Mommy needs to brag...

So Melanie has been doing awesome in school, and I just had to brag on her a little bit! Here is her homework from this week... I love all the glitter and her beautiful handwriting! So proud of my baby!

Spike

Well we have all been up since 4 am because Meredith thought it was time to party. Awesome.
So Eric and I were talking, and she looks at us and shushes is because Spike (her baby My Little Pony dragon) is asleep and we might wake him up. Seriously kid?!? I'm glad that the only one that can get some sleep is a stuffed dragon!
So then, this afternoon she tells me Spike is at daycare. Don't know where she got that from, because neither her or her sister have ever spent a day in daycare). On the way home this afternoon they are fighting in the car, so I told them they needed to go to their rooms and chill out for a minute. Meredith looks at me and says "I can't go to my room because I need to pick Spike up from daycare, and if I go to my room first daycare will be closed."
Yeah, we are in BIG TROUBLE come that kid's teenage years!

The kissing line

So at the Justin Bieber concert, and Meredith was convinced that there would be a line to kiss the Biebs. I kept trying to tell her they didn't have anything like that, I but her sweet sister helped her out by creating a picture on the iPad....

W...O...W....

All right.....it's been since OCTOBER 17th that I last wrote on here.  We have gone through Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, my birthday AND Valentine's Day (not to mention the epic Justin Bieber concert!!) since I last posted. While I was having a dance party with the girls in the playroom with them all dressed up in their princess costumes and new Valentines tiaras I just bought them at the mall today, I realized why I haven't had a chance.  We have been SO BUSY!  Between me working again (I know it's only 3 days a week, but still....) and the girls' activities and playdates, and Eric doing all that Eric does, we just lose track of time.  But it hit me today, while I was dancing with the girls to the Mamma Mia! soundtrack that I haven't gotten around to writing down everything they do because I am busy trying to live their lives with them while they still want me around!  I know there will be a day soon where they will want to do anything but hang out with Mommy, and it hurts to think about that, so I try not to, and I am trying really hard to be the best mommy to these 2 little monkeys as I can possibly be while they want me!  If that means I fall behind on keeping up with this, then I think I am making the right choice.  They will remember the mommy who did fun stuff with them, and not the one who was too busy on the computer trying to keep a record of everything they were doing!  And because of that, I am going to miss and forget some stuff.  And I have to remind myself that it's okay.

Well, I am sure I have forgotten a whole bunch of stuff that has happened the last 4 months, but I do have a few highlights that I was able to jot down so that I could remember to include on here, and I am sure I will think of things that I can add in later.

We will start with the strawberry story.  I laughed my booty off when she did this.  Meredith got scared of something (see, can't even remember what she was scared of!) and she looked at me and said, "Mommy, that scared the STRAWBERRIES out of me!"  I just started laughing and asked her where she heard that.  She looked at me and said, "I not allowed to say 'shit' so I say strawberries instead." Mothering at its finest right there!

Eric had a meeting at Piedmont Park for work a couple months back.....and the girls thought it was HILARIOUS because he had to go to "Peed on Park".  Class...that's how the Reins roll!

I was making dinner the one night and Melanie came up to me talking about a "cod potato".  I had no clue what that meant....then I figured out she was talking about avacado!

And Christmas.....that is always interesting.  Luckily this year there were no fires in the house or illnesses, but we had the comedy of Meredith Rein.  Christmas Eve we were reading the Elf on the Shelf story, and there is a part about how the elf will tell Santa about you cleaning off the stairs and saying your prayers.  Melanie looks at us and says, "I do that!"  Meredith looked at us and said, "I do nothing." 
The next day, she gave Melanie her Christmas present....a Baby Jesus baby doll that we had to special order.  While we were shopping online for it, she saw that they also had a black, asian, and hispanic Jesus dolls.  Melanie opened it all excited, and Mere just looks at her and says, "They had a black one too."  Straight faced, dead serious.  I don't know where that kid comes from!

We also had the Justin Bieber concert....Daddy even came with us, and we all had a blast.  Daddy got major points for coming along with us girls!!!

I will be on here again soon,  but I am not going to beat myself up anymore for not having time all the time!! :)

Awkwardness

Well, I feel weird writing about this, but since I specifically keep this blog to document all of the cute and funny things our girls do so that when they get big on me, I'll have a record of stuff that I would otherwise forget.

Although this...I think it would be next to impossible to forget.

A lot of people teach their kids the proper terms for male and female body parts. I never taught the girls the right words for a few reasons, one being that I feel uncomfortable using those words, secondly, I hate the sounds of those words (I think I would prefer them to say curse words over those words) and lastly, knowing my girls, they would definitely use those words at inappropriate times (like at church or school).

All this being said...Meredith decided to make up her own words for these body parts. While we were in Florida on vacation, she started calling the male part "an American" (Props to my cousins for the comment about how it does salute!!) But then just a week or so ago, she started calling the female part "a McGraw." Now, I habe NO CLUE where she came up with these words, but her big sister agreed that these are GREAT names to use!

So we have Americans and McGraws. Awesome. But here was the best part:  We were watching the presidential debate last night, and our sweet baby girl was sitting next to her daddy before bed. Everytime they said the word "American", she would start giggling. She looked at Eric and asked, "Why they all talking about Americans??"

Wow, I can't wait until I have to have "the talk" with her one day!!!

The Raspberry Dumbboy

Meredith kept talking about the " Raspberry Dumbboy".....it wasn't until she mentioned poking his fat tummy that I realized that she was talking about the Pillsbury Doughboy!

Our Family Vacation!

It had been a few years since we had a week-long vacation that was just the 4 of us, and we finally got one a couple weeks ago!  We have a fall break (thank the good Lord!!) and we decided to do one final summer trip to the beach and to Disney World. 

