sweet summertime

summer to me is a toddler covered in sunscreen, smiling ear to ear & a popsicle in hand; sunny days spent swinging and sliding at any and every park we find, sometimes with an uncle or two. it is missed naps because we don't want the play date to end and breakfasts that turn into lunch that turn into dinner. summer is for running through the sprinklers & riding with the top down, ice cream cones + burnt hot dogs at a weekly bbq, concerts & weekend travel trips to see old friends!

this is the stuff life is made of. the memories that after ten years, still give us goosebumps, make us laugh until our sides ache, or bring tears to the brim of our eyes. the hushed late night conversations in the dark or the hilarious ones we have while sitting on kitchen counters. these are the beautiful stories that stitch our life together so we end up the most stunning tapestries, made up of the bright colors of happiness and laughter & the darker tones of rest. There is still summer left to enjoy! What has your summer looked like? what new memories have you made that are for the books?

to have & to hold.

today marks three years of being married to this handsome fella. three years of snuggling. three years of holding hands. three years of waking up next to the same person. it has been truly wonderful & i consider myself to be so blessed to have found my forever love.

s w e e t h u s b a n d of m i n e.

sheesh i love you. i love being your wife & your right hand. i truly believe i was made for loving you and you for loving me. choosing to love you each morning is so easy. i love parenting alongside you & learning every day how to love you + arrow, better. i look forward to the many years i know we have ahead of us, more babies, new experiences & best of all, more of you. lets keep doing what we're doing because it seems to be working. oh & lets hold hands and makeout later? k sounds good.

y o u r forever&ever w i f e.

fleeting moments

maybe its the arrival of arrow's full, sentence speaking vocabulary reminding me that she'll soon be two, or just the celebrations of anniversaries and birthdays passing yet again, but as i say over and over again. time needs to slow down. i heard somewhere once, that life is just a collection of beautiful fleeting moments & we must always be ready to bottle them up. now, i am a very literal person, so I'm like where can i buy the jars? lots and lots and LOTS of jars...

from the moment my eyes feel sun peeking through the small space between blackout curtain and wall, i see beauty. i can look to my right and trust that there will always be something wonderful waiting for me there, a loving husband or if I'm reeeeeally lucky, a sweet toddler who crawled into bed with us in the night. I go into the kitchen to make coffee & what am i greeted by? another beautiful, breathtaking scene. a sky painted with pinks and yellows on one end & dark blues and purples on the other. 

i could keep walking you through my entire day, explaining in great detail all the magnificent things i saw, because that was yesterday & all of those memories are so vivid still in my mind. but a month from now i will have forgotten them. instead of being able to bottle them up for storage, i will have to replace them with new sunrise imagery and a month older toddler and husband. on one hand, this is awesome because if i have a not so beautiful day, i can replace it with the next days beauty. but on the other, its seems the days i love the most will last no longer than the day i can't wait to be over. 

we can all try our hardest to capture images and video and keep little nostalgic bits, like i did with arrows first ever finger painting, but those things will never compare to the physical moment when i turned around to find her apparently bored of painting on paper with paint all over her body, stripes and swirls of red and blue and the biggest grin on her face. or the look on grants face when i walked out of the bathroom one night with 'coming soon' written across my stomach.

you see, life IS in fact a collection of beautiful, magical, fleeting moments. it moves so quickly that it is easy to get caught up in the blur. living monotonously from one day to the next. if one thing i write today sticks with you i hope its this : drink it all up, breathe it all in & keep your mental camera sharp and at the ready, today could hold the most incredible moments of your life.

enjoy your weekend!

five things i love about arrow.

when it comes to finding things i love about arrow, i do not struggle. i mean, look at her, she's adorable, brilliant & hilarious. however, it's so hard to narrow it down to just five! plus, with my favorite things about her changing all the time, i should document them every once and a while so i can one day remember them all, here we go!

