Peek-A-Boo

Ice-mageddon 2015

The cold weather decided to sneak its way back into Texas starting last Saturday morning, which conveniently enough was Avery's very first soccer game.  Needless to say we were less than thrilled to have to dress in layers, bring blankets, hats, gloves and all the cold weather accessories to sit out at a very early, very COLD soccer game.  But Avery and her teammates did so well and as always its so fun to see Avery out on the field doing what she loves (and she possibly scored a goal or two also ;-)


Unfortunately Walker is pretty unversed in the cold weather experience so he was not a huge fan.  Combined with the fact that the game lined up during a nap time, plus the fact that I kept trying to cover him up in blankets and put gloves on him, he was a pretty unhappy little guy.  Lesson learned here- next time its supposed to be freezing temperatures AND nap time....get a sitter.  Done and done.


Then the ice descended upon us starting late Sunday night and left a huge layer of pure ice all over North Texas.  It started out kind of slushy and maybe, possibly a little fun to play in but as the day wore on Monday it completely froze over and was just miserably cold.



The kids were out of school both Monday and Tuesday.  They loved every second of it and I think we exhausted very single possible toy and game option in our house.  I was, and still exhausted from it.  Ha!



Then immediately after we dropped Avery at school today it started to snow!  Real, actual, big snowflakes!  It was gorgeous and left a very very light layer of white snow everywhere.


This weather is definitely keeping us on our toes and they are saying we may get more snow later this week?!

Valentines 2015

Baby's 1st Haircut

Let me preface this post by saying that Walker is quite obviously my first boy and dealing with boys hair and dealing with girls hair is VERY different.  With girls you slap on headbands and bows and possibly trim the hair a little yourself for years before they get an actual haircut and it works out just fine but with boys its a different story.  I have always liked Walker's hair a little long but lately his hair has started to get very full, i.e. frizzy, and about 50% of the time I would look at him and think "wow your long hair is so cool and surfer-ish" and the other 50% of the time I would think he looked like a little ragamuffin who needed his hair brushed.  So i have been battling with if and when to give him a haircut for a while and have even trimmed him up (to the best of my limited abilities) a few times.  But we were running errands yesterday and I looked and him and his crazy hair and just thought "OK its time for a haircut. We better go right now before I change my mind."




Luckily we were able to walk right in to the local kids haircut place and they could fit us in immediately.  He got to pick out his favorite car, watch his favorite show (Mickey Mouse) and eat a sucker.  Even with all those awesome distractions he moved around like a crazy person and how the haircut lady was able to cut his hair at all was a miracle.





He had a great time, but seemed a little annoyed that someone kept touching his head, but overall loved every second of all this pampering.  The haircut lady was good and obviously pretty used to wrestling babies in order to cut their hair.  I told her to trim up the sides, take out some of the volume, and try to keep the top fairly long.  She did just that, and we didn't use the clippers at all- perfect!  She was worth every cent.






Because look at this handsome little dude.  I mean seriously he looks precious.



His haircut is phenomenal and is everything I wanted it to be, but geez he just looks so much older to me now.  How do you slow down time?  ;-)







The official before and after picture





He knows he looks good.  Overall great 1st haircut experience and I'm sure we will be back very soon!

The Terminator, The Pledge & Sleepovers

We second half of our week was so great! The weather warmed up and we spend every possible second outside just soaking it up.
Spending time inside just leads to a lot of this .......




All day every day. He is into everything. And everyone keeps telling me to get cabinet locks but letting him destroy our Tupperware drawer is the only way I can ever get dinner made. I consider it worth it..... Most of the time.  I look at the disaster that seems to follow Walker around, and then I look at sweet little Gracyn who quietly works on her art projects for hours.  Lol the difference in boys and girls is astounding.  But i love it ;-)




Avery was chosen to say the Texas Pledge in front of her whole school on Friday. She practiced here and there throughout the week and kept telling me "I got it down Mommy, I really don't need to practice." And I don't know if it didn't dawn on her or if she truly didn't care but she never ever once mentioned that she was saying this IN FRONT OF THE WHOLE SCHOOL!  She was not nervous at all.  At least that made one of us ;-)



Of course she nailed it.  she got right up in front of everyone handled them in the pledge.  So proud of my smart little lady .


But let's not mention how big she looks here.  Yikes.


Then Friday night Gracyn was invited to her first ever sleepover at someone else's house.  It was only fitting that her first sleepover was with Ella, because Avery's very first sleepover was with Campbell.  Although I knew she was going to have a blast and I was 99% confident that she was going to do great, there is always the 1% unknown factor with Gracyn because her fears and anxiety can be unpredictable sometimes, but she did GREAT!  She had a great time and loved every single second of it.  Both my girls are getting so big!






Obviously Walker was very sad to be the only child for 24 hours.  Just tore him up to have all Mommy's attention.  LOL.


