Father's Day

I know I say it all the time, BUT...MY HUSBAND IS THE BEST FATHER EVER!!!! There is just no denying it! We spent Father's Day having a relaxing family day! I got up and made Jasper French Toast, Bacon and Hash browns for breakfast, spoiled him with presents and the girls sang him the special Father's Day song we learned in the daycare and gave him their special gifts! We then went up and visited with Jasper's grandpa and rounded off the day with a quick shopping trip in Chico! It was great to just have a day to celebrate my husband and all the things he does for our family...Here are some of the reasons that he is the best dad...
1. He does the girls hair (Sorry babe I know this was a secret;)) I'm talking, the man does it good!
2.He did almost every single bath time through my pregnancies and heck even now.
3.He has always been the night time baby feeding guy (I know I am making myself look like a slacker now)
4.He has never ending patience with our children.
5.He has changed just as many diapers on our kids as me.
6.He can recite many lines from children's books because he has spent countless hours reading to our kids.
7.He has given up many hunting seasons, and fishing trips due to pregnancies and babies. (HUGE I KNOW)
8.He is willing to sport my mini van around town and can rock it like no other dad around!;)
9.He has always been patient with the 1,000,000 photo shoots I have made him be in.
10.He can sing the whole intro to Veggie Tales This is HUGE for our girls...Makes them giggle everytime!;)
11.He loves our children and me with a love stronger than I have ever seen. I literally can see in his eyes each day how much he loves us and it makes me feel, proud, safe, loved and content.
12.He has made it a priority to raise our children in a God loving home and center our family around Christ. Having a husband that loves God and has made faith a priority in his/our lives, is huge to me!

My darling husband, you are one of the greatest blessings God has ever blessed me with! You truly are the most amazing father and I know someday our kids are going to think back and say, man...our dad was amazing to us!

A quick family trip to the Afterbay the day before Father's Day!

Daddy caught a fish for the girls before we left! Reagan thought we could bring him home for our fish tank.;)

Giving daddy his special Father's Day gifts from them and singing him the Father song.:)

I HAD to post this picture. LOL! This is what you get when you ask a man over 70 to take a picture:)))

Jasper, Great grandpa Warren and the kids all feeding the horses. A MUST when we visit grandpa!;)
So there you have it...The best dad in the world:) (Of course my own dad is right up there too! When you are growing up, you dream of finding love, finding a sol mate, finding that person that knows what you are going to say before you say it, that person that when you look out the window and see him playing with your children, it makes you stop and say "I am blessed"....Well....I am blessed! I found that man! I intend to spend everyday until forever raising our beautiful family with this incredible man! We love you babe!

It's been a while....

My oh my...I have been on quite the vacation from my poor neglected blog! For several reasons actually... First of all I have been crazy busy with the daycare! Early opening, late closing, drop-ins and so on! At the end of the day I am just super exhausted and focused on my family so the computer kind of gets the boot till bedtime, and once the girls are in bed, I'm just too tired! I also felt that I was maybe spending too much time with things like blogging and so on, so I took a break! I am back and refreshed though!
Lately I have really been trying to find the balance between work and my family. Some people look at the fact that I am a stay at home mom and are jealous and think it is easy...Let me just tell you, it is work when you run a daycare from home! I can deal with the on your feet 12 hours straight, wiping noses, changing diapers, toddler tantrums, late pick-ups and on and on...What is hard is making my children understand that THEY are still my priority. All day from before they even wake until almost dinner time, my life is full of several other little ones and my girls can get, well a little jealous because at the end of the day I'm too tired for them. I have really been working on this and I have had a blast spending time with them outside in the pool, taking family trips anywhere to just escape the house and cuddling with them more than ever. I absolutely am blessed for being able to have a career where I am home with my own children and other amazing children and I hope as my children grow, they will appreciate and respect that I picked my career for them. I picked it so I would have the freedom to not only have a job, but be a mom while doing it each day. I feel God led me to opening up my own daycare and I know that God has worked in me so much over the past year and helped me grow as a woman, a mother, a business owner and He has definitely helped me with patience along the way!;) Just yesterday I was speaking to a daycare provider that ran a large care daycare for 11 years and recently shut down. She put it very well with simply saying "it takes a special kind of person to run a daycare". So very true. Not trying to pat myself on the back, but it is a very fun, tough and rewarding job! Nothing makes me beam with pride more than listening to a 2 year old recite The Pledge Of Allegiance or a 3 year old that can show me the month of their birthday and spell it, it's the little things that make me so proud! Just knowing that I helped them do that. It's amazing!

