Mrs. H

Once Upon a Time…

Long, long ago, a girl met a boy and they fell in love. They married, and had beautiful children and lived happily ever after. But that wasn’t the end. You see, all because two people fell in love… Two more could fall in love, and two more, and on and on… Until finally one day a boy named Duane met a girl named Carol, and they fell in love. And that, folks, is where this story gets interesting. Because they got married, and one day they had a baby girl. Suddenly Duane was a Daddy. But not just any ole Daddy.

He was MY Daddy.

I have so many happy memories with my Daddy. Washing cars, planting flowers, riding tandem on a two-seater bicycle, and watching lots of football games. I remember vacations we took and evenings to visit him at work and take picnic dinners. I remember “princess rides” to bed at night and pancake breakfasts made special for me. But most of all, I remember that he was there. Every band concert. Every school program. Every everything. He supported me EVERY. SINGLE. STEP. He was there.

I remember him telling me that I didn’t have to find a ton of good guys to marry- I only needed one. And that somewhere out there was the right man that God had for me. A man who would love me and take care of me and be a good Daddy to our children. I remember lots of times when I knew he was right, and lots of times when I questioned his wisdom in that matter. Would I really ever find a man as wonderful as my own Daddy? Surely not.

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But you see, before that boy, Duane, fell in love with that girl, Carol, another boy and girl had met and fallen in love. Ray and Sherry had met, fallen in love, and married. And Ray had become a Daddy ten years before I came along. But he wasn’t just any Daddy.

He was Cody’s Daddy.

I’ve heard fond memories of working on old cars, mowing lawns, fishing, and camping. I’ve heard stories about Boy Scout adventures and canoe trips. I’ve heard so many wonderful things about that Daddy. And I know they are true because I see the example he set lived out.

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Because one day I fell in love with Ray’s boy, Cody. We got married, and after a while of trying and trying to have a baby, we had our beautiful little girl. We lost two very young angels to miscarriages, and then we had our handsome little boy. And Cody isn’t just any boy any more.

He’s my babies’ Daddy. He’s my husband. He’s my rock. He’s my world.

He is absolutely an amazing Daddy. And I’m going to make sure that our kids ALWAYS know what a wonderful man they are blessed with as their father.

He’s there at work, working hard to support us. He’s home as soon as possible for games of hide and seek, trains, marble run building, and lots and lots of book reading. He’s here for little mini dance performances and for new words. He’s here to play “vrroom vrroom” cars, and help with baths. He puts forth huge effort to keep our kids happy and functional and well cared for.

He doesn’t hesitate to let me get breaks away from the house, and encourages my extroverted side despite being an introvert himself. He never complains about being with his kids. He loves our babies with everything in him, and absolutely cares about every aspect of their lives.

I love each of these three Daddy’s so much, and each in different ways. I am SO BLESSED to have such a wonderful Daddy, Father-in-Law, and Husband. And my kids are SO BLESSED to have such an amazing PawPaw, Pappy, and Daddy!! Love to all three of you!!

Happy Father’s Day 2015!

Painted Flower Bouquet

It’s time for another Friday segment of Fun with Art!! We have been doing a lot of fun things lately, but she’s been on a big dry erase/crayon book/scribble on paper mode, so I haven’t had a ton of art ideas to share with you. This idea came from several weeks ago when we were painting and she grabbed a silk flower and wanted to paint it… and for some odd reason, I said ok. What she made turned out beautifully, and you might have seen it if you follow my Facebook page. Here is the one she did:

It was already yellow, and had a large “diamond” in the middle, which she completely covered in paint. So anyway, since she enjoyed it, when we were at Dollar Tree one day, I picked up a bouquet of white silk flowers, thinking she could really get creative with them. This morning we finally pulled out the paints and painted them. I think they turned out absolutely gorgeous!!Here are a few tips/tricks for painting success when it comes to silk flowers:

1. Buy them cheap. The cheaper the better.

2. Use a good acrylic paint because it’ll go on very easily and not make the petals so wet that they stick together. (It also dries relatively quickly.)

3. Carefully pull the flowers off of the stem to paint them.

4. Let them dry individually on a paper plate before putting them back on the stem.

5. Be creative!! Remember that you don’t have to use a million colors to make some beautiful flowers.

6. Paint the stems and leaves too, if you want! Why not?

7. HAVE FUN!!!

8. Please SHARE your painted flower bouquets on my Facebook page! I’d love to see the ones that you create!

These would be a fabulous birthday/Mother’s Day/teacher appreciation gift that can be customized to the recipient’s favorite colors, could be tied with a ribbon and/or placed into a small vase!

