Spring Break Project

Yay, my Mom is here and she's come to help! I should not even be posting these pictures, it's so embarrassing!

Right now the girls are sharing a bedroom and it has worked out really well for both the girls, but now they are ready to have their own rooms. Sooooo... we are tackling the bedrooms and the playroom during spring break. The girls have both PROMISED that they will keep their rooms clean after the redo (ah ha).

I'm checking out all the creative blogs and trying to find good ideas for decorating and I'll post after pictures when the week is done!

Rylee went to work with her Daddy this morning and we are getting a good start with Hanna as our helper. I mean what could be more fun than cleaning your room for spring break? Surely not Disney World, which is where all the cool kids are (or so I've been told)!

Oh, and I swear the rest of my house does NOT look like this - really!

An the winner of the Spring Fling Giveaway is...

Using the random number generator... minishoes. I'm off to email her now and let her know the great news. Thank you so much for all that participated, I wish I had one for everyone :)

Ask and you shall receive...

A couple weeks ago Rylee came to me asking for a magic mermaid hat. Since I have no knowledge of such a thing I decided I had to call in reinforcements. We made a short video of Rylee's explanation. If you haven't seen it you can click here to view Rylee's request.


Imagine her extreme delight to get a package in the mail today (thanks Aunt Net). She tore into the package and was completely amazed to find this inside the box:


She placed it on her head in total amazement that she had actually received a magic hat! She looked at me with those deep brown eyes and said "Mama, can I say the words, Mama?" I said "You can say whatever words you want to Rylee, do you have something in mind?" She nods quickly.

She closes her eyes and very softly says "I want to be a princess, I want to be a princess, I want to be a princess".

I watch to see if she is going to be disappointed and wondered what happened with the murmaid.
She opens her eyes, grinning ear to ear "Mama I am a princess now, I have to get my princess dress on", she squeals as she takes off running!

"WAIT! You can't put a princess dress on, we are going to the barn."

AAAARrrrrrrrgggggggg! MAMA!!!




This one got a hat too. All I want to say is that she takes after her father... enough said...

Wow - so many visitors yesterday!

Welcome to all my SITS girls - wasn't spring fling such a blast? I didn't realize giveaways could be so much fun and what a great community of bloggers are in this group! I am looking forward to getting to know y'all better!

Tonight my girls wanted to get into some America's Next Top Model action, so I obliged and whipped out the camera - cuz who can't resist taking pictures like these:

They also challenged each other to come up with their own head wear design and then modeled the results. I think Hanna may set a trend with hers - what do you think... the next big fad in down filled, fashion accessorizing?

Hanna doing "fierce"

Spring Fling Giveaway and Serious Life Magazine

We have two exciting things going on today!

For starters I am participating in my first ever blog giveaway as part of Spring Fling over at http://www.thesitsgirls.com/, a blogging community that I am a part of. Click here to go to their site and check out the hourly giveaways that they are hosting today.

For my very first giveaway one lucky winner will receive a fabulous set that includes one Arbonne REactivating Body Serum and one REfinish Hydrating Body Lotion (this set has a retail value of over $80.00)!

All you have to do to enter is leave me a comment below for one entry into the drawing. If you don't have a way for me to email you in your profile or on your blog (or you don't have a blog), you will need to leave your email address in your comment so that I can contact you if you are the lucky winner.

If you want a second chance entry, just click over in the side bar to follow my blog and you will get another entry into this drawing!

Contest will end Thrusday and I will draw the winner on Friday!

Good luck and don't forget to click over to the SITS site to enter the other fun giveaways!



The second exciting thing we have going on is that the March issue of Serious Life Magazine is out today!

They just published the March issue today, and I am in their Featured Blog Directory. It’s a very high quality magazine… click on the cover page to go check it out!

The magazine includes a lot of great content from bloggers you’ll appreciate, as well as great features, photos and other content.

The magazine is owned and published by a family who have seven kids, three adopted and one who has Leukemia - you see her button in my side bar (http://www.riggsfamilyblog.com/).

The magazine gives away a bunch of ads to charities and ministries. Besides great articles on interesting people (Cactus Cuties - woo hoo!), there is a lot about family, adoption, personal finance, spiritual life, humor… all sorts of “life” topics.

The subscription is FREE, and I think you’ll enjoy the magazine as much as I do, so take a minute to check it out and sign up to get future issues. http://www.seriouslifemagazine.com/

Let's go have some serious giveaway fun - Happy Tuesday!

iHeartFaces - Week 9 - Creative Crop

It's week 9 at iHeartFaces! This weeks theme is creative crop, click on the button above or here to enter this fun contest! Here is my entry for the kids category:



And right here below is my original (before crop) shot.

To join the fun or see all the great entries click here!

Kung Fu Panda *Warning*

I just wanted to warn any of you that have not rented Kung Fu Panda for your kids yet, what might possibly happen. We rented this and watched it with the kids last night and this morning... well... it will be easiest to just show you:

1) Your stomach may expand....

2) They may begin attacking each other...

3) The noise level will be off the charts...

4) Until they collapse from sheer exhaustion (this lasts for approximately 30 seconds)...

6) Round 6, 732 will involve the parents...

7) Did I mention about that NOISE level, Tylenol anyone???

