just a glimpse

thanks and an update...

First of all, I wanted to say a quick thanks to everyone who left a comment or emailed me in regards to my last post. I was overwhelmed by your comments and humbled and flattered that so many people (a lot whom I'm never met) care about this little blog. I will send the password to everyone as soon as I get a chance, I've been so busy the last week, I haven't had much time to think about it. So if you haven't heard from me, I'm not ignoring you, just preoccupied with a few other things......

Let's see in the last week,

Chloe turned four.

Cole graduated from Kindergarten.

We helped my parents move here (yippee!!).

I quit my job (still can't believe I actually did it).

Attended class parties, made teacher gifts, all the typical end of year stuff.

Forgot more things than I remembered.

Planned a last minute princess party.

Had 3 photo shoots. A wedding with my friend Kim (a few pics are up on her blog), a sweet extended family of 12, and a 2 month old baby. (all fun, but so tiring!).

And remember the one who's the mess from the last post? Well she is still a mess allright....... and now she's the owner of a hot pink cast for her broken right elbow.

As soon as I turned around to put my camera back inside look where I found her....

Excuse the blurriness, I snapped this super fast, before I got her down in hopes of preventing a matching cast for the other arm.

So needless to say, it's been a busy week. Thanks for being patient with me.

she's a mess

This one's a mess in a really big way. And despite the fact that I may be bald in a short time from pulling my hair out almost.every.day. as a result of her 'spunk', I don't think I could possibly love her any more. She's captured my heart in an indescribable way.

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On a totally different front.....

You may have noticed that I haven't posted here in about 2 months. For one thing, I haven't had a spare minute, but I've also been wrestling with the idea of password protecting this blog. And after some stories I've heard recently, I've decided to do it. I'll try to continue to share (more often!), but I like the idea of sharing in a bit more private manner.  So please post a comment here or send me an email if you would like the password and I will send it your way. If you are a long time lurker, don't be shy about asking for the password, I'm not trying to scare you off in any way, just trying to be more aware of who is reading..... Thanks so much!

 

and the after...

I didn't take these pictures until we were playing outside after school today, so the curl was almost gone, but I think you get the idea. I may have created a monster though, since tonight is the 4th night in the row for the curlers.... I can't say I mind too much though since up until now it's been almost impossible to keep it out of her face and I think she looks pretty darn adorable like this.

 

rollin'

When I was opening the package of these spongy pink rollers last night I couldn't help but think of all the times I'd worn them myself as a little girl. Reminded of the countless Saturday nights our mom would roll our freshly washed hair section by section and my sister and I would toss and turn all night trying to get comfortable with a hair full of curlers.

I, of course, had to sit through the ordeal for about 30 minutes longer than my sister since her hair always required about 4 rollers and mine required about 25. And on Sunday morning when mom would unroll all those strands, I'd leave for church a curly-frizzy haired mess (tied up neatly at the top with a bow of course) and Meg's hair would be as straight as it was the night before all before we got to the church parking lot. 

Chloe wanted to try 'curly hair' after we saw her friend Allison at school with a curly ponytail. She though those curls were soo pretty and she's been begging me to try it on her every since.  She doesn't like to sit long enough for me to curl it with a curling iron so I suggested these. After I got hers all rolled up, she ran into the bathroom with excitement and giggled at her reflection in the mirror. I thought for sure she would want to take them out after she went to bed, but she slept with them in all night. When I was tucking her in, she exclaimed 'I CAN'T WAIT to see my beautiful curls in the morning'. 

you'll never guess where we went last weekend....

unless you already know of course. Here's a hint.....

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Yep! Disney World! We decided to go on Monday night and left on Friday. Talk about an impulse decision. Actually, it's not quite as crazy as it sounds. Jared just accepted a new job and is leaving his job at the airline in a couple of weeks. Which means the end of flight benefits. So we figured we better take advantage of them one more time. I use the word 'benefit' loosely, because we are restricted to 'stand-by' travel and standing-by to Orlando is never a good idea since the flights are already 99% full and the chance of getting 4 more people on any of them is pretty slim. (And yes I did say 4, we left Kate with my dear friend Liz for the weekend (who I can't thank enough) and she's none the wiser now, but I'm sure it's a decision we will likely regret years from now. Jared suggested photoshopping her into the pictures since she won't remember if she went or not and he doesn't want to suffer the years of whining I'm sure we are headed for... LOL!)

So we left before the crack of dawn on Friday morning and drove through light snow to get to the airport, but we didn't tell the kids where we were going just in case we didn't make it on to a flight. Luckily we did make it on (BARELY!), but we still didn't tell them until we landed at the airport and got ready to board a bus with a gigantic picture of Mickey Mouse on the side. At that time, we let them guess where they thought we might be going. And they had no idea. Jared told them that we were going to the zoo, and they both got super excited (and which point we were wondering why we didn't choose the zoo since it would have saved us A LOT of money), but when we told them it was Disney World, they were even more excited.

I'd love to write the whole story, because we really had such a great time (with the exception of Cole catching the flu while we were there), but I have one million other things that I should/need to be doing. So I'm just going to post a few pictures instead. Please forgive the quality. I took my old camera (which I can barely remember how to use), and I didn't discover until later that there was a big smudge on the underside of my lens. So if one giant spot in them looks fuzzy to you, it's totally not your eyes, it's the result of my dirty lens! Ugh!!

Little Minnie Mouse at Minnie Mouse's house. She looked so cute in her Minnie Mouse costume. (I happened to pick it up before we left and I'm pretty sure that decision alone saved me about $40 extra dollars. Disney sucks the money right out of your pockets for sure!)

