Jeff got a Kindle recently and was looking for a book to read. A friend suggested The Martian. He was hooked right away and spent most of his free time for a week reading it. He then proceeded to take a week or so to talk me into reading it. Now, I love reading, I really do, but I have so many parenting books going right now I was not too excited about adding another book. But then Jeff said I'd look sexy reading a piece of fiction. I thought it was a ridiculous conclusion to draw. What?! Am I not sexy when I am reading super helpful books that will make me a better Mom?? Sheesh, the nerve.
Well it worked, I guess I just can't resist making him want me. If he says specifically that he likes an outfit I have, I choose wisely when I wear said outfit. Same thing goes for makeup or perfume. And Jeff is not one to gush on what he likes about me too often, so when he makes a point to say something, I listen.
Anyways, I read the book real fast. I got hooked too. It's a great book and it's been a long time, years since I've read a fiction book. And a book that is so suspenseful. I really enjoyed it and we are making a point to go see the movie tonight! Yay for date night!

Just one of those days

The room is dark and quiet, except for the calming wurr of the white noise machine. I am alone, except for the little angel in my arms and this is the moment I think about blogging.

My brain begins logging all the thoughts of the day, the happenings, the ideas, any sparks of creativity and dumping them into the forefront so I get all inspired to share them with you. I just wish I could type things up in my brain and have them show up on my computer later. (I'm sure technology will have that someday) Because I always forget the best parts when I turn to silently close the door behind me after laying Averly down.

Well tonight I felt compelled to write as soon as I came downstairs. So I am avoiding the kitchen and living room which would suck me into picking up crap the rest of my night. BTW: I have lowered my standard of cleanliness so far that I am okay with leaving dishes in the sink up to 7 days if I have to, and I have. I also have relinquished the dream of being able to walk around my house without having to dance the samba around dolls, pens, clothes, and half-eaten granola bars. It still bugs the hell out of me but I have trained that part of my brain to go offline when needed.

I am choosing to sit here and unload a few thoughts. 

Today was like most days. There were special little moments where I kissed my kids faces till they begged me to stop. A moment I chuckled at Auri for accurately using the word "Enthralled" in a sentence and then her asking what it meant. A moment I captured how adorable Luci is when she hears a good song and says "Let's dance!" And then there were many more moments of me holding by breath for as long as I could so I wouldn't drop a whole bunch of profanity to get them to shut up and stop arguing with me or with each other. Auri & Luci are in a pretty intense stage right now. They like to play with each other, but Auri has a more sophisticated(controlling) way of wanting to play and Luci has her own ideas and is not really interested in being bossed around. She is also systematically trying to break Auri down by pushing all the wrong buttons. So today was filled with them fighting over stupid things and arguing with me about how to solve the problems they created with each other. 

I was SO done by the end of the day, we went out. I had 2 margaritas!! I will survive...I think.

Will they always be this way? Two very different sisters 3 years apart, constantly bugging each other? We try very hard in our home to make the person more important than the "thing". Whatever it is, the other person and your relationship with them is more important to keep in tact. We really drill it into them, so I am hoping that one day it will click in both of them and they will fight to stay friends and sisters, forever! 

On a less intense note, but almost just as exasperating; both girls must be in an epic growth spurt, because for many many weeks they have been eating non-stop! I can't keep up. And I have Jeff Mitchell's children so they have sophisticated pallets and more specifically they want variety. They will not eat the same food twice in a row. If you give them a granola bar they want a cheese-stick next followed by some sort of fruit maybe. They are constantly saying, "I'm hungry, can I have a snack" and "I want something else Momma" You gotta keep them interested and excited about the food. You gotta sell it baby!  The only easy thing that I probably could get them to eat every time without complaining would be fruit snacks & Mac 'n Cheese. But, I am trying to feed them healthy stuff and not ruin their metabolism or something. Some days I think, forget this! I will feed them what they want and I will explain to them later in life when they have diabetes that I tried but it's all their fault. Then I remember the sugar crashes will be on my time, so I fight a little harder. Being the hard-ass mom sucks! I really hope they love me later for the hard choices I am making right now and don't judge me too harshly for the lazy ones.