The Saturday my parents invited me and the kids over to spend the night since Matt was out of town and I jumped at the chance.  I mean who could resist waking up to this.....????



We had a great time and spent almost the entire day Sunday outside, and Mommy even snuck away for a few hours to go home to do laundry, clean the house, and grocery shop completely alone.  It may not sound glamorous but to a Mommy of 3, it most definitely is.  It's funny when you have time alone though, because I always find myself rushing back as soon as I can to see these three little smiling faces.  They make my heart burst.


Happy Sunday folks!  Hope you have a great Pre-Valentines Week!

100th Day of School

"I really need to practice my knitting and my walking really slow since I'm 100 today."







"Eat your vegetables dearie!"



Hope you have a great 100th day of school 100 year old Avery!

Happy Boy!

This kid is always down to clown around.  He is such a smiley, happy little fella and he just melts me.



























And then very rarely you get to see him still and asleep and it is the most precious thing in the world.

Keeping Busy

It's that time of year where I always start to wonder what people is super cold climates with much longer winters than ours do all winter long.

 It has been cold, dreary, and the flu is rampant so we have been saying home a lot but are all getting a bad case of cabin fever.  He have been hitting up our favorite places, like the library.........


Someone asked me if he sits still and reads books- ha!  No he thinks the chairs are a jungle gym and he likes to climb up and down, up and down, and then run around like a crazy man.  Luckily our library has its own dedicated children's floor where they are pretty lenient about the noise level.





The girls love the library and playing on the computers and as Avery gets older it is getting more and more fun to look around a pick up book together.  Her and I joke that we want to have a girls getaway together where we go somewhere and read all day.  Sounds amazing.


Two days a week I have both Gracyn and Walker home and watching these two form a sister-brother bond has been really fun to watch.  She is very sweet with him and always tolerant if his tantrums.


She teaches him how to climb, sing, dance and he thinks she hangs the moon.






They have smooch fun playing together and watching them together just makes my heart sing.  I love it so  much.

January Is Over

Today is February 1st.  That blows my mind.  January flew by in a whirl of activity.

Avery has been selling girl scout cookies for a few weeks and it has been really fun.  She does a pretty good job talking to people and trying to sell them cookies and it has been a really great teaching tool for her.  The downside is that we have about 30 boxes of Girl Scout cookies at all times just sitting in our house.  They tend to call to me about 9PM at night.  I have held strong so far but apparently we are selling these puppies until March.  Pray for my strength ;-)





I fee like we go through periods of time where the kids play SO good together and truly enjoy playing with one another, and other times where all I am doing is breaking up fights and telling someone to quit crying.  Luckily we are on an upswing right now where they are just loving spending time with one another.  It is so heart warming to see them all together.

My whole heart and soul.  

The other night we went to eat at Babes and Avery went to see the "big light up thing" and when we told her it was called a jukebox and it played music she said "that big music maker thing is weird.  Plus its way bigger than an iPod."  True Avery.  True.


Friday we had Walker's 15 month well-check appointment, 2 weeks late, but who cares right?   Everything went good and all his stats were great and coincidentally enough he weighs exactly the same as Avery did at this age, and is only a 1/2 inch taller than she was at this age too.  Sadly he had to get 2 vaccines but I gave his a lollipop right before they gave him the shots so that seemed to ease the blow.


Then we spent the rest of Friday preparing for Nana's retirement party and I got to spend a little alone time with my niece Emersyn.  It is rare to get alone time with any of my nieces or nephews and I just adore it.  She is such a sweet girl and she loved being the "party planner" for Nana's party, although she informed me that she didn't think we had "enough colorful things and it might be a little boring" LOL


Obviously Walker was a huge help with the decorations.  He kept yelling "baaaaa!" and then ripping down all the balloons and decorations we had just set up.  Thanks buddy.

Beyond the fact that we were all in town to celebrate my mom I just eat up the time I get with my sisters.  We are all such kindred spirits with an insane amount of inside jokes and all we do is sit around laughing (our big, loud, identical Haggerty laugh) with each other.  They truly are my best friends in the whole world and when we all 3 get to be together I feel so blessed to call them my siblings.  We had such a great time celebrating Mom on Friday and maybe even spilled a glass of wine, or two, or five.......



And obviously the highlight was surprising Mom with her trip.  We planned it and booked everything about 2 weeks ago and it has been SO hard not to tell her.  Her favorite place on earth is the beach and we have never, ever taken a trip with just her, me and my sisters, so this is areal treat for all of us.  Definitely a once in a lifetime trip, and June cannot get here fast enough!


Saturday we spent the whole day outside.  It was little chilly and overcast but the kids didn't seem to mind.  I love days spent outside, watching the kids play Mermaids and Pirates, getting muddy and dirty and wearing mis-matched clothing.  The bonds these little cousins are making is truly extraordinary and such a pleasure to watch.


Sunday came way too fast and we were all tired and not at all ready for the next week but it was definitely a weekend we will always remember.

Happy February!