Cinderella's castle by day. One of our few glimpses of sunshine. It was pretty overcast/rainy most of the time...

The kids on the Dumbo that's made for picture taking and we didn't discover until after the ride. For future reference, don't hop out of your Dumbo and try to snap a pic before the ride starts. Because I tried that and yeah, it wasn't a good idea...

Cole at the Magic Kingdom entrance. With a fever and the flu....

Big Minnie and Little Minnie. Aww aren't they cute?

The line had already closed to meet Buzz, so we had to admire him from afar.

Giant, overpriced balloons by day...

Giant, overpriced balloons by night....

On a magic carpet ride....

The only shot of all of us taken by a friendly park worker. Notice the giant smudge on the right. Nice....

admiring the view....

The end....

return of the lollipops...

It's always easy to get good pictures of kids when you bring along giant lollipops. The weather was nice yesterday (like 80 degrees nice!), so the kids and I went out to get  a few shots for their Valentine cards for school. Hopefully Cole doesn't get beat up for bringing photo cards, but so far he hasn't asked to take the store bought ones yet, so it must not be too dorky. :)  It's FREEZING here today, so I'm so glad we did this yesterday. Now I just need to design something and get them ordered. (I finished Kate's last night, it's on the bottom, but I need to come up with something for the other two).

And speaking of photos, my friend Kim posted some of my favorite photos from our family shoot this fall on her blog. I love them so much, she's awesome! Click here to check them out.

   

it's about time....

When even my own husband is asking me when I am going to update my blog, I figured it was about time (even though I'm not really sure why he cares since he knows about everything going on around here already).  Or in the words of my friend, Kim, 'It's dang near valentines day and you've got those dadgum stockings still featured front and center.  ;) "  Ha!

Anyway, as much as I was hoping things would slow down after the first of the year, they just haven't yet. I didn't make any formal resolutions this year, but one of the things I want to work on is balance in all areas of my life. Yeah, failing big time in that area already, but I am going to work on it!  One of the things that's been keeping me busy is my new website, which is finally done! The pictures load really slowly the first time you open it (you'll have to be patient), but I'm working to get that fixed.

www.kellystocksenphotography.com

Now on to the other 489 things on my to-do list.

And since it doesn't seem right to write a post and not include a picture... here's the one of Chloe from the front page of my website. In exchange for her modeling services, I only had to 'pay' her with 2 treats from our treat bucket...... Sweet. :)

the stockings were hung by the chimney with care...

A Christmas recap....

It's 2 days after Christmas. By now, I usually find myself READY to put away the tree and pack away the decorations. To restore a sense of order to the house. Ready to breathe a sigh of relief that all of the festivities and preparation are over. But this year is different. I'm actually dreading taking down the tree. It was magical here this year and I'm not ready to pack that away just yet.

Ever since the arrival of Tic-Tac, the kids were soooo ready for Santa to come. They've talked about Christmas everyday, with the anticipation building from one day to the next. By Christmas Eve, everyone was so excited they hardly slept on the 2 and a half hour drive home from Grandma's house, even though it was past their bedtime by a couple of hours. On our way home, we saw a bright white streak across the sky led by a flashing red light, and Chloe was convinced it was Santa and his sleigh. Their sense of wonder and true belief have made this year unforgettable to me. And I know that these years will be the ones I look back on with the most fondness in the years to come.

We started our Christmas break by heading to Jared's family's house the day before Christmas Eve. We exchanged presents with them that night and the kids opened SO MANY presents it was hard to keep track of everything. Christmas could have been over right then and they would have been satisfied for sure. On Christmas Eve, we went out to Grandpa's farm to play in the snow and ride 4 wheelers which was such a great way to spend a white Christmas together. The kids had opened snow boots from Jared's sister the night before, so it was the perfect time to try them out!

On Christmas Eve night, we went to Jared's grandpa's house with all of his family for their annual Christmas party. After staying for a couple of hours, we loaded up and headed home to get the kids to bed so Santa could come. My parents were waiting for us at our house and got to spend Christmas Day with us. It was great to share that time with them. The kids were really excited about thier presents from Santa; he brought three things for each of them (if it's good enough for Jesus, should be good enough for them too, right ) :). So Cole got a Wii Lego Star Wars game, a huge Return of the Jedi Star Wars battle pack, and a Bumblebee Transformer. The girls got a wooden dollhouse to share, and then they each got a new doll for the dollhouse and some makeup and makeup bags. It was so fun to watch them open it all.

Like I said, now that Christmas is over, I'm having a hard time letting go of the magic of the last few days. As we were putting all the new toys away today, I was overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude. For our family. And our extended family. For all of our blessings. But most of all, for Jesus. That 2,000 years ago, God sent him as the perfect gift. A gift to which our earthly blessings don't even compare. And that is truly magical.

merry christmas

Hope you all experienced a bit of the wonder of the season and were blessed by Christ's love this Christmas! 

ice, ice baby

The lights are flickering as I post this and after having spent the majority of the day yesterday without power, I'll be lucky to get this posted before it goes out again. For the last 2 days, it's been raining all day and then the rain has been freezing on contact with everything, which has resulted in a major ice storm.

Yesterday when we looked outside and saw our trees like this, we knew they were probably goners.

But looking outside at them today and seeing that they are somehow holding up under all that weight seems somewhat like a Christmas miracle. Jared cut most of the branches off yesterday in an attempt to save them, but I don't think day 3 is going to look that great considering it is still raining right now...

And here are just a few more random ice pictures to show how thick it is out there.... Check out the Christmas lights!

The lights are still flickering and even though I have more to say, I'm going to shut the computer down before we lose power again.