So apparently I'm really bad at this blog.  I do it no justice.  It's like our family just sits around and stares at each other all day long. 

EXCEPT

We had another baby!  EIGHT months ago.  Please don't tell me that this is typical third born kid stuff because I really really really want to be better than that.  I can't remember the amount of times my mom forgot me at school.  I was the youngest, so it was expected.  But I have vowed to not forget my youngest child at school.  And she's going to have lots of pictures of her and I won't forget when she got her first teeth!  I have dreams you know :)

So please meet Emerson Kate Park. 

She is seriously the sweetest baby in the whole entire world.  I met up with some friends at the park yesterday and the big girls played for almost three hours.  Emerson sat on a blanket and messed with stuff in the diaper bag pretty much the whole time.  I carried her a little, gave her a bottle, but for the most part she just entertained herself.  It was incredible to watch.  She is so easy going, yet a feisty little girl.  She can really stand up for herself when she's tired of being dragged across the living room by one arm.  She doesn't cry much.  Just when she's hungry and sleep and even then, it's more of a complaining then a crying.  The only time she cried much as a baby was in the car pickup line at school (and it made me want to cry too, so I can't blame her) and when she got thrush.  Other than that, it's always been fixable.  I look back and think that things were way too easy. 

If I can think of the most perfect time in my life, it would be the summer of 2013.  We spent so much time swimming in June since I was so ginormously pregnant.  Ella learned to swim without floaties and we really had some awesome quality time together.  Emerson was born on July 1 and the peacefulness of life was so abundant.  I would sit and nurse my baby and the girls would come put lotion on my feet to take care of me.  My maternity leave was seriously something only dreams are made of.  I had an incredibly sweet baby and the most understanding little girls who couldn't have been happier with their new baby sister.  They didn't get upset with me because I was taking care of the baby the majority of the time.  It was such a relaxing and amazing time for all of us to bond with each other before Ella started public school.  I wish I could go back and visit those days.  I remember sitting and telling myself to soak up every tiny morsel of those days because I knew they were numbered.  It was such a beautiful time for our family.
 
And now.....life is absolutely chaotic.  My house is such a mess.  I keep blaming myself that if I were better at picking up after myself, then the house wouldn't be so bad.  I spend so much picking up that I never actually get to clean.  I have these grand ideas of going on all these fun outings with the kids and then I spend $80 on diapers and formula for the week and then try to think of fun things to do at home instead :) So goes life, I guess.  We really have such a wonderful time together. 

Ella started kindergarten, which is so exciting and so sad for me all at the same time.  And now, kindergarten is almost over.  I got to be the room mom for her class and it has been really great getting to be involved in the classroom.  Ella is the sweetest, kindest, and most loving kid I've ever met.  She is so happy and her laughter is infectious.  Her giggles come spilling out uncontrollably and she just makes me melt.  She's reading, writing, and learning math.  This kid is crazy smart.  She's also a very structured, rule-follower.  If you're within earshot, you can usually hear her singing happy birthday while she's washing her hands in the bathroom.  When she cleans the playroom with Sadie, she usually tries to just send Sadie down so that she can clean by herself because then it will be done correctly.  She definitely gets that from her daddy.  But I can always rely on Ella. She is so honest and careful that I can do so much more because she is my eyes and my ears when I need an extra pair.  She is my right hand man and helps keep our ship afloat. 

Sadie. 

Sadie. Sadie. Sadie.  Words can't even describe how crazy and silly this kid is.  She will be four in May and I can't believe it.  She dresses up in the craziest outfits and calls herself a "fashioneaster".  She has her own made up language and her own made up world and I am so lucky I'm invited into it every day.  While Ella doesn't break the rules much (more like ever!), Sadie thinks that rules were made to be broken!  It can frustrate me so much, but her creativity and her free spirit allows her to just let loose and live.  I admire her ability to just feel it and live in the moment.  That handful of M&M's was totally worth the timeout.  She spends her fair amount of time there, but she genuinely wants to enjoy the people around her and get the most out of life.  She struggles with not getting her way, but that seems to come with the territory of being three.  I'm so excited to see her blossom in the next couple of years.  She surprises me daily.  I look at her some days and I can't believe she is my child.  She came from me.  She is such a wild little creature and a blessing to me every single day. 

This picture describes the big girls to a T

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And this summer will be TEN years married to this man.  He's amazing.  More on him later......

Okay, I'm signing off for now.  And hopefully not for another year and a half! 

