Pinterest & me

My husband and some of my friends openly make fun of me for my number of Pinterest pins but eh, what do they know. I have never been able to watch TV without doing something else so Pinterest is just perfect for me. I can sit with my iPad and collect ideas. I do almost everything worth doing that I pin and if there was a way to easily clean up your boards my page would be a place of beauty. For now I have a few 'under construction' boards that I might move and some things i'd delete if it didn't take so much darn time to do so. I use Pinterest as a resource for teaching, cooking and diy daily. Basically,  IMO it's the best thing since Starbucks.

Anyway, I do know that you know all about it. The long story there was to 1. avoid embarrassment by saying I know that 4,894 pins is more than the average user has and 2. to brag that I have 1,069 followers! Sheesh if I could just roll that over here to the blog think of the fun. Truly, I get a steady little amount of traffic at nestbliss but it is really fun to pin things on Pinterest and watch that constant social interaction happen when someone else repins, likes, comments or starts following you because they liked a board you put together. It's probably what I always wanted to happen here and the blog just never jumped over that hump where I have lots of interactive readers. I write on my blog because its fun to create an anthology of my life & to write articles about cool stuff but it must be extremely fun for the 'big' bloggers who post and within seconds have comments piling in - it's really a conversation. What a reward that i'm glad to have my little Pinterest piece of.

All that to say come over to Pinterest and join my party! http://pinterest.com/nestbliss/

oh yeah i own a preschool

Well through a long chain of events I co-own a school, just a preschool right now but we have BIG ideas. Co-own with the best, coolest partner ever & we have some awesome (way over-educated) teacher moms that work with us as well. Through an at times intense summer of super hard work we started the school year in an amazing huge old house with hardwood floors, gardens, and porches the size of classrooms. We have a pair of chickens running around and a monster airplane see-saw that 7 children at a time can ride on. Our kids ages 2 to 5 rotate 'classes' all day and take turns in Italian, Yoga, Art & Nature Studio (my class, like the fancy name?), English, Math, Gardening, Music, Sensory experiences & ample blocks of open play. We have gorgeous hand carved wooden dishes in our play kitchen and tons of laughter filling our hallways - life at school is very good. Seeing my own children gathered around our little school's kitchen table cooking with friends and other parents (we are cooperative) is amazing and still highly surreal. I have thought about blogging about school plenty of times but because my blog gets some kind of random traffic and I want to protect the privacy of our families I have been hesitant and really just too busy to even stop and post a little blurb!

I'll give you a little view of our front porch though. These days we eat meals and snacks whole school, family style with our blue picnic tables lined up end to end. My husband built these and 1,000 other things for us this summer & we are already in need of more! Life is full. The ability to bring to life your dreams and imaginations is a superb reality.

Making Happy

I am pretty good at making happy. I have always been. As I watch Ava grow I think she knows how to do it too. Lilly is only 17 months old and there is a particular angst that goes along with this age where you are completely aware but posses very little reason and have low communication skills - i.e. if you are given three gold fish and you want more but there are no more, you can't understand, you're so tired, so you drown yourself in screaming until something comes along to make you forget about them or in Lilly's case your Mama scoops you up and covers you with kisses as you cling to her and sob and sob about the crime of no more goldfish.

(Above her sister touched her favorite cat towel and then I didn't pick her up after she got it back. End of the world.)

But anyway, so we don't know about Lo lo (as we affectionately call her) yet, but me and Ava we are happy makers. I think I was about school age when I started changing my dreams - I remember laying down and closing my eyes and conjuring up my bestest friend Candy Roper. We would run and play all night, my mom would often come in my room thinking I was awake as I would talk to Candy and my other night time pals in my sleep. My Ava has a whole slew of imaginary friends that she pops out anytime she's bored, it's quiet and then all the sudden you realize she's chatting it up with a friend.

I know how many pillows I need to sleep (three - two fluffy, one not), how to make my perfect morning iced latte, the kinds of rugs and pillows and stuff that I need to be happy in any home (it's all about the new West Elm look these days). The saddest, weirdest, most worry some days can be fixed for me with the right Pandora station and my favorite blanket, oh and maybe some Pinterest on my iPhone - so soothing ;) repin, repin, repin...