I wish I had jotted down more of the cute things the girls were doing while we were on our trip, but everything was pretty crazy from before we even left the house!  The night before, my mom made me go to urgent care about my thumb, which she thought was getting infected from when I slammed it in a car door at carpool at work a few weeks ago.  Just to appease her and to make sure I was all good to go on our trip, I went.  Saturday night at 9:00, I was getting x-rays at urgent care.  Not only did I have a staph (sp?) infection on my thumb, it was also broken.  Eric was up in Athens at a very late Georgia game, and I was trying to finish up the last of our packing with my now splinted-up thumb.  It's never dull around here!

Anyway, we had a very uneventful drive down to New Smyrna Beach, where we stayed for the first half of the week.  We stayed in an awesome condo (good job, honey!) and had a very relaxing time on the beach and at both the pools in the complex.  There was a little rain every afternoon (typical Florida weather) and the girls kept themselves occupied with Melanie's Little People Nativity set, where the girls kept acting out the story of the first Christmas....how sweet is that??

 

 

At the beach, the girls kept themselves occupied with the sand and doing their "surfing".  We found a crab on the beach that Daddy caught in his hat so we could see him up close, and when Daddy put the crab back down, he was MAD at Daddy, and just kept staring at him.  We thought he was waiting to attack!

We went to the Canaveral National Seashore one day, just for a change of beach, and we got to see a really cool storm rolling in.  We also saw a tortoise crossing the street and we stopped to take pictures and steer him in the right direction so he wouldn't get hit by a car.

 

 

 

So, after seeing a beautiful sunrise on the way out of New Smyrna Beach, we headed towards Orlando to go to Disney World with our two little Disney Princesses!  Now, I didn't get to take nearly as many pictures as I would have liked, by my memory card stopped working about halfway through the day!  And I got sick walking around the Magic Kingdom....not going to go into detail about that, but I wasn't contagious and "manned up" and made it through the rest of the day with my girls because they were having so much fun!  As Eric always says, "It's not a vacation or holiday without you getting sick and/or hurt!" and I didn't disappoint this time....I managed to be hurt AND get sick!  (I don't do anything half-assed! :)  Melanie (our brave girl) went on Space Mountain not just once, but twice!!!!  She went once with Eric and then again with me.  I had never been before, and I don't think I will be going again!  So we figured she would be up for anything.....and the poor baby freaked out on us on Pirates of the Caribbean.  We looked like horrible parents in that ride because our kid was screaming, "NO, NO, I DON'T WANT TO GO!" the whole time. 

 

 

 

Other than that, they had a great time.  Their favorite was "It's a Small World" which I have always loved (I told the girls all about how my aunt Anne had to take Nicole and me on that ride at least 10 times when we were little!) But we only rode that twice this time.

 

We also did the teacups twice, and Eric almost got all of us sick the last time because he spun us so fast.  We did "Gumbo the Flying Elephant" and the racecars, Aladdin's magic carpet ride, along with seeing the 3D Mickey movie, which we all loved. 

 

 

 

 

We had to go to the Hall of Presidents for Daddy, where we had Melanie perturbed because he made us go see "Ogama.  We don't like Ogama, Daddy."  Then after that we went on the Haunted Mansion ride, where Daddy told Melanie very loudly that "The Hall of Presidents with Ogama is scarier than this ride."  (Gotta love it.)  Both girls loved it, which, again, surprised me after Pirates, but hey, whatever works. We also met the one princess both of the girls wanted to see.....Merida.  They both shot arrows (which I don't have pictures of) and met Princess Merida.  Thank goodness for Disney PhotoPass and their own photographers, because we were able to buy a shot of the girls with Merida! So much fun!

 

 We stayed for the parade of lights and the fireworks....right as the fireworks started, the skies opened up and we had to make a run for it! It was a great day, and Daddy was a great navigator, making sure we got to see everything we wanted, and checking all of the wait times on his phone, so our longest wait was about 10 minutes the whole day! 

The next day we were all pretty tired, so we just hung around the resort for awhile and took full advantage of the awesome pools.  Then we headed over to Universal for a late lunch/early dinner at Margaritaville, which was awesome!  The girls had a great time there.

 

 We went back to the resort after that because it had started to rain again, so we went down to the game room and played for awhile, and then went and got ice cream!

 

After the ice cream, we realized it had stopped raining, so we went outside for some late-night swimming!

 

The next day, we got up and spent a few more hours at the pool, and then we got ready and went for Daddy's favorite part of the trip....a place called Ybor City, where the original Columbia restaurant is located.  We went around the city for awhile, then went to eat dinner at Columbia where we also went to see the flamenco show!  SO much fun, and the food was incredible (especially the flan.  Oh my word, that was delicious!!)

 

 

The only sour spot on our whole trip happened that night after dinner.  We had bought the girls flamenco fans before dinner, and Meredith left hers in the car, so I ran back to get it.  While I was walking back, I got stopped at a crosswalk of a very busy street, where I could see the girls and Eric across the street.  Well, a car flew by, and thankfully God was looking out for her, because about 5 seconds after that last car went by Meredith bolted into the street to get to me.  Eric and I both ran after her screaming, and luckily the light had changed and the traffic wasn't coming anymore, but it scared the living you know what out of both of us!  I think I was in some kind of shock because about a half hour later I just started bawling!!  So thankful that she is okay, and we all said a few extra prayers that night.

 

 

BUT....all in all, we had a FANTASTIC trip, and we can't wait to do it again.  My favorite times are with these 3 wonderful, crazy people....I wouldn't change one thing about any of them!!!!