Recently At the Crockett's

Recently at the Crockett's, life has been pretty normal BUT there have been moments.

So here they are.

Walking down the hallway to my room the other day, I was asked not to look into the girls' room by a very confident 5 year old that wanted to surprise me with her pretty outfit. When given permission to look after she was fully primped I found a princess in place of Novalee.

Can you see the boxes of makeup and jewelry she has behind her? That's not even everything. She's a very interesting mix of a tomboy/girly girl. I kind of love it.

During the time she was dressing up, a young fan of hers admired her from afar.

It's a mixed feeling that I have for Sadie's growing admiration of her older sister. :)

Wesley had a birthday! Yay! I was lame and forgot to get him a birthday card or even make him a cake or even breakfast in bed, which he does every year for me without fail. So to try to make up for it I spent a little time writing this lovely message for him only to have it rain before he could see it.

(Good thing I'm familiar with Oregon weather and took a picture before it was ruined. Proof that I'm a good wifie). :)

I've ALWAYS been Sadie's favorite until recently. Every now and again, lately she has preferred Wesley. Whatevs. It sort of bugs me...haha. Good thing it wasn't the other way around, I wouldn't have been able to handle her ALWAYS preferring him. :) The other day she just wanted to snuggle Dad and watch TV. Here's Wes relishing the moment with his little girl. :)

The other day we celebrated Oreo's 100th Birthday. All the kids love Oreo's. Wes doesn't really care for them but this time I froze them and he couldn't get enough of them either.

Here the girls are helping mommy eat them up.

This picture of Sadie makes me laugh because it's just about how I feel whenever I eat oreo's because I tend to eat A LOT when I have good intentions of just having one or two.

Please note the belly sticking out of her shirt, yep that's totally how I feel. But they are so oh oh Good!

Two weeks ago Jared brought home a cold with him from school. Then Novalee got it and then Sadie. It hit Sadie the hardest since she wasn't able to clear her throat as well.

Because I'm sick (in the head) ;) here are some lovely pictures of what sick babies are capable of.

She did try to wipe it up with her blanket. :) Which we thought was pretty sweet. Let's just say we no longer own that couch (we had plans to get a new one anyways).

Here is my favorite moment. About a week ago I walked into our room to see Wesley trying on this sweatshirt.

Naturally a little bit of a Miss Need to Know It All, I asked, "Honey, whatcha doing?"

And here is the best part. He replied, "I was trying this sweatshirt on to see if it was worth keeping."

What? Do you really HAVE to try on something like this to know whether or not it's worth keeping?

Just look at it!

Haha! He's too funny!

After looking at all these pictures of the last little bit I am just wondering one little thing. Where's Jared? I need to remember to get more pictures of him. Though if I did it would probably be of him wanting to take pictures of his new Skylanders. :) I do have some really fun video of him dancing, which makes me feel a little less guilty for not taking pictures. :)

One thing I would like to note about Jared is that we got his report card on Friday and it was ALL improvements! We are very proud of all his hard work in school and how much he is learning!

Note To Self

Don't allow pictures of yourself to be taken from the side, wearing all black, during winter while pregnant. EVEN if you are having a super great moment with your littlest one on a nice sunny day.

Reasons are listed below the photo. :)

1. Notice the lovely double chin? Yeah, no good.

2. No sun all winter plus not working out while pregnant equals pudgy white chubby arms.

3. Sitting on a child's bench from the side angle only adds to the belly that already is too big thanks to ALL day long sugar cravings. :)

But since I am going to choose to look on the bright side of things, here are some positives.

1. This little girl is having the best time popping bubbles into her mommies face!

2. Those toes just got painted the day before. Phew! The chipping blue was pretty bad.

3. Besides my belly getting bigger so are my lovely tulips! :)

We had such a good time popping bubbles together so regardless of my pregnant loveliness ;) here are a couple more pictures of us having fun together.

I'm super excited for more sunny days. Bring on the summer!

My Project

We currently live in a Duplex(rental). It is so So SO much better than an apartment. We have lived in some pretty interesting apartments...cough...cough...Overlook at Pantano.

One of the nice things about where we live is that this is the first time we have really had any land (even if it is very little) to do anything with. We actually have a back yard!

(It's funny how quickly you get used to what you have and then want more. Many times we have caught ourselves being total snobs, complaining about where we live as if we have ever had anything better...well Wes has back when he was single.) :)

Anyways, the front of our house has this dirt mound. And all winter, weeds and grass grew in it.

It really bugged me how bad it looked.

And so these last few weeks I have been pulling out all the weeds. It has taken a long time, mainly because the grass was almost as thick as the grass in our yard in some places. It was super tedious work to pull each weed, one at a time, shake off the dirt and move on to the next weed.