Sometimes I just need some hard, sweaty all day long work. The kind of work that makes your whole body tired but wipes your mind totally clean. Finding this simple settling in good things is important - so many people seem to be so lost to food, drugs, etc. to find peace. Or when I meet someone really perpetually grumpy it makes me wonder how long it has even been since they felt that full in your belly, warm, happy.

I don't need for all the stresses in my life to go away, they never will, there will always be some weird random thing going on just out of my control. I just need to take a drive with the windows down, put the girls in a full, hot bubble bath and dunk my feet in, write a blog post about the amazing and wonderful things in my life, watch a great movie with Joe.

I often hear people say that you need to find God to find peace but the more I consider this it feels backwards. I see people thinking they are following a spiritual life but not being able to see anything spiritual because they don't know how to slip out of this world into another place just with their own power over their own emotions, settling themselves down to a good, solid, happy place where they can hear.

p.s. When I write a post like this I always get emails asking if I am sad about something. Really today my motivation for writing this is watching my girls interact, feeling so inspired by Ava. Thinking of my husband who is at the moment working 7 days at week and gone from 6am to almost 10pm some days. Thinking of Lilly who poor little thing is getting six teeth in and how well this is all just life, busy and crazy and I want my family to always know how to walk out of those stresses at any moment and just be happy. How to make happy - no spouse or parent or friend can do that for you.

A Week-ish

I was glancing through my phone and I have been snapping photos of my girls like crazy the past two weeks. It's funny because sometimes dumping my iPhone photos can be so spiritual for me. The way I feel about my girls these days is almost surreal. These quick phone photos from the past 'weekish' are so inspiring to me, they remind me that no matter what small things might be troubling me and my husband from time to time the big picture is that we are living an amazing life surrounded by amazing little souls. 

 

We had so many first moments - first time swinging from the monkey bars without help, first time blowing a bubble, ha the first time Lilly LET Ava read to her (Ava can read!), the first time seeing baking soda and colored vinegar react. Also, I remembered what happens when I let Ava turn on the hose for 'just a second to fill up her watering can real quick'. 

 We had excellent times playing and exploring the world. I am reminded every second how easy it is to make children utterly, blissfully happy and I think that's why I've always liked them so much. This week, Ava told me that 'when she used to be a grown up she was a doctor' - a very classically creepy thing for Ava to say. Once exactly when my hand touched her toy airplane, that she hadn't seen for weeks, high up on my tall chest I heard her say to her Dad in the next room 'can I play with my wood airplane now'. She's crazy happy so we've just decided it's fine that she talks like a tiny psychic half the time. 

That Lilly is just growing up. She (clearly) hates the sandbox, but I still toss her feet in anyway. She has finally started to grace us with words, when she feels the inclination and she clearly is understanding most of what we are saying to her now. Sometimes, Lilly just clear as day bursts out with some word like she has just always said it, she may or may not repeat it after that as she is basically immune to praise from us and chooses when she will do almost everything. Watching her grow into a mini person is just amazing, comparing her now at 16 months to where Ava is at 3 and a half and thinking about what will happen to her over the course of the next two years is mind boggling. I always think the biggest difference in having more children is that you don't know the latter children yet the way you know your first child. I will have always had two more years of knowing Ava in and out and it's in someways like Lilly and I are just beginning. Such a strange power to be able to choose when and how to add these little humans to your family, to the world. The awesomeness of being alive. 

Happy 4th of July

Hope your 4th was as much fun as ours was! We actually celebrate on the 3rd of July because of my husband's work schedule. Which in Atlanta is brilliant because there are tons of fireworks on the 3rd. We then spent the week following in Florida with my family. I am realizing when looking through the photos from this summer how random they are. It is so much harder to take photos of everything while chasing around two kids!

Me, my brother and his new girlfriend (we like her). But how much will she like me posting photos of her in a bathing suit on my blog, hmm. 

Lilly and Gransheila. Lilly is getting cuter by the second.

Me after a long night the night before. 

Ava and Uncle Christopher

Lilly relaxing at my grandparent's motor home.

The whole crew - on the night of our 8th wedding anniversary by the way.