             One of my sweet little daycare boys and his mommy baked me cupcakes for my birthday!:) Made my day that they thought of me! Here I am with a few of the kids blowing out my cupcake candle!

A FANTASTIC weekend....

This weekend really was a GREAT one! Normally I am a total hermit and NEVER leave home....I am determined to start getting out of the house and enjoying family time whenever possible though! It's funny because when we had Peyton we thought it was soooo hard doing anything with ONE kid. HAHAHAHA..Little did I know how EASY those days were!;) Now, we have FOUR to take everywhere. I have to be honest though, it's actually way easier than I ever thought it would be. We manage just fine in restaurants, malls, stores, parks, and yesterday was our first trip with all four to the water park! It was a blast but man are my kids crazy when they hit that place. They go every which way and you can't blink or they have moved. VERY scary for an overprotective mommy like me! I think I put my kids up and down the water slide at least 100 times plus I helped another mom with a little one because she was by herself. I think it just comes second nature to me to help another mom whenever and however she may need it, because after all moms have to look out for each other right?!
So anyways, Friday night Peyton and daddy went on a Father/daughter date with our friend and his son whom graciously invited Peyton and Jasper and Peyton had a blast! I am so happy they had that time together. Then Saturday Jasper and I escaped for a quick movie date while grandma/grandpa Warren babysat!:) Then we headed down for dinner and a little shopping at the Fountains in Roseville. We finished off the weekend with a fun time at the water park! It was a great weekend!! I hope everyone else had a great one too!! I am feeling quite humbled and blessed and seriously there is nothing more incredible than the family God has blessed me with. I know, I know I say that all the time, but really it's true!;)

                                    Peyton and Adam....They MAY get married someday;)

They were very excited to meet him I hear!

                                                     Water park fun!!

Please don't mind that I am a hot mess in this picture and my saggy shirt makes me look pregnant again...I MUST wear clothes when swimming...You DO NOT want to see what's under the clothes! Anyways, it's Caiden's first time swimming so it had to be documented!

OH......and look WHO IS A BIG GIRL NOW!!!! Last night was Jordyn's FIRST night in a BIG GIRL BED! No more crib! She did great! It took about an hour for her to stay in bed and go to sleep because her oldest sis is a nut that can live on NO sleep so she kept her awake....Jasper went in at one point in the night when Reagan called for him to cover her up, and Jordyn was asleep covered with her blanket on the floor...Not sure how she got there lol. Other than that, she did great! Let me tell you though, it is time for a BIGGER house 4 kids and a large daycare DO NOT belong in a 3 bedroom house....Does anyone want to buy my house at a ridiculous over market value price so I can go buy a 4-5 bedroom house? PLEASE!;))

SO EXCITED TO BE A BIG GIRL LIKE HER SISSYS!!!!

For a moment

There seems to be a lot of these moments for me lately if I just look for them. You know, the moments when all is well in the world and you sit in wonder at why God thought you were worthy of such an amazing life. A life in which you are surrounded by the blessing of children laughing, dancing, and even crying....
This little girl and I have had our rough moments lately....We are together 24-7 LITERALLY...From 6:30am to 8:00pm there is no time I am not with her. It can be tough and we wear on each other and get cranky with each other like no other. BUT....then I have a moment like this where I watch her in all of her glory, so proud of herself, so beautiful, so angelic, and I remember...I am BLESSED! Blessed beyond anything I could ever deserve.

                                                       I LOVE her: )

                                Peyton and her ballet class! Recital is in TWO weeks!!

                   The class with their teachers! Miss Janelle has taught Peyton so much and I am so thankful Peyton has had her as a teacher! She has learned discipline, concentration and respect from the way Miss Janelle teaches and I love it!



My life is chaotic, but each day there are moments, just moments, that I am in awe of the life Jasper and I have created together with the help of our Heavenly Father....If only for a moment the world is still and I am filled with a quiet joy in my heart and I know it makes all the hard times worth it! Life is great!

