We tried to squeeze in a few fun last minute things the week before Christmas with my grandma since she was here to visit.

Still trying to play catch up here on the blog and document all the December happenings! Hopefully I can get it all done by New Years so we can start fresh for 2017!

I turned 28 on the 15th... inching ever closer to the big 3-0 you guys! Sometimes I'm like "eh... its just a number" and other times I'm all "oh my gosh! Ew! 30 is old!" Growing older has its pluses and minuses. For example.... Minus - bags under the eyes, wrinkles, chunkiness thats harder to lose,  and not having a clue what your 16 year old sister and 18 year old brother are talking about when they use "cool" sayings...


Friday we had Mark's family over for a little Christmas Party because we won't be heading to his Granny's this year (more on that later) and we enjoyed dinner and an ornament exchange and fun Christmas crafts with the little girls.

We continued our annual tradition of going to Christmas Town at Busch Gardens, only we got to go twice this year! Our tradition has been with Mark's family but my family had never been and they really wanted to check it out this year, so my parents surprised us all with tickets and we enjoyed the day there as a family the Sunday after Thanksgiving.

Mondays are hard mom days for me.

Monday is my 'go grocery shopping, get laundry done and get the house back in order from the weekend' day and I have to get it all done by the time I have to leave for work at 2. Since I work Monday afternoons that also means I have to prep dinner, throw getting ready for work in there somewhere and get Reaghan down for her nap before I leave. I'm super blessed that Mark works from home on Mondays and I don't have to take Reaghan anywhere while I go to work, but Mondays sure do make for busy mornings here at home. Usually there is something on my check list that just doesn't get done - today it was vacuuming.

We broke our usual tradition this year and decided to put up our Christmas lights before Thanksgiving. *gasp!* The first 2 weekends after Thanksgiving were packed full with family fun things so we decided to get a head of the game and take advantage of a nice warm day and put some pretties up outside!

It was a challenge trying to figure out how to put lights on our new house. You guys, we love the two peak's that bookend our home, but man are they high when you're trying to reach them! We struggled for literally hours just to get the lights up over the garage before Mark decided it wasn't going to happen unless he had 1.) a better ladder and 2.) someone to help him who wasn't 7 months pregnant, a toddler, or a brother-in-law who confined to a wheelchair. haha We were trying our best to give him a hand, but I'll be honest, we weren't doing much more than holding the lights. We set everything else up and then the next day Mark went and got his late grandpa's industrial ladder with his dad and came back and finished all of the lights in like 20 minutes. haha oh the poor hours we spent in frustrations that we'll never get back... At least our first experience with the house was memorable!

First a Big Girl Bed and now potty training! Reaghan is getting the hang of all of the big girl milestones before she becomes a big sister and its so bittersweet to watch.

Potty training has been just a tad bit more challenging than the transition to a big girl bed. Before we started she hadn't actually gone to the bathroom on a potty before but was showing all the other signs of being ready. She was super interested whenever I used the bathroom and always wanted to flush the toilet for me. She wanted her diaper changed right away after she would poop and was even telling me several times throughout the day when she peed in her diaper.

I was nervous to start because I once we started I didn't want to go back to diapers but I wasn't totally sure she was ready. I mean, theres no way to know unless you try right? I really wanted to make sure when we started that it was for good and I knew if we didn't do it now then it wouldn't happen until the spring, well after the baby was here, and the thought of that spurred me on to just get it done! I'd always heard that doing it in a weekend was possible and thats the way we wanted to go.

Prep Work:

We talked it up with Reaghan for a few days before we planned to start to get her really excited about what was about to happen. We bought a little potty chair for her for the bathroom and had her practice sitting on it at night before bath for a few days before we started. I took her to the store and we picked out some pretty underwear and Mark picked out a few potty training books that we started reading with her a couple days before as well.

Reward:

Potty chart with stickers and a bowl of M&M's - 2 for pee, 5 for poop!

Day 1:

When we got up that Thursday morning I excitedly got her out of her bed and reminded her that today was the day that we were starting to go potty on the potty like a big girl! I texted Mark to pray for us and I put her in panties right away and we went out for breakfast. She had lots of accidents that morning but we just cleaned them up together and I said things like "uh oh. pee goes in the potty. lets try harder next time!" and "remember if you feel pee coming to tell mommy!" We spent the morning sitting on towels in the living room reading books, coloring and drinking lots of juice and lemonade. Her favorite activities! And setting a timer on my phone for trying to go potty every 15 minutes. We would sit and read on the potty and if she didn't have to go then we just tried again later. She successfully peed in the potty for the first time around 11:45! I realized I didn't have any stickers to put on the potty chart I made her so I texted Mark to stop and get stickers on his way home for lunch. She LOVED putting stickers on the chart and I realized that was motivating her way more than the promised M&M after a successful pee pee. By nap time at 2:30 I was exhausted! She had peed on the potty 7 times but had also had twice as many accidents! I put her in a diaper for nap time and was happy to take a break from being on a constant potty vigil!

I made kind of a spur of the moment decision a few weeks ago to run a fun 10k the weekend of Halloween. I hadn't been running very much, so I wasn't sure how much of the 6.2 miles I was going to be able to actually run but there were two girls at work who also wanted to run it while pushing their kiddos in the strollers and they were willing to walk/run it with me so we decided to go for it.

I've run the race a few times pre-baby with Mark and his sister and brother-in-law.

After we got home from the Apple Orchard I was quick to start browsing Pinterest for some yummy new apple baked goods.  We brought home so many apples! I took some to coworkers and my family, still had some yummy fresh ones to munch on for snacks and made lots of baked yummy goodness. I made an apple pie, apple turnovers, and a new favorite - Apple Snicker Doodle Bars! They were so good I made them twice! I found it from a pin from Back for Seconds, a cooking blog that I had never been on before, but I'll probably be checking back there for some more delicious recipes since this one turned out so well!

My pictures don't do it justice, but if you're looking for a delicious fall snack you need to try this.

A few weeks ago we headed up to Massanutten for our annual tradition of a long weekend in the mountains to go apple picking and enjoy some fun fall sights and smells! Like I said last year when I wrote about this trip - it's something I look forward to every year!

We left Friday morning and if you follow me on Instagram you might have seen my sappy post about being in the throws of parenting a toddler, because its hard sometimes. I know I just have one so I have a lot of learning to do, but still... I sometimes feel overwhelmed with the challenges and its moments like this sweet, pink, fuzzy bag full of all of the toys Reaghan sweetly helped me pick out for the trip that give me all the warm and fuzzies in my heart and give me the breath of fresh air to keep pressing on through the tantrums.