What a special day, not just because it celebrates possibly my favorite thing about my self (that I am a mother), but how it celebrates mothers everywhere, my own mom who is so special to me, my mother in law who I wish so dearly was still in town, my grandmas who have given me wisdom and continue to teach me so much, and mothers everywhere who sacrafice so much to bring precious children into this world. I feel so grateful and blessed to be apart of this “club”, honestly there is NOTHING I would rather be doing right now with my life than raising two beautiful children. This job is so rewarding and I feel so proud of myself for being able to do this. Yesterday I got to attend Lincolns Mothers day tea at his preschool, I was a little nervous how he would do since it was out of his regular school rountine and Lincoln is not usually very accepting of change lol but he honestly amazed me. The kids went into the class room first then after about 5 minutes all the moms sat down at the tables that were decorated with picture of your child, little flowers and bagels with cream cheese and cucumbers, first the kids sang about 5 five songs, Lincoln sang along to all and did all the actions and when I stood up to take a picture he got a huge smile on his face recognizing me, after the songs it was their turn to each individually walk across the room while carrying tea to their moms, it was a little scary since they had to carry a saucer and cup (both china!), Kimberley helped him at first so he didn’t spill, then he did the rest by him self and was so proud to serve me tea!! He said “Mommy I served you tea!, I love Mothers day!” lol it was so cute, my whole table of moms were a crying mess, myself included hahah! It was a special treat for me to see how sweet Lincoln is at preschool, I am so proud of all his accomplishments. This Mothers day we will be following our tradition of doing the mothers day walk and run bright and early on this sunday morning, honestly how could I not participate in it when peoples donations and funding towards the neonatal units in calgary saved my childs life? I am honored to donate to such an amazing cause and can only hope that all the research and equipment keeps saving beautiful preemies lives. Hope you all celebrate mothers day by thanking someone who is your mom, or who has been a maternal inspiration in your life.
I totally regret not bringing my camera to the mothers day tea, but at least I had my iphone!
Well we are home from a fabulous family trip!! We are all tired even though our flights were short and there is not much of a time difference, but traveling with two kids was fun but exhuasting!! Lets get started on the trip, the first day we got there we had to leave our house by 4 am to get to airport and check in on time….that was tough!! waking up at 3 and making sure the kids are changed, fed Autumn and double checking we packed everything was tiring, but it was fun to arrive and have a full day in Arizona. We stayed in Scottsdale, AZ and we really liked our resort it was very family friendly and the pool, and our room were great, they were very accomidating and had a crib for Autumn and Linc slept on a pull out couch. Scottsdale was a reallly nice city, it is has more of the wealthier neighbourhoods, and shopping which was fun to see. We spent a lot of time in target, seriously I love that store, they have the cutest kid clothes and for so cheap! We ate at lots of different places but our favorites were the white chocolate grill, rain forest cafe (Lincoln nearly had a stroke there he thought it was so cool when the animals moved and there was a thunder storm lol) and our favorite for breakfast was the paradise cafe and bakery, it was delicious, the people who worked there would make fun of us for being there every day lol! It was so hot on our trip, the weather ranged from 35- 40 degrees, we are SO not used to that kind of heat, I loved it but the poor kids had a hard time, Lincoln was a red sweaty mess every time he would play outside, and Autumn was basically in a diaper and little dresses and tank tops because it was just way too hot to dress her in anything else! We spent alot of time in the pool, shopping, but the highlights for us were driving to Sedona which was about an hour and a half away, the drive was amazing!! I definitley thought the vibe of Sedona was very similar to our touristy town Banff. It was a great place to visit with lots of hiking, different stores and lots of tourists. We also did a drive south to Tucson az, it was very different scenery from the drive to sedona, very much so just desert, as sedona was lots of red rock. Tucson is about 45 minutes from the Mexico border and man it was HOT there, we visited the air plane museum when we were there, that was lots of fun to see as well. In Pheonix we visited an amusement park called enchanted island, it was the cutest place with a little train that goes all the way around the amusement park and a little river surrounding it, but the best part about it was its meant just for toddlers to young children, so Lincoln could go on all the rides by him self, he had ALOT of fun and there was no wait to go on any rides. We also visited a place called crackerjax the day before where Linc and daddy went on the bumperboats and Lincoln tried the kids go carts for a first time…..he didn’t drive at all, infact he just drove into the wall a bunch of times, luckily the nice boy who worked there took him around the track, oh my gosh it was pretty funny to watch!! Daddy tried the go carts at cracker jax but not to his liking they didn’t go as fast as he wanted….so we found a place in pheonix called K1 speed where you can go on go carts that drive up to 80 km, he had lots of fun driving the go carts and Linc and I cheered him on. We also took Lincoln horse back riding and he had so much fun doing that as well! We spent one full day shopping, visiting 3 different malls! So id say each of us got to do something fun that we all enjoyed, and Autumn was a good sport for all of it! She enjoyed sitting on the ground watching Lincoln play at the park on our resort and splashing and kicking in the pool and falling asleep probably every time we went into the hot tub! We had a great time, I would not call this vacation relaxing by any means, we were up by 7 every day and didn’t get kids in bed till 9 every day, and we had to pack so much stuff to accomidate Autumn and Lincoln, but it was really fun and i’m glad to say we have officially had our first family vacation. But I will definitley enjoy the next trip Andrew and I do on our own as well .
