I’d call this a photo dump, but I could never be so callous about my Christmas memories. Our family had a fabulous Christmas. The Christmas we had is the reason everyone loves Christmas. We had great visits with family, an abundance of food, presents, laughter. Also, this was the first time it’s been too warm for my kids to wear their
Mary Virginia: Look Mommy! I’m twirling! I look like Cinderella! David: No, Mary. You look like Mary in a dress. Mary Virginia: Mommy, can I wear that alligator shirt? David: Uh, Mary, it’s not an alligator. It’s a dragon. Mommy: David, Mary Virginia is pretending. If she wants to pretend this is an alligator costume she can,
I don’t know why, but I always feel cliche saying I’m thankful for family on Thanksgiving. Because that’s what everyone says. I’d like to be more original. Profound. But what else is there? I’m thankful for high-speed wi-fi? For drive-thrus? That I’m raising three children after dishwashers were invented? Ok, those are valid. But what is more profound
For some reason I’m lazy and unprepared when it comes to every aspect of my life except the holidays. We have a “Happy Halloween” banner in our dining room, pipe-cleaner spiders lurking around the house, and I ordered Mary Virginia’s dress on September 1 because I could not wait another day. Technically, I made David’s
I was not planning to jump at David’s SkyZone birthday party. Then this happened. I had no business jumping like that on a trampoline; I had a baby three months ago. But there’s just something about trampolines, right? I don’t know what it is, but you know what I’m talking about. I haven’t been on
When I was planning David’s birthday this year, I wasn’t really sure what to do. We had a family dinner for him, but we also wanted to have a party with his friends. When we throw parties, we like to invite a lot of people, make a ton of food, and bake a giant homemade cake. I wanted
Right around this time of year in my house, it feels like all we do is blow out candles, eat birthday cake and celebrate — which might be the best feeling ever. David turned four on Sunday, something he’s been looking forward since the day he turned three. We started the celebration this weekend with a
Every morning David asks me what we’re going to do. Is it a school day? Or a park day? Is someone coming over? Is today a church day? Then he gets down to it. “Mommy, is today a swimming day?” No, son, it’s not. That’s my usual answer. Except when we were on vacation. On vacation every day was
We went on vacation with Tom’s family a few weeks ago and it was, um, full. Full, which is a euphemism for crazy, exhausting, hectic. Hectic. That actually nails it. Synonyms for hectic include: frantic, frenzied, feverish, manic, busy, active, fast and furious, fast-paced. But instead of hectic, I’ll get back to that euphemism. It was
For the past ten years, my sister and her family have lived overseas. It’s taken us every bit of those ten years to get used to the distance. I remember, at one point, thinking it was odd that I wasn’t familiar with my sister’s wardrobe. It’s a minor thing, but part of the transition that
It was my idea to name our third baby after his daddy. And, ugh, that sentence is an example of how confusing it can be to have two people in your family with the same name. Saying “…to name Thomas after Tom” sounds convoluted. So far we’re calling the baby “Thomas” or more often “baby Thomas.”
Mary Virginia turned two last weekend, and we had a little party to celebrate. And by “little” I mean little. Because normally when I say “little” I mean that I restrained the guest list to our 20 closest friends and their 400 children. The theme of this party was “mama just had a baby.” I
This isn’t the craziest birth story you’ll ever read. It isn’t the most dramatic or fastest or the closest call. But it is my craziest birth story. I’ve already told this story several times, and each time I feel a bit like I’m lying, or at least exaggerating because the timeline just doesn’t feel real. Whenever I tell it, I
One thing I didn’t expect about having kids is the arranging required to do absolutely anything outside of the normal schedule. You take this kid, I’ll take this kid, Mimi will pick up that kid, and ugh, I wasn’t even thinking about their carseats. Do we have enough Goldfish and carseats? The arranging is why moms just stop
It’s hard to know when or where to begin baby Thomas’s birth story. Does it start it when I felt my first, painful contraction? Or a month before that, when I packed my hospital bag and asked several close family and friends to please keep their phones on in the middle of the night just in case.
