Isabella Interview For the Year 2014

I'm going to do an annual interview to see how my little stinkers' answers change throughout the years. I start doing Hayven when she can answer questions. I may even do it more often than once a year with different questions.

We had so much fun talking about these, and when I had finished, Bella asked if we were done and said it was fun and wanted more questions. This little girl has my heart. I know I shouldn't boast, but y'all, she's one amazing little girl. She's extremely well-behaved, and only has to be told something more than once very rarely. She has countless toys, but always wants to be with us and do whatever we want to do. She loves being around her family. Her daddy is her world, and she wants to be with him and do what he is doing at all times. Who can blame her? I know this will come with Hayven also; I'm fully prepared being that I'm a huge daddy's girl too. She has the sweetest heart and tells me oodles of times a day that she loves me and we go back & forth with who loves who most. She is the best big sister, and I find her running over to Hayven to give her "tash" (pacifier) to her, or in the pack-n-play with her, or singing to her in the car. Hayven absolutely adores her and giggles every time Bell is in her sight. I am so glad I get to be a part of this princess's life and can only hope that she remains so kind hearted as she grows up in spite of the worldly things she's around.

Nicknames: Bella, Bell, Bells, B-ella, Bella Boo, Boo
How old are you? 7
What is your favorite color? Red
What is your favorite animal? Horse
What is your favorite book? One about ballerinas
What is your favorite T.V. Show? Jesse
What is your favorite song? Black Widow by Iggy Azalea
What is your favorite food? Chicken
What is your favorite drink? Coffee (what?!)--I then asked her favorite drink she can actually drink..haha & that was followed by Mtn. Dew (negative) & finally sweet tea
What is your favorite breakfast food? Donuts
What is your favorite snack? Chips
What is your favorite outfit? The one I'm wearing. (skinny jeans, silver sparkly shirt, and pink Converse)
What is your favorite game? Chutes and Ladders
What is your favorite toy? Baby dolls
Who is your best friend? Lilly
What is your favorite thing to do? Play
What is your favorite thing to do outside? Play
What is your favorite holiday? Christmas
What do you like to take to bed with you at night? Olaf
Where is your favorite place to go? Disneyworld
Where do you want to go on vacation? The beach
What do you want to be when you grow up? A teacher
What did you do on your birthday? Went ice-skating
My favorite thing about school: Writing
My favorite season: Summer
My favorite sports: Gymnastics
My favorite thing I did this year: Ice-skate
What do you do really well? Draw
What is something that made you sad this year (2014)? Having to leave y'all on Christmas
What do you love to learn about? Dinosaurs
If you had one wish what would it be? To keep having a happy family

Happy New Year

2015 has some massive shoes to fill in order to keep up with 2014. Each new year, of course, brings forth resolutions, and maybe me posting them on the blog will help me hold myself accountable. Last year I know I accomplished one new year's resolution I had of being on time to work, but the others didn't work out so well. Oh well, that doesn't mean I'm not going to try again, and on the bright side, at least I accomplished one. I'm actually pretty proud of myself for accomplishing that goal because it's been even more tough with having to get a little one out the door. This year my New Year's resolutions are:
1.) Cook more often- I'm not a good cook at all. Bull is a great cook, and he loves cooking. One of my biggest issues is thinking about what to cook. I get little help from Bull with that, because with his carefree demeanor, he always just says he doesn't care. I recently purchased Emeals, so I'm hoping having meals planned out for me with the grocery list already put together for me will help.

2.) Go to church more consistently- After having Hay-Bug, we really dropped the ball on this one & we've gotten in the bad habit of swapping sleep late days on Saturdays and Sundays since sleep is few and far between. I enjoy church, and I want my girls raised in church like I was, so we're just going to have to figure out a new plan.

3.) Lose weight- This is a reoccurring resolution, as I'm sure it is for a lot of people. As I was writing this, my sweet sweet husband walked in with a Fitbit. I'm SO pumped to use it!

4.) Blog more often- Can we just figure out how to add more hours into each day & create an energy pill already? Time is definitely the issue here, but I love looking back on what I've written so far, and I want to be able to remember all of these days when Hay is young. I'm not giving a set number of times a week, but I just want to recap some of the memories more often.

5.) Use my camera more often- A friend mentioned this as one of her resolutions today actually, and I loved it! I really just want to continue to take a lot of pictures. I have a great camera, but the easy access on my phone has me taking pictures on it. I need to get one of those things that transfers pictures from the camera to your phone, since that's where I upload to Instagram & what not.


I love the new year & thinking about a fresh start & the motivation...if only it would stick around!. I'm all about resolutions, and badger my husband to make some while he ends up just agreeing with what I say. Hopefully I can keep them. Here are some pictures from our new year festivities.
We went to eat with my mom for her birthday (which is on New Year's day, but everything is closed that day). We had to wait 2 hours to get seated even after doing call-ahead seating. I think we may do January 2nd next year. It was fun spending time with the family anyways. It was about 9:30 before we left, & we decided to go home & play a board game with my niece & nephew thinking Hayven would fall asleep in the car & stay asleep. She did fall asleep in the car, but after changing her diaper & putting on her pajamas, the little stinker was having nothing of falling asleep. She ended up staying up until 12:30!

 

On New Year's Day we went to Bull's parents,  Nana & Grandpa, to watch the Alabama game play in the Sugar Bowl. The game didn't turn out as we hoped, but we will be back next year! Roll Tide!