I have bikinis, tankinis, one pieces and even a monokini but after looking at a ton of different stores I finally found a bathing suit I liked at nordstrom. ( I know i’m officially a mom for owning a one piece )
When I think about how recently my baby girl was kicking in my belly and I rubbed it and talked to her everyday, it makes me so sad and so happy at the same time to be celebrating the fact that she is 6 months! Half way to a year! So many changes, milestones met and SO many fun ones to come. I loved having Autumn in my belly, sure my pregnancy was quite honestly rough and challenging but I cherished it, and I have always promised myself since Lincoln and his rocky entrance into this world that I will try every day my hardest to not take my kids for granted, I think on most good days I really don’t, I say quiet prayers daily thankful for their smiles, health, personalities and joy they bring to my life. Time flies and 6 months feels pretty big! At half a year my darling is rolling all over, loves to eat (milk and now solids), sitting up for probably 5 minutes at a time, giggling and baby talking. Autumn WE love you so much, Mommy, Daddy and your big brother…and of course many others out there too!!
Hey friends and family I hope you all had an amazing Easter weekend, hopefully spending it with friends or family, indulging in yummy food and relfecting on the true meaning of Easter, I can say we definitley did all of those things!! We had a lovely weekend, we enjoyed 2 Easter dinners that were so yummy and on friday we went up to banff/canmore for the day with our friends Brian, Christina and their little guy Carter. We could not have asked for nicer weather in the mountains, it was sunny and hot, infact the boys were running around with their coats off enjoying the weather!! We spent the day shopping, bbqing yummy food, swimming and enjoying the mountains! The next days we spent doing some errands, playing with the kids, taking a few family photos and we spent time with my grandparents, and other family members, we could have not asked for a better weekend!! Here our some of our photos!
Well things never change, I am always behind on Autumns monthly post, but at least I’m still keeping track of the photos so when she is a year it will be so fun to compare each month. At 5 months she is feeling like a different baby, grabbing her feet, rolling all around, sleeping super good now (yay!), playing with toys and last week we tried her on rice cereal! I am glad we decided to because she was definitely not fully satisfied with just milk, and she is a little piggie, she loves cereal, oat cereal so far is her favorite and today she tried peas, she made a crazy face while eating them but she still gobbled them up! I love this baby stage!! She lights up our lives. Also we took her to get her ears pierced, she was amazing, honestly didn’t cry at all, I am not exaggerating at all, I put a ton of that numbing cream on her ear lobes and I think that made a huge difference for her! So check out some pictures of my little angel baby. xoxox
Hey friends and Family, I’ve been wanting to share this video with you all, its a collection of Lincoln from birth till now, I regret so badly not having a better camera when he was a baby and not taking more videos but I will cherish the few videos that I have. I won’t be making the same mistake with little Autumn. Also here are a few pictures of Lincolns new bed and bespread in his room, we based it after his favorite book!
also here is a photo I’ve been meaning to share for a while, on the left is Lincolns feet at 2 weeks old and Autumns on the right at 3 weeks old…also Autumn is 5 and a bit months old now and she still doesn’t fit into ANY shoes, not even 0-3 month size, her feet are TINY so you can only imagine how small Lincolns were.
Well Autumn is now a big girl and can go in the jolly jumper!! I have the happiest memories of Linc playing in the jolly jumper, it is seriously the cutest thing! Here is a picturing comparing Lincoln in it and Autumn at the same age….look at how chunky Autumns legs are compared to his!!
Time is flying, baby girl is now 4 months old!! She is getting so big and now rolling all around, we can no longer set her on the chaise or couch because she rolls way too much, so now we just set her on a blanket on the floor and she rolls pretty far! Its so cute to see, she is now quite the giggly baby and at her last appointment she weighed 12.8 pounds! Shes still a great eater but I have noticed she is chewing on things quite a bit and likes to watch when we eat food, in a month or so I definitely think she will be ready to start a little bit of rice cereal, I can’t wait for that! She is such a good girl, here are some pictures of our 4 month old love bug.
Ah well it’s that time of year again, where every where you look there is heart shaped candy, reminders of love, pink and red floods every stores shelves and romance fills the air. Of course Valentines day could be thought of as a very silly holiday because we all know it shouldn’t just be one day a year where we suprise our spouse with flowers, gifts or random acts of love, that is definitley something that should be done all year round, but valentines day is a good reminder to keep the love and romance alive. This holiday is also way more fun now that I have a toddler, his preschool class does a valentine exchange and its so fun to see him so excited to give his little cards out and also see all the cute valentine crafts he has brought home from school. Hope you all have a love filled Valentines day, here our some valentine things around our house. X0X0
The other day Andrew and I had fun looking through our baby photos, its super fun to see some of your selves in your children, its hard to say who each of our kids look like, I think their a pretty good mix of us and some family members as well, who do you think they look like? Team Engen or Team McCollum LOL?
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