open wide!

this morning we had Ellia's first dental appointment! I know, I know... not really very exciting. There are few things I hate more than going to the dentist - BUT it just felt like such a milestone taking her in. They were great with her and everything was revolved around making her "feel like a princess." She laid back in the chair and watched Mickey on the ceiling TV... what a life. I captured a few shots of the appointment - I told them to just bear with me - YES, I am going to be THAT mom - and thankfully they did. I STILL remember the picture my mom had of me at my first appointment so here's to that.
oh by the way... she was an absolute trooper - confused, but no tears and very cooperative.

Happy 3rd Birthday Ellia!

so the 5th Christmas wasn't exactly the last of our celebrating! three years ago on Christmas morning, I went into labor and the next morning I had a beautiful & sweet little girl. So yesterday, the day after Christmas wasn't a day for resting or clean-up... it was a day to celebrate Ellia - her 3rd birthday! We promised her we'd take her to see the zoo lights again because its what she reallllly wanted to do. We opted out of any sort of party this year and decided to have our own little celebration. With little preparation because of all the Christmas craziness, I just made-do with whatever I could find around the house. I tried setting up the room like a party and making it special for her. Instead of a cake, I made a huge chocolate chip cookie pizza and decorated it with little to no tools on hand :/ When the girls got up from their naps I showed Ellia her little party and all the work was worth that little smiling excited face.
We realized yet another reason you make things a surprise for kids and don't promise things too much in advance: It was 25 degrees with a wind chill around 10 - YIKES. not the best stroll-around-the-zoo weather. but we had committed...so we BUNDLED and BUNDLED and went off to the zoo. As we pulled in the lot we realized we left the double stroller in our garage - DOUBLE YIKES! now what??? I mean you are talkin Parents-of-the-Year-award here. So peter held remae and I slathered blankets all over them, and I carried Ellia. We made a run for it - stopping at the first store inside the gate to warm up, then running to the reptiles (trying to point out all the lights on the way there), then running back to the car. Fun. Relaxing. Comfortable. But let me just say - she LOVED it. She had so much fun AND couldn't wait to get back home to her "party."
Anyway, we made it a pizza party! picked up pizza for dinner then had a cookie pizza for dessert. Then present time. By this time Remae was already in bed so it was just the three of us - it was a special time to just be with her.
So I certainly didn't "have it all together" for this one - BUT she was none the wiser and no less thrilled so I guess I'd dub it a success!
















Ellia, I couldn’t love you more. Although you weren’t planned by mommy and daddy, God knew your days before time. He has a PERFECT plan for you and I am so thankful you are here with us and we can watch that plan unfold.
I love your cautious Spirit and pray it stays with you as you age.
I pray your incredible memory and smarts will be used for HIS glory someday.
I pray your gentle independence will be an opportunity for you to stand for Truth.
I pray that someday your unbelievable beauty would be nothing compared to the beauty of your heart.
And that smile and laugh are a contagious joy. I LOVE being with you and I LOVE being your mommy. Thank you Jesus for the wonderful blessing of my 3 year old little Ellia.

not so bad afterall

ok so confession: im not really a "girls-night-out" kinda girl. i don't know what it is... but Ive just never been that into it. im sorta a home-body i guess. i mean, don't get me wrong, i LOVE my friends and have such a great time with them... but totally honestly, if I have free time, I ALWAYS want to spend it with Peter and the girls. Think what you want about that, but its just the way I am. I'm not lookin to get out or get-away at any possible chance and actually almost avoid it as much as possible. I TRULY would love to be with Peter (and my girls) ALL the time.
HOWEVER... a few of my girlfriends in a small group I'm involved in, decided it would be a holiday treat to have such an event. ya know... no kids, enjoy a hot meal, not rush in an out of everywhere, nothin to carry or wipe up :) anyway... they decided on dinner, some holiday shopping, dessert at the Melting Pot and a night at a hotel. So I'll admit, the home-bodiness kicked in a bit, causing me to opt out of the hotel BUT I did let loose and join in the rest of the fun. and that's exactly what it was... FUN! we had such a great time just relaxing together and enjoying lots of laughs (with the help of a particularly hilarious waiter). It was such a nice treat to enjoy some adult girl company and some yumminess. I was just as excited pulling in the driveway, knowing I'd get to see the boy... but I will step up to the plate and have to fully admit: girls night out was totally fun and I look forward to doing it again! :)... (at least our very tame and innocent version of it)

the holiday baking continues

so the baking continues.... of course! after a break from the homemade marshmallows and hot cocoa, here's whats been on the menu the last two days:
-peanut butter fudge
-eggnog fudge
-vanilla peppermint cupcakes w. chocolate buttercream

They made great little gifts and I must say, I was thoroughly pleased with how they all turned out... but most especially the eggnog fudge! Eggnog Eggnog: I know, most people either love or loathe the stuff... but I LOVE it (only about once a year though). So I wasn't sure how it would go over... but so far, its gotten rave reviews!

