Carli Happenings

My Carli Jewel is almost 22 months old. In so many ways I truly can't believe it! But at the same time, She acts like she is like 4 years old! Carli is obsessed with her princess figurines. And I am not exaggerating.. She has them in her hands at almost all times and gets seriously bummed when she has to put them down to do something like drink her milk or ride her bike. She constantly likes to take their dresses off but needs me to put them back on.. ( every 2 minutes) :) Carli loves wearing her princess nightgown... She will throw a huge fit if she wants to wear it and i want her in something else... (like not jammies all day) Carli loves fruit. grapes, strawberries and oranges are her big favorites right now. We always joke because Carli will usually chose to eat fruit over chocolate or sweets. Quite the opposite of our other little "special treat' munchkin Carli loves her blankie and her paci or her papi as she calls it. We are trying to just let her have her paci in bed but bend the rules sometimes. Carli loves animals especially dogs!!

Christmas 2013

We just finished our family Christmas celebration with the girls.. It was absolute perfection!! It is rare that things exceed your expectations in life as we usually have unrealistic expectations ( at least i do) But today completely met and exceeded my expectation. IT was a day of pure joy and Christmas magic.. It started yesterday as Dave was working getting the swing set all set up and then we were both working in to the late evening putting together your gifts and wrapping last minute presents and cooking and preparing everything for Christmas morning. It was fun and I felt like my mom and all the years her and my dad would stay up late doing all that. It was so fun for me. In a lot of ways this felt like my first real Christmas as mom. I know it is really my 4th (wow!) but this was the first year Summer was so into every aspect of the celebration. She knew Santa wouldn't come until she went to sleep and she knew the true meaning of Christmas is that it was Jesus' Birthday.. One of the funniest, things was watching my 3 year old so excited that she could barely sleep ( oh I remember those days).. She woke up at 3:30am and yelled "daddY!!" a few times and then proceeded to run full speed down the hall to see if Santa had come and if it was CHristmas morning.. Luckily Santa put a sheet over everything and Daddy was able to get her back to bed in time. The morning was perfect. THe joy and excitement over the gifts from Santa was so fun to watch.. Summer kept saying " I love it so much" They both loved their matching princess nightgowns and wore them all day. After we opened all the presents and stopped to play with each one after opening, we ate breakfast went outside to ride the scooter and then Carli took a short nap. Then....we went outside to have some time on the swing set. The girls had a ball! Summer loves the slide and Carli loves it all!! We spent like 45 minutes or so out there before they wanted to come in and play with their toys and watch Rapunzel Summer amazed me so much today, SHe was so kind and shared so well with Carli even though they were her brand new toys. They both did.. Carli loved her baby doll bed and high chair and spent lots of time taking care of her baby today.. My girls are just so awesome!! We all took some naps and then went on a family ride/walk in the wagon.. after the wagon the girls had a ball playing while Summer rode her new scooter down the hall and Carli chased her. They were laughing and screaming and getting along so great. We ate dinner and then did our new tradition which I am so excited about and had so much fun doing. We all sat around the table and read The Christmas Story about how Christmas is where we celebrate the birth of Jesus. We then brought out the birthday cake and sang Happy Birthday to Jesus. It was so fun and the girls loved it. Today was one of those days where i watched my family in awe and had tears of happiness and gratitude multiple times. Im sure i missed some fun details but wanted to get down as much as possible before I forget the beauty and joy of today. Thank You Lord for sending your Son to earth for us. What a glorious day Christmas really is!! and Thank You for my family! I am grateful beyond words.. lots of love MOM

just a little spilled milk.

Daddy had to work late tonight and my two little sweets were not being so sweet at dinner time. They both would not take a bite of their dinner, all consumed with whining and Carli throwing all her food and water on the ground. Meanwhile I realize their is a big puddle of milk on the floor by the fridge, come to find out the milk cartoon had a leak in it.... needed to clean out my fridge now too.. Somehow I managed to throw towels on the floor and give up on dinner and let the girls go play.. Mama needed some space. After a few minutes Summer asks me if I could come to her clinic and get a check up. Everything in me wanted to say "No mommy needs some space and I need to clean up this crazy mess in the kitchen." but I instead decided to go get a check up... Carli made her way in for a check up as well followed by Rapunzel. We then started singing on Summer's new microphone. It ended up being the funnest moment where Summer, Carli and I were taking turns singing and being silly into the microphone and laughing hysterically together.. We then played alittle store and had a dance recital. The dance recital is were Summer and Carli dance in the living room and do spins and Summer lays out a special mat where I have to sit and watch. Each performance is followed by them falling down and then jumping up with a "tada!" They spin so much they say the house in spinning! haha!! The time had arrived to go attack the kitchen tornado before the hubby got home to the chaos! I put on a princess music video and left the girls a little. I was so glad I chose to go get that check-up and spend some awesome quality time with my girls. It completely changed my mood from frustrated to joyful.I was now able to go get my chores done and my kids love tanks were full! as was mine.. Don't get me wrong, I don't always make this choice to play with my kids first so don't go thinking I am super mom or something because that is not always the case at all... but I hope to make this choice more often. random fact of the night: Carli later ate 5 cutie oranges in one sitting and wanted more!

