I've been doing my best to get in shape for the Tough Mudder next month....So far, I've lost 15 pounds and can run 7.34 miles straight! And I've only fallen in a hole once and gotten bit by one dog in the process. I'm going to assume that everyone else falls in a couple holes and gets bit by a few dogs....right?

T minus 47 days until the Tough Mudder.

Mud Running

After our very first mud run.

Over the past year, Josh and I picked up a new hobby. We did our very first Mud Run last October and just finished our fourth one. Each time we (and I mean I) do better and better. Josh is the best running partner. He is in terrific shape and during his time in the Army, he did a lot of running and he's fast. But every time we run, he makes sure to stay with me at my pace and he gently pushes me to do better. He never gets frustrated or upset with me that I'm quite a bit slower than he is. I feel like he is just as proud of me as I am when I finish. So, after this last one we decided to try something a little more difficult. So we signed up for the Tough Mudder. I am starting to regret that decision! I've been running and trying to get to where I can at least run the length of the course...it's about 12 miles. And to elaborate, there are obstacles such as jumping across haybales, running through fire, and the ending obstacle is called electroshock therapy, where you run through a field of hanging live wires that will shock you. Yes, I feel as if I may have made a mistake. :) So far, my furthest run to date is 5.61 miles and that was on Sunday. The hard part for me is that my pace is about a 10 minute mile, so running takes a while for me and now that daylight savings is gone, I tend to run out of daylight before I can even get started. But my goals for the Mud Runs were to not walk the course at all, which I've been able to accomplish. So I'm hoping that I won't have to walk on the Tough Mudder, but I'm not even close to 12 miles yet. I'm going to keep pushing and hopefully by January I'll be able to run 10 miles. That's my goal.

I love the holidays!

And here it all starts again. Halloween kicks off my very favorite part of the year. And I'm already excited about Black Friday!!! Halloween was such a success this year. The girls had some pretty cute costumes that other people handmade for me since I am not very good at that sort of thing.... :) Ella was Little Red Riding Hood and Sadie was The Big Bad Wolf. Being that Sadie has grown up pulling hair and biting her sister, I felt that the roles were very fitting! Sadie and I went to Ella's Halloween party yesterday morning at school and we had such a fun time. Sadie wanted so bad to be a big kid like the rest of them. She got to eat cookies with the big kids, play games, and sit in the circle with them.

Here are the kids praying over their snack. It was so cute to hear them saying their prayer in unison.

Sadie got hold of some of the super cool loot Ella got from her party.

Josh and I carved our very first pumpkin. Ella was supposed to have the job of scooping out the seeds, but she was too grossed out!

And we ended the night with a little trick or treating. It was so much fun. Ella would show Sadie where to go and would walk her up to the people handing out candy. And if someone looked a little scary, she'd make sure Sadie was ok. Although I think that was more for her own comfort :) And Sadie told every single person that gave her candy "Tay-tu Mama". It was the cutest ever.

Sadiebug's 1st Birthday!

Okay, so I realize it's been over 4 months since her birthday but I'm just now getting around to this post. So, let's start with the food (because that's my favorite part).

The party favors (strawberry jar cake with homemade buttercream frosting)

And now for the cake (as promised). Completely homemade from scratch and my first attempt at a cake. I found these really neat food color pens that the guests used to sign her cake.

And apparently, if you use gel food coloring instead of the regular kind, the colors are much brighter!

There were some imperfections in the cake, but all in all it was a success and an accomplishment for me since I don't even own a mixer. Luckily my mom let me borrow hers.

And now for the party! It was a berry-themed party since that is her favorite food of all time.

this was the best present and still saves my life most days. the girls love to "cook" for me.

thanks to noelle for the super cute birthday outfit :)

Sadiebug, I had so much fun celebrating your first birthday. I still can't believe that you're the same tiny, cuddly, little newborn who slept hours on hours in her swing. I love watching you figure out who you are and what you like. Your personality is all of it's own. You are such a mommy's girl, but when daddy is around you are mesmerized. I know just how you feel. :) You are so much fun and I love you with all of my heart.

