Saturday, May 19, 2012

Perfect Mother's Day

Yep, I'm throwin' out the P-word. I don't like to use it too often, but last weekend earned it.

That being said, it's amazing how quickly my mind blocks out memories of two little girls taking an hour.and.a.half to go to sleep since they aren't used to sleeping with Mama and Daddy. If last weekend already looks perfect in my mind after a week, I imagine that it will look like heaven on Earth 20 years from now.

It really was exquisite. I got a weekend in my favorite place, Chelan, with my family of four, and the girls had the time of their lives. To risk being a broken record, there is nothing better than seeing my kids so happy and free-spirited. My cheeks got a workout for two days with little time for a straight face. These girls make me smile so much it hurts.

We headed out on Friday evening after work, and both girls were zonked out by the time we reached our hotel. This made for an easy bedtime the first night. I got such joy out of waking up a few times during the night, only to realize that we were sleeping all together as a family.

This scene has become quite familiar to the Collins Family. Well, it's more commonly executed in the back of the car, but it was full of everything we own (that's what we bring on two day trips nowadays...don't you?). This is the little smile we get every time Austen tinkles. We can't get enough, obviously:


There just happened to be a parade going on in Manson on Saturday. The girls had a blast princess waving, dancing to middle school bands, running for candy, and getting to eat some of that candy. You can bet that I was on a mommy high for the rest of the day.
Too much parade fun!
Kaitlyn surprised us by going out in the water by herself!
She was proud to coax her little sister to do the same.
Two brave girls!
Ever since seeing a girl do the splits at Aunt Stacey's wedding, this is Kailtyn's move.
Evening picnic at the park...it just kept getting better.

I don't think I've documented The Great Haircut of 2012 yet. This is showing the surprisingly good job she did on her bangs. I love them!
What they did for an entire hour.
Kaitlyn has been really into taking pictures with Mama's camera. This is some of her work.
And this would be a self-timer picture.

The weekend exceeded my expectations and refreshed me. It delivered many reminders that I am lucky; really dang lucky. I have absolutely nothing to complain about, and so much to be thankful for. 

Monday, May 14, 2012

Quotables

These are stories and quotes from the girls that I just know I'll forget if I don't publish them somewhere...

Kaitlyn is really into letters these days. Letter sounds, what they look like, and what they spell. She likes to put her arms, legs, and fingers into configurations and ask us, "What is this?" She wants us to guess the letter she's making. She also does this with objects. As her biased parents, we think that this is pretty dang genius.

Austen has got the pouting thing down. If she is upset about something, she raises her arms all the way above her head before dramatically crossing them and plopping them onto her chest. Oh, and her glare...

Kaitlyn continues to be hit or miss with bedtime. Many nights, she tells us at first that she "can't fall asleep" or isn't tired. Sometimes, nothing comes of it, and other times we are in for a longer bedtime. The other night, she was having a particular hard time and had herself worked up, so I told her to close her eyes and started running my fingers through her hair and brushing her forhead with my hand. She started relaxing and breathing more deeply. After a few minutes I had declared victory in my head. It went something like this, "I can't believe it worked! Well, I kinda can; I mean, I'm her mama and I'm soothing to her, so of course she fell asleep. She's definitely asleep now; she's breathing like she's asleep." And right as I was thinking that I would go crawl into bed myself, I hear (with her eyes still closed, but a 'what the heck are you doing' scrunch of the eyebrows"), "Mama, why are you rubbing my head?" Here I had been thinking I was having this great mommy moment.


Every time Austen sits down to go potty, she stares ahead as she waits, and you can tell when she starts going because she gets this huge grin on her face and looks up at you and giggles. Every.single.time.

Kaitlyn says "girl" like "goil." So, Austen does, too.

We were putting both of the girls in their carseats and Kaitlyn sighs and says, "My daddy is the best."

We went to Chelan this weekend and stayed in a motel. Any time Kaitlyn referred to it, it was the "show and tell." No matter how many times we replied with motel, it was, "When are we going back to the show and tell?" "Do we get to stay at the show and tell again tonight?"

In addition to her "I'm doin' it" grin, every time Austen gets ready to go potty, she announces, all excited, "I'm wearin' underwear!"

One of Kaitlyn's garage sale finds the other weekend was The True Story of the Three Little Pigs. We pulled up to Walgreens the other day and she says, "This house is made of bricks!"


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We were in Chelan this past weekend and it was pretty much perfect. I'll post a little later, but here's a taste:

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Labels

I read a lot of blogs. Some, I follow quite religiously, others I have stumbled on only once and moved on. They aren't hard to find these days, these blogs. Since they are so trendy, one can easily find someone writing about something they can appreciate, be inspired by, get annoyed at ;), or relate to. I tend to continue going back to the ones I relate to or have a positive impact on my state of mind.

My own blog has many faces. I stressed for a short - very short - time about what I wanted this place to be. I love writing, I love taking pictures of my kids, and I am not always in the mood for blogging and sometimes want to simply document in order to look back at our blog books years from now because that is important to me.

Conclusion? This place is whatever I want it to be at any particular time. :) No labels here. I'm not trying to get hundreds of followers or become an author. I am one of hundreds of followers on some popular blogs, and I root for people who have the goal of being in that spot and/or writing a book. Me? I'm just a mama, minding my own business and blogging about my family and rambling thoughts. I strive to be compassionate and genuine, and am sometimes a little too worried about stepping on toes. I am a big "benefit of the doubt" person, and I hope others will do the same for me. I'm often "confrontational," and I think that term gets a bad rap. For me, this means that I have a need to talk things out so they are out in the open and can be fixed. I can't stand thinking or knowing that someone is upset with me. I don't ever, ever, intentionally hurt someone or do wrong by them and if I find out that I have I usually overcompensate to try to make it better (I love my friends and family for loving me through this sometimes exhausting trait ;-)).

"Don't judge me until you know me. Don't underestimate me until you challenge me. And don't talk about me until you talk to me."

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And just to prove that I am a little bit scattered and a lot a procrastinator, here are a bunch of pictures from Easter:

This is what we found Kaitlyn doing with her new glow sticks. Love.This.Kid.
The poor, orange one in the corner? That's Austen's. "Okay, be gentle with this one." "Okay!" PLOP! This is what little bruisers do :)

Kaitlyn had some fun helping us set up for Stacey and Aaron's rehearsal dinner bbq:

We came outside to this. She was arranging all of the drinks (and her elf-voice microphone) into the cupholders in the coolers. Organized like her mama...


Paper on a bottle is about as far as we get with labels around here. ;)