So as most of you know I am pregnant with baby #3! This was a big surprise for us but we are excited to welcome our little blessing in August/September! For my first pregnancy I was on bed rest so I didn't log any weekly updates or anything. With my 2nd pregnancy, I was super exhausted. I am even more exhausted with this one, but my daughter A loved to lounge and take naps with mommy so I did that. Well my now 3 year old son C is fighting naps and is very active so no rest time for mommy. So while he is playing at the park I can jot down and later blog weekly updates this time. Plus, with neither of my previous two pregnancies we didn't have the amazing Pinterest! Which of course, I have found so many amazing pregnancy resources and document ideas, such as the pregnancy chalkboard which I will be doing weekly!
I've always wanted to track my progress from the very beginning of pregnancy so I've decided to start at week 11! I will be doing these every Friday each week!
How far along? 11 weeks
Total weight gain: I've lost 7 pounds
Maternity clothes? Some shirts since I have a long torso. Still in regular jeans.
Sleep: Very little. Between the kids getting up sometimes, and Ch had surgery this week and has to elevate his arm, I am not getting much sleep. lol
Best moment this week: Telling the kids! Their reactions were priceless!
Miss anything? Coffee!!! Good this is I haven't craved it yet lol.
Movement: He/She is moving like crazy I just can't feel it yet
Food cravings: Biscuit with gravy and chili cheese dogs...but not at the same time
Anything making you queasy or sick: everything! I am hoping this "morning" sickness ends soon
Oh, ya know... just the newest member of our family. No big deal. ;)
Yeah, so that was one way to start 2014. I just knew it was going to be a good year! And is that not the cutest little peanut you've ever seen!?!
Yes, I'm sure it's hard to believe, but this baby was quite a little surprise for us. Okay so, my stomach was the reason I tested. I woke up New Years day and felt really sick. I assumed I had drank too much or one of my kids got me sick until I realized what day it was. I raced to the calendar and started counting... 38, 38, 40, 41. You see I have all over the board cycles from 33-38 days. But never 41! So I caved, ran to the store, came home and tested. It was mid-morning on Wednesday, January 1st and this is what I saw...
Pregnant.
I was shocked. And happy. And excited. And nervous. And in love. And scared out of my mind. But mostly happy =) I went into the bedroom where my hubby was sleeping from working New Years Eve and just smiled at him. He said "What!?! What's wrong?" and I just pointed to the tests. Of course he was just as shocked as I was then we hugged, kissed and spent the rest of the morning saying "I can't believe it!" We didn't do anything fun or exciting this time, we just told his parents that day and then my parents the next, which happened to be our anniversary. It seems like all a whirlwind now thinking back but we are so excited and happy. I'm due on September, 2014 which is the same week A starts 2nd grade. But with my medical history and my rather large monster babies, my doctor won't let me go past 38-39 weeks. That means this baby will be here on or around August 28, 2014 approximately.
I'm 11 weeks pregnant, and let me tell ya... it was so hard for me to wait this long to tell you. But I wanted to wait until after my first ultrasound and after the first trimester to really share the news. He/she had a beautiful heartbeat of 148 bpm, which we got to see and hear on Thursday, 1/16. We had to wait a while to tell the kids. I just wanted to make sure everything would be ok before telling them. Especially since once A knew, the whole world would know. We told them last Sunday, I made these shirts for them and had them open them after dinner and documented their reactions!!!
Part 1:
Part 2:
And then of course we wanted to do something cute for everyone else on facebook, instagram, my blog, etc. After looking at many ideas on pinterest this is what we came up with:
Okay, so I think that is all for know. Soon I will start to post belly pics so you can all see how huge I get! I am so glad you all get to be on this wonderful journey with me about baby #3!!
So it has been awhile since I have blogged, let alone logged into my website. As the kids are getting older, and our family is going on more adventures together I find myself wanting to document and share these fun memories. It also helps that one of my best friends Natalie at The Cat Lady Sings (you need to go read her blog...you'll love it!) has inspired me to start blogging again. Will anyone actually read my blog? Who knows? But it will be a nice place to jot down all those memories and have them to look back upon in the coming years.
So lets see...what happened in the year 2013? At the end of 2012 we found out that my hubby would be leaving for Texas in March for AF Training. He would be gone for 5 months. Yikes, at first I wanted to scream because I thought we were done with being seperated from each other. After a minor breakdown I went into military wife mode and started making a list of everything that needed to be done. Contact our landlords and give them notice, find a new school for A, take my 1200 sq ft house and condense it into about 400 sq ft of storage combined with a 10 x 13 room in which we were moving in to. You see, whenever my husband deploys (or in this case training) the kids and I move in with my in-laws so that I have help with the kiddos so I don't lose my sanity lol. It is a great arrangement other than the lack of space, but we are willing to give that up so I have the support from our families.
