Liam’s First Lost Tooth

Hello friends!

One week and two days away from his 5th birthday, and our little guy loses his first tooth.

How did this happen? We just grew those teeth; I am just not ready for all of this growing up.. seriously.. people never tell you how hard this part of being a parent is.

His little tooth has been loose for a little more than a month, and trust me, it has taken everything in my power not to yank it out. Just ask my sister, my dad and I would pull her teeth as soon as we saw a little wiggle, she hated it.

Monday night, I was getting ready to floss his teeth when I noticed it was starting to turn black.  This little tooth had been holding on for dear life for weeks.  I told Liam I needed to pull it out because it was turning into a dead tooth. He cried a little because he didn’t know what to expect, but for the most part he was so brave. I grabbed a tissue and started to pull it out and I think I scratched his gums because he really started to scream at this point. I felt horrible.. ugh.. I asked if I could try one more time and reluctantly he let me look at the tooth again.  This time I made sure I was only grabbing the little tooth. He started crying and saying, “mommy I don’t want you to pull it out.” Before he could finish the word out, I pulled the tissue away and along with it came the tooth.

He had no idea his tooth was gone until he tried to feel it with his finger and it wasn’t there. He looked up at me with those amazingly loving eyes completely surprised that it didn’t hurt at all. Then he started cheering and dancing around telling us how happy he was that his tooth was out. He was cautiously excited at first because it has started to bleed and I told him to keep the tissue in place until it was done. Daddy told him it would only be a few minutes before it stopped bleeding and that seemed to calm him down. After it stopped bleeding he walked around with the biggest smile on his face.

We put his tooth in a baggie and put it under his pillow for the tooth fairy. I told him the tooth fairy would leave him some money but might not take his tooth if it was too small for her village. He loved it and went right to sleep.

When he woke up, he walked downstairs and asked us to go back up with him to check under his pillow. I cannot tell you how happy this made us. Our little guy is still our little baby. I wish we would have recorded his reaction, but I think we were too excited for him to even think about grabbing our phones. He climbed into his bed and pulled back his pillow to see the bag with his tooth and two one dollar bills.  I have never seen anyone so excited for $2 in my whole life. My heart exploded. He asked that we put his money in his piggy bank.

When Quinn woke up he told her all about the tooth fairy and the money. She clapped and gave him a hug. Man, when those two get along…. Life could not get any sweeter.

Life is good J If anyone cares to share their first lost tooth story I would love to hear them! Comment with them below  🙂

Have a great day!

Cheers!

D

Hello Fresh

Hello friends!

Hello Fresh is here again this week.  Last week, I found a groupon for Hello Fresh and I jumped right on it, $50 for 3 meals for a family of 4, heck ya! That comes out to just over $4 a person per meal, you cannot beat that! Last weeks meals were amazing, but I did not do a good job taking pictures of documenting the experience at all, so I am going to try again.

I won’t pretend to tell you that I continued the subscription on purpose; I forgot to cancel it last week, so they sent me another week. At first I was a little mad at myself, because I hate paying full price for anything, but seriously, it comes out to a little over $8 a person a meal.  That is NOT bad at all. In reality the deal is far better than that, because depending on the meal, you can stretch it to lunch the next day.  The chili and steak we did for sure.

One of our little babes is a picky eater, so I didn’t know how this was going to go, but it was alright. We did not make them eat the chili because I was not in the mood for that fight. But they loved the chicken and the steak.  So this week, I will do a better job taking pictures for you all and blogging about the meals the next day! Here is our menu for the week..

I think we are going to make the pork chops tonight, tacos tomorrow and the chicken on Thursday. Stay tuned.. this week is going to be yummy!

Let me know if you want to try Hello Fresh for free, I can give a week of meals away to 4 friends!

*Disclaimer: Hello Fresh did not pay me for this content, nor do I get anything for posting any of these. These are my opinions and my opinions alone*

Cheers!

Museum Day

Hello friends!