Averly's Arrival

And then there were three...

 

  

  

 Auri was ecstatic and could not stop smiling!

 I will never forget this moment looking at her little overjoyed face!

 Auri sat next to me holding Averly for at least 20 min

 Luci admired her from a distance and stole her binky :)

                                   And this is why we keep growing precious little humans

 Her huge feet looked so odd next to her skinny legs

Yep a year later aaaannnddd no blog posts. Haha, I must be kidding myself that I can keep this up. Well the last year went way too fast. My best friend got married, I found out I was pregnant with #3, turned 29 (the age I remember my Grandma always saying she was at every birthday) Auri started and finished a year of Preschool, we had said 3rd child and life has come to whole new level of crazy.
I spend my days taking care of the most amazing group of girls. I love getting to know each one of their special personalities. It's a really hard and thankless job most days, but ever so often there are days where life brings happy tears to your eyes and you are envisioned to keep going strong and fight to be better each day. Parenting has been the single most effective tool in bringing me to my knees and teaching me patience, kindness, perseverance, trust and joy. It hurts so good and I love it!
That's all for now

Catching up...

So the month of August really has been a blast! We kicked things off with a family wedding August 1st! My baby sister Michaela became Mrs. Alonzo!! She was a gorgeous bride and they are such a cute couple; deeply in love! The day was gorgeous and remarkable in many ways. It was a very healing and monumental time for our family. I was sad when the party was all over.

Soon after we recovered from the wedding we went camping as a family with some of our closest friends. We had a blast making memories, chasing after our kids and sitting around the campfire late into the night. My absolute favorite!! I look forward to our annual camping trip in August with the same giddy excitement as I did when I was 10 years old!

Now that camp is over and put away I feel the fall nipping at my heals, which oddly I am excited about, I typically lament the end of summer for most of the fall and then finally come around about Thanksgiving time. But this year fall will be bringing some fun house projects to get ready for a glorious season of dinner parties and practicing our B&B skills. I will be making an intentional learning space in one of the bedrooms to hopefully attempt a fun homeschooling-ish environment for Aurelia. She is so smart and really loves to learn new things, so we are going to just go with it and have some unofficial homeschooling every day. I also have the most amazing in-laws who are both early education experts and will be working with her this fall in learning to read. Crazy! When you talk about school and reading it really hits you; we have a kid. A really big kid.

This fall will also bring the wedding of my lifetime best friend Katrina Hope!!!! She is marrying the best man for her and I am over the moon excited to be a part of their special day and the marking of many new chapters in their life. I love her, I love him, I love that they are getting married, words can't describe my excitement!

My motto these days is something I read recently, "Life is not a race, it's okay to slow down." I have wasted too many years in varying levels of stress and anxiety worrying that I am not doing enough, or not doing the right thing, I have to produce, produce, produce and you know what? that's crap! :) I'm sick of feeling the pressure to be constantly moving and doing things. I am taking time to really enjoy what's going on right now, enjoy my family, enjoy the weather, enjoy God and this gift of life. It is a glorious thing when you can let go of your own agenda and be carried along by God. Amazingly you still get things done and have positive impact on other people, but it's not a matter of striving to achieve something, more like responding to what tugs on your heart. I really believe He wants us to enjoy life more than we think. Chill out, take time to be grateful and just relax...

Curve Ball

You know when you just get settled into a groove, you see the light at the end of the tunnel called chaos, you start to relax and then life throws you are curve ball?
That was today...my father-in-law Eric lost his job of 17+ years at Microsoft. :(
I don't know what this will mean for Jeff & I (being that we rent their big house and they live across the driveway), but I know it will come in the form of change...again. If there was a theme for the last 12 months of my life it would hands down be "flexibility". Lord help me!

