Happy New Years!

Happy New Year!

Okay, I'm a little late on that.

This past year has been a full and busy year for my little family.  We had a second baby, not so gracefully adjusted to life with a busy toddler and a colicy newborn, bought a house, went on a few trips/vacations, and celebrated a 2nd and a 30th birthday (I plead the 5th on whose the later one was). All of this was while my husband was a rockstar at working full time and going to school part-time and I was home with the kiddos surviving on love and coffee.

Photo by Melissa Wollman Photography

I thought I would take a second to write down a few of my goals for 2015.  I'm determined for this to be a year of great changes!

1.  Get organized.  Just last night I defeatedly admitted to my huband that I really am just not a good housewife.  I hate hate triple hate having a messy home but that is all I seem to live in.  Part of this is because we recently moved and are still not completely moved in.  It's just an impossible task to conquer with my busy toddler and snuggly (read: kinda clingy but oh-so-sweet) baby.  But three months later there is no longer and excuse and it's time to work on this house and figure out a system to keep it in order!

2.  Eat healthy.  We found out over two years ago that my husband is allergic to pork, chicken and corn.  We have YET to fully embrace a lifestyle that helps him.  We plan on going Paleo and I'm currently reading It Starts With Food but I need to finish it up and get this train a goin'

3. Drink more water.

4. Take time for a daily devotion.  Which probably means I need to start waking up before the girls (gasp!)

5. Practice more with photography.  And take more pictures with my camera and less with my iphone.

6.  Spend more time outside and plan more fun activities for the family.  Walk away from the internet, Rachel.

7. Love my husband more.  Our lives are so busy and it's so busy to not put the extra effort into this relationship.  I need to listen more, serve him more, and just overall find ways to continue to "date" him.

8. Love myself more.  Being home with the girls all the time, I find myself being on mommy mode 24/7.  While this is my most important job right now, and one I want to do the best I can, I am still an individual apart from my children.  I need to be sure to find a balance and find those things that are mine and that I love to do so I can be the best Rachel I can.  And, in turn, be a happier and a better mama and wife.  

9.  Take more pictures WITH my family.  Stop worrying about my hair, make-up, extra baby weight, and spit up on my shirt and just smile and capture the memories when I can.  I know in the years to come I will be thankful I did!

10. Blog more.  I have no plan on being a "blogger" or for anyone to even follow what I post.  But this is a great opportunity for me to capture my life, my projects, and my thoughts and share it with those I love.  I enjoy looking back at the posts I wrote when Lyla was young and hate the void that has happened since then.

So there you have it!  

My big plans for 2015.  

Cheers to a new year!

Life.

Life is busy.

Oh, so busy.

My dreams and aspirations to get blogging back in my daily routine has been, yet again, pushed aside.

We just recently closed on our new house and have started the seemingly never-ending battle of unpacking.

....with a baby and a toddler running wild.

I might be lucky to get one box unpacked by the time bedtime rolls around.

Then on top of everything else, we finally buckled down and potty trained Lyla.

It actually was a reletively easy process for us, but it was extrememly time consuming.

I plan to post more about it soon.

I couldn't be happier with our new house!

I'm so excited for what this means for our family.

We needed a new place with more space for us.

Which is exactly what we got.

I am so thankful for all the answered prayers this place is for us.

The best part is that it was literally down the street from where we were living!

How's that for an easy move?

So, hopefully it won't be too much longer until I feel life balancing out again and we can finally be settled into our new routine!

Friday!

Hooray Hooray for Friday!

This has been one crazy week in this house.

I'm still totally adjusting to life with two kiddos.  

I feel like in many ways I take one step forward and two steps back at times.

For instance, I'm so happy that my little Hazelnut is becoming a better napper.  I am able to simply rock her for a few minutes then lay her in her crib and she soothes herself to sleep all on her own.  This is such a biiiiiig step in the right direction!  Definitely my one step forward moment.

For my one step back however, my toddler has quickly figured out that while I'm getting Hazel down for her nap it's a great window of opportunity to get into all types of mischief.

That mess may or may not have stayed on the floor for a full hour before I got around to cleaning it.  Just sayin.

One thing I do know that is currently really working for our family is our bath time situation.

There for a while Jesse was washing Lyla in the tub and I was washing Hazel on the bathroom sink counter in her baby bath.  Bath time is one of my favorite times and it's important to me to have the girls share this time together (and go to bed around the same time).  For both sentimental and sanity reasons.

But what we were doing just was not working and was a little more of a hectic and crowded time than I wanted.

