A Touch Of Tyrell

Reason #827: He's funny. He's been asking me what I want for Christmas and I keep telling him that I've gotten enough lately. But he keeps asking. So I came up with a list and texted it to him... LOL! He makes me laugh everyday!

He loves to help pick out paint colors!

Yesterday officially marked Everett's 18 month birthday. Here's a little bit of what I want to remember about 18-month-old Everett. He LOVES his pacifier and won't hand it over for anything. He throws his dirty diapers away for us. Loves to wash his hands with soap and loves to put lotion on. He really doesn't say much at all. Pretty much just 'ball'. He points at the Christmas tree and says, "baw? baw?" while pointing at the ornaments. It's pretty cute. He's been kicking me in the face when I change his diaper and is constantly hitting everything/everyone. Any emotion (other than happy) is followed by hitting... especially mad and scared. He screams at the highest pitch possible for a human kid voice. (seriously) It leaves our ears ringing. Hitting and screaming are usually combined when he gets frustrated. He prefers to play with really small non-baby-proof items. (like screws, nails, marbles, little Lego's, cd's...) Favo...

I'm a big fan of Thanksgiving. I know there's a lot of people out there that might think it's a silly holiday... but I love it. I love watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, I love making the pies, I love setting the table, I love the eating, and I love the leftovers, I love the day after... I just love everything about Thanksgiving. This year I was in charge of the ham, dinner rolls, pies, and setting the table. I did my grocery shopping a little late and I couldn't find pecans at three different stores so I opted to make a chocolate pudding pie instead. As I was looking for the chocolate pie ingredients I found a bag of pecans, so I made pecan pie too. (My favorite pie ever because it basically has three ingredients. Butter, pecans, and sugar. Mmmmmmm!) I woke up Thursday morning and started on my pies and rolls right away (while watching the parade, of course). If there was one thing I had to pick to eat for the rest of my life... it would be m...

Last Christmastime, I read a book called The Glass Castle . It changed the way I look at my everyday life and the way I looked at my parents and childhood. A few months later a friend gave me a book called The Heretics Daughter and it also caused me to be grateful for my life and every convenience I enjoy. I feel like I've always been a grateful person but these two books really illustrated how easy and enjoyable my life is and now I feel like I'm even more grateful for everything that surrounds me. You might not understand what I'm talking about if you haven't read one of the books... but either way, I'm so grateful for my life, my family, my experiences, my comfort, my faith, and my health... I'm so grateful to be me. Things aren't perfect but they are so much better than they could be. I'm grateful for my loving husband that goes to work everyday and works hard to provide a good life for our family. I'm also grateful to be a mother. The exper...

We woke up to snow Saturday morning. I'm pretty sure Everett thought it was amazing! Gotta love the socks on his hands... and the snow on the front tires! This next picture makes me laugh so hard. He kept getting stuck and he was getting so mad. Serves him right... it's our neighbors yard and I told him not to go in it. (But our neighbors don't mind) We had a pretty good time in the snow. It didn't stay long though. It was all melted by noon and then the sun even came out for a second during senior pictures.

I took my SIL's senior pictures today and they turned out amazing. I had been stressing about it and losing sleep over it... but they seriously turned out so good! I guess all the sleepless nights were worth it because here are my favorite 10 UN-EDITED pictures of Brianna. Isn't she beautiful! I also took her friend's senior pictures. Candais has the most gorgeous blue eyes. Here are my favorite 10 of her. Look at those amazing blue eyes! (I didn't edit any of her pictures either.) I feel so accomplished! I'm so pleased with the way these pictures turned out. These two girls are so beautiful and I'm so glad they asked me to take their senior pictures.

Just in case I ever become a 'not-fun-mom'... this is proof that I was once a 'fun mom'. I hope our neighbors didn't mind all the noise we were making at 7:30 in the morning. Everett had a blast. He kept looking back at the cans. I think he was amazed that something could make more noise than him!

Monday morning brought quite the excitement. By 7 a.m. the tree guys were already to work on our beast of a tree. My favorite neighbor (Sandy) called Jake on his cell phone and said how jealous she was of our new front yard. One guy climbed the tree and cut the branches as he went. Two more were on the ground shoving the branches into the shredder. They had to make three trips to the yard waste dump from the branches alone. When they cut that last section of the tree down I thought it fell right on top of our house. It was SO loud and the ground shook. It was intense. Thankfully it landed perfectly in our yard. While one guy was grinding the stump in our yard... the other guys were cutting down three trees in Sandy's yard! What can I say, we're trendsetters! The neighborhood looks SO much better already and the sunshine in our house is amazing. We have sawdust everywhere. Our front yard has huge piles everywhere, our roof is covered, and we even have sawdust on o...