Finding the Joy

I don't know what my expectations of being a Wife & Mom where as a little girl, but I don't think I anticipated how hard it would be. So hard. I was drinking my morning coffee this morning & I was talking to Jesus, trying to let go of the heavy burden that is motherhood & I heard Him ever so politely say to me, "Find the Joy, focus on the Joy". Where do I find joy in this 24/7 marathon called motherhood?
It is in these eyes...

It is in this smile...

Joy is Auri asking me to stay and snuggle a little bit longer as I put her to bed. It is Luci giving a dozen voluntary hugs a day.

Today I choose to focus on the Joy!

Motherhood

Becoming a Mom for me has truly exposed me to the very core & left me undone.
I never thought I was a really selfish person.
I never thought I was an angry person.
Oh, but these little humans that I share a home with have been designed by God to push every button I have & know exactly the right combination in which to bring the worst out of me.
Sometimes I feel like they join forces. Auri starts off whining for a snack after barely touching the breakfast I made her, Luci is yelling because her demands can't be heard over Auri's whining. I have to, with my mind reading powers, figure out what kind of food Luci will eat today & then play the taste & see game. As soon as I sit down to eat & drink my lukewarm coffee they are done & ready to play. Our house is pretty chopped up in terms of rooms & because they are not quite at the age where they can play nice unsupervised for very long at all, I take my food on the go & rarely get to finish it.
Some Moms have girls who are so sweet & docile, content to sit & play with dolls for hours. Not mine! Both my girls are always on the move it seems. The messiest activities are the most attractive to them. They love variety & new experiences, which I blame 100% on my husband. Jeff is kind of the same way in an adult version. He expresses it in his desire for new & gourmet food most nights & rarely agrees to eat leftovers. The girls express it in looking for new activities every 20 minutes.
These days I feel like my whole day is spent on damage control. Toys, food, clothes & random crap is everywhere by dinner time & unless I want to spend my quiet evening time before bed cleaning I have to keep a lid on the mess somehow during the day. Some days I anticipate their next move & can keep the destruction at bay, other days it is a complete wasteland.
My complete inability to function in a messy house is my Mom's fault! Sorry Mom :) She is a clean freak & a control freak. She knows this. She did an excellent job teaching us kids how to keep a house clean & she had very high expectations. The downside is that with two very active girls a little piece of me has to die each day as I learn to live in chaos. This is hard for me. I get mean & nasty when I care more about the condition of my house than the condition of my girls. And the best part is my little 4 year old can spot it so fast, at least I know I am teaching her well on what a bad attitude looks like. She will often say, "Mommy, you're being nasty."
Whether it's Luci waking up too damn early in the morning, Auri finding a $10 tube of anti-fungal cream & rubbing it all over her body, Luci playing in the toilet water, Auri pooping in the front yard, wrestling Luci to just change her diaper or Auri dumping a pound of nails & screws on the shop floor; they are driving my ugliest attributes right out into the open air so I have to face them head on. It's a painful exorcism.
I'm not shocked to see my sin, just really sad & disgusted. I am extremely grateful for the blood of Jesus & His grace. I am learning more about Jesus, His love for me & His commitment to my salvation in this journey called Motherhood, then I ever did in any church service or program.
In the last year I have been stripped down to the most common denominator in so many areas of life that I am seeing it's all about Who loves me, who I love & how I love them.
The 2 words that cross my lips the most when talking to my girls every day are the two words I need the most in my own heart. Patience & Kindness. When I feel my head about to explode, profanity about to pour out my mouth, anger on my lips, if by the grace of God I catch myself all I can think of is: Love is Patient. Love is Kind. I know my girls will never be able to learn patience & kindness until they see it demonstrated in me first.
God help me be a patient & kind Mom.

