Project Life Tuesday Week 3

Good morning! This week was hectic, but provided lots of opportunities for pictures. I had a hard time picking from some of the days! I love this project because I'm getting better at having my camera handy!

1.17.10-Wii Fit-have been doing this fairly consistently (with room for improvement) have lost 5lbs so far! This past week has been not so good-so I need to step it up. St. Thomas in June is my motivation! 1.18.10-This is what $250 bucks will get you during a semester of graduate classes. I'm applying for graduation in February so hopefully this will be the last gaggle of books I purchase for a while!
1.19.10-We love doing things as a family and Wayne and I try to do some one on one things with the kids, too. This night, Emilia and I were spending some time together and were talking about The Little Mermaid on Broadway. Disney had some clips on youtube of the musical so we checked them out. She's growing up so quickly and although most of the time I want to strangle her and her newfound attitude (she's 5!) I love this time together! FYI-the National tour of TLM starts this Fall!
1.20.10-Forgive me if you're tired of pictures of this big sleeping beast. :) In this one, she's laid down right on my laptop cord and pulled it out of the wall-that didn't bother her one bit. This week as I write this she's perched on my brand-new leather reading chair watching it snow.

1.21.10-We got furniture for Wayne's office! I've wanted to have a chair in this room so that I can read while he works and we had talked about a couch in front of his desk so that the kids can be in there with us watching movies or playing games. The best part? We got it on clearance at Wolf Furniture outlet!! I love, love, love it! The back walls look pretty bare-I'm framing some kind of flight maps for him to put there.
1.22.10-My mom turned 50 on the tenth so I did what I do best-threw her a party! Some family came in and her friends from work were there, too. It was a really nice night. I love this picture but hate the the bottle of Asti made it's way in there, too. And, because it's now a game-another picture of Dad & I from this night is included as an added bonus lol.

1.23.10-Peyton's birthday is the day after Christmas and we usually wait a little while before doing anything with his friends. This year, he elected to bring three friends to the Lake for dinner and a movie. It was a really fun night!

I have a confession....

I keep my children's teeth in my jewelry box. Does that make me morbid? And tonight, with a sweet solution of joy and sadness I get to put another tooth in the box. My baby (she's 5-I can't help it) lost her first tooth tonight! We were laying in bed together watching The Little Mermaid and we were wiggling and wiggling it and it just came out! She let out the sweetest little squeal of excitement while inside I got a little sad. We had a celebration with each tooth that entered their little mouths...at least that's how I like to think of it now...then it was drool and fevers and those herbal teething tablets by the gallon. I can't help but keep them. I only have about 4 now so it's not too weird yet, right? Peyton lost 2-literally-and I dropped one of his down the drain!

When Peyton started to loose his teeth Mia cried and announced in her no longer present baby voice that she wanted "dog teeth, too!" We laughed so hard when, days later, we finally figured out that dog=adult! Now, she's got a gap in her sweet smile and it's just one more way that she's growing up. So-one of these will prob. be my Project Life pic for this day, but I wanted to post them tonight, too.

Love, actually :)

"I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest."

~Shakespeare Much Ado About Nothing

I LOVE my husband. I also love literature and sappy love quotes. I really love leaving them on his Facebook page despite the fact that he rarely uses Facebook. He gets an email notification and he has an Outlook folder dedicated to the messages declaring that yet another post (by me) has been made on his wall. It may sound geeky, but when I saw that folder on his laptop one evening, it made me swoon. Really.

I love this quote from MAAN as Beatrice declares her love for Benedick. I get excited when I stumble upon new quotes while reading. I dog-ear the pages and draw hearts in the margin and underline, circle and star words and lines until my heart's content! (You should see my copy of Wuthering Heights :)

This evening these few, simple words kept running through my mind at a funeral home-of all places! My FIL's sister had passed away and although Wayne and I didn't really know her we went as a show of support for his dad. I spent the evening sitting at one end of the room while Wayne stayed with his dad and cousins on another end. Anyway, at one point Wayne's dad quickly left the room and I saw that Wayne hadn't noticed. I spoke his name, "Wayne." not loud but in a normal volume level sure that he wouldn't hear me. Almost as quickly as I spoke he turned around and his gaze met mine. I looked at this man, my heart, who knew my voice in a crowded room full of people and just melted. I love big stuff that he does, but this little stuff, something as simple as the act of turning around at the sound of my voice just puts me over the edge somedays.

I know he lurks on here sometimes, and if you're reading this:

I love YOU, U.W.P with so much of my heart that none is left to protest.

Beatrice and I, we have it pretty bad.

Project Life: Week 2

Hello, all! It's so neat to connect with different women through this project! I've been really swamped this week as my (hopefully) last semester of graduate school is underway! But, I still managed to capture my family and our life this week!