Since Sadie was born, I never thought that having two kids was all that difficult. Maybe it's because they were spaced out perfectly in age or the fact that I didn't have any sort of hormonal issues after Sadie was born, or the fact that I was only home with both kids two days a week.  The hardest part was the typical newborn stuff that you get with the first one anyway, so it's not so much of a culture shock the second time around.  Sleep training is the devil.  Either way, two kids was a piece of cake. The older Sadie gets, the more difficult things get. She is like a walking disaster. A small toddler-sized tornado ripping through every toybox, closet, and cabinet within reach. I don't ever remember Ella being so destructive. Yesterday was a wild day. As I was taking a shower, Sadie was in my bathroom drinking her bottle and as I'm trying to hurry through my shower, I see her take every tampon under my sink out and scatter them on the floor. Then she gets all of the extra hand soaps (apprently I stock up) and litters them throughout the bathroom and closet. Then she comes out of the closet holding several tank tops she took from out of my drawer. Finally I'm able to get out and stop the madness. So I'm getting dressed and then she comes walking in with the toilet brush in her hand. I am hoping, by this point, that she didn't put it in her mouth. So the morning goes on like this. I'm in the kitchen later and hear an "Uh-oh" come from Sadie in the living room. She spilled Ella's entire cup of water onto the rug. Then she's thrown every single toy out of the toybox, destroyed every puzzle (because she only likes to take them apart and not put them back together), pulled every book from the bookshelf, and dragged out all of my tupperware. So I scoop the kids up and we go to the grocery store. I linger for a while because I really don't want to go face the mess. We finally get back home and Sadie tells me she wants a "Mahnah-mahnah-mahnah" (banana)....

I may lose my mind soon. :)

I'm not sure when it happened, but sometime recently Ella has decided she'd rather play with her friends. *GASP* But I was always her favorite playmate. It happens so fast, doesn't it? But I still have Tuesdays and Thursdays where it's just my girls and me and those days are the best days.

Just got an "I luh loo" from Sadiebug this morning. Such a sweet girl.

I luh loo too baby girl :)

Life is like a herd of cats?

A bit of a long update, but I guess that's what happens when I'm too busy/lazy to blog.

Life at our house is pretty crazy right now. The kids are so much fun, but incredibly busy. I still want to have more though :)

Here are some updates:

Ella still LOVES gymnastics, but I recently discovered that Lake Jackson soccer starts at 4 years old. So Ella and I are both so excited about next spring. Sorry gymnastics, you were fun while you lasted.

Ella just moved up to her new class at school. I've been anxious about her moving up for a while because she's had one teacher that moved up with her from the day she started, but this was as far as she could go. So Ella's on the other side of the school with the rest of the big kids and new teachers. But luckily, she's still got Spencer :) I love that Spencer loves Ella. AND, she comes home every day with a smiley face in her folder and praises from the teacher about how good she is in class. She makes me proud.

Ella can write most of the letters in the alphabet. There's something about little kids' handwriting that is the sweetest thing. Getting notes from Ella is going to be my new favorite thing.

Ella also loves to sing. She has an incredible ear for music. She knows most Justin Bieber (Justin Beaver, as she calls him) songs. She has an awesome memory. She picks things up so quickly and finds new and hilarious ways to try out new words.

The other day, Ella was throwing a bit of a fit and she tells me "I am so terrible. And I'M SO DRAMATIC!!!" She thinks that the word terrible means something like frustrated. Josh and I will sometimes tell her that she's being a little bit dramatic, so that's where the second part comes from. So many times she'll say something and we have to stifle our laughter because either 1) we don't want to encourage what she just said or 2) we don't want her to feel like we're laughing at her when she's upset. But she constantly keeps us rolling.