Baby steps to Saturday, baby steps to Saturday...Jeff has been in DC since last Tuesday and I am losing my mind, no seriously can somebody help me find it. The natives have me surrounded and I hear them discussing whether to empty all the cupboards in the house or just burn it down entirely.
Come home Jeff!!!

These two cuties are getting married in 18 days and I am freaking excited! My baby sister found a really great guy!

Beginning...again!

I have been fighting with myself about blogging and really all social media for many years. To be honest I am a bit overwhelmed by it all, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Blogger and I can't name anymore because that is how behind I am. I guess it could be showing my age? Nope, a ton of my friends take to it like a bee in a clover field. I KNOW that Facebook and blogs have forever changed the fabric of our culture and I am curious what the outworking of it all will be. I wonder what it will mean for my kids. Will they know that you can't make "friends" by clicking a button and that just because you think something doesn't mean the World Wide Web needs to hear it? I worry about my own social skills which aren't amazing in the first place. I sometimes feel that part of my brain malfunctioning. The part that helps you engage in conversations and make new friends and grow old ones. I am afraid for how Facebook has changed the way we view relationship and what we define as "knowing" someone.
Anyways, I still have a lot of "issues" with social media that I am still working through. I would rather go out to coffee with you or have you over for dinner, but I understand that miles and busy schedules can keep us from sharing daily life together. So I'm thinking, if my friends & I can keep a little more relationship going in between the face-to-face meetings, then blogging is totally worth it! I suck at calling people on the phone and with two very loud girls in my house all the time the best time to talk is late at night, which makes for a convenient time to blog about the day...or sleep!
I won't blog to make money or build a following, I will blog in an attempt to keep my friendships growing. I will not stop getting together face-to-face, but the deeper I get into my growing family & business and all of your lives being full as well, the frequency of hangouts are less than what I would like. So I will read about your lives and hopefully you'll do the same, because I love you all and truly would spend so much more time with you if I could!
Here goes...

Wedding Photos!

Photobucket Album

Atlanta, GA

Hi all, today is our last work day in Atlanta with MGX08! Yay! The show was considerably easier than WPC and we were grateful. We are tired, worn out, weak, did I mention tired? We are so ready to come home. Sorry, Jeff says he is not tired, but I AM!!! However, we thoroughly enjoyed our hotel...Check it out! I also was finally able to attend my first attendee party at Six Flags over Georgia!

Houston-WPC!

Hello, from Houston. We are on our 3rd to last show for the summer, YAY! It is being held in the George R. Brown Convention Center. The interiors looks like either a McDonald's or a cartoon ship, I've heard both descriptions. We came excited to spend 4th of July in the heart of USA Spirit and we were met with rain, wind and thunder! We went out for a leisurely walk in the park, we brought our books thinking we could sit and enjoy the warm weather. OH NO, we got caught in the rain...we decided it would probably lighten up soon so we sat down under the overhang of a closed restuarant and began to read Chronicles of Narnia...1 1/2 hours later...it finally lightened up so we could walk home in our obviously toursit outfits of sunglasses and flip-flops.We spent the rest of the day inside our hotel ordering room service. :)

Grandma's House!

So, my grandma Hayes has an awesome piece of property right on the Yakima River and we went over on a Saturday to help get the place ready for summer. It was tons of fun, a little work and a lot of food!

Home Sweet Home

So I am sure you have all notcied that, blogging is not easy for me when I am in the company of my Hubby, he is just so much more fun than blogginf. Anyways, it is not fare to you, so I will try my best to keep it up.

Now that I am in the humid and boring Houston, TX, I am very much missing our little home. We just did some decorating in the living room to make it feel a bit more like a unified room.

