My Life: Weddings, Baby Showers, and Homeschooling

I have about 5 different blog posts "in the works", but cannot seem to find the time to ever finish them. I'm just not one of those wonderfully consistent bloggers, at least not at this time in my life! Maybe someday I'll be, haha! Yes, I dream big...
Last week was a whirlwind of baby shower fun, literally planned the whole thing in one week! Of course, my genius friend Ashley over at House of Lovelock helped me and she's insanely gifted when it comes to decorating (which I am not!). I can execute someone else's idea easily enough, but to come up with the "vision" myself, happens to me only once in a blue moon. It turned out beautiful for my sweet friend, she's having her first baby and it's a boy. We went with a rustic, whimsical theme and most of the decor came from our houses or yard (cheap!). Seriously in love with this theme for any type of shower, you can do so much with it!

 That gives you a little bit of an idea how cute it was. Aren't the logs incredible?? I found these pictures online earlier in the week and died.

Like I said, I'm seriously in love... STUMPS... Who knew?!?!

Backtracking to a couple days before the shower happened, I got a phone call from Sky Mountain Charter and Josiah got in!!!! SO excited (and relieved)! It's a bit overwhelming at this point, figuring out what curriculum to use and all that, but I know it's also going to be a bit of trial and error at the beginning. Plus, I have a plethora of resources in all my lovely friends and neighbors who have all been doing this for awhile & it's just going to be finding out what works for us. The Lord has led me this far and I trust He's not going to stop now. :) Josiah's in his last week and half of school and I can't believe after that I'll officially have a second grader and a kindergartner! It's crazy how much time is flying by and I'm thankful that for at least this year I'll be able to enjoy having all my boys at home and watching every minute of their brains develop. Yes. That sounded weird to me too..
The Bible College had their graduation on Thursday and my sweet friend, who is much like my little sister (I used to babysit her, her brother and cousins ever since I was 12 and she was 5) graduated & got engaged!! It was beautiful and sweet and she is marrying a terrific guy! Check out her STUNNER of a ring

She asked me to help coordinate her wedding and I couldn't be more thrilled! I love weddings, I love planning, and I love her. Spectacular combo.
So today I will be driving up to my hometown of Paradise with her and a couple other friends to see my wonderful family and do some wedding planning/dress shopping (Eeek! LOVE wedding dress shopping!). I apologize for the girly squeal, but it's the truth. I'm a total girl when it comes to this sort of thing...
Two of my nieces are graduating, one from high school, one from the 8th grade. Like I said before, time is flying by! It's strange, clearly remembering and being at the birth of someone and then seeing them graduate high school. Like, really strange. And I'll be seeing my sister Michelle, whom many of you have been praying for, after her accident last March. She is recovering well, but please continue to keep her and her girls in your prayers. There is a lot of emotional trauma that comes along with what happened and while it's hard to see her go through it and not be closer in distance, I have to trust the Lord is working and is going to comfort and heal her in every way. He is good.
P.S. You should check out my friend Ashley's blog, whom I linked earlier in this post. She's one of those wonderful people who blogs multiple times a week, and has really delightful taste in pretty much everything. Plus it's just fun and she has really cute kids.

Weekend Post

Wouldn't you know, I've been working on this post for the past hour and I leave the computer for a minute, Elias comes over and erases the entire thing...Gah!!! So we took a 20 minute break and danced to MJ's "Beat It", just because I can't handle how cute Elias is when he dances to his favorite song, and what better way to cure any type of aggression slightly bummed out-ness.
Sooo, like I said yesterday I had a really great weekend. Cisco surprised me last week with a little getaway to Dana Point for my Mother's Day gift / super belated anniversary trip, for last years anniversary we never got around to celebrating. We stayed at the Blue Lantern Inn and I have to say, it was incredibly impressive. It's definitely a place worth giving a little shout out to! Besides being just downright lovely, it was wonderfully clean and adorable in every way. Even the two ladies who run it were uncommonly friendly and helpful and made you feel immediately comfortable. We went out for sushi that night and I fell in love with it all over again. It's amazing the difference of having "good" sushi and "amazing" sushi, cause there totally is! I've only had "amazing" sushi maybe 3 times, and all 3 times I left convinced I could happily eat sushi for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the rest of my life.
The next day we went to the San Juan Capistrano mission and then up to The Lab in Costa Mesa for lunch and to do some shopping. While most of it was mainly "window shopping" I did find a few amazing deals at Urban Outfitters on jewelry

Can't beat a dragonfly pocket watch necklace for $10 and a gorgeous vintage looking cuff for $4.99! I also got earrings for $4.99, but those didn't make it into the picture...I was wearing them when I took it!
All in all, it was a great time together and we were excited to come home and squeeze our boys, who were happily having a blast with our friends Carrie and Frances. The perfect end to a perfect weekend: RAIN. I know. I'm weird. I'll be posting more on this later this week. My weirdness and my lifelong love for rain. :)

Where have I been??

I just realized the other day that it's nearly been a complete month since the last time I was on here! My, how time flies! I could've sworn it had only been a week...I'd love to say it's because I've been so incredibly busy and I have all these fabulous stories to write about, but truth be told, I just kind of forgot. Haha! I do have a few posts in the works that I'll get around to finishing up soon, and I promise to try and be better about posting on a more regular basis. I would also like to add, thank you to those of you who have left comments on here, I really do love hearing from those of you who take the time to read this! While I don't want to pretend my life is so awesome that everyone should want to read about my day to day, I do love feeling connected to people I haven't seen or talked to in years, even with my own family I don't get to see very often. And I do really love hearing feedback from all of you! I'll be back tomorrow with a post about my sweet weekend and later on this week with a few other things I've had on my mind lately. Until then, enjoy this pic I took the other morning of my precious boys sleeping. I don't know why, but I really love taking sleeping pictures of my kids...probably because I love watching them sleep and I know that is going to be one of those things I will miss when they get older. They are just so darn sweet...