Neat Things I've Found

So I signed up for something called the BabbaBox. Very cool. I got my first box in the mail the other day and it's really neat. I am not very creative or good at coming up with craft ideas that are fun. Usually if I ever do come up with something it takes four hours to get it all together and tons of trips to Hobby Lobby and the girls are done and disinterested in about five minutes....But this box is great. They send you every single material you'll need to put them together. You get a new book, downloadable educational app, several crafts, and other itmes.  And they are all themed together. This month's theme is By The Seashore.

Another really fun thing I've found is Project Life. It's a really neat way to start memory keeping.  I am so bad about writing things down because it always feels like I'll never forget this stuff.  And then I forget it.  And I am not a scrapbooker at all.  The thought of sitting down and putting together a scrapbook makes me shudder.  But I also think writing things down in a journal is kind of boring.  So this is an easy and fun way to keep your memories and pictures in an easy to get to place.  The product has been out of stock for months and amazon just restocked everything.  It's pretty easy because you typically will make a page per week of the year.  That way you can remember all of the big things and the little things that happen when your kids are little.  And it's organized by year.  There are plastic pages where you can print off your instagram photos (through persnickety prints) and keep them in the binder as well.  And I hear there's going to be a baby edition sometime later this year.  It would be a fun way to track your pregnancy and your baby's first year.  Anyway, cool things I've found recently that I'm having fun trying out. 

Alright, well now I'm off to watch the olympics with Ella!

Summer with the girls

All summer I have so enjoyed all of this extra time with the girls. On September 5th, they are both starting at a new preschool. It's about two minutes from my house and they will go from 9-12 every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning. It's put on by the methodist church. We went and toured the school a couple of weeks ago and both Ella and Sadie were very excited to walk through a classroom again. Ella more so than Sadie. Before we visited, I asked Ella if she was ready to go back to school. She was pretty unhappy at her last preschool, which is why we worked out this new schedule. She asked me two questions: Will I have to eat lunch at school? No. Do I have to take a nap at school? No. After she got her answers, she was beyond excited. Those were the two things that she did not like at the last school. But Ella loves to be in a classroom environment and she loves to learn and meet new friends. I'm so excited for her. And Sadie definitely needs to spend some time in a structured environment with other kids. Ella is such a good sister, but I see her cater to Sadie a lot because it's easier. So it will be good for Sadie to learn how to interact with other kids her age. And the good part is that I'm not giving up too much extra time with them. They have been spending Fridays at their Nonnie's house. But now it's about the same amount of time, I just get to go into the office three mornings a week, which will be extremely helpful for me my job.

Oh, and in other BIG BIG news...Sadie is getting pretty close to being potty trained. We've been working on it since Thursday and she's only had about three accidents!  Everytime she goes potty she high fives me and says "I TID IT!  YAY FOR SADIE!"  It's the cutest ever.  And Ella even gets in on the celebration. :)  Sadie still can't tell me that she has to pee ahead of time, so I take her to the potty a lot, but we made it through a birthday dinner at La Casona, a couple of trips to Target, and a bike ride without an accident.  So we're getting there.  I'm so proud of my girls.  And they are growing up so fast.

And the last update....Ella starts soccer in August!  We went and picked out her cletes, shinguards, and a ball.  I'm so excited!

Sadie calls them piggy-ponies

Hammin it up

i cannot believe she is 4 1/2!

I'm so proud....

Trip to the beach

:)

Sadie loves to play dress up

Fried pickles...Mmmm

Mr. Wonderful

You know how you usually have that small group of people that you can count on no matter what?  Well, for me, that's my husband.  Always there.  Always happy to see me.  Always happy to talk to me.  Always happy to help me with anything I need.  Always happy to take care of me.  I am so lucky and blessed that he is so good at being exactly what I need.  I'm feeling a little mushy today.  Maybe because we just celebrated our 8 year anniversary or maybe it's the fact that he's been out of town so much lately and I've gotten really good at missing him like crazy.  Or seeing how much his daughters love him and miss him while he's out of town, but are secure enough in his love for them that they are not too affected by it.  But there's definitely a missing piece.  He completely balances us out.  I cannot wait until he gets home.  It will be so nice to have the love of my life sleeping peacefully beside me at night (or at least until the next work trip).

the weekend he proposed....we were so young!