So after I arranged everything it was time to move. We moved the last Monday of February and got all settled in to our "new" home. Ch left the first week of March and would be gone for the next 5 months :/
A started her new school and C and I joined the local MOMS Club. I tried to keep the kids as busy as possible while Ch was away. We celebrated Easter, his birthday, Mothers Day, the birth of our niece, Father's Day, 4th of July, my birthday, & A's birthday without him. So when he came home the first week of August we re-celebrated everything with him to make up for our lost time together.
In August Ch got a new job as a Veterans Enrollment Counselor at a local college and it has been such a blessing. For the first time in 10 years he has nights and weekends off!! It is so nice for him to have a "normal" job for once. He still has AF Training one weekend a month but being gone for 2 days is not bad and sometimes we go with him to visit our friends near base.
In September A started first grade at her new private school and it makes me so glad how resilient and a social butterfly she is. She made friends right away and loves going there. C and I started a weekly mommy and me class and we still attend many play dates through MOMS Club. Ch is currently attending graduate school to achieve his Masters Degree and I couldn't be more proud.
All in all I would say that 2013 was a very blessed year for us and I am excited to see what 2014 brings, especially because my sister & brother-in-law are expecting a baby in May!! Looking forward to 2014!
I am so excited to share that my hubby is almost home from Air Force Training! It has been a long 5 months and I know myself, along with our little boos are super excited for him to come home!! Stay tuned for updates from all the fun things our little family is going to do when he comes home!!!
So we just started the little man on baby food and he is loving it. I think his favorite so far is bananas, which he likes so much he dives for the spoon! He is still learning what to do with that tongue so a lot of it comes out which makes eating time a messy affair. Of course big sister thinks this is hilarious and has also made it her duty to try each and every food he does. So far she thinks they are all "yucky."
He has more teeth coming in (he has two on the bottom already) which makes him a cranky man at night. So spoiled mommy who had a baby sleeping 12 hours straight at night is now sleeping 4-5 because his teeth hurt :( This comes with the joys of motherhood which just requires more coffee in the morning!
The weather here has been so nice lately that I am worried that it is going to be a hot summer here! Tomorrow it is supposed to be 80 degrees and get up to 88 on Friday so I am glad on days like those our apartment has a swimming pool! Last week A even went swimming at 5:30 at night it was so warm.
We took the kids to their first drive-in once we discovered that we have one 5 minutes away! I was so excited to see what A thought of it which I soon found out that she could care less where we were seeing a movie she just enjoyed seeing it. We saw Hop and Rango which I think we all enjoyed Hop way more! It was so fun and we are looking forward to doing it more this summer with some friends!
The munchkins are getting so big and C is starting to be more and more aware and loves his big sister immensely. She can always make him smile without even trying and can make him laugh so much when she does try to be funny for him. Most of the time she ends up being just plain old silly but he loves that too. Each day I realize how blessed I am with my wonderful husband and two amazing kids. I look forward to sharing with you our journeys each day as they remind me of Life's Simple Pleasures...
I can't believe we have been here for 2 1/2 months already! We are settling in quite nice and are enjoying every minute of our new home. Sometimes it gets a little crowded in our 2 bedroom apartment which is why it is nice to have our patio as well as a playground right outside our door. In the summer it will be nice to go out to the pool area as well. I will upload pictures in the next few days because I know all of you want to see it! But for now I will leave you with an adorable picture of the little man who is 4 months old on Friday!
Wow! It has been a long time since I have posted on here. I had this blog on hiatus while I was preggo and I was not going to come back to it until we found out Ch was offered a job. This was fantastic news! The news we had been waiting for over a year! Then I discovered the job is in the I.E. Yes we would now become residents of the nine-oh-nine...yikes! AftEr I got over my initial shock of moving an hour away, I realized how nice this is going to be that we are finally going to be able to start our lives together as a family of now four. So I decided to start the blog again for all our family and friends to keep up to date on our daily happenings while living an hour away. :)
So the apartment hunt was on! I was prepared to look at apartment after apartment for weeks/months on end until we could find one that had everything on our checklist:
-2bd/2ba
-outdoor area
-safe
-kid-friendly
-affordable
-short commute for Ch
Now as you can see we were not asking for much but so many places had some of the factors and not others. The biggie was the outdoor space because we all know that A needs a place to run around!!! So I started looking at all the rental websites and started ruling out ones that were never going to be occupied by our little family. I then picked four that I wanted to spend a day looking at and headed on down to the IE to meet Ch and look at some apartments. I knew that four was all we could do in one afternoon with a 3 week old and a 3 year old. The first two were busts, the 3rd one was ok, and the 4th one was perfect!!! Not only did it have everything on the checklist but it also had a washer/dryer!!! We were so excited about this (well, I was) that we did not even check if there was a dishwasher but hey I could always wash dishes by hand as long as I don't have to do coin laundry. So we decided to go for it and an apartment opened up that had an even bigger patio than the first! We knew we had to take it. I asked when it was available for move-in and they said the 15th of this month!!! I think my jaw dropped to the floor and Ch could see that I was nervous.
