Christmas Season 2015

Wow. I can't believe how fast December flew by.  It feels like Thanksgiving was last week. And tomorrow is New Year's Eve.  I am speechless.

We have had an incredible Christmas season. The moment the tree went up, "Tree is Booo-tiful" rang throughout the house.  Our little helper was incredible helping put ornaments on the tree. And she really didn't mess with the tree all that much over the last 4 weeks or so.

She has very discretely taken ornaments off and attempted to put them back on.  Usually ended with me re-hanging and then needing to vacuum! But this little lady is officially obsessed with all things Christmas and all things Santa.

She has been such a little joy throughout the holiday season. She also got to ride her first train... to which she yelled " Choo Choo!" and "All aboard" the entire length of the trip. I never knew free roaming mall trains were a thing!!

She was incredibly excited to go to Christmas Eve service. Luckily we decided to attend the Children's/Family's service, because McKenna was her typical talkative self.

She was over the moon opening presents.  Ya know, the type that tore each piece slowly and delicately, making sure ever stitch was off before unveiling the gift. To which she was determined to take out each toy as she went along... let's just say, she sure made the gift-giver feel very happy! Every gift was loved before we had to coax her to move onto the next present.

"My present. McKenna's present." Mine mine mine. is the name of the game now.  HOWEVER, she is incredibly understanding and giving when you explain that a gift is indeed not hers but so and so's. Here she is helping the Boys open their bones! "Here you go Chief. Here you go Boogs." [Heart melts].

I regret that I have not been blogging through this wonderful month (quite honestly I regret it's not easier to upload pics/videos)..... because the amount of joy McKenna has brought to me and our family I wish I had been sharing with you! I can easily say, without a single doubt, that this was the most wonderful Christmas holiday I have ever experienced.  We managed to celebrate with both sides of the family (with a lengthy road trip to SWFL on Christmas Day), but also were able to have a wonderful, quiet Christmas morning for just the three of us.

From our family to yours, I want to wish you a Happy Holidays, and a Happy New Year!!

Halloween: my little Daisy Duck

Wouldn't ya guess.  Only back into blogging for a couple of months and I'm already getting behind! Maybe I wasn't cut out for blogging, but you know what? I'm still going to post what I want to when I want to, and you can decide if you want to come back and read about the madness.  Honestly though, I find I get behind when I pull out the "nice" camera because then that means I have to get the computer out to upload photos. Which in turn I feel compelled to "edit" pictures before uploading them. All of that takes way to much time.

BUT I DIGRESS!!!!!

HALLOWEEN! which already feels like it was a month ago.

We had quite a potential scare with our little miss Daisy Duck costume not arriving. It's a custom made costume from a shop on Instagram.  I ordered it mid/end of September, and I checked in several times to assure it would be sent with ample time. Long story short, it was shipped the weekend before Halloween and got lost in the mail, with Priority Shipping.  USPS can really suck sometimes.  From Utah it decided to take a detour to New Jersey on its way to St Augustine. High anxiety I started tossing around ideas of things I could make from around the house. We missed wearing a costume for several little outings throughout the week of Halloween. Then. FRIDAY. The day before Halloween..... DAISY ARRIVES!! And the face on McKenna when she tried on her costume made the entire debacle 1000000000% worth it.

Sometimes I wonder how people get such good shots of their toddlers. I took well over 100 pictures of her on Halloween and only got a handful of pictures, none of them really showcasing her entire outfit (or showing her clutched to her Donald Duck stuffed animal).

 "Gang's all here!!!!"

She had a blast Halloween night too. Instead of trick-or-treating, because I'm not sure she really would have taken to it without an older child to follow, we set up shop in our driveway and handed out candy. And McKenna Rocked That Sh*t!!! She was handing out armfuls of candy to kids, saying Happy Halloween, yelling goodbye as they walked away. It was literally a blast. She really didn't even ask to eat any candy. But she had more than her fair share of dried fruit... literally a few bags of it! lol. I'll take it.

We're more than 2 weeks passed Halloween and McKenna wants to wear her Daisy Duck costume regularly.

Fall Festival day!

Today we spent a couple of hours at our community's Fall Festival. It mainly seems directed at the elementary school-aged kids because they all run amuck and go crazy in the bounce houses, but we still had fun. We mainly walked around taking in all of the madness. It's less than a 30-45 second drive to the clubhouse and McKenna managed to doze off and get the Zzzzz she had been fighting all day.