As you can see, Jeff and I are minimalists when it comes to the fancy things. We like to keep it simple, fresh and uncluttered. We bought a picture and two side tables for our couch. You can't see them too well but they are simple dark wood square boxes. We think it feels cozy! :) We love to have people over, so if anybody looks at this and desires to relax in it's tranquility, give us a call, we'd love to have you over. Here Jeff is eating some frozen grapes...a great hot summer day treat.

Microsoft Funnies!

As gruiling as the hours at Microsoft are, there are always those moments that make the day worth it. We've had the opportunity to run around in Microsoft superhero costumes. (Not Jeff or I, but the MC's) They were pretty hilarious walking around in the costumes and of course the attendees loved them. On many occasions I had the urge to trip them and watch them struggle to get up. :) Evil I know!

Another funny story, at the show this year they passed out water bottles to the attendees and had packages of soap available for the use of washing them. Multiple attendees ripped open the soap packages and before any of us could stop them, began to eat the soap, thinking it was an energy drink! One gentleman spent several minutes at the drinking fountain trying to remove the soap from his mouth...quite funny. The funniest part was that multiple people did it, not so smart, huh?!

TechED - Orlando

Okay, so it was so much better to be doing a show with Jeff. I missed him so much in Chicago! You can tell my blogging went down after being with Jeff...I can't ignore that he is a lot more interesting than blogging. But I promised to keep you all up to date, so TechED has been very good, long, but good. Jeff did his biggest and most complex bag build ever. They had 50 items going into 8,500 bags. We had 165 people working on the bag build and we got it all done in less than 8 hours! Jeff was very proud of the team and if you know him well he was eating up all the stats. Get this, they averaged 65 bags a minute! WOW! I joined in for some of it...I love running the line! This picture doesn't do it justice but you can kinda' get the idea.

There is something in our laundry closet!

So, I am still bored so I thought of a priceless story that you all must hear. A few weeks ago Jeff and I were having dinner in our apartment and we heard a noise coming from our laundry closet, which is just off our kitchen. It sounded like there was a rat in there russling around. We opened the door and Jeff grabbed the broom...to be honest we were both scarred...hair standing on end! Well we didn't see any rat but we kept hearing the sound of claws on the wall. We finally isolated the sound coming from the heater vent form the dryer going up out of the apartment. Every time I touched the vent we heard the sound. I shook it again violently and felt something fall and try to get back up the pipe. OH MY GOSH!

There is definitely something in that vent!!!

We called maintenance (the joy of renting) and they came over and pulled the dryer out, opened the vent and out stuck a little black wing! They proceeded to pull out 4 DEAD birds from the back of our dryer!! Yah, nasty! Don't worry we washed our clothes again. - Elise

Broadway Lights!

Even though I am a whole time zone away from Jeff, being in Chicago with Momma Mitchell does have its perks. We have gone to 2 excellent broadway shows in 2 nights. The first was Wicked. It was about how the two witches in The Wizard of Oz grew up and were actually friends. They did an excellant job and some of the parts were quite chilling. The overall message was interesting but I couldn't tell if they were trying to champion animal rights or rebelling against the system (probably both)! Anyways, the next show we went to was Jersey Boys! This one I felt guilty going without my Dad, because if it were'nt for him I wouldn't have know any of the songs they sung. The musical showed the rise and fall of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. They sung songs like "Sherry", "Big Girls Don't Cry," "Walk Like a Man," "Can't Take My Eyes Off You," "Oh, What a Night," and more. It was SO FUN! Almost the entire audience was 50 or older, but I enjoyed it as much as they did. Thanks Dad for making me listen to such quality music! :) If ya'll have no idea what group I'm talking about does the name Tonny Divito ring any bells? The only downer of the evening was that I had bought some eye drops and granola bars at Walgreens and the theatre made me throw them away, AAGGHH I should have known and tried to sneak them in, instead of having them in plain view. Oh, well I got some more today and my eyes are no longer blood shot red. Scarry! It's pretty hard to respect and follow someone when they look like they've been smokin' pot. (Don't quote me on that.) - Elise