James' time off

James had this squadron weekend out and at first we thought he couldn't go. With him being new, I wanted him to get out there and make sure he was involved. I didn't however want to take care of Hadley over night alone because she can be a handful. I decided to stay longer at my sister's while he had some fun (don't worry, I'm already thinking of ways he can repay me). I guess this "trip" is an annual event and they go to Memphis. They visited Elvis' studio and other Elvis related events. It was a major booze fest from what I've gathered. It all started when a squadron commander from the past just really loved Elvis. They were supposed to incorporate Elvis in their flight suits and wear them all around town. I heard they were posing for pictures everywhere they went! My mom assisted James in his outfit. It was a last minute decision to go so we did pretty well with how long we had to plan. James is already planning for next year! Here are some highlight photos.

I will also mention he's been working hard trying to finish the kitchen cabinets but work seems to be getting in the way of that, hopefully it will all be complete soon for a final reveal! 

thank you thank you very much!

Wordless Wednesday

Happy Hadley in bumbo!

Max's birthday party

My nephew Max turned 1 a couple weeks ago and we celebrated with "Where the Wild Things Are" theme. Here's a couple photos from there and some of us.  Here are some of the photos of the details.

Some photos of our family.

Hadley was still in her pjs

outfit change

me and the birthday boy

My sister, Max, and David

us twins with our babies

my mom (gigi) sister-in-law Marla and brother Chris

We had lots of fun!

MIA

I am on a little trip at my sister's house and I did not bring my computer but I am using hers. I don't really have anything major to blog about except for Max's (my nephew) birthday party and family festivities. I will direct you to my brother's post and my sister's post to catch up on what has been going on! I've been enjoying their new house and since Hadley did pretty awful in the car getting here, I'm pretty sure I'm not leaving.

This is a post about how Max and Hadley have been getting along. This is a CUTE post about how Max's smash cake session went. He's adorable!

This next post is my brother's blog that sums up his weekend here with cute pics and videos!

My sister will be posting really soon about Max's where the wild things are party went. They had every little detail planned and executed perfectly. I don't anticipate I will do a separate post about it since they're already doing the leg work :) What can I say, I'm a lazy blogger!

We have more family coming in this weekend and we can't wait!! So for now, wonder around my sibling's blogs!

Hadley's 3 months old!

I really don't know where this last month went, I feel like I JUST took her 2 month pictures, seriously! We are loving Hadley's new developments and look forward to seeing everything she does.

Stats:
these are just our measurements
Length- 24 1/2 inches
Weight- I plan to weigh her with my scale a little later so I may be updating this

Eating:
Hadley's breastfeeding very well and we're having a great time with it now. It was hard work but we've got the hang of it now. She eats every 2-3 hours and it's mostly around the 2.5 hour mark.

Sleeping:
Well she are still in the swing at night. It's mostly because we do not want to give up what we have going. She sleeps from 11pm-6am (give or take a half hour on both ends). We've tried to get her to go to bed earlier and she SCREAMS with discontent when trying to put her down but the minute it's about 11pm she's OUT and goes down very easy. It's kinda comical she just wants that to be her bedtime. Hopefully in the future this will get earlier. She sleeps straight through in that sleep period without waking to eat. She's doing great with napping in her crib during the day although we still only get a good 30 minutes with an hour for the first morning nap. Now that we know when she wants to go to bed perhaps we will give the crib a try, I just know I'll be getting up a bunch of times because she stirs a bit. Small steps :)

look how happy!

Developments:
Hadley LOVES her hands, I mean can't get enough of them. Shoves both in her mouth and just loves sucking on them. She still loves her play mat and kicks and kicks for a good hour sometimes! She smiles like crazy and talks to us (sometimes REALLY loudly). The BEST new development is that she GIGGLES! She did it for a friend Superbowl Sunday night and we can get her to do it occasionally but not as good as she did that night. LUCKILY, James got it on video, take a listen it's sooooo cute!

Valentine's cutie

Randoms:
She is out of 0-3 months of most brand of clothing and 3 months are fitting good. She SHOULD be in size 2 diapers but we're letting the size 1 diapers we have finish up first. She still doesn't like her car seat (I don't remember if she started hating it at 2 months or not). She just gets mad about 5 minutes into being in the car and I have to sit back there to occupy her with a paci (that she doesn't suck but "bites") and squeeze toys. I can't really take her anywhere where I'm driving because I choose not to listen to her scream the entire drive, I really hope this is a phase.

We love our Hadley Emilia and she's proving to be a very happy baby. We finally feel we have the hang of her and what she likes. So this is why people have more than one child :)

she likes to lick things.....

Look how Hadley has grown from month 1, 2 and 3! BIG GIRL :)

Re-grand opening

The blog post title says it all. I feel like we have a whole new house! I really like putting in our own style and touches. The floors are done and in! We love them. I also forgot that I'll be the one cleaning them so that is a TINY bummer. We LOVE how they turned out and couldn't be happier. The floors seem darker than what I picked out in the store but I do love me a dark wood floor. I love the carpet too. Can't go wrong with some frieze carpet! Tip: if you go to the BACK of the store (in our case Lowes) that's where they keep the in stock carpet and you don't have to special order any which is always WAY more expensive. I'll let the pictures do the rest of the talking. The only thing left is to finish the rest of the kitchen cabinets, appliances, and decor!

We sectioned off the living room to have some carpet for Hadley to crawl on one day.

This was all carpet before, new walkway to patio door (behind couch)

before floors (old scratched tiles)

new floors!

front door/hallway

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MAX!!

