June 7, 2016 (Third Birthday)

My girls are 3!  T H R E E !  I can't believe how fast time goes.  Their birthday was actually 2 weeks ago but here is a recap of their special day.

Brian and I woke them up.  We sang them Happy Birthday first thing.  Then we took them downstairs so they could open their gifts from us.

I made them each their own book from our Disney vacation.  Here is Taylor "Kissing" hers.

Then, each of the girls had an opportunity in the prior week to get each other birthday presents.  It was so sweet watching them get excited about giving to their sisters.

Then it was breakfast time.  After pancakes, we let them eat a piece of their tie-dyed cake Dad made them the night before.

After breakfast, we got everyone ready and headed to Wet n Wild Splashtown in North Houston.  The girls had so much fun and I think it was the first time that Brian and I weren't stressed the whole time during a family outing.  The girls behaved and we all had so much fun.  They loved doing the water slides in the smaller kids zone... over and over and over again.

Back at home the girls got in a nap while MeMe and Grandpops arrived and set up this...

They spent hours refurbishing my old Barbie doll house.  It turned out so adorable and it made me want to play before the girls woke up.  I did snap a few photos of everything set up all cute before 6 little hands got to it and destroyed it in 4 seconds flat.

They had to pull everything out.  They loved it so much and I can't wait to watch them grow up playing with my childhood doll house.  Its pretty special.

After they got to play with the barbie house, there were more presents to open from Nana and then we headed to dinner at their favorite restaurant.  What is a 3 year old's favorite restaurant you might ask?  Well, its Freys, a restaurant with a huge backyard and lots of balls to play with. They technically won't eat any of the food, but they sure love to play.  

The girls birthday was so much fun and I think everyone enjoyed themselves.  They had their birthday party on June 11 and I'll share photos from that in my next post.

Triple Play: 3 Years

How old?  3 years.  

Our weights?  S:  28.8 lbs T: 29.8 lbs M:  28.2 lbs

Heights - S: 35 1/2 in  T: 36 in M: 35 3/4 in

They are wearing size 3t.  

Shoe size:  S: 7  T: 7.5 W M: 7.5

Our sleeping patterns?  They still nap about 1.5 hours every day.  We can skip naps if we absolutely have to, just makes for a crankier bedtime.  Occasionally Taylor or Sam may just not nap, but Mallory always does.  Some days it's a breeze to get them to sleep and other days it's a fight for an hour because they are keeping each other up giggling and playing around.

These kids and they sleeping through the night.  We've only had 4 nights in a row where they all three slept through the night.  They need covers, or their stuffed animals, or just to know that Mommy or Daddy will come upstairs to see them.  Taylor and Sam sleep through the night on most nights and Mal has a hard time sleeping a lot of times.

They wake up pretty consistently around 7:30 AM. 

 Our eating schedule?  The girls have breakfast at 8:00 AM, Lunch at noon, snack when they wake up from their nap (between 3-4), and dinner at 6ish.  

 Our favorite foods?  S: Chocolate milk, Nutella, and gummies are the only consistent foods this girl says she likes.  She loves noodles or fruit one day and hates it the next.  It's so hard to feed her.

T: Pickles (and she likes to be called Pucklepuss when she eats them), tostadas, gummies, Mac and cheese

M: Veggies, meat, fruit... I wish all three are like Mallory.

Our likes? Dress Up... It's the first thing they do right out of bed. They even call each other Anna, Elsa, Cinderella, Belle, etc.  They also like painting, swimming, picnics, and making a mess (Mom hates this).

 Our dislikes?  When I've given them the wrong color cup, or I carried their plate to their chair, or I put a vegetable on S or T's plate, or I won't let hem watch TV, or I say we need to clean up, or I gave sister the dress she wanted, or And the list goes on...

Our favorite games/toys?  Barbies, Princess dolls, Paw Patrol, coloring books, books, bubbles, tracing lines

Our milestones? 

S: jumping and singing really well.  She is very verbal and talks a lot.  Her imagination is bursting.

T: jumping and seat drops in gymnastics, singing LOUD, spelling her name

M: recognizing all letters and asking what words start with, recognizes all of her numbers, has started doing addition in her fingers, traces all the numbers and letters, writes an 'M', pretty much getting too smart for us. This girl loves to learn.