Long time no talk. I was supposed to post this last Friday, but things are super busy around here… okay, I am totally lying. Erik and I are really into watching Game Of Thrones while we have free HBO.  Our free-ness ends at the end of February, so we have been watching at least 2 episodes a night. That series is amazing, No spoilers please!

Aaannnyway, last Monday my sister and I had the day off so we took the kids to the Natural History Museum. They were both amazed to see all of the exhibits.  Can you believe I have lived here all my life and had never been there before?! Insanity.  It was a blustery day, but we made it.  The walk from the parking garage to the museum was not bad at all. Taking the double stroller (even though my kids are enormous and look ridiculous in it) was the best decision I made all week!

I love those little faces 🙂 Their smiles will never get old.

Watching kids explore the world around them is quite possibly the most amazing thing in the whole world. I always wonder what they are thinking when they find new things.. things they have never seen before. Like skeletons, for example, I didn’t know how Liam would react to seeing human bones, but I don’t think it really phased him.  This experience was so special to me. They would run around looking at things and run back to find me 2 minutes later to show me what they had seen or learned.

After we doodled around the museum for a few hours, we met Erik for lunch at a place called &Pizza. O.M.G. this pizza was amazing, (more on this in a minute). Erik asked the kids what they saw and learned at the museum and Liam was first to say, “Daddy, a long time ago, even before you were born, people were monkeys.” He was so amazed to see how the human race has evolved over time.  I hope he never loses his curiosity and total excitement for learning.

Now, onto this amazing pizza. If you have an &pizza around you, you need to go. They let you pick your ingredients and they make the pizza right in front of you. The crust is sooooo light you can taste every topping you put on it.  The kids LOVED it,

We didn’t know if they would, because they have a history of liking what they like and nothing else….. But this was a huge hit!

After lunch we headed back towards home, but then this happened….waaay too much excitement for our little lady.  We ended up running some errands so she can sleep in the car before we headed back out for a wonderful playdate.

It was a fabulous Monday, I only with Erik didn’t have to work so he could have come with us.. maybe next time, he will call out of work to play with us :).

I hope everyone has a wonderful day!

Cheers

Five

Hello friends!

Have I mentioned how good it feels to be back? So good, so good! (Sweet Caroline reference, in case you missed it) Anyway, if you are friends with me in real life or on FB, you will already know this, but we are expecting baby #3 in July!

We are beyond excited for this baby bear to join our pack; life is bound to get a little more exciting in the next few months! The kids are really excited for their new baby too. Quinn asks me daily if the baby is a boy or a girl.  And if you are wondering, we will find out in February. At first, we wanted to wait until the baby was born to find out, but we are actually really excited to clean out the storage room in the basement. That room is bursting at the seams with baby/kid clothes. Spring cleaning will actually mean something to us this year.

I don’t intend on making my pregnancy the focus of my blog this time around, but I will pop in once in a while with monthly updates. I just don’t know! I am hoping to have a general hodge podge of blog posts for you all to read. I have tons of recipes I have wanted to cook, and I even might actually want to try Hello Fresh or one of the other food delivery services in the next few months to see what all the hype is about. So many things I want to explore and write about. We shall see where we go from here.

I hope everyone has a fabulous day!

Cheers,

D

The Long Road Back

Hello friends!

Happy New Year!!!

IM BACK! I don’t know if anyone is still following my blog, but here I am. It has been way too long since I wrote here, and it has been killing me. Man, the last time I wrote in here was about the time I signed up to be a LuLaRoe consultant. That adventure has really taken over my life for the past year and a half. A lot of good… and a lot of bad… I guess it would be fitting to start my blog back up when I am stepping away from the business and getting back to my old self.

