We welcome with love

Piper Danielle

Thank you for all the support, encouragement, emails, tweets, posts!

Your friendship, thoughts and prayers mean the world to us!

So it’s here.

The day we finally meet #3…who as I write this still does not have a name waiting for her…but hopefully by the time you read this, she will!

As I write this post one week before you actually read it, I’m flooded with memories from last year.  So I’ll warn you now…

this will not be my typical post

it will be more personal

and it will be long.

But it is where I am at the moment…

As most of  you know from stopping by each day, our third Little is going to be joining us Tuesday, March 9th (still keeping my fingers crossed we make it to the date!)  As such, I have a treat to share with you all!!!

First off the truth, as I tell you repeatedly, I’m not super human!!! I’m a regular mom and regular person just like you, that just has lots of tricks up her sleeve!

The only thing I may do differently than others is organize our life to try to keep the chaos manageable….that being…

This Favorite comes after an email reminder from a reader in Oakland, California about how wonderful this company’s poufs are!  And she is soooo right!!  Pixie Dust Decor is a DARLING company that offers poufs, bibs, blankets, burp cloths, tuffets…loads of wonderful cozy things!

I love all of the fabric choices Pixie Dust Decor offers, each item gives you the option to see swatches and collection photos.  Not only are they all so cute, but SUPER soft too!  We were given some bibs and burp…

My most Favorite Things??

My family.

It’s no secret. And I’m sure you feel the same about your own.  As we are down to 2 weeks before our family has 5 people in it (CRAZY!), all I can think about is how fortunate I am to have the incredible husband (and Dada) that I do, and how darling our little girls are (even if they can be little stinkers sometimes too!!)

And I think it’s nice to have small happies for yourself displayed daily reminding you of special moments, or of those special people.

One of my amazing…

I know it’s all about my family this week, but then that’s what this blog does is show you how our family functions in the chaos of it all!

You may have noticed that I’ve been lagging a bit on email and comment responses…but there has been so much to take care of with Birthdays, Birthday Parties, Holidays, getting ready for the the new baby, this blog, work, and lack of sleep from sick Littles that I’ve been falling farther and farther behind.  Hopefully you’ll except me as human rather that throwing stones, but I…

It was beautiful Monday!

Soooo sorry to say this to anyone in the rain and the snow, but we’ve had our share of rain in the past few weeks.  My Littles and I have been CRAWLING the walls.  We couldn’t really leave the house with their colds, so it’s been really FUN!  Needless to say the past two days of 80+ degrees have been FABULOUS!

And today was a treat!  Hubby was off work with the holiday, so he spent the day working on his man projects,…

Wishing you all much happiness, good health, laughter, prosperity and good fortune!

It was a BUSY week and weekend in our house, and I’m finding the “To Do” list is getting longer, the weeks before Baby #3 are getting shorter, and I’m getting more and more behind!  I apologize for not keeping up as I had planned to…I’m crossing my fingers I can get better at all of this!  Until then, here are a few photos from our Chinese New Year/Valentine/February Birthday Party.  Hope  you all had a wonderful day as well!

Ours started with,

“WHOA,…

So it’s Valentines Day on Sunday AND it’s Chinese New Year.  Not that I’m a BIG celebrator of either Holiday, BUT

1. When you have Littles, you can’t ignore that it’s Valentine’s Day

2. Celebrating other holidays can be a fun learning experience and add a little spice to the dinner scene.

3. In our family, it also gives us a theme for our February birthday dinner.  February is the one month out of the year that my husband dreads.  A whole ton of birthdays fall in February for us….2 of my hubby’s brothers, his mom, me and now Hayden…..plus…

You all are TOTALLY going to laugh at me!  But if you are OCD or any kind of over the edge organized person (or WANT to be that kind of person, because you know some of you do) you will love this little find!

I am never happy with my “To Do” lists.

I keep most things on my computer and therefore synced to my phone, but I have never really gotten into keeping lists for particular projects on my computer.  I tend to use them so much throughout the day and want them…

Well, I have to apologize as it seems I made some readers anxious I had gone into early labor because there wasn’t a post Monday morning!  So sorry!  Not nearly as exciting as that!!  Just had a super busy weekend and it seems both girls came down with colds again so my time got away from me.

