How Does Your Garden Grow

After many years of discussing a garden, Tim and I finally got around to planting three tomato plants. I didn't figure that we would get too many tomatoes but I was wrong. Over the weekend Tim picked and brought in over thirty tomatoes! How on earth were we going to eat all these tomatoes?! Thankfully I consulted Pinterest and figured it out. From those tomatoes I made salsa, stewed tomatoes, and fire roasted tomatoes. I froze the stewed tomatoes and fired roasted tomatoes to use for later. Below are the fruits of my labor. I'm glad that none of those tomatoes went go waste and can't wait to have fresh tomatoes in the winter. 

Staying home with the girls on my maternity leave has been great and crazy at the same time. Below are some of those ahh moments brought to you by Lilybelle and Claire. 

The Mundane

We've all settled into a daily routine around here. I'm enjoying my time with the two girls just doing the daily mundane tasks. Weather permitting we go for a walk and I try to take them to the museum once a week. We also clean the house and do a load or two of the never ending laundry. 

 We've had some colds in the family lately so it's changed our routine a little. On Friday Lilybelle and I built a fort using boxes and a sheet. It was a lot of fun. 

We've also been looking for a minivan for about a month. We realized after Claire was born that two kids and all their stuff don't fit too well in a compact car which is what Tim and I both have. So after looking at a lot of minivans we bought one today. Tim did a pretty good job negotiating for it. I can't wait to really get to use it. 

A Day at the Discovery and 1 Month Old

Today I summoned up my courage and took Lilybelle and Claire to the Discovery Museum. It went better than I expected. We might even do it again.

This week is bubble week at the museum and since Lilybelle is obsessed with bubbles right now I figured we had to go. It was pretty cool. We made a bubble snake and watched ivory soap turn into foam in the microwave. We also played in the river exhibit, went down the slide, played with the foam coal, and generally ran amok (and by we I mean Lilybelle, Claire and I just followed her). Claire was a perfect angel who slept in her baby bjorn the whole time. 

Today also marks Claire turning one month old. Below is her one month photo. I can't believe it has already been one month. Time flew. So I guess that means I must be having fun. :)

Aunt Shana comes to visit

My sister Shana just spent a week out with us. It was a fun week. We hung out, visited with family, and did some shopping. While she was out here we also blessed Claire. She looked so precious in her blessing gown. Originally she was going to wear the same gown as Lilybelle but at the eleventh hour I found my blessing gown. I had been looking for it off and on for the past few years with no luck. But the night before I decided to look in a container I thought I had looked in before. I must not have been very thorough because I found it!

But let me back up. A few days after Shana arrived, we drove down to our parents' house and spent the day with our Mom and little sister. Lilybelle even tried out Minden's sunglasses. 

She looks so good in the sunglasses but I can't get her to wear sunglasses her size. Ugh. 

On Shana's last day we went out to Legends for a little shopping, water, and lunch. I wanted to buy the girls matching dresses but Carter's was having a good sale so we went a little crazy. Let's just say that there is more than one matching outfit. 

While I fed Claire, Shana and Lilybelle played in the water. It was so cute. 

4th of July

Yesterday we had a good Independence Day. The day started by dressing the girls in matching outfits (I've always wanted to do that).


My parents came up for the day and after nap time we went to the River School Farm to look at artwork and flowers. I've never been out there and I wasn't disappointed.



After our little outing we came home and had dinner complete with a patriotic desert - vanilla ice cream on top of a blueberry raspberry crisp.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

A Long Time Coming

I haven't posted in a while, mostly because I'm lazy and this last pregnancy totally took all my energy (my almost two year old probably didn't help any, she has limitless energy). But I felt the need to introduce our newest member of the family.

Claire was born on June 25, 2014 at 5:42 am. She weighed in at 8 pounds 10 ounces. She is the spitting image of her big sister when she was born. The good news with Claire is that she was only three days late versus her sister who was eleven days late and had to be forced out via an induction.

Funny story on her birth. I was originally scheduled for an induction on June 26, 2014. My doctor took pity on me and went ahead and scheduled it when I asked for one. I went and saw him on Tuesday (June 24) and he told me I was dilated to a 2. He went ahead and massaged my cervix and I went home fully prepared to check into the hospital on Thursday evening. I got home, put Lilybelle down to bed and took a nap myself. When I woke up, I felt some cramping but I didn't think anything about it. Tim got home later than normal that day and I told him that he was in charge of dinner because I thought I was having contractions. He wanted to know why I hadn't texted him when I my response was "I think I'm in labor." I told him I didn't think it was a big deal. I continued to be in denial that I was in labor until about 8 that night when Tim insisted that we start timing my contractions. Sure enough they were 5 minutes apart and lasting about a minute. I labored at home until a little before midnight when we called my mother-in-law who came over to watch Lilybelle and Tim took me to the hospital. My sister-in-law, who is a labor and delivery nurse, just happened to be working that night. She checked me out and sure enough I was far enough along to stay in the hospital. Which was good because I didn't think I was up to laboring at home anymore. A little less than 6 hours of labor (soo much less than Lilybelle) Claire was born. It was an amazing experience! It was so different than my labor with Lilybelle that I felt like having a kid before this didn't really give me any insider knowledge. My sister-in-law was my nurse and she did an awesome job. It was such a special experience. But without further ado please meet Claire Yvaine.

Lilybelle seems to really like Claire. She keeps calling her "my baby." I'm glad that she loves her little sister. Lilybelle has also taken to water. That's all she talks about. So on Saturday she went swimming in her cousin's pool and had a blast.

I'll try to be better about the updates in the future.

Catch up

It's been a long time since I've posted anything. It seems we have been busy with one thing or another, so I decided that I would do a catch up post.

In the past two months Lilybelle has accomplished so much. In a matter of two weeks she got four new teeth and about a month later she got one more, so in total she has eight teeth now and I think she is teething again.

Around the middle of October Lilybelle started walking. In the beginning she was still more prone to walk around on her knees, but lately she's taken to walking much more, but she still looks like a little drunken sailor. Tim says that her lack of coordination must be hereditary and that she gets it from me (sigh).

For Halloween she was a little flower. She went to my friend's Halloween party and kept her costume on the whole time and didn't fidget with it. I was extremely pleased. She also went over to her aun and uncle's for Halloween, but didn't go trick or treating with her cousins because she just wasn't feeling it. We had to leave early because she was tired and cranky.

Her hair is finally growing and it is getting long enough to put in a little ponytail. She won't leave it in yet, but at some point I think she will (or at least I hope because her hair is starting to get in her eyes).

We took her to the Discovery Museum for the first time yesterday. It was a lot of fun. They have a lot more going on then I realized. She had a blast walking around the place and even wanted to walk down the stairs by herself. She went down the slide, played with blocks, and played in the water. I didn't get any good pictures because she wanted to be on the move.