Most recently I’ve come to realize that while it was an amazing opportunity for me to get out and meet new people, the business was growing tiring on me and my family. Sales have been decreasing over the last 8 months which required more work on my part to make the same amount of money as I was before. But it was never about the money, it was about the experience. It was fun for me to get out and party with other people, make new friends and make other people happy at the same time. But the harder I had to work, the less time I would get to spend with my amazing family. I was starting to get lost in all aspects of my life. I tried to set hours for LuLaRoe, but with the decrease in sales, each inquiry because something I felt I had to respond to immediately in order to get the sale. I was losing patience with everyone and becoming generally unhappy. The stress of it all was becoming too much.

I wasn’t the best me, not even close to it. I had been toying with the idea of closing shop since August, but the overwhelming thought of sell off over 1200 pieces of inventory was terrifying. How would I do it? Won’t everyone be disappointed in me? It was awful. I eventually decided to suck it up and keep selling. It wasn’t until we were on vacation in September that I realized what life was like without LuLaRoe. A whole week with the people I love the most and no stress of checking facebook or email to see if someone wanted to buy anything. I felt so free. It was during this vacation that I decided that was it, I was done. I wanted to be free. I wanted to play with my kids on the weekends, go out with friends, workout and cook meals for my family again; all things that got lost along with those parts of my heart. Freedom. I wanted freedom from the chains of retail.

We came home from vacation and developed a plan to sell it all off. It started to feel achievable. My goal was to sell it off by the end of the year, but it has proven to be harder than I had anticipated. I have reduced my inventory significantly, but we have a long way to go before we are completely free.

But for now, I am finally at peace with my decision and I can feel the weight being lifted off of my shoulders.

It was bene a long road, but I am back and while I may not be a great writer, I realized that this was something I had always looked forward to doing. I am not sure where this blog will go, but I hope you all come with me on this ride.

Cheers,

D

I’ve been super busy

Hello friends!

Long time no talk! I have been unbelievably busy and OBSESSED with something new for the past few weeks. I haven’t been blogging and it makes me sad. I really want to find time to get back into it again, but to be frank, I haven’t had many new things to talk about.

Beachbody coaching is going really well and I am helping a TON of people achieve their goals, so I have really been focusing on that in my free time.. well that was until my friend Kristen introduced me to Lularoe. I’m sure you have heard about it, and I might be really late to the party, but I am OBSESSED. I have been stalks facebook groups like crazy everyday, all night long, and I finally decided to take another leap of faith and I signed up to be a Lularoe consultant!

It is going to take 6-10 weeks for me to on-board and get my inventory in, but I am really excited about this new adventure. I have a lot of goals for myself and for my family and I really do think this business opportunity is going to help us achieve those goals.  One of our major goals is to pay off our cars and our furniture so we can start saving for BIG house renovation projects and super awesome vacations.  We have other long term goals, and I am just planting some seeds to achieve them.

I will be starting a VIP facebook group in the next few weeks, but I want to wait until I am closer to the top of the list before doing that.

As for my Beachbody coaching, I am still going to be very active with that. Nothing can replace the good feeling I get when I help someone achieve their goals.  You might think I am crazy for taking all this on, but I have a good feeling about our future and I am just trying to open more doors.

More on all of this in a few weeks, but for now I am going to be popping back in here once in a while for random updates.  I think I owe you all a few blog posts.

I hope everyone has a wonderful day… it has been raining here… for 15 DAYS straight. I think Tuesday (my BIRTHDAY), was the only day in 15 days it hadn’t rained ALL DAY.

Cheers and wish me luck!

Richmond Day Visit!

Hello friends!

This past weekend the kids and I drove down to Richmond (Erik was doing more house renovation stuff) to visit our favorite people.

One of my very best best friends is moving to California. Her hubby got an amazing opportunity out there, so they are packing it up and heading to the west coast! While I am really (REALLY) sad they are moving, I am equally as excited to see where this journey takes them. Liam has already started asking when we are flying out to California to see them.

The kids had a great time at the children’s museum. 

See… they were excited!

Sorry for the lack of pictures. Erin and I were too busy yaking (and trying to keep track of FOUR kids) to take pictures.

We had lunch at Panera (duh) and hugged each other goodbye (sniff). Then we attempted to take a picture.. It is impossible to take a good picture with four kids.. It just cannot be done.

