Our BABY is THREE!!

Today will be the last day that the Raley's have a 2 year old in the house. Our little Adelynn Cole will turn 3 tomorrow even though  she has been telling everyone she is 3 for quite some time now. Some of you may already know but when I was pregnant with Adelynn we chose to not find out the gender until she was born. It was an exciting time and I would think about how it would be if she was one or the other and how she would complete our family perfectly!  Since we didn't know we referred to her my entire pregnancy as "THE BABY". Well on March 26, 2013 we found out that she was a beautiful healthy baby girl! 🎀🎀

We found ourselves calling her "the baby" though for a long time! The name kinda stuck which was okay because to us she will always be "THE" baby!  She has been such a blessing to our family everyday since!  She has her brother wrapped around her finger and he will seriously do anything she wants him to! I love to see the friendship that Charli and Adelynn are developing. They have really started enjoying playing with each other and can play babies in their room for hours!  They had a rough start though when Adelynn was born. Let's just say Charli was less than thrilled to have a new baby sister!

HAPPY 3rd BIRTHDAY SWEET GIRL!! We are so glad you are our "BABY"!! Tonight I will rock my baby and enjoy some extra snuggles today! 

The cleaning and scrubbing can wait till tomorrow

But children grow up as I’ve learned to my sorrow.

So quiet down cobwebs; Dust go to sleep!

I’m rocking my baby and babies don’t keep.

The Paci is DEAD.....NO resurrections this time

Just want to start this post off with asking for no judgement okay?!?! Or you can judge just keep it to yourself because I don't wanna hear it;-)

Charli is 3 years and 4 months old and yes she has still been taking a Paci at bedtime and nap time. I know! I KNOW!! But as of 2 weeks ago the Paci died and will not be back!! That's a fact Jack!  The first week was well pretty much H-E- double hockey sticks. The first night she cried and cried and sobbed for over an hour and it completely broke my heart:-( The next night was around 45 mins and it got less and less after that til she now just goes to bed without it!  Success!!!!  It was really upsetting to see her so heartbroken.  It was like she was mourning her Paci!  I'm not talking about fit throwing crying but the real I'm sad kind of crying:-( It may sound silly but it was kinda sad to me too because it was the last thing that resembled "baby" for Charli!


A wise friend who had kids before me told me to get rid of it around 9 mos so that they wouldn't get attached but of course I didn't listen!  I was kicking myself in the rear for sure and if your reading this you are my witness that Addy Cole will NOT have a Paci past 9 mos:-).

Our Family is Complete!!

Adelynn Cole Raley completed our family of five on March 26, 2013.  She was 7lbs 6oz of pure sweetness!   We didn't find out if we were having a girl or a boy until she was born and it was so exciting!!! I highly recommend waiting for at least one of your children! I'm not gonna lie I had wanted a boy because I thought it would keep Charli from being a "middle" child if she was the only girl and girls are way more expensive so I had my mind set on it being a boy! I can't even imagine anything other than our precious Addy Cole!  It took me a whole second to completely fall in love with her!

I mean how stinking precious is that?!

Her brother was pretty smitten with her as soon as he saw her! He tells her everyday how beautiful she is and can't get enough Addy Cole kisses:-)

Her sister on the other hand was not as thrilled at first! This was pretty much Char's attitude the whole time we were in the hospital:-)

Fast forward 6 months through a move to a new town, Gunner starting Kindergarden, and now Charli  LOVES her sister like a best friend! She knows how to make Adelynn laugh out loud!

Adelynn is such a happy baby and you can't help but smile when you see her because she is always  smiling!She just radiates JOY!  She is most definitely our Sunshine:-)

The Color Yellow Rules our Day

Gunner is our oldest child so everything he does is a big- okay HUGE deal to us!  It didn't matter if it  was learning to walk, his first Tball game or going to Kindergarden we made a big deal out of it because well frankly we can!  So Gunner started Kinder this year and of course there were the tears and the butterflies and the background checks on his teacher and such;-) that was Eric by the way!  If your kid has started school you know what we mean!  Will he do well? Will he fit in? Will the teacher love him like I love him?! So those of you that are on your 2nd and 3rd kid in school will laugh at this story but oh well....

So having recently moved to a new town where everything and I mean EVERYTHING is booming with new people, we found out that the public schools were highly over crowded and all the Christian schools had a 1-2 year wait list. We found a small Christian school that offered Kindergarden and had an opening so we jumped on it!  We have loved it so much!  That is a whole other post though. So we rocked through the first week of school like pros and the second week was looking to be promising as well when Gunner came home with a YELLOW?!?! Apparently in kinder the kids are rated on their behavior on a color system and all I knew was that YELLOW fell below the "good" line!  My first action was to call Eric and announce that our firstborn son had received a yellow on the second week of school and that we WOULD NOT have THAT kid!  My teacher imagination immediately went into FULL mode and I will admit now that I may have over-reacted a bit...maybe just a little. All I could picture was MY son being the kid in class not following the rules or obeying the teacher!  Eric and I decided that Gunner would need to be grounded that evening from TV, get a "coming to Jesus meeting" from Eric that night and that I would need to walk him into class the next morning and find out what he was doing to get that color!  (Please keep in mind this school thing is new for us as parents.)So that's exactly what I did the next morning only to be completely embarrassed by my over-reaction. His teacher probably labeled me as the nutty mom!  After I "assured" her about how    serious we were about him acting good for her in class, she told me that yellow was just a warning
and that they will get yellows a lot at first.  They are learning the rules and that it serves as a warning to stop and think about how to make better choices:-) OH!!!!!!!!!! Yea that's what we thought but just needed to make sure;-) I think I earned myself a YELLOW  that day!! Thank goodness we serve a God of second chances and I get to stop and think about my choices next time my first instinct is to
jump to the worst conclusions:-) Man this parenting thing is hard!!

The good, the bad, and the ugly

Well it's been a year since I've blogged and a lot has happened but really there is no time to try and play "catch up" so I'm just starting anew!  I've been busy people!! I've thought about writing many times but the task of it all was just too overwhelming that I would put it off again. I really REALLY want to keep this updated as a keepsake for my family and children but here lies the "bad"..... I'm an all or nothing kind of girl!  Hot or Cold, In or Out and there is no in between. I want every post to be perfect with well written words and cute pictures to go with each post and well that's just not possible in this season of my life. I don't do scrapbooking or family picture albums or anything that requires creativity (2 of my 3 kids have blank baby books for goodness sakes) but I want a place that my kids can look back and remember everything- good, bad and ugly!  I looked back at most of my posts and they were all the highlights of our life thus far..only the really great stuff and thought what a joke!  My kids will read this someday and think "That wasn't our life!" Don't get me wrong we have all these great times and many more but we also have some really ugly times too where we are learning as a family to grow and get through them together:-) so from now on this is my oath to you....you will get the good, the great, the bad, and the ugly!  And I'll try to add some pics along the way too...

I will leave you with this adorable picture of Addy Cole on her 1/2 bday!

There's a STORM a brewing......

Gunner is playing soccer this fall and we are the Lubbock STORM!!  He is getting much better and enjoying it much more with each game!!

Here are some pics of our lil STORM!!

Go #7!!!!

 

Action Shot!

 

YaYa is there to pass out the dollars when he scores!!

Aunt Nat and Char!

Bubba's Biggest FAN!!

 

GO STORM!!!

 

 

 

 

BIG NEWS!!!

Gunner and Charli are thrilled to share their BIG NEWS!!

 

 

 

We took these back in August but Im just now getting around to bloging about it!