O N E. 

right now she is really into putting diapers and onesies onto all of her stuffed animals. she even sometimes goes as far as clips in their hair, hats on their heads & socks on their feet. I'm hoping i can keep her satisfied with stuffed animals until its barbie doll time & we can just skip the whole baby doll phase, because lets get real, baby dolls give me the creeps.

T W O.

 i taught her how to fist bump in her carseat. i know I'm not from the jersey shore & i pray to God she never knows who snooki is, but when the time comes for a dance party and you're strapped into a safety 1st 5-point harness, a raging fist bump is really all you can do anyways. i always try to film it, but the music we're jamming to is on my phone.. oh, and I'm usually driving. chris brown: forever, is her song of the moment. circa 2007, but does it really ever get old?

T H R E E.

she is a repeater. i am pretty sure it's just a natural phase of toddler-hood, but i feel like she might have an even more serious case of the repeats. let me clarify. "done. I'm done. done. do-ne. don-e. done. rowrowDONE. done. done. mama, done. done, mama. done done."  arrow, are you done? i think you might be done. it sounds annoying; its not. its precious. sometimes, i just let her go on and on about being done or wanting to go 'wiiiing' (swing) outside because she sounds so sweet & i can't believe she's talking.

F O U R.

her ponytail, can officially be a top knot now. clips and bows be gone! i'm sure by now you have seen pictures of her infamous sprout across all my social media outlets (insert a billion heart eyes emoji) - but what you haven't seen is the aftermath. about three hours into her updo, she will realize her hair is up & want to take it out. you go girl. one second she's arrow, the next she is the villain from the incredibles. hair blown up and out in all directions. hilarious. oh, and before we get off the topic of her hair, her bed head, top notch people. top. notch.

F I V E.

she has always been independent & becomes even more so with each passing day, but my favorite, favorite thing about her right now is that in midst of all this changing and growing, she still needs her mama. she still needs me to put her to sleep every night, her heavy head on my chest until i tuck her in and say the same prayer over her that i have since the day she was born. she comes running to me when she is scared or hurt; & whether i hear it through the monitor or she has made her way into bed with grant & i during the night, her first word in the morning is always, mama. my favorite title. i am the luckiest woman in the whole world to have someone as wonderful as her need me, just as much as i need her. God certainly knew what he was doing when he put us together. 

happy monday! spend today thinking about all the reasons you love the people around you & then go and tell them! you never know whose day you could turn around by reminding them how great they are!

e a s t e r!

happy easter!
anyone else feel as if easter 2014 was like 5 days ago? it can't possibly have come and gone again, right?! sheesh. i know i say it all the time, but time is flyyyyyyying by. anyways, happy late easter everyone, the sweet anniversary of jesus conquering the grave & freeing us from our sins! a serious praise hands emoji to that one. this year, i was lucky enough to host easter! though we were missing a few characters, almost the whole family was there! we had honey baked ham, twice baked potatoes, a tasty salad, deviled eggs & of course, more desserts than we should have. homemade strawberry lemonade and iced tea were quenching our thirsts on this beautiful day & easter candy wrappers were strewn everywhere. abel and arrow participated in their very first easter egg hunt & i did more underdoggies on the swings than i can count. it was wonderful to get everyone together, laugh & celebrate this day! i hope everyone was able to spend time with your families and get out in this great weather!

^^ can we just take a moment to appreciate the bedhead going on in these photos? that girl knows how to rock bedhead. & the fact that she wants all of her new easter bows in her hair at once.

^^ loving on her new snuggly lamb.

  ^^ table setting & food! if it's not pretty, it's not worth eating!

