bsmiles and sunny days

My girls... Look at this kid. Bless his pea-pickin heart. My camera shoots out an orange beam that always distracts her from smiling. Somehow we got past the beam, but her eyes still shot open on the first flast. Hahaha! She loves kisses! Yikes. Kennedy is standing on the brink of being a teenager. She still carries a doll around the house and shops the baby clearance stuff every time we get close to it. Jasmine is a a real-deal Baby Whisperer. I feel totally confident putting her on the job when the screaming begins. We had a costume birthday party last weekend and this is how we went. Aren't they something?

There is no sound like the sound of new laughter...

If you have children that know my kids, you may be interested in checking out these little sweethearts. They are updated WAY more often than mine. And they're nuts. And I adore them! http://www.thediariesofkennedysutton.blogspot.com/ http://micahsfireblog.blogspot.com/

I think about you, my faithful readers, everyday. I thought about you last weekend when I was baking all day, and I thought about you all day long while I chased my kids back and forth across town to and from soccer games. There are so many things rattling around in my head that I want to write about, but I don't have time to load pictures, and I even if I just sit down to write, I rarely have time to complete a thought without interruption or total diversion. While I have a few minutes, I thought I'd unload some of my random thoughts. I have a lot to do. Right now, at 10:19pm, the pressing thing is the kitchen floor. It's a mess. I mean, it's bad. The dishes are done, the groceries are put away, and the trash is out, but the floor: yikes. Instead of tending to the pressing things, you know what I do with my time? I cruise Facebook. Here is a lovely opportunity to catch up on all your long lost friends, look at their lives, see how they interact with their friends, see

When I lived in Chicago, I discovered this cool little book that inspired me everyday. I'm sure you've heard of it, it's called "Life's Little Instruction Book". There are a bunch of 'em now, but back then it was pretty new and I loved reading it because it always gave me one more tool for my life tool belt. I read years later that it was written by a man who wrote it for his child before he left for college. It had all the information he could possibly pass on for this little bird leaving the nest. It never occurred to me until this minute how lucky we are. Right now Dale is teaching his class to the kids. Every Wednesday, Dale fills their heads with all kinds of valuable teaching that he would never, in any other situation, have the time or opportunity to give them without serious discipline in scheduling. But, because they are home, he is able to think through the things he wants them to learn and the seeds he wants to plant, and then spend this few hou

It was a few weeks ago, but these pictures were so cute, I had to share them. She pranced around the house like a princess all day. Now if you ask her, "Are you the big sister?" she says, "No, I da pwincess." This is the little Cinderella cake the we bought at Albertson's to commemorate the occasion. She fell in love with this cake and Dale and I were trying to avoid a real cake, so I decided this was a good fit for the little princess. We all got a little sliver of the dress. It was so good (I love grocery store bakery frosting) that I was tempted with the giant cheeseburger cake that I saw there last night. Here I'm skimping on groceries, saving $.40 here and $.67 there, and I had to talk myself out of a five dollar indulgence. What can I say. I heart cake. Leila loves the part when we all sing happy birthday to her. It's the best part of the whole day. She adores it. You can see it on her face. Here she is with the tiara and earrings. So

I have this great friend that apparently knows me very well, which is rare because my life is like a locked diary and I don't ever share it with anyone. Ever. No details; it's all classified, if you know what I'm saying. She called me about a week ago and after listening to me moan about my troubles for awhile, she said, "So what's the plan? I keep waiting for you to blog some new plan, and I'll know that you're OK." And that was all I really needed to hear, a reminder to live deliberately. Honestly, for the past few months I have been just trying to get by hoping something would change and the blues would clear up on their own. Well they're not. So I decided to devise a plan that would: a. save us money, b. help us to eat healthy foods again, and c. get me organized. After some hunting, I found this awesome website that was just what I needed to kick myself into gear. This gal lives on $50 a week and tries to eat organic as much as possib

Alright, the reality is that I'm not depressed, I am severely overwhelmed. Today I received four of the twenty-some boxes that I'm waiting for so we can proceed with a successful school year. I have cardboard boxes and plastic bubbles full of air that I need to find a place for so that I'll have the supplies in the event that we don't finish the school year here in California. (I know, it's a long shot, but I'm an optimist. And my mom is a woman of faith.) I don't have a place for it. My shed is full of other stuff that I'm saving for who knows what reason. I can barely keep up with my regular housework on top of shuffling our storage space to accomodate these things, and trying to meet the needs of all these little lives around me. I haven't cooked in a couple of weeks. (Hey guess what! Chicken nuggets tomorrow too!) I get overwhelmed with the guilt of not being a competent teacher, not praying for each one of them everyday, not meeting my husband o