Sanity Saver of the Week

OOPS....I am a little late on this one this week!;) It's been a busy one!
Here is what saved my sanity this week as I paid bills.....(For some this is probably no big thing, for the others, TRY IT, it works great!)
Well, I sit down twice a month and pay all of our bills. Normally it's the 1st and the 15th. Not sure why those exact dates, but I adopted them around 8 years ago and they have just stuck! It seemed like I was always panicking thinking I had forgot to pay something, and I am a FREAK about bills...I REFUSE to have a late fee! Although I have Quickbooks and could probably do a million spreadsheets, I am not that smart when it comes to those things.  I went in to Word and made a simple document with every single bill we had and the amounts we pay, I also put all online accounts info, automatic withdrawl info and so on. This way I make sure as I pay them that I know exactly what should be paid. You never know if something could end up lost in the mail and then you are stuck with a late fee because you didn't get the bill and forgot it wasn't paid. I know this sounds so easy that why wouldn't everyone do it, but some just throw their bills around and pay what they see. I love having a monthly checklist to make sure I didn't miss any of my online accounts and things like that.
My other big reason for doing this is because I have always paid %100 of our bills. From the moment Jasper and I got together and got our first home, he handed me his checkbook and said "here you go"!;) I always worry about what he would do if something happened to me..He would have no idea where to begin to keep the ball rolling....By having the list, he knows all accounts, passwords, balances and so forth!:)
There you have it...Another look into my OCD brain:))) Happy Friday everyone!! Enjoy the weekend!

Feeling like a "sometimes" mommy lately...

      For the past week or so, I have kind of been in a crummy place. I was not quite sure and then Friday afternoon it finally hit me. I have not been feeling like a "good" mom lately. It seems funny to even say that because after all, I spend 24 hours a day 7 days a week with my children, rarely ever I mean ever get a few hours away and I try to dedicate all my time to them. No tv, very little time on the computer at night till they are in bed, read books together all the typical stuff. It's just that it's been different lately....I always promised myself that if I was going to have a daycare in my home, my kids would still get "all" of me and they would come first no matter what....Well, easier said than done! Now don't get me wrong, I LOVEEEE what I do and I am so blessed for each and every child that comes into my life and I love them each like my own. It's just that my children have seemed a little on the jealous side lately because these other children get so much of my love and attention all day long, then by the end of the day I am so tired and a little kidded out and my own don't get near as much "quality" time as I would like. So I had a talk with Peyton and reminded her that my job is a blessing for us both. If I chose any other profession, I would not get to spend my days with her and she wouldn't get to have so many sweet friends to play with each day!:) I then made myself a promise that no matter how LONG and exhausting my days may be, (8 kids, crafts, curriculum, exercise, dancing, constant cleaning, nose wiping, boo-boo fixing, fight mediating, holding,cooking, feeding, diaper changing and so on can be a tad tiring;)) I am going to give my children the quality mommy they deserve each day! I am now trying really hard to give alone time to each, and also learning time with me one on one to help in the areas they need. Peyton for instance is working on learning to read simple sight words so she needs time for that. Reagan is working on recognizing letters and numbers, Jordyn needs help on pronouncing certain letters and on improving vocabulary in general because in reality I haven't spent much time working with her and Peyton always speaks for her!;) Caiden, well he just needs extra kisses and tickles!:) Anyways, today I got to take Peyton and Reagan to the movies which was so special, and then just Jordy and I went to yogurt together! It was so special just spending a few sweet minutes alone! (Now if only there was enough time for Jasper and I at the end of the day...I just remind him that our time will come!) These moments are so fleeting, and in what I do for a living, it's so easy to let your own kids slip through the cracks, and I just never want that to happen! I have realized that besides my God, my family is the only other thing I can count on...Friends may come and go, but my family is forever! I sure hope they know how much I love them, even on my most exhausting days!

I need more crazy, happy, spunky, energetic, hyper moments like this with my beauties!

Sanity Saver of the Week

I really am loving this sanity saver stuff! It's amazing how stuff that has just become second nature to me really helps others come up with their own ideas to help them with the day to day exhausting things! Here is a super simple one, but I sure do love it!;)
    I used to be SUPER on top of things like birthday's, anniversaries, and such. Well....Once you have 4 kids and a daycare to run, even a calender can't keep track of it all.;) I now like to keep a stock pile of greeting cards on hand! Whenever I have the time (and extra money, those things are NOT cheap unless you go to the dollar store) I go and take the time to find a TON of cards for each and every occasion. I mean, kids birthday's, mother's day, father's day, graduation, get well, congrats, and more! I also like to stock up on Target gift cards for kiddos when I can! I keep them in a special box so I know right where they are. That way if I am running behind or too busy to have time to go get a gift right before the party, I am still prepared! I know it sounds impersonal to just give kids a gift card, but these days, I have discovered kids LOVE to go pick their own gifts! I love when my girls get gift cards because it gives us time to go shop together just the two of us and pick something! They feel special because they get to "pay"...My girls LOVE to make their own cards for people most of the time, I also love to make my own cards for people, but now I am prepared for those moments I really need a card and we don't have the time to make one!!