Happy Birthday, Baby Girl!

Well, sweet girl, the day is here. You are once again celebrating a birthday. Three years ago today, I held you in my arms and you made me a Mommy. I was so overwhelmed by you that the nurse had to take you back when I blacked out momentarily. The last three years have been such an amazing journey, that I can only imagine what lies ahead.

I never dreamed that I would have a three year old who would read the title aloud of each item she received at her party. You have begun to read literally everything in sight just in the past couple of weeks, and the power of your brain simply blows me away. You love to add and subtract. You’re interested in learning about money and telling time and comparing fractions. You’re interested in the Solar System, and tell me frequently that you are going to live on Mars some day. You’re gonna plant a Texas flag on the moon. You say you’re gonna be a great scientist. And who knows? Maybe you will be! You’ve got a brain in your head that is unlike any I’ve ever encountered and I’m so extremely proud of you.

I love that you are who you are, and while it might not always be easy to be you, you do it with such flair and such confidence that I can’t help but smile. You love to dance and twirl in dresses and tutus, and you love to lay on the floor on your tummy and play with matchbox cars and build train tracks. You’re fascinated by marble runs and Duplos and Legos and anything you can build. You love puzzles and have a voracious need to work as many puzzles as possible.

You love to spend time on your Kindle – working puzzles, reading, and playing math games. You love to watch TV, and your favorite show at this moment is definitely Peep and the Big Wide World – which you act out in real life frequently. Your favorite food is peanut butter, and your favorite meal is bean burritos. Your favorite restaurant is Chick-fil-a (“Chicken-fil-a”). Your best friends are Evan and Verity (and their siblings) and Tirzah and Abby and Kate. You love many of the teenagers from our youth group and want to be just like them. Your favorite colors are purple, green, orange, pink, turquoise, and red. (YES, you list each of them as your favorite.)

You love rainbows. You do not love thunderstorms. You are fascinated by bugs that crawl, but aren’t fond of bugs that fly. (I’m totally with you on this one!) You LOVE to play in the water outside – in your little pool, and in your water table – and you love love love with everything in you your kitty cat, Toodles. You love to swing in your swing that Daddy built for you, and you love to go walk on our nature trail. You enjoy gardening with me in the flower bed, and are very caring for the birds – always wanting to fill up the bird feeders we made from milk cartons. If you could live outside, you would.

You have a sweet and caring heart for your Baby Brother, and you usually get along really well with him. You are learning to be gentle even when you are frustrated with him, and he’s starting to actually be able to play with you some. You love to make him laugh, which makes my heart so happy.

You are a fabulous helper in our family – you love your recycling job, and you are quick to help clean up toys and books and make a “nice clean room” wherever you are. You set the table frequently, can make your own peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and you are great about clearing away trash after a meal.

You love to paint – anything and everything that can be painted. You are highly interested in art, and love to create art with lots of different mediums.

You are fascinated with animals and life cycles and the food chain and pretty much anything science you can get your hands on. You are learning to love history and geography, and greatly enjoy our story times each day when we read Magic Tree House books together.

You are simply amazing. You struggle with noises that are too loud, and don’t always like to be touched, but your love for Brother is helping you overcome many of those issues because he cries and squeals a lot, and often messes with your feet or your hair. He is helping you become a stronger person, and you are doing an awesome job at learning to control your feelings of discomfort – and overcome them with love.

We as parents are learning how to help you get the sensory input you need, and you simply adore pulling all the pillows and cushions off of the couch onto the floor and hopping around on them like a frog on a pond full of lily pads. You love to run and spin our round swirly chair, and you love to sit in the chair and be spun around really fast. You love to listen to classical music, and your sound machine is always turned on to the crickets/outdoor sounds when you are in your room.

You have let us know that your nose doesn’t work like ours, and we are working toward helping you understand what smells are like in the world around you, even if you yourself will never experience that sense. You are fascinated to hear what things have good and bad scents, and are trying to memorize that information so that you can be more understanding of the world around you. Your interest and care for your world and the people in it is just incredible. You are probably the most thoughtful, deep, intense person I know.

You are the most amazing, adorable, beautiful little girl I’ve ever seen. I love you more every single day. Lots of days I get frustrated with you, and you might feel like I don’t love you as much on those days, but I promise – I love you more every single day. I love that you have a strong mind and know how to articulate your desires. I love that you verbalize your thoughts – even if they are bold and brazen. I love your creativity, even if I get frustrated because it causes a mess. I’m human. Sometimes the intensity that you so boldly display drives me crazy. But I ALWAYS love you. And those moments before nap time and bedtime when you look me in the eye, and your eyes go all mushy and you say “one more kiss?”… in those moments, my heart melts. When you tell me you love me, it melts all over again.

