Molly is FIVE

I was on the verge of tears about a million times today because of this kid.  

 She made me a mom 5 years ago today.  She is a source of absolute pure joy in my life.  Sometimes when I watch her try new things or just be her everyday awesome self it hurts because of how much I feel for her.  As she gets ready for Kindergarten to start next week I have all kinds of anxiety that I never thought I'd feel.  I don't want to let go of her, not even a little bit.  I can't stand the thought of not knowing what she's doing and sharing in all of her wonderful moments throughout the day.  

I hope that she is always as full of joy as she was today.  That she always loves "her" day as much as she did even though it didn't totally work out the way we thought it would.

I hope we will always have fun moments like today even when she's older and I'm totally not cool to her anymore.

As if today wasn't exciting enough, she topped it all off with losing her first tooth.

and then her and Violet laughed and played together at the pool and crashed on the way home.  

they are literally my whole world.

Update

Lets face it... I haven't written in this blog for ages but in an effort to organize my life and reflect on progress in all areas I thought I might start writing a bit more.

First of all... our kids, they're growing like fricken weeds.  Today Violet cried for almost 20 minutes because she didn't want to grow up.  It was heartbreaking and hilarious all at the same time.  I had to convince her of all the wonderful things that happen when you become a "big girl" and she kept on saying she didn't want to be a big girl and wanted to go back to being a baby.  Let's face it if I didn't feel like I had to be the parent in that moment I would have been crying right alongside of her.  

We went to finding Dory over Nels' holidays and it was SO FUN.  Violet might have been a tad young  (she's 2 weeks short of being 3) but Molly is a breeze at the movies.  

We also did our second annual baseball game in Okotoks on Father's day.  The kids did awesome and it was fun to be with lots of family.

Our yard is coming along so well this summer.  One day if I have time I'm going to take a million pictures so I can remember what this summer looked like.    We planted more trees, landscaped the front and seeded some more grass.   Here are a few pics of early spring after some planting.  

I can't really do a yard update without mentioning the garage that Nels built in the fall.  Not only has it been awesome for storage and for the cars... it's made our yard look much more complete as we wait for our trees to fill out a bit more.  

In the early spring I figured one of our first "yard" projects should be painting our play structure.  It looks great but it was a terrible process.  It basically took almost 2 full days by the time we got every little corner.  I am super happy that it is done and it looks awesome.

My theme for the inside of our house this year was "Let it go".  Being busy with work and kids and family and friends allowed me to really pull back on house projects and it was actually really fun to just enjoy what we have and not obsess over things.  I thought I'd add a pic of one of my favourite things Nels built this year.  I got the idea from here and after having it pinned for months Nels whipped it up one afternoon and now the kids have some awesome storage for their dress-up clothes. It looks so cute and we've recently added a homemade frame on the other side of the couch that looks awesome.  I'll share that later.

Ok, I'd say that's a semi complete update of our lives:)  Happy July!!

You know you haven't blogged for awhile when....

... you forget how to login to your own blog!!!!

After about a year of forgetting about this blog and a few conversations with Nels about just shutting 'er down I've decided that I love writing this too much to quit.  Blogging has been a fun way for me to look back at the progress of our house and some of our major life events.  Nels always encourages me to write things down anyway because its always been one of the best ways for me to communicate.  Especially with two little kids it seems like I can't really get out much so this is one of the ways I can have some sort of creative outlet.

Also... lets face it I'm a Pinterest addict so instead of just spending hours on Pinterest I thought it might be good to actually write about the loads of things I've actually attempted from Pinterest.  

With all of my re-establishing the blog ideas in mind, I will begin by documenting the hugest update in our lives and try to add some house stuff very soon. 

Ok, so the biggest change in our lives in the past few months has been the arrival of our sweet little girl Violet Helen Bieber on July 22 2013.  I am so in love with this person it is crazy.  The transition from 1 to 2 kids has been fairly smooth partly due to how well Violet sleeps and also the incredibleness of my husband:)  

My labour and delivery with Violet was quick and painful... 5 hours start to finish.  Kind of a chaotic experience compared to Molly which is funny because Violet has been such a calm, peaceful baby.  Without going into too much detail I will say we may have had a nurse who was panicking quite a bit and delivering the second time around may go faster but that doesn't mean you don't want to die because of the pain.  Praise the Lord once again for the laughing gas... I owe my life to that beautiful invention:)

One of the most exciting feelings I've ever had was hearing we had another girl.  There are a few moments in life that make living so rich and that moment when you deliver a human being is definitely one of them.  Knowing that Molly would have a sister and we would get to experience all of the girliness of life another time makes me very excited.  

Watching Molly grow into the big sister role has also been one of my greatest joys and it actually brings me to tears sometimes when I see her and Violet together.  Don't get me wrong sometimes Molly isn't a the most gentle but there are those precious times when she wants to hold Violet or calls her cute or lights up when she smiles that make me so excited for these two sisters:)

Nels and I often look at each other and marvel over how we created these two people.  It really is a miracle and I truly feel blessed.  

You know what is lovely?