Impossible.

After lunch, the kiddos and I went to visit my sister!

They played, took amazing naps and watched “ran out of gas car” (Madagascar) before we hit the road and headed home. We met Erik at chick-fi-la for dinner and Liam told daddy about his awesome day with his friend.

I am so so glad we got to go down to spend the day with them, I wish we had scheduled the weekend sooner so we could have stayed the entire weekend, but a few hours is better than none at all.

We love you guys and we cannot wait to come visit 🙂

I hope everyone has a great day!

Cheers!

Finally Friday!

Hello friends!

Happy Friday!!!!  I forgot to mention this yesterday but our little Qbear is officially walking.  She sort of has been taking steps for about two weeks now, but wed night she took a ton of steps.  She was even changing directions and standing up from a seated position.  I posted videos of this on my Instagram (you know you wanna follow meeeeee). She still prefers crawling as her main method of getting around be she is starting to stand and take more steps. It’s adorable and I am actually really excited for her to walk 100% of the time because the knees of her pants are all wearing down!

Speaking of clothes….. haha… I got some new workout gear yesterday!

mmm so excited, they were on sale, so I snatched them up.  The shorts fit a little weird because I think my legs are still too big for tight shorts, but I am working on it.  I was totally not motivated to workout yesterday, until I went outside and saw this box sitting on my stoop.  Once I opened it and realized what it was I could not WAIT to put them on and get in gear.

The Hammer and Chisel tank is SO FREAKING SOFT.  I might order a few for some giveaways… maybe… we will see. Alright friends! I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend! The kids and I are going to Richmond this weekend to visit a few wonderful people 😉 while Erik and his crew start the backyard reno… Oh did I not mention that… errr ya we are getting out backyard leveled… I’ll post before pictures and show you some progress pictures on Monday!

I hope everyone has a lovely day!

Cheers!

March Flabless Wrap up

Hello friends!

I just wrapped up my very first month long challenge group and it was fabulous. The people who participated were amazing and very engaging. I ran a biggest loser/march madness style challenge group and I think everyone really enjoyed it.

The person who won the bracket lost almost 4% of her body weight! I could not believe it. These challenge groups are doing an awesome job at keeping me motivated.  I just started my April “Spring Training” challenge group and I am excited to see how well people do in this one.

It is not too late to join us in the challenge group, so let me know if you are interested!

 

Alright friends! Short and sweet. I hope everyone has a great day!

Cheers!

Super Saturday!

Hello friends!

This past weekend I attended something called Super Saturday. It was amazing!  My super awesome coach Harmony gave me a free ticket because I hit emerald rank before the event. Thanks Boo! I am really glad I got to go to this event because I got to work out with the man himself… MR. TONY HORTON!

The workout was AWESOME ( I am STILL sore from it). Something about being in a group environment during a workout is crazy motivating. Don’t worry though, I am not going to run out and join a gym, I don’t have time for that shenanigans. Unless Tony Horton was the instructor.. all the time….. Then we can talk… I am also pretty sure we made eye contact during the workout and I got the coveted nod of approval from Tony.

Seeeeee he was looking at me.. kinda.. It happened I promise.

Super Saturday is an awesome event to go to because you get to hear from real people who started their businesses from the ground. They had the same doubts about being successful, but there they stand, a part of the beachbody millionaire club (WTH, I want that), telling you their story to motivate you to get out there and help people achieve their goals! I left the event feeling motivated to help as many people achieve their goals.  All the speakers talked a lot about personal development, and how beneficial it is to everyone (not just coaches). So I went out and ordered my first personal development book.

I am really looking forward to reading this book, I will let you all know how it goes!

I think the next Super Saturday event is in August sometime and I think I am going to pay it forward and get VIP tickets to two of my coaches who hit emerald before then.

Alright friends, that is all I have today. I hope you guys have a great day and if anyone has any other personal development books they want to recommend please let me know!

Cheers!