And I know I'm not alone here, but it's gotten to that point where I never know what's going to come out of her mouth. She's embarrassed me a few times, so now I've taught her to only ask me questions about someone after they've gone and she whispers to me. Am I teaching her to talk about people behind their backs? I'm ok with that because I'm really tired of the "Mommy, is that a boy or a girl" question. And the worst part is that sometimes, I don't know the answer either. Talk about being put on the spot. There are times where I'll see someone walking towards us and I have to distract her because I can already tell she's going to shout out some obvious difference in this person's appearance. I love it though. I love how observant she is and how much I get to teach her. Answering her questions is a pretty awesome task. Really, just delving into her little mind is a priviledge. I love the rawness of her outlook on life and her emotions. She definitely puts it all out there.

Sadie is hilarious. Absolutely crazy. She's starting to talk more. Her favorite words are puppy and daddy, so she walks around saying "Daddy Puppy!" a lot. She's also learning i love you and thank you. It's the sweetest ever.

She also loves sitting on the potty. She walks up to me, pulls her shirt up, and yells "Potty!" so I can take her to go sit on it. Every once in a while, she'll accidentally pee and then she gets so excited. I'm wondering if this is a sign that potty training will be easier.

She's also learning animal sounds and knows all of the parts of her face.

Puppies are her favorite. Well, puppies and vacuums.

She is doing much better at work. I've fenced her in and she plays really well at her table. She loves to color and she's definitely right-handed. I still don't know if Ella is left or right-handed. She uses both equally.
Sadie is also extremely ornery. She is the funniest, sweetest, most independent kid I've ever met. But she has also got a pretty good mean streak in her. She hardly ever cries, only when she's really ticked off. She also pulls Ella's hair out all the time. Poor Ella. She deals with the abuse, but we'll all be glad when Sadie learns not to do that.

The girls are the best of friends. They share everything. It is so sweet when Ella wakes up and comes downstairs. Sadie shrieks in excitement yelling "Ella! Ella! Ella!" whens she sees her. It makes my heart melt knowing that they love each other so much.

I will say that lately, my life seems like I'm continually herding cats. And if you've ever tried to do that, you know how impossible it is except at dinner time. So right now, I'm just trying to keep up. I wonder what it will be like with three. I'll try not to focus on that or else I won't want to have another one. :)

I'm cooking in the kitchen and I hear "Mommy, come look at us" and this is what I see... *sigh*

Sweet, sweet Sadie

Ella got her first haircut a while back. She did awesome!

An extremely rare moment at my house. Ella sleeping on the couch. Sadie kept trying to stick toys in her mouth.....

Oh, and I got some new ink a couple weeks ago....

I wear my sunglasses at night so I don't see the dark. -Ella

I do not like roaches. I have a very irrational fear of them. I think it stems from when I was a little girl and one of my older brothers would chase me around the house with them and threaten to throw them in my hair. So, I really don't like roaches.

Josh is out of town for the next week or so. I have to wake up pretty early in order to get everything ready so I can take Ella to school and get to work on time. So I'm walking down the stairs and I round the corner to go to the kitchen. It's 5:30AM, so my eyes are still blurry and I'm a little out of it and I see a dark shadow on the floor a couple of steps in front of me. I think to myself that I didn't leave anything out on the floor, so I bend down to take a closer look and it's the biggest, fattest roach I've ever seen. I immediately run away and hide in the living room. So I peek around the corner to see if I scared it away, but he's still just sitting there being fat and ugly. I turn on the TV and some lights to see if any activity will scare him back into the walls, but he doesn't move. After about half an hour of waiting for him to move, Sadie wakes up. At this point, I'm running out of options because I can't let her down to walk around or she'll eat it and that is a situation that I never want to find myself in again (yes, again but with the other sister). So I hurl my flip flop in the general direction of the roach and run up the stairs to get Sadie. I wake up Ella and get her dressed and ready for school. We come back downstairs and he's only moved about a foot closer to the wall. So I let Ella walk by him (she doesn't even notice him) to see if she scares him away but he doesn't even budge. Ella comes back and she asks me to make her some peanut butter toast with banana slices for breakfast and I told her I couldn't make her breakfast and that she'd have to eat at school this morning. She got so upset and I finally admitted why I couldn't go into the kitchen. There was a man-eating roach in the way. So she walks over and takes a closer look and here is the next few minutes of dialogue between us:

Ella: Mommy, you don't have to be scared. He's not crawling, see? It's just a bug, so don't be scared. It's ok.
Me: But Ella, I'm really scared of roaches. They're really gross.
Ella: It's okay Mommy. You can just kill it.
Me: But I don't know how.
Ella: Just take your shoe over there and SMACK IT
Me: I can't do that, Ella. I'm really scared of it. Maybe I could get some bug spray.......
Ella: Yeah, get the bug spray! It's in the garage. Come on, I'll show you. You can put Sadie in the high chair while you spray it.
Me: Ugh, okay...


So we walk out to the garage, find the bug spray and then go back into the dining room. At this point, Ella is now hiding behind the curtains peeking out. But she's not hiding from the roach, she's hiding because she doesn't want me to spray her in the eyes with the bug spray. So I stand there for a few minutes trying to build up the nerve to spray the roach and I look over at Ella and tell her how I need her help, her love and support because I can't kill this roach. She nods at me, very knowingly, and holds my hand as I spray the roach. That nasty thing was too fat to even run away. So, I killed it. I have not yet picked it up. I blocked off the area so Sadie couldn't get to it and was able to make Ella some breakfast. I came to work and asked my mom if she'd come over to my house and throw it away for me, but she told me she wouldn't do it and that it's tough love and it's good for me to have to throw it away. I'm already having a little bit of a panic attack thinking about having to go home to the man-eating roach. Luckily the brother from which my fear of roaches stems from lives a few minutes from me. Maybe he'll come get it for me...........


A little dramatic? Maybe so. I never said my fear was rational. Lucky for me, I have a brave little daughter who helped me through it this morning. I love her like crazy.

I wish time would just stand still.

I cannot believe that Sadie will be one on Friday. This year has flown by so fast and it seems like every year they get faster and faster. I ask Ella all the time if she would please stop growing up and now Sadie keeps doing it too! This time last year I was a nervous wreck and I was terrified of ruining Ella's life by having another baby and her not being the center of my attention. Boy was I wrong. These two girls love each other so much. Sadie sometimes gets tired of how much attention Ella shows her, but then when Ella's doing something Sadie will go over and yank the hair out of her head and then smile. So I think they are pretty even at this point. Sadie is still blissfully unaware of how to share and the concept of being nice versus being an onry little thing. So she gets a lot more breaks than Ella does, but when Sadie does get a teeny, tiny little pop on her hand, Ella looooves it. :) But Ella and Sadie are so great to each other and love to play together, share sippy cups, food, toys. Anything and everything is for both of them. I'm truly blessed. This has been a fantastic year for our family. This two girls are the bread to my butter, the icing on the cake, the apple of my eye...they all work.

AND I'm excited about attempting to bake (and decorate) my very first cake this year. Well, I guess I technically made Ella's first birthday cake (it was a duck) and it had a lot of, um, character. This time, I'm using fondant...So I've got some Betty Crocker cake mix for backup. The sad part is that I don't even own a mixer; I have to borrow my mom's. Maybe I'll find out that I like baking and can justify spending the money on one after this attempt.

Some updates on the fam:
Sadie is WALKING! She started taking steps at the end of April, but about a week or so ago she got to where she walked more than crawled and now she doesn't crawl much at all. Only when she falls and then she'll crawl over to something so that she can stand up and walk again. I love this stage.

Ella can (mostly) write her name. I love it. Sometimes the letters are on completely different places on the page, but she can write the E, L, L, and A. You might have to squint to see it, but she's making some serious improvements.

We spend LOTS of time on the karaoke machine. I've got some music loving kids.

Ella doesn't really care for Yo Gabba Gabba anymore :( Sadie loves it.

Our house is still on the market. 15 and a half months now. But we just purchased a new fridge, stove, and dishwasher and this week we're going to tackle new countertops. Hopefully this will drum up some interest and we can get into something with a little more space. There is no way I'm having kid number three in this house!

