Melts in your mouth. Not in your hands.

It's no secret that I am addicted to chocolate.

Today I ate way too many M&M's. WAY too many. I just couldn't stop myself. It was awful and so good all at the same time! Did I say how much I love and am addicted to chocolate? Because I am.  Darn those M&M's. If I gain 5 pounds, it'll be their fault, not mine.

As evil as those little candies are, they are also a great teaching tool.

My mom potty trained me when I was Sydney's age by rewarding me with them. And letting me reward my potty-training dolly with M&M's whenever she peed on the potty chair.  I was always happy to help my dolly when she refused to eat her chocolate. Guess the addiction started early for me.

Elisabeth learned her colors via you guessed it - M&M's. She didn't care to learn colors with us when she was little until we were at a birthday party and family members asked her to get them various colors of M&M's. She happily (and correctly) obliged.

Now Miss Sydney is learning about the magic of M&M's as well.  Primarily, she is learning that they are WAY yummy.

Sydney is also learning to share with her sister. (And her sister is learning to share with Sydney.)

The M&M's are helping Sydney learn to count too. Usually it starts with a finger point for "one", much like she is doing in the photo below.

What comes after one? Let me see if I can spell it out for you.

Tchüüüüüüüüüüüw (make sure the last few letters are said a few notes higher than the rest). It looks like this:

We're still working on numbers higher than that. Right now all numbers above two are also pronounced "Tchüüw"!

Thanks M&M's! You never cease to amaze me. In your honor, I will eat some more of you tomorrow.

A letter to my dear husband Mark.

To my awesome husband:

7 years ago today we were married in a beautiful church in Madison.

Happy Anniversary!



We have grown quite a bit in the past 7 years. We've had the good and the bad and the sickness and health. But every moment has been experienced together, and has made our marriage stronger.

Thank you for always holding my hand,

And for helping to keep the flame alive in our marriage,



(and for not telling anybody that my garter was down to my ankle during our ceremony and that I tried to hike it up right before we lit our unity candle - I'd sure hate for everybody to know something like that.)

Our families have grown up and grown even larger in the last 7 years.

We now have a beautiful family of our own, and our oldest is almost the same age now as our flower girls were then.

I loved you so much then.

And I love you even more now.

As we continue to walk our path in life,

I simply ask that you continue to love me as much as you loved me that day,

And continue to eat cake with me.

Just make sure it's sponge genoise cake layered with apricot preserves and hazelnut buttercream frosting, okay?

I'll love you forever, I'll like you for always.

xoxo,
Erin

The post titled Good Old Times

Well I had no idea what to title this post, since it's really just a bunch of pictures from another local nature preserve. I antiqued them while experimenting with iPhoto on our new Mac (that I LOVE, by the way).


Hence, the title.

Goodbye Summer

I have a hard time letting go of summer and all that it stands for. Usually I sit in denial about fall being right around the corner (or like it happens to be today, the next square on the calendar), but then I am faced with obvious signs of change.

The good news is that I love fall just as much as I love summer, if not more!

Acrophobic Mama

Hello my name is Mommy and I am an acrophobiac.

I haven't always been this way. Before I had children I loved all things scary and all things full of height.  But there is something strange that happens when you have children (or just get older, I am not sure which is the true culprit, as I haven't used my fantastic market research skills to isolate and test each variable). You develop fears. Mostly irrational, but still fairly understandable fears.

Mine is a fear of heights. I can't stand being up high. We have a balcony that overlooks our living room and I don't even like to get too close to the edge. I envision myself tripping on a pantleg and plummeting to my death as I fall over the side of the railing. It's a good thing the balcony is very wide, because I walk straight down the middle no matter what!

So when we went to the festival after the parade last weekend, my fears kicked into high gear as we stood in line for the ferris wheel.

I LOVE ferris wheels! The colors. The lights. The nostalgia.

The heights.

I always seem to forget that part until we're standing in line and looking up.

I went back and forth, trying to decide if it was a good idea to take Sydney on the wheel of death with us, or if she should stay back with Mark because she was sure to slip right underneath the small piece of metal they call a "safety bar".

I literally had her going in and out of the line. And at the very last second, I had Mark pass her over the platform and the very nice carnie ("carnie" is not exactly PC, I know. But it's in the Urban Dictionary! And he really was nice!) helped get us sitting as safely as possible.

And that was it. The three of us started going up up up. I forgot that it takes you up backwards, which somehow makes me even more nervous. I also forgot that it stops continuously so that the next seat of death can be unloaded and loaded. And then the next. And the next.  Which of course means that the seat of death that you are sitting in will swing with each.and.every.stop.

I thought I was going to throw up from fear of one or all of us falling out! So I put on my fake smile so Elisabeth wouldn't know how freaked out I was, and up we went some more.

BARF!

Once we got going continuously I did a little better, and I discovered that if I kept my eyes looking out at the clouds instead of down to where I was about to fall to my death I wasn't as nervous. And fortunately for all parties involved, the ride eventually came to an end.

 

Have you developed any fears recently? Please tell me I am not the only one!

Labor Day, and Connecting Through Living Waters

We had an action packed Labor Day weekend. It's a good thing it's not called Couch Potato Day, because we never came close to the couch. I don't think we ever stopped moving!

We actually spent a lot of time with our church over the course of the weekend. Our church is known to the public as the one that hands out the water at parades. The water bottles are each wrapped with another label, turning it into "Living Waters water". It's pretty cool, and a great way to spread the word about a great church.

We have never walked in a parade before as a family, but Elisabeth actually requested that we do it. You can't say no to a kid that asks to help her church by walking in the parade! So, we said yes.


And it was a blast. Being in a parade is a completely different experience than standing on the curb and watching the parade. There was this sense of connection. Connecting with hundreds of complete strangers. Bringing smiles to their faces. And bringing smiles to our own faces. Working as a team to empty a pick up truck's worth of ice cold water bottles until it's all gone. It's no small task! We were sweating. Panting. Mark's legs hurt so bad for the next 3 days that he actually screeched when the cat jumped on his lap. (We think his mass pain level was possibly multiplied somehow by his heart meds, because I wasn't even close to being in that much pain. Or maybe it's just because I'm a superwoman... Yeah. Let's go with superwoman.)


That's our pastor in the photo above. He is phenomenal. I am not sure if he realizes just how much he has impacted our family over the past 3 years.


The parade concluded at a park with a huge festival set up. And on Sunday morning our church had its worship service right on the festival grounds!


After that, we all headed over to the church for a picnic. More fellowship! More connecting!

We absolutely love our church. Neither Mark nor myself have ever felt such a connection with a church community as we do with this one. I am sure that connection will just keep on growing over the years. It's so nice. We have attended churches that left us feeling like horrible guilty sinners. It's not exactly the way we want to feel. But this church leaves us feeling refreshed, rejuvenated and wanting to share our joy!