McKenna did get to show dada how well she can scale the big kid part of the playground. 

She also picked out a pumpkin at the pumpkin decorating station. Though McKenna seems as indecisive as her mommy and wanted to #decorateallthepumpkins

She was sure proud of her pumpkin once she finally got it decorated. 

To boot, we finally got to show off our fall Mommy and Me leggings!!

 



This is such an exciting age. She was so excited when I pulled out leggings for her that matched the ones I had on. Let's just say it made getting dressed a little easier than it has been the last little while. Ohhhhhhhh, Toddler. How you play with my emotions so. This St Augustine weather is just too much to handle too.  I'm hoping we'll be living in our backyard for the next couple of months!!

Pumpkin Patch goin'

We hit up a fall festival over the weekend with my best friend and her family, but we still haven't gotten our pumpkin to carve. If all goes well, this will be our first time actually carving a pumpkin we bought lol. Anywho, even having rained for the first time in weeks, we knew last night would likely be the only chance we would have to get to the pumpkin patch. No worries, I've had McKenna's outfit picked out for the pumpkin patch for weeks so we were ready at a moment's notice.

The whole ride there McKenna was lighting up saying Patch Patch Patch. As soon we got there she was ready to test her abilities....

You know how that saying goes... "She will move mountains".....err..... pumpkins. Any surely she will try!

 

She was determined....

 

 

Even until Daddy found the Perfect Pumpkin, she had one goal....

Well.... Daddy ended up helping get this one to the front,

 

But she was able to finally pick one out!!! ;-)

It was a rather quick trip to the pumpkin patch because the rain was upon us, but we found the perfect pumpkins!

20 month old LITTLE GIRL

I just really can't put into words how difficult it is to accept my baby girl is just 4 months shy of turning 2 years old. 

She amazes me with something new everyday. Most know her as a quiet, reserved, thoughtful, even timid little one. And while this is true, there is a spunk and sassiness that can test even the most patient of tempers.  

Stubborn. Just like her father (ADMITTEDLY, People!). While I am known for being a bit reserved and modest, I have a stubbornness as well. So she was doomed from the start.

I love watching her in new places because really, that shyness about her is almost her is calculated. She is observing and analyzing people and situations; you can watch her wheels crank. She stays back and gets a feel for her environment and the people in it. Because it typically won't take long for her to jump out of her shell, even though it still seems as if she stays in her own world. It's been incredible to watch her at Kindermusik last the last couple of weeks. New class, new city, new faces, new places. Down south we would typically see at least one familiar face when we went to a baby time class, but we're thrown into a whole new ball game here. So far, she's just going with it, and adjusting far better than mommy is!

She loves being outside, but honestly I think her favorite thing to do in the whole world is read books. We could go through every shelf of books we have and then start all over again, and that's just before lunch. And her language development is far beyond what I could ever imagine at this age. She can repeat pretty much anything, including phrases. The newest one being "I got this!" Perhaps one of the cutest things ever. 

Her intelligence and humor surprises me everyday. She outsmarts us regularly, and I know it's only going to continue getting worse! Time will only continue to fly by, all the while I'm just trying to keep up with this little ball of energy. 

Just another Monday

As I typed the title it autocorrect an accidental mispelling. Just another Momday. How fitting. 

We're still getting settled into our new home, but I felt more at home the first day we moved in our new house than in all of the three years we lived in our house in Southwest Florida. It is just our perfect home, and I feel so blessed and humbled it's "ours". 

Transitioning into the "big city" life is a little bit of a different story. We live in a beautiful, quiet community, but it is going to be quite an adjustment for both McKenna and I. It is essentially a 20 minute drive on the interstate to get anywhere. That includes Target. That alone is quite an adjustment for me and McKenna. Roaming our indoor playground requires a bit more planning than it once did. And with getting the home in order, I've found it difficult to find the motivation to get out and check out allllllllll of the fun things this city has to offer for a toddler whose world is her oyster. 

This weekend's home priority was getting our pretties a home on the wall for the first time. 

Many people will never truly understand the beauty in this picture. And that's ok. But it makes my heart happy (and I'm sure any other Tula-loving mom that happens upon this blog. I just block out that this is what the wall underneath the rack looks like at the time being:

Her bins upon bins of toys and stuffed animals will find a home soon 😁.  