Oh, and we've got another Mud Run coming up and this time we convinced some other crazies to do it with us. :)

Josh is awesome, as usual. The best I could ask for. *love*

That's what happens.

She's so much like her dad

Does it get any better than this?

I am Mommy to the most amazing little girls who steal my heart a million times a day. I love being Mommy to my two precious little ones. Watching Sadie learn and grow and absolutely adore her big sister gives me so much joy. Watching Ella figure out just who, exactly, she is and wants to be is such a privilege. She told me today that when she grows up, she wants to be a Mommy to a little baby girl and a baby boy and she wants to stay home with them while I go to work. And if you know me, then you know that's not something she heard me say. I love working part time and I love being a part-time stay at home mom. But my favorite part about her future is that she thinks we'll still be living together when she has two kids. :) She's so innocent, beautiful, perfect, and she amazes me every day. And when I get to rock Sadie to sleep every so often, when she falls asleep in my arms it's the perfect end to my day. She is so innocent, beautiful, perfect, and amazing. I love watching her peacefully drift to sleep. Her face is so angelic and soft and completly contented. She makes me feel special. So, I'll ask again...does it get any better than this?

Daycation

Josh has been working out of town a lot lately. He got home at about 3AM on Saturday morning and was supposed to be leaving again on Wednesday. So he took Tuesday off and we had a daycation. I was thinking back and we have never done that. We've never taken vacation days to just go and do something fun with the kids. We've gone out of town, but we've never just decided "hey, let's go to the ___ tomorrow". So we went to Kemah and had a great time with the girls. We ate lunch at the Aquarium and then Ella and Josh rode the carousel and we finished it off with a ride on the train. She and Sadie had a great time. After Kemah, we went down to Galveston beach and that was quite a trip. The last (and only time) she went to the beach was July 4th, 2009. Living so close to the beach, you'd think we would go more often. Nope. I've never really been a beach person. I don't mind going to the beach, but it's all of the clean up when you get back that I hate. There's sand everywhere. But we ended up going today and had a really good time. Sadie pretty much ate her weight in sand. It was pretty disgusting. And it took Ella a while to warm up to the sand and the water. She wasn't a fan of all of the jellyfish that washed up on the beach, either. (I should mention that we live on some pretty less-than-favorable beaches, by the way. Could be the reason that I've never loved the beach.)But after about half an hour, she loved it. She loved digging through the sand looking for shells. She gathered up a pretty good collection and then buried it for someone else to find next time.

Here are some pictures from the day. And since i absolutely hate the way blogger uploads pictures, they are in very random order....

Grandparents are wonderful :)

I love watching Ella and Sadie with their grandparents. Every Sunday after church, we go over to my parents' house for lunch and we usually end up staying until dark. Since we live in a townhouse, we don't have a yard for the girls to play in so they get in a full week's worth of outside play on Sundays. We had such a wonderful time yesterday. And the weather has been perfect! Tomorrow, we are headed to Kemah for a fun day with the girls. I am so excited. Pictures to come later!

Here are a couple of pictures of the girls with Mimi and Grandad. Ella did not want her picture taken, but by the time they made it back from riding around the block, she was pretty darn excited about Grandad's motorcycle.

I don't like these shoes.

Wal-Mart can really wear a girl out!

Ella, Sadie, and I always do our grocery shopping for the week on Tuesdays. But it's been getting a little bit harder lately because Sadie sleeps from 10AM - 12PM, Ella sleeps from 12PM-2 or 3PM, and then Sadie sleeps again from 3PM - 5PM. So, if I'm not up and ready to go with the girls by 8AM, then we have a hard time fitting it in because with two kids, bathroom breaks, Ella picking out cereal, it takes us every bit of two hours before we're out of there.

Sadie's been in a growth spurt the past week or so because she's been eating like crazy and sleeping like crazy. So yesterday we went around lunchtime and she just couldn't make it through the shopping trip. She looked so sweet sleeping in the basket for about 45 minutes :)