Random Pictures

Here are some random pictures from our week.

It's here - the highly anticipated dress like a pirate day!!

Yep, that's right it is Dress Like A Pirate Day at school today!

Why you ask? Hmmmm... good question!

In fact it is the same question I posed to my oldest this morning. In response I got this look:

(Yes, I know this shot totally captures the incredible brilliance that is my oldest daughter, and while I could expound greatly on that subject we will just have to save that discussion for another post!)

So obviously, she had no idea why it was dress up like a pirate day so... we just went with it anyway.

Don't get me wrong, I am completely sure that the entire reason behind such a day was thoroughly explained buried somewhere deep within the thousands hundreds of papers that come home each week crammed into heavy backpacks. Somehow, I must have missed it.

So, this is the best we could do this morning (pre-coffee), when I remembered Ry telling me yesterday that she "must go to school dressed like a pie-wet".


I will admit that I had a brief moment of panic when we got to the bus stop and the other kids were dressed - well normal. I studied Rylee briefly and decided that I would just go with "I know... I know , but sometimes you just have to let them dress themselves. We are working on encouraging creativity right now."

But then to my relief, we were joined by two more pirates!

Insecurity and questions...

Sometimes things can just kind of move along and it is almost possible to forget (or at least put in the back of your mind) that your daughter has only been home just over a year. Sometimes she does so well and is so much a part of our family, that it is almost hard to remember that she hasn't always been with us.

But a couple of weeks ago when I was sick and out of commission it was very hard on Rylee. When she is not at school, I am always with her and she just did not know how to handle Mama laying on the couch and not being able to get up. For those of you that don't know me that well - I am desperately slightly germophobic. I did not want Rylee to get the stomach flu and so wouldn't let her in the room with me. She would come in the room and stand by the door with her hands stretched out towards me with a barely audible "Mama... Mama... I want you... I really want you!" I will spare you the gory details and just say that there was no way that I could get up or even away from the bucket that I was wrapped around. But no matter how sick you are, you can't just see your child needing you and not try to do something.

So I asked my husband to go pick up masks for the girls so that they could come in the room and not breath in "my" germ(y) air. He had a strange look on his face, but he went anyway :) This was my second round with this bug - so I didn't for one minute believe that you can't get the flu after you have already had it. Unfortunately the mask was just way too big for Rylee's little face and she couldn't stay in very long. She cried when Daddy took her out of the room, and I felt even worse!

I knew that this was hard on Rylee, but I didn't realize just how hard it was until the second day. I went outside to meet the bus and as she came around the front of the bus I immediately noticed the little "penguin shuffle". She waddled over to me shouting "MAMA... MAMA... da da ba ba ma ma". I knew this wasn't good - penguin waddle and baby talk... She did these same things when we were in China and she first came to us.

Poor sweetie - I can only imagine what was going through her head. After a couple of days she asked me "Mama, you member that time when you was in the couch, an you was sick - do you member that Mama?" (as if I could forget that easily) "Well Mama - maybe you would get dead!"

Ack... I should be more prepared for these things, I should have known that she might be worried about this - but we have not talked about death yet. While she has a giant vocabulary, language comprehension takes so much longer and some things can be hard to explain still. I should have realized that she would be worried about losing me. We talked about how people get sick and then usually get better, but suddenly she is talking about dying a lot.

Something good that I think has come out of all of this is that she is really trying to vocalize her questions and think about the answers.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

iHeartFaces - Messy Face Theme

How fun is this theme? "Messy faces" and they have a special category for beginners this week so I am hoping for some great feedback. This group has so many amazing photographers in it and is full of great tips and instructions. I think I have learned so much already in the past two weeks and hope to learn a lot more this week! Click here to join in the fun (or go to http://www.iheartfaces.blogspot.com/)!

This is my oldest daughter on our annual Christmas Cookie Day, after a brief mishap with the flour. I tried some of the editing techniques that I have been reading about using the free version of picnik (which I also learned about from iheartfaces).

For my iheartfaces visitors, I am looking for the real feedback here. Photography is my new found passion and I really want to learn how to take the amazing photographs that I have seen on your sites the last couple of weeks (or even half as amazing would be thrilling to me!) So help me out - I can take it :) Many thanks for looking!

Does anyone know about this magic hat?

Meet the newest member of our family...

This would be Ms. Frosty Snow or... Ms. Snowy Frost depending on which girl you ask and yes, apparently it DOES make a difference...

For our Michigan people - something you would find totally funny is the continuous news coverage this 3" to 4" of snow is receiving. Seriously, we have continuous news and they are driving around in their cars with the cameras going showing off the snow. They are already talking about if there will be school tomorrow or not - but the snow is supposed to stop by about 2:00 today. Right now they are announcing where the snow has stopped and where it is still falling... What? Why are we watching it you ask??? Well, because the satellite is out and only the local stations are coming in right now... I think it's a conspiracy to sell all the milk and bread on the store shelves...

What were you doing at 6:30 a.m.?

It is a time of great joy here in the Speese household - at least for half of us... Being the fabulous mom that I am... I groaned bounded out of bed when I heard the squeals of delight, to join in the early morning fun! Seriously, what could be better than freezing wet snow dripping down the back of your neck at a pre-coffee 6:30 am?