Thomas Christopher Krieger Jr. Born May 19, 2015 8 lb, 10 oz., 22 in. Mommy and Daddy enter the hospital: 6:35 a.m. Baby Thomas enters the world: 6:38 a.m. Since the very beginning, Thomas has been sucking on his fingers and chewing on his hands. He doesn’t seem to be the sort of drowsy newborn who will nurse and
Last Friday I fulfilled my duty as a mother and on the last day of preschool I forced David to stand on the porch with his school bag, stare directly into the sun, and let me take photos. Since I happened to be two days past my due date, the night before the last day
Mary Virginia loves babies. She acts like an over-eager grandmother when she hears about an infant. She gets so excited that she starts talking in falsetto, and has to channel her energy into frantically knitting tiny sweaters and bootees. Then when she’s actually in the room with an infant, she transforms into a middle-school-aged boy with a crush. She
I’ve been trying to make a real effort to not complain about this pregnancy because I don’t want to lose sight of what a blessing it is to have a complication-free pregnancy and carry a baby to term. But as the days and weeks pass it’s getting harder and harder. I’m achy, I’m tired, I’m getting bigger,
After the race and egg hunt, we had a pre-Easter celebration with my parents and my sister’s family. As we were planning the weekend, my sister emailed me and suggested we dye eggs as an activity with the kids. She hadn’t had a chance to do it and I hadn’t either, so Saturday seemed perfect.
It’s becoming an Easter tradition for our family to participate in David’s preschool race and Easter egg hunt. Tom ran last year but this year he volunteered to help. Which reminds me, sometime after the half-marathon, Tom and I retired from running and all other forms of exercise. We just decided to surrender; our kids
Pretty dresses, a toddler-sized sport coat, Tom in a tie, and our last Easter as a family of four. As if I needed another excuse to take a family photo. Before we left for church, our kids were more than happy to sit with my parents’ dog for photos. They sat there and smiled perfectly. We had plenty
Every year spring seems a bit like a miracle. Even my yard, which was cold and brown a week ago, is blooming. The past few weeks have felt unrelenting. We have dear friends who are mourning a great loss, those waiting, aching for answered prayer, others who are trusting God for healing and His sovereign care. It feels heavy.
I always dreamed of dressing my little girl in smocked outfits and grosgrain bows. It never, not once, occurred to me that I’d have a daughter with an opinion. Every day clothes are a battle. That shirt Mary Virginia was obsessed with yesterday? NOOOO! I NO LIKE IT! I no lika dat shirt! I find myself
My sister has four kids, and they all have birthdays in the eight-week span between January 10 and March 6. As if that wasn’t enough celebrating, my sister’s, mom’s, and Granny’s birthdays are in there, too. Seven birthdays in eight weeks. That’s why I specifically didn’t make any New Years resolutions about no sweets or eating healthy. My sister and her family is
The past few weeks have been really cold and snowy, so we haven’t been letting Brigham outside like we normally do. He’s spending all his extra time looking for places to hide from the kids, and gazing out the window dreaming about…what do cats dream about? …Autonomy? Whenever I write a post about our cat, I use
I’ve never had anything against minivans. Maybe it’s because I drove my mom’s minivan a lot in high school, or maybe because I’ve just always driven cars for their function and economy over coolness. (Except, I did have a 1985 Bronco II when I was in college. Even though the paint was peeling and — with no warning —
In thinking about making goals for the coming year, and deciding I didn’t want to make goals, it didn’t occur to me even once to look back on my goals for 2014 until I sat down to write this. So I did. I re-read what I wrote at the beginning of 2014 and then I
Our family had a grand total of three Christmas celebrations this year. This was our first year spending Christmas morning at our house with just our family. We spent the next day with Tom’s family, and then visited my family. Each celebration was full of wonder, wide eyes, shredded wrapping paper, and inevitably ended with David whining, “Mommy, where’s
We didn’t send out a Christmas card this year, but if we had it probably would have looked something like this. And it would say: Merry Christmas from the Kriegers. And then, perhaps on the back, we’d add a blurb telling our family and friends that Tom and I are so excited to announce that we are expecting
The only thing we had on the agenda of our family lame-cation was a trip to the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center. We figured we’d need at least one actual activity because toddlers operate in a time warp. That’s where that saying, “the days are long but the years are short” comes from — toddlers mess with the
A few weeks ago Tom was looking at his schedule and realized he had a bunch of vacation days he needed to use before the end of the year. Since one of the rules of the Krieger family is that letting vacation time go to waste is a crime, he started trying to figure out