(Here is a moment when I wish I had taken a before picture. But you will just have to trust me when I say the weeds were bad!)

When I was 1/3 of away from being done, Wes came out to inspect my work. He said, "That's nice honey but wouldn't it be faster if you just used a shovel and shoveled up the weeds?"

Wow the things that never occur to me! Seriously, how easy would that have been.

Anyways, Novalee and I picked out flowers yesterday...then it snowed last night (weird) and snowed more this morning (weirder) but finally the sun came out and we got to work.

Novalee placed all the flowers where she wanted them (which amazingly looked really good) while I finished weeding.

Here are some pictures of our hard work.

What pretty little flowers! :)

Novalee isn't actually in any of the pictures. She kind of lost interest after a couple of hours and moved on to bigger and muddier things such as mud pies. However I should probably get a picture of her by them since she spent most of her afternoons lately outside helping Mommy.

And as a brag moment. While I was out there today, TWO people came by and told me how nice they looked!

Oh happy me! :)

Bangs

Little Miss Sadie got her first haircut the other day.

Daddy insisted that the hair covering her eyes wasn't working. While I agreed with him, I was reluctant to cut the hair since my preference would have been to let it grow out until it could be tucked behind the ears.

But I gave in the other day when I was watching her walk around the house barely able to see (that's an exaggeration). Poor thing. :(

(One of the benefits/drawbacks of being part of a family is that no one in the family ever really looks as you critically.)

I want to note that the PJs that Sadie has on, Novalee wore when she was three. Yep, it's true. It's kind of hard to believe. Sadie turns 18 months on the 9th of this month.

But after looking at these pictures I realized her hair was really out of control.

Sadie was fine with me combing her hair down because she is used to me combing her hair and telling her what pretty hair she has. (I kind of think she is aware that Novalee has long, LONG pretty blonde hair and wants hers that way too.)

But she started to freak out and cry when I brought out the scissors which of course made trimming her bangs challenging.

I realize her bangs look choppy but they are actually pretty straight...according to me. :)

They aren't my favorite, but she does look more put together and I don't have to pull her hair back everyday.

We also think she looks a little more grown up. :)

Not to mention that she looks even more like my sister when she was a little girl. Someday one of my kids will look like me...I'm not giving up until one does!

Just kidding! :)

Baby Kinsley's Blankets

My wonderful in-laws got me a super great gift for Christmas this year.

What a complicated little beauty!

It's what I wanted and I was so excited to get it.

BUT serger's to me seem like engineering or car repairs. Whenever someone I know who does either of these things goes any further into what they do than just their job title, my brain just shuts down and I stare at them blankly (nodding politely of course) while I try to stay focused but am actually thinking about other things. :)

So it is not too surprising that the beautiful serger sat in it's box until this week. Just to excuse myself further for taking this long to open the box I have to also say that my kids are brutal to my sewing machine.

Anytime I leave for a moment, I will come back and find that the presser foot is off, or the stitch has been changed or the thread is no longer through the needle. (AHHH! I must really love sewing or a challenge or SOMETHING to put up with it). And TRUST me, they have been told over and OVER and OVER again not to touch mommy's sewing machine. I'm actually surprised it's lasted this long...knock on wood.

Anyways I would have and probably will FREAK OUT if the serger gets the same treatment from the kids. And so I have kind of been waiting for a special spot in the closet to open up where it can safely be put away after each use.

That finally opened up. I got the serger out of the box. I watched both "Easy, How To" videos and then had a little panic attack.

Why would they show videos of the serger is such poor lighting that you actually can't see what they are doing? It was so frustrating to watch. I must have kept stating my frustration out loud because Novalee finally said, "Who gave this thing to you mom? Can't you just send it back to them?" Haha. She's so cute.

My desire to serge must have been stronger than my desire to give up and pack it up permanently because I decided I would do like the old NIKE slogan and "Just Do It."

It actually wasn't too complicated after all. Sigh. But I still am not sure how to finish off the stitch when I'm done. Oh, well. Eventually I will figure it out. Oh and I only know the one stitch, the one it was set up for to begin with. :)

(Wow I must need someone to socially interact with, this is a lot of typing just to introduce my blankets for baby).

Here are the swaddling blankets. I made five. No, there is no theme...I probably didn't need to say that, since you could guess by the pictures. :)

Oh yes, I'm proud of myself thus the multiple pictures. :)

I can't wait until we can swaddle our newborn in them and they will smell of the sweet newborn baby smell!

And you know how I made Sadie and Novalee matching blankets?

Well I had lots of left over fabric so Novalee made one for her doll.

Then I tried making one for Kinsley for the crib...

But you might be able to tell from the picture that it's too narrow... :(

Oh well, it's done and I'm over it. I have another one in mind so hopefully it turns out better. :)