Things we do to make Mom and Dad smile?  When we see them figure out the answer to a problem all on their own, when they play together like when they take turns being Anna and Elsa and act out the scene where Anna asks sleeping Elsa "Do you wanna build a snowman?" When we do something like take the 3 of them to the water park and we have an excellent time with no meltdowns.  They are really growing up fast.

Our pictures

Perfect Mother's Day Gift! My New Business

Hi Everyone!  I've started a new venture in my life and I'm so excited to tell you about it!  I've opened an Etsy shop selling custom silhouettes.  I've worked so hard the past few months to get 3 Daughters Designs up and running and I'm pretty proud of myself.  I love creating and crafting and I'm so excited to be doing something I have a passion for.  Here are some of the products I've created so far...

Every silhouette I make is beautiful in its own unique way.  Please check out my shop at www.3daughtersdesignshop.etsy.com and see all that I have to offer.  Silhouettes make the perfect Mother's Day gift so use code MOTHERSDAY for 10% off.  Thanks for checking it out!

Flood April 18, 2016

We knew we were going to have some rain but nothing like this. Rain started coming about 8:30 PM on Sunday night. It poured through the night. I woke up around 3 AM. I checked the wether forecast and we were in a tornado warning. At that point we couldn't sleep and could see the water rising outside.  We laid back down around 5 and Brian set his alarm for every half hour to check the water levels.  By 7:30 AM we knew we couldn't leave but the water was just covering the sidewalk.  

We had no running water and not a single bottle of water in our house so Brian decided it would be best to get some before the flooding got too high. So he put on a poncho and drug our wagon through water to get to his brother's house about 1 mile away.  He filled two 5 gallon tanks of water and drug them all the way back. He then helped neighbors get groceries to their house with the wagon.  

Gradually through the day, the flood water kept creeping up and up. At one point it was rising 1 inch every 10 minutes. Brian and I worked all day to clear our downstairs. We were both in semi-panic modes.  I kept starting one thing only to get distracted with something else I thought we needed to do.  The girls were pretty cooperative and since we still had electricity, they enjoyed watching movies for a good portion of the day.  Brian nor I stopped to eat lunch.  By this point we could tell the water was coming quick.  

By the late afternoon we had hauled a lot of our downstairs furniture upstairs and covered legs of tables.  We had taken most valuables, scrapbooks, etc upstairs. We couldn't help but go look outside every once in a while only to see the water had risen even higher.  We were in touch with our neighbors through text or yelling across the river that was now our front yard.  Our direct neighbors, the house next to them, and another friend's house in the neighborhood all had water in them.  There were lots of kayaks and canoes coming by and then we saw the sherif come by in an air boat.

The water peaked in the afternoon and stayed steady for a while before we finally started seeing signs of it receding.  The water came about 1 inch from the top of our foundation.

Around 5:30 PM, Brian and I thought it would be best to get the girls out of there. Our toilets would no longer flush and we still had no running water.  I quickly gave them some dinner and packed some essentials in 2 bags. The kindest, most selfless people were waiting for us in a canoe to take us to dry ground.  We put the girls in their puddle jumpers and told them to hold on in the boat like it was a ride at Disney World.  They did great and didn't seem to care that we were having to leave our house in a boat.  I found out these kind people were called by a friend of their church to come help and then they began helping anyone else they could in the neighborhood.  They had already helped one of the neighbors across the street/river from us. 

They were amazing people that walked chest deep in the nasty water guiding our canoe and then they carried Taylor and our bags to a pick up truck. They then gave the girls and I a ride all the way to Telge and 99 where we could meet Brian's mom since her car couldn't make it down the road. One guy even sat in the back of the truck to hold On to Ryley.

We had to take the long way around but we made it to Brian's parents.  Brian stayed back at the house to elevate a few more things and then walked in the dark to his brother's to stay the night.  It's been an eventful 48 hours to say the least.  Here are more photos Brian took today while helping neighbors clean up.

Water is going down.

Our upstairs is packed with furniture and stuff and our downstairs is almost empty.

This is the back of our neighborhood. You can only imagine what it looked like yesterday. 

How high the water got from coming in our house. You can see the debris line.  

We are one of the lucky ones.  Our house was about 1-2 inches from being flooded.  Three houses on our street and many others in our neighborhood and surrounding areas flooded.  It's heartbreaking to see someone go through this. I'm so thankful my family is safe. I want to thank those amazing strangers that helped us get out of our neighborhood.  It's incredible to see a community come together like this.