a few fun facts

I am back on my blog!! I haven't blogged in like 2 years. I had just been using facebook as my way of sharing life but as I came across this blog i realized what a great memory book it really is so I am hoping to get back on it and share my life in an honest and loving way. Since I can't possibly update you on what has been going on in the past 2 years I am going to share a handful of fun fact about my sweet, awesome girls! Summer dresses in one of her many princess dresses everyday... and as soon as Carli see's a dress, she insists i put one of her too. Carli loves the dogs. She literally screams in joy when I open up the back door. Summer loves to sing!! Carli is obsessed with her princess figurines and carries them around most of the day. Summer often goes in her room and closes the door and has a full on doctor's clinic going on with all her stuffed animals getting check ups. Summer has a brillant imagination. It is one of my favorite things Summer is doing so well and growing so much. She started preschool and loves it and is really blossoming into a little girl! She really loves Carli and it blesses my heart to see how fond they are of each other. When one of them gets hurt, the other one will run and get their blankie to help them feel better. Carli is almost two going on five years old. I swear that girl has no idea she is younger than summer and all her friends. She keeps up in most ways and is right in line with them with all the toys at the park. Carli talks so much! i think she is super advanced with her language, but Im her mom and may just not remember what is normal for this age. DOesn't really matter, All i know is I love to hear that girl talk.... its just so cute!! Summer is totally a daddy's girl! Today the two of them went fishing at tri-city park. One of my favorite things to do is hear them laugh together! and it happens often!

Carlsbad Camping.. Labor Day.

A bit late on this post but this was such a great vacation that I didn't want to miss an opportunity to write about it.
We went camping in the motorhome labor day weekend at Carlsbad State Beach. This was one of my favorite vacations we have had!. It was just such our style of fun. We rode bikes and went to the beach every day and then hung out by the camp fire at night. We got there Thursday afternoon and stayed until Sunday. Some family friends were also there so we got to hang with them which was super fun. My parents came down on Saturday just to hang out with us and we had a wonderful day. We rode our bikes to get sandwiches and then went to the beach with Summer and then ate a yummy dinner and roasted smores.. so fun!
I would say the best part of this trip and what made it the most special in a lot of ways is that this was such a big trip/weekend for Summer. I feel like she was a baby when we left and a toddler when we got home. Before this trip she was taking steps but on this trip she really started walking independently. It started with her walking around with her push toy and then her running all over the beach. She and Dave would walk to each other and she would take more and more steps and she would fall in the sand and not even care. After a few days of running around in the sound, she was a full blown walking. I also feel like she started to say a few words on this trip and as we got home she started talking more and more. We are going back in a few weeks and I can hardly wait. I think we will made beach camping a regular Edkins vacation.

Just Some Mommy thoughts for today...

Summer got another little cold this week. It really didn't seem to be bad or bother her much until we put her to bed . Long story short, Tuesday night her and I slept on the couch together and she was snuggled up on my chest in my arms. Although I didn't get much sleep that night it was so worth it as she doesn't snuggle much and just getting to cuddle and comfort my little angel was truly priceless.
also every morning after Summer wakes up we sit in the rocker and read some stories... this has become such a sweet time together. We started reading a book called big sister and its so cute because she actually sits and listens to the entire book (when usually she just wants to turn the pages quickly) and she says baby when she sees the baby in the book.
Her latest funny thing is she likes to make funny faces back and forth at mommy and daddy as a little game. It all started one day when she was eating a sour apple and then now if I initiate with a funny face, she will play with me and laugh and laugh.

My dear Summer.
You are a true beam of Sunshine in my life. I never knew I could love anyone the way I love you. I love your personality. You are so happy, fun and full of life already at 16 months. I love how you are adventurous and independent but still so sweet and loving. You are a true blessing from God.
Love Mommy.

Summer Happenings... 16 months.

My sweet Summer girl is 16 months today!! Where has the time gone... It literally feels like we just brought her home from the hospital and now she is walking and talking and having a mind of her own. I always joke that this is why I want to have a lot of kids because I just can't handle them growing up so fast.. Here are some of the Summer happenings recently.
1. She walks and even runs now.: Summer took her 1st steps the end of August but really got the walking thing down on our Carlsbad camping trip over labor day weekend. She was just loving walking all over that beach (and such a great place to learn because the fall was gentle). She now is walking and running sometimes so fast I can barely catch her.
2. She LOVES to play outside. The minute I put her on the front lawn to play she starts bolted it full speed down to the park at the end of our street. and when she sees all the kids that live down there she starts screaming in joy.
3. She can talk. Here are most ( the ones I can think of) of the words that Summer has right now: up, down, more, baba, night night, mommy, daddy, papa, nana, ball, baby, doggy, woof woof, go,
4. She loves to go Up and down the slide at the park
5. She is finally becoming more of a cuddler and sometimes in the morning she will give you smuggles for quite a while. mommy and daddy love this
6. We recently took her to the zoo and we thought she would love all the animals but all she wanted to do was run around non-stop.