sleep becomes more important and you bend the rules a little more. These girls wake up often in the middle of the night and most of the time we encourage that they stay in their beds but sometimes it's easier to tuck them tight in the bed with us and go back to sleep. If you want to read a funny story about us switching Deci over to her "big girl" bed read HERE.

A Year Update. Part 2

June: We started off June with another visit from Q's dad, Rick and his wife Hilde. She is originally from Washington so it works out that they get to come out for a visit more often than most. It just so happens that we found a house about 5 minutes outside Eugene so we moved while they were here. Convenient huh? We loved having the extra help moving! Pictured above is Deci playing on our sidewalk! We've always lived in the country so Deci has never had sidewalk to draw on and she is loving it!

Also in June, Q's best friend from High school, Jason and his wife Brittany came out for Q's birthday. We loved having these guys here. If you can't tell we LOVE having visitors! It makes us less homesick.

July: We took the girls camping for their first time and they loved it, especially Deci. She is such a tomboy for the most part...

Towards the end of July we flew home to sweet home Alabama! One of my best friends from high school was getting married and asked me to be in her wedding. I was so excited and jumped at the opportunity to get to fly home. Q got a new Job at the Eugene Mission this month so he could only stay for one week, but the girls and I stayed two weeks. There were so many pictures I wanted to post for our trip home. We crammed in so much in those two weeks. Deci loved getting to hold her chicken Sarah.

We also played in the water a lot!

It was such a fun trip back for so many reason. We got to see family. We got to celebrate with our friend getting married and saw our high school friends. We had grandparents to babysit so we got to go out on dates with friends to Huntsville and stay up way too late. We visited our home church, Lifepoint and saw our friends who's support and prayers for us are unbelievable. Life would be so much harder here without their support.

August: We flew back home to Oregon August 2nd and Breanna flew back with me and the girls to stay with us! We are so blessed to have her with us. She came out to be a part of our Crash team here but she also is the best babysitter in the world and we are so thankful that she is here to help us. The girls love her so much. Journey calls her "Nana." :)

Journey's had her first birthday August 31st. Here is a picture when she was about a week old. Look at all that DARK hair!! I thought she was going to be the child who would look like me but over the year it has lightened up so much. She is so much fun! Who knew having two kids could be this fun? She is so spunky and dances with her shoulders, which I love. She takes life slow. She LOVES her sister. I can't believe it's been a year!

Q's Mom and her husband Alan got to come out a week for Journey's birthday. We loved having them here to celebrate with us and also for the great Southern food she cooked for us all week! One night she cooked enough for a Thanksgiving meal and we invited the Crash team and our neighbors over.

September: Q's Dad and Hilde got to come back for another visit! Yes again and we LOVE it! (Have I said that we LOVE having visitors!!) They took us to Florence to ride the dune buggies on the sand dunes. This was SO much fun!

We went camping again. This time it was a little bit colder, but most of our Crash team got to come out. We celebrated Derrick's birthday.

October: Deci turned 4 this month! I honestly can't believe I have a 4-year-old. This girl keeps me going...honestly she never slows down. I love her so much and she has taught me so much about being a mom. She is little miss independent. She is so much like her dad it's not even funny. God has truly blessed us with her!

Halloween!

November: I think November passed without me realizing it...I'm not sure much happened in this month. I guess we rested most of this month. Of course we spent many Saturday's watching football.

We had a few pretty days and we took a walk to the park.

And we spent Thanksgiving with some friends here. My wonderful husband made the chicken and dressing which neither one of us realized how much his mom did to make....seriously, homemade biscuits, corn bread, toast and all sorts of goodness.... we are slowly learning to appreciate how much our family (mostly moms) did to make the holidays happen!

Whew, that was long...That pretty much gets you caught up to December.