I can not believe that my only nephew Max is turning ONE Saturday!! Seriously, where does time go! We can't wait to celebrate his birthday soon. Hadley has never been to a birthday party so she's pretty excited. They are doing a "where the wild things are" theme and the prep work is looking fantastic. The blog is a montage of my favorite Max moments. Did I tell you he can walk now?! He's so cute on the videos I can't wait to see it in person.

baby max around 10 days old

a month old?

Max from over the summer (6 months)

Max at christmas- 10 1/2 months old

Check out my sister's blog for step by step photos of Max walking and CUTE videos! Love my little buddo, can't wait to get our party on!

Side note: my Bella (aka, bella bopper, beeper, beep, bop, bella basil, muffin noodle) turned 7 on Wednesday! I've had her pretty much that whole time since she was 3 months old, and a fur ball.

"I'm not fat, I'm fluffy"

P.S. Stay tuned Monday for the flooring reveal!! It's finally complete and I can stop being quarantined to one room with the animals and baby :)

Spa

So the couple we bought our house from told me about this day spa we have here in downtown Columbus, MS. It's an ORGANIC spa! How cool is that! I love how such a small town has such unique things. They offer a variety of therapies such as massage & facial therapy, acupuncture, skin care consultations, makeover lessons and detox therapies. My husband got me a gift certificate for Christmas. They offer HUGE discounts once in a while for over half the cost. Probably their way of getting new people in and getting the word out (which it worked for me and I told people too). My last gift certificate was for a microdermabrasion session, eyebrow arch, mini facial, pressure point face massage, and scalp massage. A couple of those I didn't know was a thing, but I really enjoyed them ALL. OK, well some more than others.

I didn't know what to expect with microdermabrasion because this is how they describe it: "Natural crystals are blown onto the skin with a powerful stream of air and then suctioned away. This process provides deep exfoliation by removing the dead skin cells, allowing the new cells to come to the surface. This also increases the circulation, which  stimulates the production of collagen. Concluding the treatment we apply a soothing masque to eliminate any redness. Followed with a pampering massage of the face and décolleté. Your skin will feel energized and smooth. Great for fine lines, hormonal breakouts, acne, skin discoloration and age-prevention. 30min"

So this crystal blowing and suctioning on your face feels not great... it's like scratching! and some areas are more sensitive than others. She told me I could tell her if it hurt so she could dial it down, I just kept thinking I can handle this.... overall it really wasn't too bad, I just didn't expect any discomfort. I loved the way it made my skin feel afterwards though. I also loved my scalp massage. That was a first. I always love when hair dressers really get in there when they wash your hair, so I knew I'd like this.

I wasn't sure how to do my hair for it because of my curliness and need for product. My sister told me to just wash it and don't put any product in. Below is a picture of the outcome..... needless to say, she REALLY got in there. It was awesome! If I had a headache ever that would be a great fix! I had to cram all these services in because James was off. I didn't realize they were open weekends, but I will be noting that for next time.

crazy hair

I like them on facebook so I found out about another deal and it was on the day I went for my last service (it was meant to be). I could not pass it up, seriously the savings is crazy. They use vegan nail polish too, how cool! I recommend "liking" businesses on Facebook, there's some great deals sometimes.

Happy Valentine's Day to me

I'm loving these mini-pampering sessions. It's getting me out of the house and a little break from time to time. Thanks to my husband James for taking care of Hadley so well and getting me these great gifts!

*I was not compensated at all for these blog post, just wanted to state what I've been up to

Flooring

Well the flooring for our house update is here! They brought it over the weekend so it could acclimate. They couldn't install it until today because the installer had conflicts last week. It just feels like this whole process could have been done quicker, but nobody asked me :). We ended up going with Lowes because they gave us TONS of discounts. The guy was shaving numbers off like crazy and James told him that he couldn't spend more than X amount so the guy went back to "talk to the manager" and came back BELOW our number. That was over a 300 dollar savings just in that ten minutes, not to mention the other items he gave us deals on (moral of story- don't be afraid to ask, or if you are- have your husband do it for you haha). Nice guy that worked the flooring.

They're here!

Side note: On the order sheet that James got it said we were getting 33 boxes. James made sure to count and there were only 32 boxes. James told the delivery guy and he was like no there are 33. So James made him count and there were only 32 like James said.... Moral of this story: DOUBLE CHECK everyone's work! It seems lately we've been having problems with people not doing their job properly.... I digress. Anywho, we paid for 33 boxes so either we get the last box or we get a refund. (they're refunding us and if we need the other box the installer will get it and we'll pay again).

Old wood floors with the new wood floor color

all our 32 boxes of hardwood flooring! 

Update on the kitchen: The base of the cabinets and molding and such are all DONE! It looks FANTASTIC! We finally got to put everything back in there and I cleaned off the sanding dust. It's been like 10 days or so maybe 2 weeks since he had taken everything out to get it ready to sand. James did a flawless job. We wanted to get everything put back in there and sort of straighten up everywhere else to make the flooring installation go smoother before he started the cabinet doors. He's going to be working on the doors/drawers little by little. He has a system that will work and it shouldn't be TOOO much longer. I don't want to take a FULL picture yet until it's ALL done. I will say the white appliances are an eye sore even more now because they do NOT go with the white cabinets. So that will be next once we get the cash saved up (no finance no credit that's how we roll).

your only sneak preview! Look how good that turned out! I don't even know if I told you we decided to close out the peninsula or not, but we did and here's what happened!

It's going to be finished soon and it will look like a whole new house! Luckily Miss. Hadley has been behaving herself throughout the day so I can watch after her and let James work without bothering him to help me. Well, I actually got a blog post finished in her short nap sessions, and there's my cue we're done here (she's crying). Adios for now!