1.10.10-I grew up on a family farm and love going there and looking through all the buildings with my dad in order to find some new treasure to bring home. I always joke with my dad telling him that's it's okay to leave the farm to my brother, Chris, as long as I get to go through and take what I want beforehand. Dad gave me this shovel after we moved into our new house. I love it although everyone who comes over thinks it's strange that I have a rusty old shovel hanging on my wall!!
10.11.01-Emilia loves jewelry. Right now I'm into layering a lot of long necklaces and when we were getting her ready for school she told me that she wanted to wear a necklace to school as well. I went to get her something that would be practical for her to wear and came down to find her already wearing one of my brand-new Silpada necklaces! She was so proud of herself that I couldn't take it from her. She wore it to Kindergarten and it came home that day without incident!
1.12.10-I feel like I don't ever get enough pictures of Wayne and I together. And, I LOVE the squished together take it yourself pics. Maybe because you never know how they're going to turn out. Mine always seem to be funny...so Wayne tried to take one and it's a little blurry and WAY zoomed in but I love it. I think we look happy and I just love my husband's smiling face :)

11.13.10-This picture turned out so great. I was thrilled to get a good one of Peyton because he's in the stage where he doesn't like to see the camera come out! I think he looks boyish in this one and I love it!

1.14.10-I think all this dog does is sleep! As I type this she's under Wayne's desk laying on my feet (keeping them nice and toasty) and snoring! She sheds a lot and is constantly underfoot and she licks my friend's knees all the time but I love her!

1.15.10-My mom is out of town so Dad hung out with us a good bit this week. As I explained last week, my dad and I always take these kind of photos. I love looking at them-they make me laugh. A LOT. And I love that he acts like he hates doing it, but I know that he loves it. He makes my heart happy! 1.16.10-My goal for the start of the new year was to become more organized than before. I've cleaned out closets and two junk drawers so far (we have 3 and I'm thinking that the other one has to remain a junk drawer). In one of the drawers I found these little water shoes that we bought for Peyton during his first beach trip. They are SO small. So, I pulled out current shoes from my newly organized hall closet to compare! I loved finding them and holding them again, but to see the old and the present shoes side by side made me long for baby days again.

"The cleaning and scrubbing will wait till tomorrow,

For children grow up, as I've learned to my sorrow.

So quiet down cobwebs. Dust go to sleep.

I'm rocking my baby and babies don't keep."
~Ruth Hulburt Hamilton, 1958

Check out Jessica Turner's blog to see many more Project Life pictures! Be blessed this week!!

Voicemail: 1.7.10

The following is a voicemail message that I received that just made me laugh so hard I had to write it down:

"Mrs. Porter, this is the Nurse X at local elementary school goes here. I wanted to call you in case I didn't see you this afternoon for pick up. Peyton was in the health room today. It seems that he stabbed himself in the hand with his pencil. I cleaned it out really well, but I think it just looks bad. Okay, well, have a great day if you have any questions call me."

My children bring me joy without even knowing that they're doing so. I wasn't happy that his little hand had been hurt, but for some reason this message just made my day. I can picture him in class bouncing his pencil on his desk before impaling himself with it. I can picture the dramatics that ensued before he was ushered to the nurse. I just love that kid!

Project Life: Week One

I haven't been able to order my kit yet because of the switch to Amazon, but hopefully soon!! :) I'm trying to be really organized with this. Also, if anyone stops by my sad little blog I'm still new at everything. I started one in the fall as part of an assignment for one of my graduate classes and would love to get better about posting. Also, new to posting pictures, so brace yourselves.

1.3.10-Elphaba Garinda our 4 year old Lab loves to snooze on any piece of furniture that she can find. I just love to see her curled up on the couch or this chair....

1.4.10- Our sweet Mia. She loves posing for pictures and I love taking them of her! She's getting to be so grown up. I can't believe that she's five already.

1.5.10-I have to admit...I have no picture from this day :(

1.6.10-So, two from this day because they're two of my faves...Our handsome man Peyton and then an adorable shot of the two of them!