While I was above and beyond excited about the apartment I started thinking about everything I still had to do to be able to move and the fact that the 15th would make little C only 4 weeks old which would mean it would be only 4 weeks after my c/s! How could I possibly move with those two factors as well as Christmas the next week?! Well we decided to take it and decided the kids and I would not move in until 1st of the year, giving me more time to heal and little C a lil more time to grow :)
So the apartment is officially ours on Wednesday and we are super excited about it! The kids and I are meeting Ch there on Wednesday to sign the lease and get the keys so I am going to take some stuff down to start setting up the apartment. I will take pictures that day to share with you all! Thanks for reading and I will keep you updated on The Hons Household Happenings!!!
Hello my fantabulous family! I promise I will update pics soon once I actually ortganize. One thing I am doing to get organized and make things a little easier is digital scrapbooking. It is so fast and easy to do that I am starting to do A's scrapbook both traditionally and digitally. I will share some of the layouts once I get them done but for today I want to share 2 layouts I did of the boys. I am on a creative team where I am required to make two layouts per kit and by doing this I get the digital scrapbooking kit for free! Of course this time tho the theme was "Play Ball" which I have no pictures of so I turned to mom and got some cute pics of the boys! I hope you like them :)
I hope you like the new look of the blog because it is going to be like this for awhile. It was too much trying to change it each month when I already do that for my craft blog. This post is going to be short because the girl we all love is refusing to take a nap...again. I just wanted to show you a cute layout I made of our kite flying from the weekend. I am beginning to like the digital scrapbooking more and more since this page took me less than 2 minutes to make. Maybe I will do a combo scrapbook for her. We will see! Until next time...Enjoy! (Click picture to enlarge)
Hello hello! I have no updated in a awhile so I thought I would take this time to share a cute video with you. I will update you more later and inclue a video slideshow that our darling A took herself! She had some fun with my camera lol. But here are two videos from our trip to disneyland last week. The first is on the teacups and the second is on Gadget's Go Coaster. I was so afraid I was going to drop my camera that I accidently pushed the pause button but I was able to get her initial reaction! Enjoy!
Happy Sunday! I hope you are all having a wonderful day with your family and are excited in anticipation of the big game. Even though not all of us are football followers I think most of us will be watching the game today so I wanted to share a picture of A ready for the game along with a page I did for Ch since he wants the Colts to win. Have a great day!
Happy Thursday! I hope you all are getting excited to the end of the week and the beginning of the weekend! I don’t have a normal A story today because I would like to talk about a subject that was discussed in our bible study this morning. The speaker Jaimie is also a fellow blogger whom you have to check out at The Wonder Years. She is a mommy of two boys, ages 4 1/2 and 2 1/2. She spoke to us today about Finding Joy.
The first thing she told us was that there are 4 things that cause us to lose our joy:
1) Comparison
-We compare ourselves to other moms constantly. When those moms walk in with their breakfast dish hot, styled hair and clothes, and their 4 kids in tow you start comparing your cold dish, messy hair, sweat-wearing self to her and put yourself down. To make up for it we start putting them down in our minds any way possible to lift ourselves up. We all compare on a daily basis. I compare all the time, especially when it comes to living situation. “My husband is without a job so we have to live with his parents.” This is what I think about my situation. What I should be thinking is “We are lucky to have a roof over our heads and food on our table.” Instead of comparisons, choose contentment!
"I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.” Philippians 4:12
2) Isolation
-As most of you fellow moms know we have the tendency to isolate ourselves from the outside world. We have those days when all we want to do is stay inside because it is too much work to get our kids dressed and ready to go let alone ourselves. Another time we feel isolated is when we are one of the only ones out of our friends who has a kid. This is especially true when you are my age (24) and most of my friends are not even married. What we need to do is force ourselves to get out of the house and participate in activities such as MOPS (Mothers of Pre-Schoolers). This is such a wonderful place to interact with other moms who are going through the same thing as you now or have already done it and get guide you! Instead of isolation, choose involvement!
“A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.” Proverbs 18:24
3) Mommy-Guilt
-Oh boy how we all have mommy-guilt! We start blaming ourselves for everything bad that happens to our children whether we were there or not. “If I had been there, she would not have been hurt.” So many of us think this on almost a daily basis and we are driving ourselves crazy!!!! We cannot sit here and blame ourselves for things we cannot control. With that being said, we can also not protect or children from everything bad in this world. Sometimes children need to get hurt to learn not to do something. What we might want to stop. God wants them to learn to become wiser. Instead of fear, choose grace.