Yesterday (November 30) was the first day of Advent, which means today (December 1) is the second day of Advent, which means it’s not too late to start an Advent devotional Advent is the season of waiting. And OHMIGOSH we are waiting in this house. We have a little bag of treats we got for
As Thanksgiving approaches, lots of my friends do “thankful” activities with their kids. The idea is simple, ask the kids what they’re thankful for and display their answers — and yours. This is our take on it. I decided to trace our hands and hang them like a garland in our dining room. Initially I
This is how things looked in my house just before leaving to trick or treat. David was hiding behind the couch, screaming because he did NOT want to be a skeleton, he wanted to be a bat. David KNEW he was going to be a skeleton, David had ASKED, no BEGGED, to be a skeleton. He
Back in August, I started doing a monthly memory verse with our kids. I downloaded the printables here, and hung them in my dining room. My approach was casual; my kids are young so I didn’t think it made sense to push too much structure. I was just going to say the verse at the beginning
I don’t know why I used to think that, as the kids got older, it’d be easier to take pictures of them. “Older” translates to “more cooperative”…right? That’s the sort of thing a mom of toddlers says. Like, “Oh, I can’t wait till my kids are teenagers and I can stop worrying about them!” Go
I already mentioned that our vacation was mostly rainy and overcast. In fact, it was SO rainy and overcast, that I can only remember putting sunscreen on my fair-haired, fair-skinned babies a grand total of one time. I know, I know, you can still get burned when it’s cloudy. But when it’s cloudy, raining, and you’re huddled
This silly boy started school last week. My goodness he’s grown so much since last year. He wouldn’t stand still for photos, but I like this next one anyway because you can see his shoes. Just before we walked out the door, David ran to his room and grabbed these shoes. He hasn’t worn them
There are almost 700 frame-worthy photos from David and Abby’s wedding, but these posed shots are some of my favorites. Jason, Kristie, Amanda, Tom The Southall grandkids The girls in matching dresses The Southall girls This is a candid picture of my mom and sister between poses. I think I was maybe white-balancing? It doesn’t
This is at least the fifth year we’ve spent a week at Smith Mountain Lake with Tom’s family. It’s a summer tradition now — we’ve done this every year since Tom and I got married. Except I can’t really remember the first years, the years before we had kids. Now there isn’t much relaxing, recharging,
Five years ago when I got married, Pinterest was still just a glimmer in the Internet’s eye. Brides like me — those of us who planned weddings before Pinterest — like to say that we’re glad we didn’t have that extra…um…Pin-spiration. But, I dunno, it was still pretty overwhelming. Way back then I used theknot.com
During the week we spent at Smith Mountain Lake, David hardly asked to watch TV at all. Because who could stare at a screen when we have non-stop access to Caleb!? These two boys have been friends from the very beginning, and I marvel about how well they played together from the start, even way back when David
In the 18 days since David’s birthday he has taken exactly three naps. The nap strike started on the day of his birthday. It’s as if he read somewhere on the Internet that some kids drop their nap at age three and thought, “No more napping? Yeah. I think I can make that happen,” and then
We were honored when my brother and his fiancee asked David to be their ring bearer. He did a great job. He did such a good job that the first line of his resume now reads “proficient and bearing rings and wearing bow ties.” If anyone else out there is looking for a ring bearer, I know
It rained on the day of my brother’s wedding rehearsal. It was wet and gloomy, and we all scorned the clouds and passed around umbrellas. We looked at the sky and made optimistic comments about how we didn’t mind the rain today, as long as it was gone tomorrow. Rain on your wedding day is
Every now and then, especially when there’s a dog-, um, cat-pile on my couch, I like to remind myself why Brigham is in our family. When Tom and I first got married, our first home was near a lot of restaurants, so we had a few unwelcome cockroaches. We heard that cats could help with cockroaches,
July was a huge month for my family. My sister was in the country, which doesn’t happen often, and my brother got married. We were making memories on top of memories, and with all the travel and early mornings, I barely got any sleep. That’s why I’ve been blogging so much about my visit with my
I’ll be honest. As we were planning our summer visit with family, I was a bit apprehensive about how David would fit in with his cousins. The last time he saw them he was completely fascinated, but he was just 11 months old. He’s older now, and my nieces and nephews are, too. But they
This is Gabby. She’s like, the sweetest little thing. Gabby is my niece, and I got to meet her for the first time a few weeks ago. She is cuddly and adorable and crawled right up in my lap to snuggle. Gabby and Mary Virginia have also never met. The last time my sister’s family visited,