Stephanie Howell

**cutest stinkin’ stinkin’ giveaway ever still open in the post below!!**

so i’ve said before and i’ll say it again, i’m not afraid to admit i LOVE valentine’s day. it’s my favorite holiday and when i have my bearings back, i’ll be going all out.

this year, i didn’t get the decorations up. well except the heart garland that my mom made me.

and i did have a scattering of paper doilies, doily hearts, and jewels around the house. the girls loved making “valetimes” almost every day. that counts as decorations, i think!

we did a lot of crafts in the days leading up to valentine’s. two of our favorites were lovebirds:

and making m&m hearts with gel icing. not sure this is a craft…more of a snack, but we had fun doing it!

the girls are both in preschool now (sadie only one day a week, harper five half-days a week) so i had to make them something to take to school.

it was super simple this year. that’s all i could manage and i think these were just fine!

for sadie i found some free printables online and she gave each student a heart ring pop:

and for harper i downloaded some lollipop bands from elle’s studio

v-day is one of the few times a year where i just let it go and let the girls have too much sugar. 🙂

this is the special dinner j made for them sunday night. he had to go out of town this week and felt bad about missing valentine’s, bless his heart.

is there anything better than daddy-made breakfast for supper?

wish i had gotten his face in this photo, he was SO proud of himself!

and i made the girls a special breakfast yesterday. when they woke up this was waiting for them, along with a little felt conversation heart purse filled with a valentine’s rubber ducky, conversation hearts, a plush pez dispenser, and a heart that grows when you put it in water.:

and here was our dinner:

and of course i have to mention ‘ashion. i’d be remiss if i didn’t.

i couldn’t find harper a cute, affordable option, so i took a tee she already had and ironed on a sequin heart. why don’t i do this more often? SO cheap!!

sadie wore harper’s dress from last year…check out the valentine’s box we made together. think any other kids in her class had thickers and washi tape on theirs?

i should have checked so i could hunt down their mothers and demand that we be friends. ha!

and the babies wore the cutest baby outfits ever, thanks to my friend mandy.

a day to celebrate love? what’s not to love about that.

hope yours was sweet.

xoxo

s

patterned paper- sassafras (yellow), my mind’s eye (both photo blocks)

flowers- sassafras

journaling card, stamp- studio calico

alphabet- american crafts(white), sassafras

ink- close to my heart lagoon

 

Here’s the story behind this layout. The past four weeks or so, J has had training. He either didn’t come home at all, or came home really late at night/very early in the morning.

Exhausted.

And I was usually up feeding the babies, no matter what time it was.

He always went in and checked on the girls. Covered them, adjusted them in their beds, kissed them.

I love this about him.

He also does it every morning before he leaves for work.

And I wanted to make sure to document that. So there you have it!!

 

the layout itself is pretty sweet and simple. i screwed up on the stammping, but i don’t care. i don’t think that anyone will notice that when flipping through my albums one day.

or maybe one of my girls will be a scrapbooker, and really bad at stamping (like i am) and get a kick out of it!

Have a fabulous Sunday! xoxo

the one thing you hear about having twins,

or little ones that are close in age is that the first years are a blur.

things are very blurry around here these days. fuzzy around the edges.

a fast moving blur of bottles and baths and ponytails.

a loud mix of “MOMMY” and “I NEED YOU” and cries and laughter.

most days i can’t tell you what day of the week it is. some days i can’t tell you my name.

lots of days i don’t get a shower. i have to write a post-it for anything i want to remember.

the counters are littered with lists, with to-dos. with good intentions.

and i feel like i’m missing it all.

i feel like i’m so caught up in getting through it, that i’m missing “it”.

i don’t want to look back one day and not remember anything about these days. these days are precious.

sure, some weeks i just pray for it to get to Friday. so j will be home and i will have adult conversations, a hand to hold, a pair of arms to help.

but sometimes i just sit here, still. a constant point with everything else whirling frantically around me.

shoes flying, girls screaming, laundry piling.

and i think “this is fleeting”.

i just sit still, breathe it in (even if “it” means the spitup on my shoulder) and etch it in my mind.

one day it will be trips to the mall, first dates, and i’m too cool for my mother.

one day it will be wedding dresses, grandbabies, and my mom is my best friend.

and i want to remember these days of sticky juice spilled on the floor, sticky hands holding tight to me, sticky notes standing in for my brain.

i want to remember the way my babies smell. the way that silky baby hair feels. the way that it feels to be needed for everything.

to be the one that has the power to make it all better with just a kiss.

i want to remember those tiny voices piping up from the back seat. the broken crayons, the pink everywhere, the barbies scattered, the little tiny bodies snuggled up against my chest.

i want to remember.

xo

 

how is that right? how does it go so quickly?

they are smiling, laughing.

sleeping through the night some nights

they are staying awake for longer stretches of time.

cooing, really looking at us.

holding their heads up. trying to roll.

they make us so happy.

and so tired.

and so excited to see what the future holds.

i had NO idea that having twins was going to be so fun. and so different. and so interesting to people.

we get stopped everywhere we go. i love that.

i love them. i love each of them so much and so strongly. and in different ways.

they are so beautiful.

how is it that the heart has the capacity to love so much?i thought i’d have to divide my love by four. but instead it’s multiplied four times.

thank you lord, how could i ask for more.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Tuesday Morning!!

It feels like Monday to me, J had yesterday off. It was great to be able to spend some family time together for three days…but WHY DOES IT GO SO FAST??

i tell you…when he’s gone time crawls. but when he’s home it flies. so unfair. 🙂

i thought i’d share some photos from sadie’s birthday extravagaaaaaaaaaanza.

on her actual birthday she woke up in an AWESOME mood.

ummmm. yay?

happy birthday.

a special birthday breakfast perked her right up, though.

she picked her party “feme” or theme at the party store and wanted the backyardigans. 🙂

when j got off work we went out for “mexico” as sadie calls it, which means mexican food. our favorite.

once again, sadie was THRILLED to have happy birthday sung to her and she LOVED wearing the sombrero.

uhhhh

oh

my.

i was laughing so hard i was crying. tears streaming down my face.

i am laughing again looking at that photo. hahahahahhaha. oh gosh. she is NOT into attention. at all.

saturday was the day j told sadie we’d have our family “party party”.

she woke up sooo excited, even more excited when she got to wear her precious custom amy tangerine tee.

how cute is that? oh it makes my heart hurt!

we let sadie choose where she wanted to go for her birthday. she chose chuck e cheese. shudder. now lots of you say “oh we never go there, it’s just not an option!” and normally i would have said that. but you know what? she’s a good good girl. doesn’t ask for much. anything actually. and we hadn’t been together as a family in a month. It was a great weekend.