1.7.10-Peyton loves hats. He wears them everywhere and whenever we go somewhere on vacation or just out shopping and he sees a new hat he has to have it. I admit that I indulge him a little more than I guess I should but I think it's so cool that he has his own interests and it just makes him such a neat little guy! So, this is his "Uncle John" hat because Wayne's Uncle John (whom Pey adores) wears one like this all the time. I even had to order a spare one from Gymboree just in case anything should happen to this one. 1.8.10-My best friend Mandy and I took our girls to see The Princess and the Frog movie on Friday night fully intending to get pics of the girls with their Baby be Blessed dolls and at the movies...but I made no use of the camera in my purse! I need to get better about that. I also need to get a point and shoot one again to make it easier. Anyway, anytime Mandy and I are together (she's a professional photog) I'm always saying "You take the pictures, I'll just get them from you." We're doing this Project Life together as a way to spend some time with each other and she took our Friday picture...which I need to get! lol **Update: I stole this from Mandy's site!**

1.9.10-My mom turned 50 on January 5th. My family celebrated by going to the Lake for dinner at Unos. It's our fave. For about a year now I've been taking these crazy pics of my dad and I so it's a running joke. Everytime he sees me whip out the camera he's now trained to squish his head close to mine! The results, as you can imagine, are hysterical at times. I'm planning on making him a book of them for Father's Day. Here's my new favorite picture that came from that Saturday night dinner...

**To see other awesome Project Life participants please visit Jessica Turner, an awesome crafter and person whom I'm enjoying getting to know-you will, too. :)

End of an Era

When my son was about 3 years old he found a pair of bug rain boots in Target that he had to have. Of course, I bought them! He wore those boots out! We ended up having to replace them the next year with a pair of green frog rain boots. They went with everything, dress up church pants, shorts, swim trunks, just underwear, whatever!! After he outgrew the frogs two years later we didn't end up requiring any more for a while. Last year, Gymboree had adorable monster rain boots on sale and thinking that I'd surprise Peyton, I bought them for him for Easter. He loved them. Took them to my parents farm, stomped around in puddles with them, you get the idea. Well, this year I neglected to buy snow boots for the kids and now they're sold out everywhere. In lieu of actual snow boots, the kids have been playing outside in their rain boots with layers upon layers of socks. :) Whatever works...

The heart breaking part of this seemingly pointless story happened two days ago when I asked the kids to put on their boots so that we could go to the store. Peyton came up to me and said "Mom, do I have to wear the boots out? They're MONSTERS, they have EYES and they're EMBARASSING!" It made me sad....I want my little boy back!

Quick recap on 2009

2009 brought so many wonderful things into our lives. First, Wayne and I sold our the first home that we'd had to purchase our 'forever' house. We had outgrown the first house the minute we moved in, but it was where the Lord had purposed for us at that moment and we loved that house. However, after praying for almost a year about a house (we really loved the one we bought, but wanted God's will more) we got the house. Beyond excitement! There is not a doubt in my mind that the whole process was a God thing.


This was also the year (fall) that I was supposed to start looking for a teaching job again. I think my being home is as much a blessing to Wayne as it is to me and we made the decision that I would stay home. This time, we didn't put an expiration date on when I would go back to the classroom. Sometimes, I feel bad that I'm still getting my Masters even though I'm not putting it to use at the moment, but I know that I'm doing what I'm supposed to....and that's a great feeling.

We visited Disney World for the first time as well. I just loved it! I think we waited a little too long and should've gone there before doing the cruises because the kids were over the characters and didn't want to pose for pictures, etc. :( My parents went with us and we had a blast! My mom and dad were really a lot of fun on this trip. It was nice to see them enjoy themselves. Dad himself is just like a kid and loved being there as much (if not more!) than we did! This year also brought my dad's diagnosis of Parkinson's Disease. He's in early stages with tremors mainly focused on his hands and arms, but we are hopeful. Michael J. Fox once said that he was grateful for the disease because for as much as it's taken away it's given back. I get that now. Once we were told what the doctors said I made up my that we would never look back and wish we would've done something when dad was able to go. There may come a time when he's unable, but with the advances in medicine that time may never come! I just didn't want to be at the end of anything full of regret. So, Wayne and I went to the travel agent and booked 2 rooms. It was a great decision.

Peyton went off to second grade this year while our baby started Kindergarten. That really hit me a lot harder than I anticipated. I continue to struggle with not having a baby/toddler/not so grown up know-it-all child in the house as now I have two very bright, silly but sometimes sassy children to contend with. The kids love school and I LOVE being the one to take them, make lunches, lay out clothes, and pick them up. It's such a blessing to be able to be home I just can't say enough how grateful and thankful I am for that part of my life.

Kristen also came to live with us in the fall. It's had it's periods of adjustment, but it's been great. We love having her around. She has jumped right in as a regular part of this family and I just pray that we're helping to make her feel comfortable and loved. She joins us for family dinner almost every night, she has movie nights with the kids (and sometimes with Wayne and I), we chat and goof around with her and it's safe to say that we're all happy she's here with us.

We look to 2010 with great hope and excitement for what God has in store for us. I hope to get started with our Associate Pastor with a mission trip for this summer with the youth of our church. I also look forward to seeing Him move within our church family.