Running With Spears

I don’t do this much, but today’s post is mostly pictures because, well, they speak for themselves. 😉

😀 😀 😀 We’re so excited!

Apple, as Boo has nicknamed this baby, is due in March. I’m 13 weeks right now. I’ve been rather nauseous and had bad headaches, but I’ve been feeling a little better this week, and hopefully will continue to feel better as I get further into the second trimester.

We’ll find out gender at 20 weeks. We’d love a sister for Smiles, as they’ll be close in age. And we have all girl clothes, and whatnot, so there’s that. 😉

So…yeah. That’s our big news!!!

And now I’m going to spam you with more pics of my girls, because I couldn’t pass up taking pictures of them since we were out, they were dressed up, and I had my camera. That would be like going to Starbucks and not buying a drink.

If you don’t like it, you can simply close the page now. 😉

For those of you who didn’t…here are more pics of my beautiful girls!

Aren’t they just the loveliest?!?! I’m not biased at all. 😉

Anyway, that’s a wrap! Have a great day!

Happy Friday, guys! We made it! It’s almost the weekend, which means I get to ~~relax~~, ~~sleep in~~, ~~party~~, do all the things I normally do, but with my husband home. 😉 (Ok, in my case that makes a pretty big difference because Misteris is just the best, but there’s really nothing he can do to prevent Smiles from keeping me up half the night with her teething.)

I was thinking about this past weeks and realized I had some pretty fun “Mom Highlights” a.k.a. those quintessential Mom moments that are just so ridiculous you have to laugh…or cry. Here are a few of mine:

1. Standing in a quiet public restroom with other people when your five year old starts asking, “How do babies get out of their mommies’ tummies?”

2. Wearing your favorite shirt from your recent Stitch Fix (affiliate link) delivery for the first time when your toddler gets a bloody nose and wipes it on your shirt!

3. Discovering that your toddler learned how to move the dining chairs into the kitchen by finding her at the sink dumping cup fulls of dirty water all over the counter…using your brand new coffee mug!

4. Looking down at your outfit after you’ve already left the house and realizing it’s covered in split pea soup & chocolate stains.

5. Discovering that your toddler has learned how to undress herself by finding her running around the house completely naked…with poop on her butt!

6. Realizing your 5 year old had a growth spurt when she lifts her arms and her dress comes up & shows her (super short) undershorts…at church.

Yeeeeaaah. Fun times, fun times. 😉

I’d love to hear the “highlights” of your week!

Have a great weekend. Oh and one piece of advice…if your “fall weather” is still near 100 today like mine, Starbucks has a Pumpkin Spice Frappuccino! I don’t know if this is new or I just somehow never realized it before, but it’s fall in a cup that you can can go ahead and enjoy despite the heat!!!! Yes!

My husband and I have never really prayed together all that much.

It’s awkward.

In fact, when our pastor was talking about praying with your spouse and admitted that some people might feel more comfortable jumping out of a plane than praying out loud, Misteris agreed 100%. Nevertheless, we decided to take the 21 Day Prayer Challenge (a.k.a. pray with your spouse every day for 3 weeks), with one caveat; we’d each only pray for thirty seconds.

At first, even these short prayers felt ungainly and bumbling, but by golly our church was having a drawing from the names of everyone who completed it, and I wanted to win. That’s what praying together is all about, right? So we powered through. (Oh, is that not the point? Ooops. Well, we didn’t even win, so whatever).

Anyway, despite out best intentions, our prayers slowly got slightly longer. And while praying together still doesn’t feel completely natural, it no longer feels more awkward than having your card declined at Starbucks with a dozen people in line behind you…and then starting to cry. Not that I would know. 😉

We’ve also seen God do some really cool stuff that we couldn’t have possibly done on our own, not just once but over and over in the first few weeks after we accepted the challenge! And here we are well after the end of the challenge and we’re still praying together. So I guess maybe we did win something after all.

So…yeah. Awhile back my church asked me to write a blurb about our experience for its monthly “magazine” thingiemabobber, and I figured I’d share it with you guys, too. 🙂

Morning! Well, afternoon…whatever.

You know what drives me crazy? Being inundated with blog posts about how super awesome and together and practically-perfect-in-every-way someone is…and how I can attempt to achieve their level of greatness if I simply follow their 87.573 step instructions…beginning with waking up at 3:26 every morning, eating a breakfast of quinoa and kale and running a marathon!

Here’s the thing:

A) I have no desire to do that.

2) No one is really as super-awesome 24/7 as those types of posts imply. NO ONE! With the possible exception of Mary Poppins, but I’m thinking maybe she puts something in those spoonfulls of sugar she hands out (and likely consumes, as well…just sayin’). 😉

Anyhoo…today I decided that maybe we could all use a dose of reality. A bit of good old-fashioned telling it like it is. I’ll start.

I manage to wrangle my kids into bathing and washing their hair an average of once a week.
Which is also about as often as I actually brush all the tangles out of their hair.
I lie to Smiles, who has just started wearing pull-ups, and tell her there are no potties except at our house. I’m just not ready for the whole annoying helping a kid use a public toilet thing. Potty training be darned.
I don’t have any clocks in our house except one in the shape of a moose. (It’s super cute! But it has no numbers and ~~even I can barely~~ I can’t even read it.) That way I can tell the kids it’s bedtime whenever I get so exhausted that I just can’t handle them being awake a second longer. Even if it’s only 7:00.
I pawned off the assisting of Boo’s science experiments on Artist this year because I don’t have the energy to both oversee the experiments and keep Smiles from destroying them.
Artist and Boo wake up before me every morning and help themselves to granola bars, watch TV or play Wii, and otherwise gallivant about for an hour or 2 until I get up.

So, yeah. That’s a smidgen of a glimpse into my real life these days. You can now feel much better about yourself. You’re welcome. 🙂

Now I need to eat some lunch…and see how much of a mess my littles made with the jar of peanut butter and container of hummus I let them have so they could feed themselves while I wrote this post. And then I’ll drink a few cups of coffee to help me muster up the energy to actually clean up that mess…and then clean up all the messes they make while I’m cleaning up that mess, and so on. 😉

Good morning! Or afternoon. Whatever. I’ve only had one cup of coffee so far today. I know, it’s crazy!

I just wanted to make a quick post to share a link to finchnwren.com where I had the pleasure of being interviewed after I was a finalist in the 2014 Homeschool Blog Awards for the “Best Nitty Gritty Blog.” (I actually just realized today that I was in the top 10! Say do what now?)

Wren, and her sister Finch, won the “Best Family or Group Blog” category! So, needless to say, they rocks socks! Plus, how fun is it that two sisters homeschool and blog together?!? Seriously, check out their blog!

Anyhoo, here’s a link to my interview: Family, Fun & Homeschooling ~ Meet Heather from “Running with Spears”

And now I need more coffee! Have a fantastic weekend, guys! And thanks again for interviewing me, Wren. It was splendiferous. 🙂