 

2014 & 9 Months

2014 was one of the best years ever. I had one of the sweetest blessings given to me. I love to watch how Bull and Isabella interact with the little munchkin. She's pretty smitten with them as well. There's been more sleepless nights, but yet a lot more smiles. At 9 months, Hayven says uh oh like it's nobody's business, and it's one of the sweetest sounds I've ever heard. She's started to say dog and woof woof. She waves bye bye and hey, claps for yay, says touchdown while throwing her hands up (we're die hard Bama fans), and will smack her lips together in a kissing sound back & forth with you. She likes to copy a lot. She's so close to crawling. She can get up on all fours, but just hasn't figured out how to put that together with moving her hands and knees. She's currently a belly-scooter. Lately, she's been a momma's baby and wants me all the time and of course I eat it up. She also practically jumps into her Pa's arms and dances at every song she hears. Her favorite song is Hot Dog in Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. She has 2 bottom teeth and her 2 vampire teeth are coming in currently. At her checkup at 9 1/2 months (because she was sick with double ear infections during her 9 month check-up), she weighed 22.8 lbs, (95%) and was 28 in. short (55%).Here are some of her pictures from her 9 month check-up. (Sorry about the quality...I took them with Bull's phone and for some reason they were blurry.)

 Here's a video to recap some of our year. I'm sure I'll say this every year, but this year was again, the BEST year ever.

Changes, Lately, and the Beach

I knew things would get busy, and I wouldn't be able to blog as much.  Just a warning that this blog post is pretty long. I would separate it, but I'm worried I'll run out of time & won't get to everything. I recently made a very hard decision to change jobs. Not really change jobs, but locations. The school I was at was undergoing a great deal of changes, and I needed to make a decision soon. The opportunity arose, and I figured I would try, and if it happened, then it had to be God's will. It was an extremely difficult decision. I had been at the other school my whole career. I kept wanting for God to give me a sign, and really after I thought about it, if I had gotten an interview and offered the job, that was sign enough for me. I am so sad to be leaving all the people I worked with and love them dearly. I still plan on seeing them, and it was the best thing for my family.  I will really miss all of my students from past years that I still got to see at school, but it won't be long before they are at a different school anyways. I'll always be a Pelham Panther at heart, but will be yelling Go Jackets now! I am BEYOND PUMPED to be teaching 4th grade at Vincent Elementary School. I have a great deal of friends there, and when being around them have heard nothing but great things about where they work. I also can hopefully start Bible study again since it's held there, & I will be close. It will be a little bit of a drive, but only about 10 more minutes than what I'm used to. We also hope to move closer that way sometime soon. One of the biggest factors was that my sweet baby will be taken care of by an amazing family friend. I know she will get lots of loving and find so much comfort in knowing who will be spending time with her daily and will be more than well taken care of. With all that said, I've been busy moving my classroom to my basement until the floors are cleaned in my new school. Can you say nightmare? Oh my word at the stuff I've collected over the past 5 years. We've also had Isabella the past 2 weeks and have tried to make the most of the days having her by doing different things, so time to blog has been few & far between. We've done plenty of things since I posted last, so I'll fill you in with some pictures of some of them.

Isabella made a craft of a message in a bottle at VBS & this was her note to her sweet sister, Hayven. Translation: Isabella loves Hayven. I can not wait to go to the beach. I love your black hair. I love you. How precious is this? It's definitely going in her baby book.

 

Bells wanted to have a tea party, so we got out my tea set from when I was little that is in Hayven's room. We used the Keurig to make a spot of hot tea and found some 100 calorie fudge shoppe cookies, & we were set. Hayven couldn't take her eyes off her sissy.

My dad's company had their company picnic this month & we had a blast! It was hot, but we had so much fun with food, put-put, rides, and swimming all for free!

Aunt Jennie went to the eye dr. before she came and put her sunglasses on Hay!

We got back from the picnic just in time to go see these pretty princesses, Isabella & Hayven's cousins, dance at their last recital for the year. We kept it a surprise to Bell & she was so exited when she figured out she was seeing her besties!

Random picture of Hayven, but it's cute, so...haha

 

Here are some pictures from our family beach trip this year. I feel like it went by way too fast this time. Usually by the end of the trip I'm ready to sleep in my bed, but this time I did not want to leave at all. The beach is a lot different with a newborn & I didn't get the tan I wanted, but I soaked up sweet memories with my girls that I'll never forget & wouldn't change it for the world. The ride down was much more fun than the ride home. It took about 4 1/2 hours down there on Sunday & a good 8 back on Saturday. Traffic was HORRIFIC. Note to self-Don't leave or go on Saturdays.

I managed to capture these videos of Isabella singing to Frozen on the ride down there. I could seriously watch them over and over and crack up every time. I've probably watched them a hundred times. Isabella was mad that I videoed her, but got over it when I told her how cute it was. She even tried to reenact the moments later in the car to try to get me to record it. Haha!

 There were so many frogs where we stayed! Isabella was in heaven! She loves catching things & would always ask if she could go on the back porch while all of us were still getting ready & what not. She said this baby one was her prince charming.

 The place we stayed had it's own little shopping area & restaurants. They even had a concert on the lawn one night. It was nice having restaurants and shopping within walking distance.

One morning we decided to play a family wiffle ball game.It was a lot of fun, but I was SO sore the next day. Who knew!?

This is how Hayven spent most of her time on the beach. The heat & the noise of the waves put her to sleep. Next year I'm sure she will be getting into everything, so we soaked up this time.

 This picture cracks me up. Bull decided to put on his sunscreen himself on hi face without looking in the mirror at what he was doing. This is the result. Ha!

 

We even did a little night swimming. This little one was a fish! She wanted so bad to learn to swim above the water and got really good at it!

 

The boys just had to take some goofy pictures because it wouldn't be right without them...

That's how Hayven felt about leaving. I was right there with you girly!