... staying in a beach house in Hawaii with my family and dressing Molly up in cute sundresses in the middle of winter and playing paddle ball while Molly sleeps and going for day trips to the North shore and going back to our honeymoon spots at Waikiki.

we have a great life.

a shout out to Grandma Penner who has been with Jesus now for 1 year and 3 months and who made this trip possible because she is one of the most generous people i have ever known.  I am so grateful for her and that she met Nelson and that they had a liking for one another.  We will tell Molly all about her when she is old enough:)

1 Week

Molly is 1 week old today.... so crazy

In honour of her first week being alive she gave us the greatest gift... she slept like a champ the whole night.  I practically had to wake her up to feed her.  Loving it...

then she gave daddy some great snuggles this morning...

 and then we made pancakes to celebrate the great day!

Happy 1 week birthday Molly.  We love you:)

It happened!

Been forever since a post!

Molly Grace Bieber was born August 25th 2011 and I could cry over how much I love this little girl.  

Giving birth was the most amazing thing I will ever do in life and coming from me that actually says a lot because it had been my biggest fear ever since I learned about the birds and the bees.

So instead of boring everyone I talk to with the details I figure it would be better for everyone to just write them out and get on with life:)

My water broke at 2:00 pm after I had a nap.  I had just been to the clinic earlier that day for a check up and everything just looked normal for being 38 weeks pregnant.

I panicked a bit when my water broke because of my fear of giving birth and Nelson started running around the house like a crazy person trying to get ready for the hospital

We headed to the hospital where they checked to see if my water actually had broken (i thought it was pretty self explanatory by the steady stream of fluid leaking out of me).  So it had definitely broken and I started having some minor contractions.  There was a bit of confusion from everyone as to whether I should stay at the hospital or go home until the contractions got stronger.  To make a long story short, we went home for a bit and started having some fairly strong contractions.  

By about 8:00 we were back at the hospital hooked up to a machine tracking our contractions again.  At this point we were told that we were indeed in labour but the contractions were almost nil and it would be a good 8 hours before anything substantial happened.

I freaked out.

This is because although the stupid machine was saying my contractions were almost nothing, I was seriously struggling.  They hurt so bad I wanted to go throw myself into traffic but there isn't even enough traffic in Threehills to do anything so that was out of the question.  I wasn't remembering anything I learned about breathing either.  I was just panicking and puking.  I'm sure Nelson was quite scared at this point and he kept telling me i could do it and kept saying I sure as heck can not do this.  

Finally, we paged the nurse and told her we thought something was up.  My back hurt like crazy and so she gave Nels a few tips to help out which were "push like crazy against her spine to counteract the baby pushing the other way" This helped.  She also told me to imagine floating on a cloud and surprisingly things actually got better.

This lovely nurse decided check my downstairs area just to see what was going on.  This is where I heard "Holy shit, I feel the head... we need to call the Doctor!" and I thought, "Thank the Dear Lord that I am actually in labour here."  I found out later that I was actually 9 1/2 cm dilated at that point.  Everything moved so fast from there on in its like an awesome dream.  I had a few more hard contractions and I felt like pushing so I did.  

Dr. Calhoun (sp?) was awesome awesome awesome.  She was so calm and supportive I wish I could just give her a giant hug right now.  She offered me some laughing gas once I started doing some serious pushing and i took that sweet sweet gas and it changed my life forever.

Laughing gas was the coolest thing ever.  I could concentrate so well it was crazy.  I remember holding my Moms hand when she got there and admiring her for doing this exact same thing.  I remember looking into the Dr's eyes and listening to her tell me to push.  I remember that nice nurse who kept on telling me how awesome I was doing and when to push and not to let the air out of my mouth when I was pushing.  I remember talking to God about what an amazing experience this was.  I remember thinking how I couldn't wait to tell Krista that this isn't that bad and she can for sure do it.  I remembered Crystal telling me that she just sucked the crap out of that laughing gas mask so I just did that exact same thing 

We also had music which was something that made the experience that much more special.  We had made a baby mix a few weeks earlier of songs I thought would calm me down or had special meaning to us.  I remember the first dance song from our wedding being played ("Oh heavenly day" by Patty Griffin) and being locked on Nels.  I remember "The Greatness of our God" playing and thinking this could not be more true.

And then I felt the pressure from the babe and pushed as hard as I could and there was no pain just determination to get this thing out.  

And then she was out... and Nels got to look over and tell me that we had a beautiful baby girl and we both cried because secretly all along we wanted a Molly.  

They put her on me and I saw her blowing little spit bubbles and I have never loved spit more in all my life

She fed like a champ right away and then soon after that we were wheeled back to our room.  The whole night I just looked to my left and saw Nelson lying next to me and looked to the right and saw Molly and I just couldn't get over how I was the luckiest girl in the world

The end

Family Visit

how cute is this little guy?

nick and crystal came for a visit.  great to see them.  fricken cold outside the whole time. 
p.s henry is the happiest little guy I've ever seen in my life

Thankful

Just got back from a good good weekend in Salmon Arm. Got to see lots of good friends and family who we do not get to see enough of.

Very thankful for the people in our lives who make it interesting and fun and worth it.

newly weds, veteran weds and soon to be weds
Zander watching Monster Trucks

Our small but awesome clan for thanksgiving dinner:)
Nelly is slightly jealous of Eric's I-phone
nearly a pyramid
love
the best

I miss this tiny person

She moved across the ocean with her mom and dad to hang out with the people of Japan and I miss them all. I hope she doesn't forget us while she's gone because then I might cry.