Assistant

Today I had another photo client over, and since Raya was at preschool I only had Miss Sassy Pants here---she makes a handy photo assistant, and I like to sneak in a quick picture of my assistant from time to time :-)



Lots more yucky weather is supposedly on it's way here for tomorrow---is it spring yet?! At least I made it to the grocery store today---I have plenty of jelly beans on hand to get me through another snow day <3

Happy Hump Day!

Raggamuffins

I realize that I'm sort of "known" for having my girls dressed cutesy most of the time, and yes, I'm the first to admit that we tend to get dressed up even on days we stay at home (well, the girls do, not me! lol) ....BUT we have our fair share of ragamuffin days too! And yesterday was one of those days---a snow day so we stayed at home, didn't even do their hair (gasp!). But I had to share these pictures because it's a good example of how well the girls play together. I know I'm lucky, but I'd say 95% of the time my girls play beautifully together. Their personalities compliment each other perfectly. Brielle is a diva and by most accounts a little hard to please, but Raya is a people pleaser and goes out of her way to keep Brielle happy. So they were meant to be sisters! haha. Brielle makes crazy demands and Raya happily meets those demands, and they are both happy :-)

So here they were on an ordinary Monday, unkempt ragamuffins, playing (and making a huge mess!) happily all morning long...

We ended up with lots of vday balloons b/c my mom bought the girls balloons and then Lee didn't know she had done that and brought home more balloons for them haha.

See---unkempt ragamuffin! ;-)

Here was Raya today for school though---a little more put together haha. She looks so grown up when she wears jeans!

Ballet Observation Day

Friday was the first observation day at ballet since Brielle joined the class. I was excited to see how Brielle did---she's so short compared to the other kids in the class and it just cracks me up! She did great though---wanted to be near Raya at all times, but followed directions well and was adorable dancing around ;-)







Where's Brielle? hehe


















Grandma Donna came to watch too

Sister Saturday---and other misc.

Here was our Sister Saturday picture for the week---can't believe it's been 7 weeks already!


This weekend I took pictures and more pictures!

On Saturday I had this mother/son pair....


I was dying over the little guy's cute outfit!



And then on Sunday I took more pictures! And adorable cousin duo...




I wanted to transplant her red hair onto my children :-P



Other than pictures we hung out at home, did some grocery shopping, at lunch out yesterday....nothing too exciting. Today is another snow day for Raya, which makes #1,895,608 this year lol.

As a health update from my previous post, my bloodwork all came back good, so we still don't really know what the problem is. Current best guess is that I'm having yet another "rare" reaction/side effect....possibly to the medicine I was taking to detox from the *other* medicine I was reacting too. I just don't handle meds well haha. I'm feeling a little better now though so we'll see how the week goes.

This weekend I also worked on getting my application together so that I can apply for a school psychologist position for this coming fall. Since Raya will be starting kindergarten, and Brielle will be starting preschool, the plan is that I'll go back to work full time as a psychologist for the state in the fall. It just depends on what positions open up, because with my job I apply to the local state agency and then they assign me district(s) to work in, so even though they are posting openings I won't know the exact schools until later. So I will apply and interview and then make a decision about whether I want the job after I find out how far of a drive I'll have, etc. I'm having mixed feelings about going back to work right now. I am definitely very ready for Raya to be in school full time---she loves school and her friends, and will have lots of fun. And I'm soooo ready for Brielle to go to preschool/daycare....she is a little stinker and listening to people other than mom is going to be so good for her lol. And I am totally excited about the money I'll be making (and spending) if I get hired for fall lol. However, I'm definitely not looking forward to early mornings haha. But I worked for Raya's first year of life and I adapted fine, so I'm sure I'll figure it out :-P  And the plus side is that I'll have my summers off, and xmas break/spring break/etc., so sort of the best of both worlds. I will be sure to update you all if/when I get hired! :-)

Happy Monday everyone!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Click to enlarge photo

Raya's Valentines

I wanted to take the easy way out this year, so I bought little boxes of Valentine tattoos for Raya to pass out at preschool on Friday. But then I discovered the boxes didn't have any place to write a name---go figure!

So that left me scrambling to find something Raya could write her name on and affix to the boxes of tattoos.

....which brings us to this

I'll be sharing more from the girls' Valentine's Day photo shoot on Friday ;-)

Sick :-( (and sister saturday)

Sorry it's been quiet around my blog lately, and I haven't really been keeping up with reading other blogs either. But some of you may remember that around New Years I started a dairy/egg/red meat free diet to try and help my rheumatoid arthritis. Well for the first few weeks it seemed like it was helping--I was feeling great. But then I started having itching all over my body---no rash, just tons of itching. Well my new rheumatologist said he thought I was having a rare side effect from one of my meds, and so for 11 days I drank a detox drink 3 times daily to try and get that medicine out of my system. While that did seem to help the itching about 1.5 weeks ago I started getting new symptoms. Horrible neck stiffness and pain, and ear pain. My family doctor checked me over and I had no signs of illness, no ear infection etc. She gave me a muscle relaxer for my neck and I started seeing a physical therapist last week. But then over the weekend the pain started getting even worse, and it feels like it's in my jaw, teeth, head, etc. Basically everything above my shoulders feels like it's being constantly squeezed in a vice grip and/or throbbing. Went back to my rheumatologist yesterday and he just really has no idea what's going on with me. He said maybe I'm having an unknown side effect to the detox drink---but that seems like a stretch to me lol. I am waiting to hear back about my blood work to see if that gives us any insight. I am nervous b/c I had cancer in my neck 10 years ago, so any pain in my neck freaks me out....but I had an MRI done in June and everything was fine as of then, and so they think it's unlikely that I would suddenly have a huge outbreak or something. So anyways, send any healing vibes my way because I'd really like to get some answers soon !!

And so as not to end on a Debbie Downer note, here are the girls---sporting Matilda Jane (Raya's top was a Target clearance find that matches the Matilda Jane skirt perfectly!)





Oh, and a belated Sister Saturday picture---week 6 (Raya wouldn't wear leggings!)