Instagram Life

Hi!  Long time, no chat :) I haven't been staying silent on purpose but life seems to have gotten away from me over the course of the last week.  Carter has been keeping me busy round the clock.  He came home from Christmas break a new kid.  Partially because he's been sick with a double ear infection but also because he seemed to make the leap from early walker to wild runner/climber/explorer while we were gone.  I'm not exaggerating when I tell you that unless Carter is sound asleep, we've reached the stage where we cannot take our eyes of him for even a second!  If we do, disaster follows.  I swear that kid has bumped his head, fallen off furniture, and hit his mouth

more in the last week than all of Ava's 2.5 years combined!  He is ALL boy. 

So honestly I've had my hands full and not much time to sit down and blog.  Thankfully after a trip to Urgent Care on Saturday, his antibiotics are making him feel much, much better and the last 2 days have been much easier with him.  He's back to eating twice as much as Ava and taking good naps again.  And not a minute too soon!!  I was barely hanging on for a few days there :) And of course, as life often goes, our dishwasher broke in the middle of the madness.  So I've also been spending a little more time in the kitchen than normal.  But I'm grateful that we are able to get a new one, we just haven't had time to get out and pick one out yet!  Crossing my fingers that we'll have one this weekend. 

Anyway, the other thing that has been SUPER fun about the last week is that Travis got me an iphone for Christmas and I've been having a great time with it!  I think one of my favorite things about the phone is the Instagram app.  It's no secret that I LOVE pictures and of course, I've got two little subjects that are always giving me an excuse to take a picture.  My new phone takes great pictures and this app is so fun because you can easily edit them to look like a vintage photo.  So, if you follow me on twitter, you've seen these before but I thought I'd show you what we've been up to in the last week and some of my thoughts about them.  Yes, this is a riveting post I know and I'm sure you're disappointed by now that this is what you've been waiting to read after a week of silence :) Sorry!  I do have some posts coming about our Christmas break, but I'm a little overwhelmed with the number of photos I have to sort through! 

So, for today, here's an Instagram look at life in our house this week...Enjoy!

I had to wake this little lovebug up from a nap this morning but I couldn't help myself without taking his picture first.  Especially when he was all cuddled up on his sweet dreams pillow!  Can you see his fat lip here?  He took a nosedive into the (empty) bathtub yesterday and got a bloody, swollen lip :) Welcome to the world of Carter!

I posted this last night because winter finally blew in, after a balmy start to January (it was 50 this week!!) and we had to get the coats and the hats out.  I don't always enjoy the time it takes to bundle everybody up, but I do LOVE to see their little faces peeking out behind all those layers!  And yes, that is a green sucker in her hand, which is always the color she requests when we have multi-colored candy.  Isn't that funny?  And weird?  How many kids love green candy?

And then there is this little guy.  Couldn't you just eat him up with a spoon in that hat???  Pure sugar, he is!!

I caught him gazing out the window, yesterday, while driving around the house in his car.  He loves looking out the windows and watching all the commotion outside.  It was also spitting some snow which he found fascinating.

A girl and her babies.

My Ava is just such a little mother and she spends all day long taking care of her many little children.  I'm so thankful for that nurturing heart in her and mostly, that I get to be at home to watch it and encourage it.  I just love her and those eyes that tell a thousand stories.

This picture is a special one for me because it's a day I've waited for!  FINALLY, I can put on a movie or a little show and BOTH of them will sit and watch it for awhile.  Carter only lasts 10 minutes or so on the couch but he will stay in the living room and watch most of it while he plays, but Ava will sit mesmorized for a good hour or so.  I don't let them watch tv all day but I do let them watch one thing most days.  It's becoming a wonderful little break for them and for me. 

We went to Home Depot looking for a dishwasher and Ava remembered that they had this "race car" cart, but she was one sad girl when we couldn't find it and had to settle for a regular cart.  However, as we were on our way out, she spotted it and with MUCH excitement in her heart she begged us to get in it and drive it, ha ha.  So we took a wild lap around the store while these two giggled and squealed and loved every minute of it.  Such a sweet, simple thing but they thought it was as much fun as anything we've done with them.  I do love that about this age.  It just doesn't take much to thrill little people :)

I spent some time over the weekend getting our Christmas stuff put away and now it feels so big and empty and clean in our living room.  I love that feeling.  I knew I wanted to have a little special place for our new rocking chair and I thought it would be fun to have a little reading corner for the kiddos.  I've got some ideas for this little corner, but this is what it looks like right now.

And it made me smile to see that Ava had the same thought I did :)

I've picked back up in my chronological reading plan through the Bible.  I am in the Old Testament, reading about the history of Israel and the kings who led them (or didn't).  Reading the Bible this way has been one of the BEST decisions of the past year.  It's made the Word come alive again, to read it like a story and just ask the Lord to show me more about who He is.  You Version is a WONDERFUL website for these reading plans (there are so many and you can customize your own too!) and I use their app to keep me on track, but you can also print a plan out or just use the website too.  What a great use of technology!

I'm in my annual post-Christmas, clean out/reorganize/redecorate phase and in a quest to have a place to set a cup of coffee and our lamp, I found this little treasure.  It was $10 on Craig's list!  Ha ha!  Someday I'm going to do a post about all of my Craig's list finds because there are many.  I was originally looking for a small, round, black table but then I saw this and thought that cupboard would be a great place to hide toys and we'd still get plenty of room for our coffee mugs and some books too.  Plus, $10 is hard to turn down when my goal was $50 or less!  It's no fine piece of furniture but it looks cute by that chair and I won't care if the kids "distress" it further :)

I took this while putting all of my Christmas stuff away.  There is something still magical about having decorations we get out, only once a year.  My Mom always made our house so special for Christmas (and other holidays) and I hope I pass that down to our kids too.  Nothing fancy or expensive, just simple and sweet.  I always get sad putting it away but I enjoy thinking about what life will be like next year, when we pull them out again. 

And speaking of that, I saw this stocking and told Travis that I hoped there would be at least one more Christmas we would need it again :) That's no announcement, but I do hope this stocking has a future in our family!

I showed you this picture in my Passion 2012 post but I still love it.  Ava was imitating the worship she saw all those students enjoying and singing along with me.  She is at such a fun age, taking in everything she sees and imitating it or remembering it.  We love to hear her version of what she's learned at Church or how she's learning to pray and talk to Jesus on her own.  To know that they are this impressionable so early on, is a staggering thought. 

Here's my little guy, at the height of his fussy and painful couple of days.  He only wanted squeezable applesauce to eat and we went through lots of it!  But how could you say no to those big eyes??

This was my very first picture I took with my new phone and unfortunately, it was also Trav's first day back to work.  I hate that his car has to stay outside in the winter and on this day we realized he needed a new battery, but he is a real trooper about it and he never complains.  Someday, when we have a two car garage, I will take great delight in watching him leave for work in a warm car!

That's just a little slice of life from the last week.  Hope it's been a great week for you, I'm eager to get back in a blogging groove and to catch up with some of you!  Can't believe it's almost mid January either.  Happy Thursday friends, better get some dinner going for my family :)