Gracie pics...

Miss Gracie has been sleeping so good lately. She nearly slept through the night last night, plus a 2+ hour nap today. It was a little unusual for her, but I'll certainly take it, got a lot accomplished today. :)

Hopping back on to add a couple of Skype pics, oh my goodness, Skype is the best thing in the world:

Kissing daddy:

pics of the girls....

I kept meaning to get these up on the blog, I've had them for a while. These were taken by my friend, Anne...Fairies and Frogs Photography:





I'm also breathing a huge sigh of relief today, our regular Dr. thought that Gracie might have the same eye issue that Ella has. She saw Ella's eye Dr. today, and her eyes are a-okay. She's slightly far-sighted, but that is totally normal for her age. She was such a trooper. Since her eyes are so dark, she had to get extra drops. I'm so glad we don't have to worry about this with her. :)

just a few pics that I like:

Our next door neighbor, Olivia:


Gracie girl:


Okay, I plan to post more often now because Scott can see the blog. YEA! And we have been using Skype to chat....oh, we love that!! I do have one pic of that, but it's not great. We are loving Skype. We've also been able to see and chat with friends and family we haven't seen in such a long time. We will be using this all the time in Guam. :)

favorite book:

We got one of the audio-recordable books from Hallmark before Scott deployed. Gracie LOVES it. She reads it every night.

Our favorite song to dance to in the mornings:

The stress....

The update: After another meeting with Kate's teacher, I'm happy to report that this situation is not quite as urgent as I had feared. Thank you so much to everyone for all the thoughts on this. I am super passionate about education when it comes to my kiddos, and I'm so happy that I just had a very productive meeting with Kate's teacher. The bottom line: There is still 30 kids in the classroom. 5 kids are still out of control. So the situation remains, but is much clearer now.

Pretty morning, wish I was in a better mood...

Pretty morning. It's been a pretty crappy day, but at least it started off beautiful. I've really got so much I could blog about....but it would take up time and energy, and it would put me in more of a bad mood. Let's just say that there is drama with Kate and Ella's school, and there is a very likely chance that they will be homeschooled this year--starting next week! So....all you homeschooling mommas---I'm going to have a few questions for you really soon. (Specifically for 4th grade-certain subjects). In another post---I'll go into the drama, I've got to cool off first. If you are one of my dear friends that have chatted with me about this--THANK YOU. (Lacy, Leslie, Lisa, and Aunt C especially!) :)

Which is more important?

...having clothes organized for the week OR making sure that every doll has a place to sleep?? (photo taken in Kate's closet today)


Gracie loves listening to my ipod...I think she was listening to Lady Gaga, Bad Romance.

pics:

weekend pics...

My new desk project. I found 2 desks at our local thrift store for $15 a piece several months ago. We love them, but they definitely need to be jazzed up. These will go to Guam with us.

Ella's desk, just beginning, it will look so different by the time I'm done. The girls just had some left over paint I needed to use up quickly.

Ella pics:


Painting in PJs...one of our favorite things to do:

Lots of fun with editing:

The desk a while later:

I'm sick of looking at the desk. It's too busy. Ella LOVES it. So I'll let it be this way for a while in her room, but I'll paint the desk part a solid color later, and leave the funky circle/swirls on the chair. I love lazy painting in PJ weekends. My biggest challenge this week: Getting Kate to keep up with her homework. It really picked up this year.

My 2 favorite youtube videos....

I saw this posted on a friend's facebook page, I just love it:

And my favorite Target commercial:

Time flies...

You know I want the time to fly, really I do....but it's pretty ridiculous how quickly these days are flying by. I've barely been taking pictures. The girls are enjoying school so far, and as soon as I pick them up we are either off to Ella's choir practice, piano, or Kate's swim team practice. We get home, and it's time to whip up a very quick dinner, make sure homework gets done and organized, bath or showers, and then get all three in bed between 8 and 9. That's my life. During the days, I'm trying to pre-plan dinners, make lists of things to do, juggle Dr. and dentist appointments, play with Gracie, get boxes off to Scott...or picking up things he has requested at the store, grocery shop, clean the house, laundry, and make sure Gracie gets at least an hour and a half nap. I have not been able to add running to my schedule since school started, which is my next mission. Blogging has obviously not been a priority either, I've got Gracie watching Dora for a few minutes while I get caught up. Geez. Luckily, I've got the best friends in the world...they are a wonderful support to me. :) Being a stay at home mom is hard work...with or without a husband deployed. A year from now, we will be in Guam...the whole family, no deployments, living on a tropical island. Oh, I CANNOT wait!!




More black and white pics:

big girl...

I love it that she can eat like a big kid now...

The has been a wonderful, lazy, but productive Saturday. I feel the need to clean out the house room by room. I can't stick to focusing on one room at a time, but I am getting things done. I don't know if I can truly become a minimalist, but I am getting better and better at eliminating clutter. When we move to Guam, we likely will live in about 1500 sq. ft...maybe a little less. That's workable, I'm not complaining....but we right now have our house pretty full, and it's a little over 3,000 sq. ft. SO.....I must get rid of clutter, and re-organize as much as possible before we move. Hooray on the great OU football game today!!---that was fun to watch while I was organizing and ironing. I also ordered a bunch of prints from Costco, I've never tried their photo processing before, so I just ordered a few. Their prices are great on larger prints. If my prints turn out great, I'm thinking of getting canvas prints made of my favorite pics. Just rambling/thinking out loud...and procrastinating at the moment. Back to cleaning....

Fun Halloween shirts....

Thank you, Lacy!! They love these.



And earlier today, Gracie was playing with her dollhouse. She was saying "Ruff, Ruff" for the dog when I snapped this.

Then a few minutes later, she was trying to climb in the house!

Back to school...

First day of school. Ella is in 2nd grade. Kate is in 4th.


After school:

Little monkey, Gracie:

The last few weeks were wonderful. We hardly had anything on the schedule. Now that school is back in session, activities are picking up....and I'm completely overwhelmed by the amount of things I have to do. Blog posts will be short and sweet until I can get a grip.