another busy christmas weekend

yet another whirlwind weekend! Saturday was jammed packed - met with some girlfriends for a little Christmas breakfast/gift exchange (one of my only relaxing minutes of the day!). after the gathering, i headed home, only to walk right back out the door. we drove to Hilliard to visit with Pete's grandparents. I just have to say, they are absolutely the cutest two people EVER! They are 93 and 94 and sharp as tacks - next year they will celebrate their 70th wedding anniversary!!! Our world certainly needs more of those couples around. What a joy to spend time with them. By the time we made it home from the visit we had less than an hour to get ready for the Messana Christmas/welcome home Joe party! Aunt Lex and uncle john came to watch the girls... BLESS THEM! :)
Sunday we celebrated dads retirement with a lunch at Roadhouse - YUM! Then we headed back to nana & papa's house to celebrate ellia's birthday with them (since they'll be in fl when her bday rolls around). spent the rest of the evening at home wrapping away!
At this pace.... well... lets just say my body doesn't handle the stress real well so I think its time to take it down a notch - try to RELAX and ENJOY this week.
Christmas shopping is done. Christmas wrapping is almost done. Christmas baking is almost done.... I think we're on the right track :)

p.s. best part of the whole weekend: sitting on the floor wrapping presents while Pete and BOTH girls were cracking up watching kung-fu panda. i LOVE hearing them laugh... all 3 of them. :)

ohhhh yea! and how can i forget. amongst all the craziness was TONs of baking and gift-prep. This year we did lots of my homemade butter cookies with icing AND i tried my hand at making HOMEMADE marshmallows & hot cocoa mix. Both of which, I think, turned out marvelously! I've never done marshmallows before, but they were surprisingly easy to make and taste wonderful in the cocoa! We packaged things up for some neighbors and friends and of course, the postman :) check it out...

tonights convo

Ellia: (at 8:30 p.m.) Mommy, Im hungry again.
Mommy: You are?? You must not have eaten enough for dinner. We'll eat again in the morning.
Ellia: But mommy I HAVE to eat NOW.
Mommy: Why?
Ellia: Because my stomach is grouching!!!


there are just some words I can't bear to correct :)

weekend wonderland

well let the December MADNESS begin! The second weekend in December... and it was jammed packed. Besides the usual craziness of trying to get a tree up and decorated, the house decked for Christmas, shopping lists checked off, etc. etc. We filled the weekend with about 5 other big items. Friday my mom & dad, me and the girls took a little road trip down to IKEA. This was no easy feat... but lots of fun! I LOVE that store and I am certainly glad it takes a full 2 hours to get there - otherwise, it could be quite dangerous on our bank account. We drove back and made it home just in time for Pete & the girls and I to head off to dinner with some good friends who we haven't seen in WAY too long. It was a fun evening catching up with Kris & Maria - and I'm excited for our baking-Christmas music day we have planned soon! :) Saturday we went and got... oh wait, I just realized what we did was for a Christmas gift - so I'll share later :) Saturday evening we had such a fun night celebrating with my Dad at his firehouse - our last Saturday pizza night there. They made him a huge ax out of cake to mimic the ax he received for his retirement. I love hangin around the firehouse - something about that smell, I will never forget. I'm just glad the girls got to experience a little of it before papa finished up. I'll probably miss it more than dad ;)




Sunday we made the long snowy and rainy trek to Cleveland. but it was SO worth it. We got to celebrate with our dear friends at their baby shower! It is always a joy to watch those you love be blessed with a bunch of new beautiful things to start their family. Hung around a little after to see their new pad and chill with them. Then it was a LONG and snowy 3.5 hour trip home. I just can HARDLY wait till their little guy is born! February will bring lots of fun things :)

spreading a little Jesus

tonight pete and I had the pleasure of being door-greeters at our church's LCT concert (living Christmas tree). This is a HUGE production they put on every year, but this year they did something a little different. They decided for the opening night they would just give all the tickets away to different community organizations, inviting over 3000 people! We had folks from the local homeless shelters, international friendship students at OSU, pdhc, W.A.R.M and several other really neat ministry organizations around Ohio. We even sent buses around to bring people down.
Since pete & I are on our church's leadership team, we got to volunteer in some way for that evening. We were door-greeters... getting to smile and welcome 2-3 thousand people into our church doors that might never have had an opportunity to do so otherwise. More importantly, each one of those people were able to hear and experience the story of Jesus' birth and death, and learn of the Salvation and relationship He offers and desires.
We were FROZEN... I mean feet stiff, hands numb, lips blue, etc... but didn't even notice. We were so wrapped up in God's goodness that evening - overwhelmed with thanks to Him for this opportunity to love on His people, even with a a smile and simple "hello & welcome!" "thanks for coming" "great to see you" "Merry Christmas!". We pray that many tonight felt the love that only JESUS can give.


thanks to ellia's dancing partner.. i mean um, uncle jimmy and aunt karen for giving the girls such a fun evening while we were away! :)

christmas card takes... take 127!

so we decided it would just be "so.much.easier." to do our Christmas card picture just of the girls this year, instead of trying to get the whole fam behind the self timer 30-40 times.
Boy were we wrong. 3 consecutive days, I took roughly 40-50 pictures of the girls... trying to come up with a decent picture we could use. Now sure, I will blame a lot of that on my lack of a decent camera but... the girls will receive their due blame - AHHHH! anyway, we found one that we were fairly happy with that we ended up settling on... BUT not without some craziness and pulling-hair-out moments. Here are a few decent and not-so-decent takes along the way...
















and the winner is.....