So in comes my FAVORITE bath time product:

This Angel Care bath support is the perfect solution for having the girls share a bath.

I would honestly even recommend it for families with one baby simply for how small and streamlined the product is.  And it has a little hook so you could even hang it up to dry and store!  Brilliant.

We've been using it for a few days now and I'm really digging the new routine.  

Lyla loves having her sissy in the bath with her and Hazel loves watching her sissy play in the water.

So that's my little friday favorite.

Now I'm off to some quick bath shower time for myself while they girls are both sleeping!

The Day I Quit Blogging

It's been a really long time since I've done a blog post.

And by a long time I mean nine whole months.

{creepily 9 months on the dot almost!}

There really wasn't a moment I decided to stop blogging.

In fact, I have a lot of posts saved as drafts that I just never finished.

Maybe I just got to busy.

Maybe I just kept putting it off for tomorrow.

Maybe I got discouraged thinking that my time posting was a waste.

Maybe Maybe Maybe.

If I was to be honest it was a combination of everything.

I started this blog as a way to track my pregnancy.

Did the popular copy cat formula straight from Jessica Garvin's blog.

After Lyla was born I liked writing about our little adventures and documenting Lyla's monthly updates.

I had a lot of fun writing them and I look back with great joy that I documented so much of our lives.

Jesse get's on me all the time about Lyla's barely filled out baby book and I always defend myself by saying I have everything written on my blog!

So here we are. 

A full year later.

So many adventures.

So many changes.

So many memories.

We have a toddler now.  A full blown wild child.

And we have a baby.  A precious almost three month old baby.

I cannot believe I haven't been documenting so many moments along the way!

So back to blogging I go.

Will it be amazing?  Probably not.

Will many people be reading these posts? I highly doubt it.

Will there be a bazillion grammatical errors? Oh, you can count on it.

Our own little niche of life is back in print again ;)

Our first snow!

It's a winter wonderland here in Anchorage!

It started snowing a little bit on Saturday.  

I had a nice little view of the white dusting from the airplane I was working on.

It continued to snow some through the weekend

but the real fun came on Monday.

It was such a beautiful day.

Jesse was outside shoveling the driveway and Lyla was refusing to nap.

Seemed like a perfect time as any to take her outside for some family fun.

Lyla was in heaven from the moment we stepped outside.

It took her a while to wrap her little head around what in the world the white stuff was and how to move in this big puffy outfit.

But eventually we started seeing some big ol grins!

The grins continued as Jesse sat her in his shovel and started pushing her around.

She couldn't get enough of it!

When we took her out for him to finish working on the driveway she would make her way back over to him and try to climb back in!

So cute.

 Unfortunately I couldn't let her stay outside long because she is battling a little cold.

If there were any doubts about the fun she was having they would've been quickly answered with her poor little cries when I brought her back in the house.




As much as I think it's bonkers how it snows so early up here in Alaska,
I am very excited to share this fun season with my little girl.

Jesse is so excited that he even bought her a sled last night!



Here's to a happy {early} winter!

Now I'm off to tend to my little sicky-sick.

TWO little pumpkins!

Happy Halloween from our TWO little pumpkins

{The second one will be here at the end of May!!!}

Pumpkin Patch

What is Fall without the obligatory trip to the pumpkin patch?!

Jesse and I took Lyla out to the Reindeer Farm in Palmer, Alaska last weekend.  I heard great things about this little spot and I was excited to take our little toddler out for a family day of fun.

Lyla was beyond excited to explore all the fun little pumpkins.  

And I was ecstatic over the beautiful view.

I mean seriously, Alaska can really step it up sometimes!

It was a really windy day so we quickly moved on to the other activities to make sure we could enjoy them all before we had a melt down.

There was a bunch of little activties for kiddos to do in the barn (like holding a tiny bunny and play in a big pool of corn!) but by far her favorite thing was getting to talk to the horsies.

She was seriously squeeling with excitment. 

So sweet!

She would've stayed there all day I think but we had to keep putting her back in the stroller and bundle her up with blankets to make sure she stayed warm.  Oh the joys of living up here ;)

One of the last activities we did was jump on the tractor wagon and snuggle up close as we headed over to the hay maze.

I thought this would be a fast little in-and-out activity but ooooooh was I wrong!  We seriously were walking in circles in that thing.  There was a group of us adults that were cracking up over the fact that we were seriously being beat by this "kids game." 

But right about the time I was about to have a mini-anxiety attack my knight in shinning armor found the way out!

I'm so happy we were able to get out, enjoy this amazing season, and make some fun family memories while we were at it :)