“The reason I wrote you was to see if you would stand the test and be obedient in everything. If you forgive anyone, I also forgive him. And what I have forgiven—if there was anything to forgive—I have forgiven in the sight of Christ for your sake, in order that Satan might not outwit us. For we are not unaware of his schemes.” 2 Corinthians 2:9-11
4) Fear
-I think Jaimie saved this one for last because it is the most relevant to all moms. Fear: a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined. I think that sums us mothers up pretty darn well when it comes to our children. We fear for their safety, we fear for their well-being, we fear for their future. Fear, fear, fear! That is a scary word when you think about it and that is how it sometimes overwhelms us. If we walk around fearing the unknown we will never learn to appreciate what is in front of us. All we are seeing is the fear of our child falling off the monkey bars instead of realizing their “big kid” accomplishment. Think of how fearful the Mother of Moses was. She had to hide Moses for 3 months and then place him in a basket in the reeds of the Nile to protect him from being killed by Pharaoh. She had to place her child in God’s hands knowing he would protect Moses, which he did. He was found by Pharaohs daughter and grew up to be a great man of God. Instead of fear, his mother chose faith.
“Fear of man will prove to be a snare, but whoever trusts in the LORD is kept safe. “Proverbs 29:25
“For I am the LORD, your God, who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, Do not fear; I will help you.” Isaiah 41:13
So instead of those 4 things that take away our joy let’s make sure we have these four things to keep our joy: Contentment, Involvement, Grace, & Faith. Stay strong in your trust in God and turn to other moms when you are losing your joy. Together we can find our joy!
“There is no way to be a perfect mother, but a million ways to be a great one!”
Here is a video I made about my daughter and those days where I need to make sure I find Joy:
So I have a favorite blog that I look at everyday! This is the blog where I get ideas, recipes, and my adorable fonts that you see all over my page! This blog is called Kevin and Amanda where Amanda is the most creative person ever. She is what I strive to be at someday and the thing I love the most is her scrapbook/sewing/craft room! I am so jealous and hope someday (when all my kids have grown and moved out :/ ) I can have a room like this:
Hello!!! I could sleep in there! I think just standing in there would make anyone feel like sitting down and doing a craft or a scrapbook! I am so jealous but now know why Amanda is so crafty!!! So maybe someday (30 years from now) I will be posting a picture of my craft room just like this one...hey a girl can dream! But in the meantime, Mom and MIL who I know are reading this blog, your kids will move out sooner than mine! Wink Wink! Enjoy!
As you all know my Ch, A, and I live with my in-laws, so we are limited to our room. Now our room is about 11 x 11 feet so there is not much room to do anything but I love a challenge. It all started with my hubby getting a little more than irritated when he would come in to go to bed and all of my scrapbook supplies would be on our bed since I did not have a space to scrap. He decided enough was enough and we needed to make a space for me to scrap, craft, sew, etc. but did not know how with such a small space. Well I love a challenge so I started brain-storming! Here is what the room looked like before (sorry the pictures are with Christmas decorations that is all I have!):
And here is the big reveal:
Bed is now against the back wall (I hate beds against the wall but it is a sacrifice I am willing to make for my craft area!)
My new craft area! A large piece of wood held by our two nightstands and two center brackets for support.
Look at all that space!
That's over 7 feet of work space!
All of my supplies are nice and organized
My new saying!
So there you have it! And all we had to buy was the wood and brakets! Pretty good for 11 x 11 feet. I hope you enjoyed my bedroom makeover and I look forward to having you all over for some scrapbooking!
On Tuesday, January 2, 2007 I married my love, my life, my best friend. We were married at a Church in Redondo Beach in a beautiful intimate service with 100 family and friends. Our reception was held in El Segundo which had a beautiful indoor and outdoor space. It was a beautiful wedding and I felt like the luckiest girl in the world.
Each day I wake up and thank God for my wonderful husband. He is the best husband a girl could ask for and he is my best friend. I am so happy we have been together for 3 years and can't wait to spend the rest of our lives together! I wanted to share some pictures of our special day with you! Happy Anniversary Babe!
I was so excited to marry Ch!
Now introducing for the first time as husband and wife.
Our Wedding Party: My Sisters, Ch Brother, Ch Cousin
Welcome to my blog! This is a place for me to brag about my wonderful hubby and our beautiful eccentric, intelligent 11 year old princess and our stubborn, unique, handsome 7 & 3 year old princes. They surprise me each day and are always 2, 3, or 10 steps ahead of me. Every day they remind me that there are more important things in life and we always need to cherish Life's Simple Pleasures.