BUUUT, I do have a great little product tip to share with you and it SAVED me when the girls had first come down with colds a few weeks ago (Pnemonia and Bronchitis)….

They of course had no…

It was a crazy busy week again (What weeks aren’t for moms??  Do any of you have a new found respect for your mom?? I sure do!) And I can’t believe it’s just over 4 weeks until the newest babe is here!  PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE don’t make a showing any earlier!!!  I love ya and can’t wait to meet ya, but you just go ahead and stay nice and cozy until March 9th, Pretty Please!

OK, onto the fun things from this week.  I actually had to edit this a bit because I saw so many fun things to share…

I have a darling friend from college that I adore and love.

We lived in the same dorm, and she was as spunky as can be!  Always smiling, friends with the world, a total spitfire!

I’ll never forget visiting with her in her dorm room the first time and seeing her hooked up to what looked like a small refrigerator, and breathing into a mask…

My friend has Cystic Fibrosis.

When she came to visit with me in California, she brought along a…

Betty Crocker Sugar Cookie dough
Vanilla store bought frosting
Rainbow Sprinkles and Pink Dots
MANY afternoons of fun!

So easy, even an almost 2 year old can do it.

We baked all the cookies and saved some to decorate (and eat!) each day.

Easy as….

well, a Betty Crocker cookie.
(and pretty darn tasty too!)

Want to see more Wordless Wednesday’s?  Check in with Angry Julie!

So on the same road as Saturday’s post that I just have not felt like cooking, Sunday morning was the same.  So we went to Fashion Island, enjoyed a little Pain du Monde yumminess and then let Addie run around since all the stores were closed. As you can see, she REALLY dressed up for the occasion!! (We had to wear rain boots and we had to bring our pet balloon, AND that is her bed head….)

We ended the morning at Barnes and Noble.

I thought we should get…

It’s been a busy, but slow week!  Anyone else in So Cal feeling a little HOUSED with the Littles this week???  We have been reduced to having all the chairs back on top of our kitchen table.  BOTH Hayden and Addie are having fun climbing on EVERYTHING!  Addie now thinks climbing the drawer handles to get into the upper kitchen cabinets is fun…OH JOY!  Our biggest saving grace outing was Frogg’s Bounce House. WOW, did we LOVE this place.

This was Addie about 30 seconds after we got into the car.  Stay tuned…

Being almost 3 months old in the blogger world, there have been MANY new things to learn and introductions made!  It’s been fun AND challenging!  Exciting AND frusterating, the learning curve is HUGE!  But the one very positive and consistent thing I’ve found is the blogger community.  Some of you visit MFE as readers, and as friends, or as an occasional passerby and some as fellow bloggers.  Being so new to the blogger world, I had NO IDEA until I got here the kind of support and friendships you can make with people that you have…

I’ll be perfectly honest, hubby and I have never really been the Valentine’s Day celebrating kinda couple…we did celebrate it our first year of dating…

Went to a favorite resteraunt (that was waaaayyy over packed with extra tables).

He bought me the rose (that was waaaayyyy over priced for 1 rose).

And we ate our favorite dinner (that was about 1/2 the portion it normally was for triple the price)….

And we vowed never to do it again!

Instead we make our Valentines Day celebration our first date anniversary in June (when no one else is celebrating), and we love…

So did we all survive the first week of January???  I  made it, I think, assuming of course I get through Friday (although I still have about 100 emails waiting for replies – so sorry everyone!!)!  I did manage to take the Littles out in the double jogger today for a nice long walk and park time though, a first in a long time.  Figured I might as well start working on that baby weight that is going to need to come off in March once #3 arrives!

Thought I would share a few FAVORITE things that I saw this…

I’m a big fan of the Long Beach Aquarium / Aquarium of the Pacific – crazy, since I’m a little freaked out that most of those amazing creatures are in the ocean and could surly bite my toes off (irrational fear of mine since birth I think), but none the less, I love the aquarium.  We bought a family membership last Father’s Day and when I suggested taking the girls to run on the beach Saturday AM, Hubby suggested the aquarium instead (he didn’t quite feel…