Summer hiatus

To say I went on a summer hiatus from the blogging stratosphere is a pretty big understatement. No warning, nothing. Just vanished into thin air after an enlightening post on dehydrating your own fruits. Needless to say, quite a bit has happened in the last 3 1/2 months. Around the time of my last post was around the time that Kevin got a very serious inquiry for a job opportunity. A job opportunity across the state. That's right, bye bye Southwest Florida. 

There was a lot to take care of, a lot to think over, a lot to really wrap our heads around before even making the decision to make the move. Then after that decision is made, I can't even begin to describe in anything less than a novel how overwhelming and stressful it is to coordinate selling and buying house while moving five hours away. All with an energetic and adventurous toddler. To add to the complexity, Kevin moved and started his new job more than a month before McKenna and I and our houseful of stuff moved. But it IS POSSIBLE!

The last several months were filled with a lot of thought, a lot of emotion, and a lot of memories. But, we're here!! Hello, Northeast Florida! It's not even mid-September and the weather is already temperate.... enough, anyway to spend a couple hours in the back yard, which wouldn't be possible for another couple of months in SWFL.

I hope to get back into the swing of blogging things, and catch you up on everything!!! But I just wanted to say HELLO and we're alive!! 

Dehydrator action

Dehydrated and freeze dried fruits are one of our favorite snacks in this household. But they can get super duper pricey!! I believe I posted previously about our favorite brand Just Tomatoes. So I started exploring options to make at home. 

I borrowed a relative's dehydrator to give it a shot and we loved it!! Problem was the one we borrowed was like a $300 machine. I did some research and ended up buying a more economical dehydrator off of Amazon. 

Here's the "real thing" sitting on my counter. 

It had good reviews, and was super nice on the wallet. Shoot, I figured if we ended up using it a lot we could always spring for a nicer one. Because I'm buying this so save money! 

I began dehydrating immediately. With Just Tomatoes fruits ranging from $6-$9 per bag, we recouped our initial investment in the first TWO times I used it (maybe even FIRST time). 

Best part: McKenna is a fan!! They aren't exact same as the "freeze dried" fruits, so they are a little firmer and stiffer. I'm not sure I would have started with them as snacks from the get go. But so far we have tried out Apples, Pears, Bananas, Pineapples, Kiwis, Blueberries, Peaches... Im sure I have forgotten something! 

So far banana is McKenna's absolute favorite!

 

So much so that whenever she sees the dehydrator machine she says NaNa! 

I often forget to overcompensate how much to put in it bc we "test" (read: snack) on half of it before it's all done. I guess I'll need to buy a few more screens so we can do even more at once! 

The manual that comes with the machine outlines pretty much everything you need to know, including approx dehydrating times, etc. 

The one thing that hasn't really worked for us so far was Spinach. I'm not sure how I anticipated it coming out, but it just kinda disintegrated as McKenna attempted to bite it! Needless to say it was a nightmare and it ended up in the trash. 

It has been fun testing out all of the varieties of fruits, and we haven't even scratched the surface. I can't wait to try veggies, and Kevin is excited to try for Beef Jerky! 

As far as the machine, it is more than sufficient for our use. I'm not sure what type of features other ones offer to be so expensive! I'm not super versed in dehydrators, but food has to be dehydrated at a certain temperature, so it's not they they could shorten dehydrating time by much! Here's a link to the one we have on Amazon: 

Nesco FD-80A Square-Shaped Dehydrator

  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0090WOCM6/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_u3FAvb0JS18ZT

We are extremely happy with ours. I don't see us purchasing another one until this one goes caput. I definitely encourage anyone and everyone that wants hassle free snacks on the go to give dehydrated foods a shot! 

Memorial Day 2015

Despite having rained on and off most of the weekend, McKenna and I enjoyed a relatively relaxing few days. Unfortunately dada I had a baseball tournament he had to coach, but we were able to spend a little bit of time with him here and there throughout the weekend.

On Memorial Day we spent the afternoon by the pool while Kevin smoked some food in the smoker.

 We had a little bit of rain on our parade, but it didn't stop us from dancing in puddles.

As you can imagine, yes indeed there were a few slips and bumps of the head.

As a bonus, we did a family trek to Lowe's. I can't even begin to describe how excited we are that we finally found some vanities for our master and guest bathrooms. We have been searching for the right ones for a couple of years, and these were perfect and just so happened to be on clearance for more than 50% off!!! #winning

Kevin and I ended the day watching American Sniper. It was an incredible movie and definitely hit home the meaning of Memorial Day.