You always have and always will be my little princess, my angel, my butterfly, my lil ducky, my Boo, my daughter, my Love. I love you with more intensity than you will ever have in your body, and I always will.

I love you sweet girl.

Love,

Mommy.

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To My Engineer…

Normally I post on Thursdays about STEAM. But this Thursday is something a bit special. This isn’t your typical engineering STEAM post… It’s a day that I dedicate to a very special engineer. THE engineer in my life. The one who inspires me daily to be a better mom to our kids, a better friend, a better person. So if you stopped by for some engineering encouragement, this might not be what you were looking for today, but it’s the whole reason I do what I do. I am who I am today because of this very special man.

We met online on January 1, 2008. We met in person January 5, 2008. We got engaged January 20, 2008.

And on June 11, 2008, I married Cody Hinnant. I walked down the boardwalk at Walt Disney World in my princess dress, and the king of the castle I had always called home gave me away to my Prince Charming.

Seven years have gone by since that day. In some ways, it seems it’s been my entire life. In other ways, it’s just been a whirlwind.

But in that seven years I have grown and changed, and daily I’m becoming more of who I want to be – because of that man. Cody is absolutely the man God made for me. He knew when I was born exactly who I would need to be my rock, my shoulder to cry on, the father of my children. And each and every day we are together, He is molding us more and more into the people that each other need.

We had beautiful years of marriage before kids. We traveled a lot, and we went on lots of adventures.

And we have beautiful years now – full of new adventures with our two amazing little ones. Sometimes they aren’t always the easiest mountains to conquer, but we’re in this together, and that’s what makes it all worth while.

So, dear sweet husband of mine, here’s to the last seven, the next seven, and the next… on until infinity. I’ll love you forever, and just like from day one, I can’t help falling in love with you – over and over again.

xoxoxoxo… forever. Happy Anniversary, Baby.

Family Photos – Gone REAL

I love my family. We’re beautiful. We look alike. We get compliments on how cute our kids are. And I love to show on Facebook and on this blog how wonderful we are. But ya’ll, this is Wednesday, and this is a “From the Heart” post. Which tells you I’m about to GET REAL on ya. Lookout. We ARE beautiful sometimes. We do look alike when we smile. We have adorably cute looking kids. BUT OMG THEY ARE SO REAL. I made the mistake of looking at Pinterest before our family photo shoot at our home this past Saturday. HA! What all those Pinterest family photo ideas show you is this: family pics collage

They show you beautiful, happy children doing sweet things, and those awesome walking away pictures where no-one has a huge butt. They show you naturally posed photos inside a clean home with a child happily showing off her playhouse. They show you giggles. They show you smiles and seriously gorgeous, stunning shots. And yes, we ended up with a few of those for our hour of steaming hot, bug-bitten, whine-infested, toddler-tantrum, baby crying photo session. So it’s time to take off the filter, ya’ll. It’s time for our Gone REAL photos. Ya know, the ones I didn’t even save onto my computer from the memory stick because, well, this needs to be the only place they are ever recorded… So here they are. Recorded here for posterity, and never again. Because we are REAL. They aren’t Gone WRONG. Because ya know, kids are kids. They aren’t wrong. It WAS hot. It WAS miserable. And it’s hard at one and almost three to understand why your crazy mother wants pictures in matching outfits in the summer heat anyway. (By the end, I was questioning my sanity once again, for the millionth time this month…)

1. Seriously, posing on your front porch can be awesome if your almost-three year old THINKS it’s awesome… if not, well…
2. Somehow Mommy and Daddy were always looking at the camera… the kids? Well…
3. Yes, more than once Mommy had to bribe Boo to get into the picture… and then in the end, she didn’t get to play in her lil pool after all because she just threw one too many fits.
4. The full-on butt shot. Need I say more? Wow. More weight to go to reach my goal! (I seriously had grilled chicken and broccoli for lunch while typing this post. I’m tryin’ ya’ll.)
5. Yeah. So laying on the floor with our heads together? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA
6. Hey Becca, why don’t you sit in your rocking chair and read a book for a picture?
7. This would be a great candid shot if, oh, ya know, the room was clean…
8. Really Mom? Is all this necessary? (I have a feeling I’m gonna see this look a LOT in his life.)