Eight years

Josh and I celebrated our eighth wedding anniversary yesterday.  It was an okay day. It's hard to celebrate when there's a lot of sad around you.  Josh's dad passed away on Thursday, the 19th.  He fought so long and so hard and he peacefully left us here for his eternity in Heaven.  On Tuesday morning, he said he only had three days left.  I don't know how he knew, but he did his best to prepare everyone.  God's hand was so evident throughout it all.  But it's still been a really tough week.  We did our best to celebrate and overall had a nice day.  We were sitting at Chili's last night while my mom watched the girls for us so we could have a quick, quiet dinner together.  We were talking about all of the different stages of our lives the past almost decade we've spent together and which stage has been our favorite. We usually will say that whatever current stage we're in is our favorite.  But right now is hard.  Life, work, kids...everything just feels difficult.  Sadie is extremely defiant, which is a stage Ella never went through.  Ella is a people pleaser.  Even when she would throw a fit, you could hold your arms out to her and she'd just melt in your arms until she cried it all out.  She is so tender hearted.  But she's also learned how to argue and talk back.  She rolled her eyes when I told her something yesterday!  So, that's where we are these days.  But the kids are what keep us going and keep things interesting.  We may be having a hard time right now, but this is still where we want to be.  Please pray for the Park family.

We miss you Ewie <3

 

I really don't like to write about personal things.  Usually any posts that get too personal never make it past the draft status on here.  About a year ago, I started having anxiety attacks...nothing I've been to the doctor about, because I'm scared that they'll prescribe me something and I want to overcome this on my own.  I don't want this to be a permanent thing in my life.  But they can be pretty debilitating.  I clench my teeth every night while I'm sleeping and I have to wear a guard now so that my jaw stays in alignment.  I spoke with my mom and dad about it last year and my mom told me that there were times when she was younger where she would all of a sudden become really fearful, so she memorized Psalm 91.  Well I was at home one evening and we were cleaning up dinner and out of nowhere I sort of started to freak out.  So I went and sat in the half bathroom with my phone and was trying to remember the Psalm that my mom told me to read when I start getting scared.  So, I pulled up Psalm 18 and started reading it out loud to myself:

 I love you, O LORD, my strength.
 The LORD is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer,
  my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge,
  my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
 I call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be praised,
  and I am saved from my enemies.
 The cords of death encompassed me;
  the torrents of destruction assailed me;
 the cords of Sheol entangled me;
  the snares of death confronted me.
 In my distress I called upon the LORD;
  to my God I cried for help.
 From his temple he heard my voice,
  and my cry to him reached his ears.
(Psalm 18:1-6 ESV)

And slowly but surely my heartrate went down, the tears stopped falling, and I felt like I could breathe again.  So maybe it wasn't the same one that my mom memorized, but this is obviously the one God wanted me to hear.  He gave me something to cling to in that moment.  So these days I'm pretty armed.  When I start to feel that uncontrollable fear creep up on me, I can read this Psalm and try to keep it at bay.  I can tell you that my anxiety attacks aren't related to anything in my life right now.  Life is pretty good for me.  Two beautiful children, a husband who adores me, a healthy family, a new house....and maybe that's why I have these "episodes" for lack of a better word.  I keep waiting for something terrible to happen.  Because, after all, this is life and it's not always going to be this easy.  I was angry about all these newfound fears at first because my life is so incredibly different now.  But I've come to accept that God put this in my life for a reason.  Maybe this is a time in my life where I need to be aware and cautious and be steadfast in my faith that He will ultimately take care of me and my family.  I'm not always "thankful" for this lesson whatever it may be, but when I start to panic I can remind myself that He is in control.  And He loves me so much. 

Here's a song that I love.  It's by one of my favorite bands Rush of Fools.  If you haven't heard of them, you should check them out.  All of the albums are really good.  The second one is probably my favorite. 

Spontaneity, sort of.

So I got to be spontaneous today!  For five whole minutes.  So Josh is out of town all the time, so he was going to be in Louisiana for the 4th of July. Well my mom found some airline tickets that I could use my rewards miles on and fly out for super cheap and spend the day with him.  So I packed my bags and wrestled over how impractical it was and kept going back and forth about the whole thing.  So, finally I closed my eyes and clicked the button over the word "purchase ticket" and then almost threw up.  I have anxiety issues, if you didn't already know that about me.  Then about five minutes later, the girls and I were in the car headed to Mimi's house so they could have a sleepover.  Josh calls and says that he has to work all night and they're going to be driving home tomorrow....so luckily Southwest refunded me for the tickets.  But I was a little bummed out.  Super excited that Josh will be coming home tomorrow, but bummed out that we didn't get to do something crazy like book a last minute same day flight and go have some fun on Bourbon Street.  Well, there's always next time.....

(I still can't believe I actually bought the tickets....That is so not like me.  At all.)