^^ grammy love <333333 p="">

^^ daddy is the ultimate egg finder, maybe because he was also the egg hider... who knows :)

(below) on the hunt! she was so adorable & determined to find every egg our backyard had to offer (&hold her own basket.)

happy tuesday everyone!

eighteen months has never looked so good!

i can't believe its april. i can't believe today, my baby is 18 months old. it feels like, just a deep breath ago she was a wrinkly newborn, curled up in my lap; her daddy's handsome profile & my eyes. it has gone by way too fast, like, waaaaaaaay too fast. arrow is all her own now. a beautiful blend of us both; strong willed, smart, joyful, charismatic & one seriously tough cookie. we call her a little bruiser. no splinter or skinned knee can slow her down.

her hair is just long enough to tuck behind her ears or pull into a sprout ponytail & thank goodness for it, because she's been 'over' bows and clips since, well, forever. her legs are 24 months long & her eyes get bluer every time she wakes, i swear it. she fills my life with 'uh-ohs & whoas' and says 'mama' in her sleep. her vocabulary is rapidly growing. no seriously, grant + i are in trouble seeing as she tries to imitate every word we say (maybe we should try a swear jar...) she can identify, eyes, ears, hands, feet, tummy, bellybutton, booty etc. & make alllllll kinds of adorable animal noises on command. her mooooooooo is quite possibly the cutest thing you've ever seen. ever.

 we're working on our please + thank yous, being kind with our hands & sharing. I'm pretty sure she believes that strawberries are the most important food group, maybe even the only food group, well that and ice cream sandwiches. if it were up to me, she'd sleep with us every night, its terribly uncomfortable because she is a ninja in her dreams, but it is also so sweet & those days are so numbered.

she insists on going down the slide on her belly, my little wild one, and loves dance parties in the kitchen. bubble guppies & swinging are her jam, along with drinking out of big girl water bottles. what can i say, she is a girl of many interests! she can usually be found with a sidekick in hand, boo boo, the famous pomeranian* to be precise, thank you LA airport store!
*kitty or pig will suffice when he is in the washing machine.

she is my light, and a shiny bright spot in each persons life that she meets, whether it be the grandma in the grocery store, or her own birdie & grammy back at home. she has changed grant & i for the better & i hope she continues to grow and cultivate us into the perfect parents, do those exist? 

my sweet arrow, we made it! thank you for making the last 18 months of my life, the brightest + most wonderful, i have yet to encounter. every moment with you is new. thank you for forgiving me when i fail you, loving me when i need it most & challenging me to be a better mama every day. though one day you may be blessed with a little brother or sister, there will never be another you. a first. a perfect little crash test & i wouldn't have it any other way. happiest of year & a half birthdays to you, arrow! love, your mama

the women who built us

it all starts with our mothers. they took a blueprint from God & handcrafted us with care. they swoon & sing for us when we are little, teach us words and good habits as we grow. they cry with us when we deal with heartbreak & scold us when we make decisions they don't approve of. these women guide us down the twisted, crazy road of life giving us all the tools we need to choose loving friends, find a trustworthy partner, and become good mothers. they nourish our soul with everything it needs to blossom into life on our own. then the cycle repeats itself, though even now, on my own, i still call my mom as if she's my doctor , the pediatrician, a counselor & a preacher.

i heard someone say something the other day & found it quite amusing - 

"no point in fighting it, one day, we inevitably all turn into our mothers."

some might cringe at the thought. its too late for me, i already am my mom in so many ways. creative, scatterbrained, driven & wise. a project is never completely finished before i am on to the next one + my drawers are never all shut at the same time. her qualities shining brightly out of me are comforting in a way though, i know that if she were to ever go away, id have such a huge piece of her with me, coming out in my life and looking back at me in the mirror.
i have soaked up so much of my mother in law too. she has engrained in me, a need for cleaner surfaces & has shown me patience in hard times with arrow, that I'm not quite sure i would have acquired on my own.

but what about the other women who carve their ways into our frames?

they say you are what you eat & i say, you are who you hang out with. during your lifetime you are going to meet a lot of people. some people stay, some people go. some people are blood & some are so close they ought to be. older, younger, same age; these people shape us. they attach their own characteristics, like blocks onto the original beautiful shape that God & our mothers built. we take on bits of their personalities, their silly inflection, their good habits & even some of their bad. we have our human surroundings to thank for who we are, who we will become & then finally, who our children become. in the end, we all end up like wonderful collages, made up of our sister's whimsical way of of looking at things, our girlfriend's crude & silly sense of humor + our mother's eyes. what an exciting blend.