Waiting for fireworks to start at Stone Mountain.

Lilly's First Beach Trip - The Panhandle beaches are still beautiful

We visited my husband's parents this month and spent some time on Orange Beach in Alabama which is very near to Pensacola, Florida and along the path of the big oil spill. The beach was absolutely beautiful. It seems that for all the trouble they had figuring out how to stop the oil they haven't had any trouble figuring out how to clean it up.  After we moved away from home 8 years ago the thing I miss the most is the dreamy Florida Panhandle beaches with big sand dunes and sugary white sand that your feet sink into - heaven. 

Some shots from Lilly's first Beach Day

My swimsuit is hot. I know. Who is this a good picture of? I don't know.

Lilly was unimpressed. 

Ava was in awe. 

Lilly was tortured.

Ava was in sandcastle heaven.

Lilly tried really hard not to laugh. 

Ava tried really hard to run straight into the ocean as fast as she could without anyone stopping her. 

happy to be a mom day

My entire life was a preparation to be mother to these yummy little girls. The likely hood that I will ever do anything more important than being a very good mother to them is teeny, tiny. Really, what could be more important? Very little. 

Ava took this one! Lilly's bow is from billiebrand (I love her bows)

The Girls

Lilly is turning 6 months old in a week and Ava is two. They are already so different. It will be so interesting to see their little personalities develop and contrast.

Lilly is such a lover, so sweet and so affectionate. She is extremely laid back and loves to play with toys. She has big eyes and huge long eyelashes like her sister but much more hair than Ava had even when she was one. Lilly has my light skin tone and her daddy's beard gives her red bumps on her cheeks if he kisses her a whole bunch - but since she thinks it is hilarious he does it anyway.  Cracking up laughing is her most popular trick around the house. Lilly is really close to sitting on her own and she tries really hard to sit up. She adores food, possibly more than any baby I have seen and she can already polish off an entire jar of stage 1 food - which in 'non-baby' speak is a whole lot! Lilly hardly ever cries and everyone notices and comments on it. Probably her love for food combined with the fact that she is weighs 17lbs now helps her sleep so well for naps and at night. Everyone in the house calls her 'the lilla billa' or just 'lilla' for short.

Ava is blossoming into a remarkable little person. She is really funny and her language skills are quite impressive and almost flawless. Ava is absolutely the girliest tom boy I know. She likes to dress up and play with dolls but she prefers throwing sand and running in the sprinkler. She is such a daredevil and must be watched like a hawk. Almost every night after dinner I push her on the swing outside and she screams for me to swing her 'higher, all the way to the sky' while I swing her so high it would probably make your stomach turn to watch her. She has her 'two' moments but she is mostly extremely agreeable and reasonable. Ava will eat anything and will pass up cheese crackers for a bag of whole kalamata olives. Her eyes have changed from blue to the same green as mine and she has her daddy's olive skin. These days we still call her 'Ava Mava' but mostly the shorter versions 'the mave' and 'Ave'.

Newborn Photo Shoot

I was looking through my draft posts and found this one! This is a newborn photo shoot that BlueRayne Photography took at our old house in Florida when Lilly was 10 days old (about 4 months ago). I think they turned out perfect! It was also nice to have some photos of our family taken in our house taken right before we moved. I love having photos taken at home. It is so much easier on everyone and you capture a memory of your home. 

Here are two where Jessica owner of BlueRayne and I were trying out some things and they turned out a tad awkward but still cute and they make me laugh because Lilly was so annoyed and we were trying so hard to be Anne Geddes. 

Her eyes just happened to close here - she didn't fall asleep in the basket! We also had her naked in the basket and I couldn't keep her legs closed and she peed on the blanket...

I tried really, really hard to keep her all tucked up but not happening.

p.s. I started a Facebook Fan Page so go to the side bar and 'like' it o.k.? Thanks!

Sweet Sisters

These girls are awesome. This went on for an hour, it started with Ava asking me if Lilly could lay in her nap mat with her. Ava read Lilly book after book and Lilly just turned in towards Ava. I am just in awe of them. 

Ava is telling Lilly 'this is our Mommy and Daddy'

Lilly 3 months Ava 2 years 6 months