The evolution of a haircut!

I am a crazy person when it comes to my hair and I just wanted to show you all how I work when I decide I want a change with my hair...

Here is me in November. This is a pretty good hair day. If my hair had looked like this everyday I probably never would have gotten the urge to cut my hair. You see I have very thick bangs, and they drive me crazy and they get thicker and thicker every time I trim them. They seriously start like 5 inches back from my hair line. I decide that in order for me to be successful in growing them out (because I have triend many times in the past 5 years) I need to cut my hair to get the end of my bangs closer to the end of my hair,

 This is me on New Years Eve after watching Safe Haven and deciding to cut my own hair just like Julianne. Its not to shabby for doing it myself. Still in the safe zone because I can do ponytails.

Same length just straight in this picture.

Sometime after this picture I tried to shorten the back a little to give it more of an a line look, I think I even had Jared help me "straighten" it out and he, of course, did the opposite of that. So, I asked my neighbor Cassi who cuts hair to fix it for me. Its super cute, I think in hindsight this is my favorite length of this whole adventure! Now I am even shorter and I have left the safe zone. No more ponytails but I really love it!

Here's a pic of the back, so cute, right!?

Here is the same length but wavy with my favorite hipster glasses!

But,of course I can't leave perfection alone! I am telling you people, I have a problem! Normal people just don't do this! Some how I make a few snips here and there and thin it out a ton with my razor. You can't tell in this picture but I have messed with it a bit.

And then suddenly, because I always make hair decisions suddenly,  I decide that it's no longer even in the back after my few snips and so I must make it even shorter in the back and that is good, I tell myself, because I did want to see more of my neck. Warning! Warning! Should have started flashing on the screen but of course I can't see it. I am on a path of hair destruction! Ok, so it doesn't look that bad, it really is cute. But now my neck actually feels naked and I feel self conscious unless I am wearing a shirt with a collar! And ponytail land is now half a year away...

So here we are at the end. I have actually asked my hubby to hide all sharp objects from me. Its staying just how it is until it gets LONGER! This is me tonight right before I started blogging. It's still cute, and I still like it! I am having fun styling short hair again! And look! My bangs and the end of my hair are only inches away from each other! But I think I still liked it best somewhere in the middle of all this.

And I am pretty sure I will always go back to this...

Can anyone admit to anything crazier than what I just shared with you all!?

Five is the new Ten!

I have 5 children. I have 5 kids. There are 5 kids in our family... I am constantly reminding myself of this. Even nine weeks with our beautiful, cuddly baby hasn't really given me enough time to accept this very obvious fact.  Jared and I were very happy with our family of six. 

Our cute little family of 6 in 2009. Don't we just make it look easy! :0)  

Four kids is still a lot of kids these days. I always said four was the new six when it came to kids. Four kids makes a big family but it is still a very acceptable amount of children but when you move above the safe zone of four you have gone over the edge. And it seems to me  that five kids is the new ten. People look at you with wide eyes when you tell them this bundle of joy is your fifth child and they say something like, "Wow, that's a lot of kids." or they whistle "Woo wee!" And, of course I say, Yeah, don't I know it!" 

Fast forward to 2013. Our now gigantic family of 7! Will we ever be able to take a good picture again???

Surprisingly, I am handling having five children very well considering the fact that I had a five year gap between my fourth and my fifth. That five years gave me enough time to  do a lot more things than I was previously able to do with four young kids. I was able to run a lot more, and I even ran my first marathon. My oldest daughter turned twelve and could now babysit while Jared and I had weekly date nights!  And as they got older I was able to leave my husband with the kids over night and go places with my girlfriends. Having a taste of all that freedom was what scared me most about having baby number five. When you have your kids close together, like my first four, you have already succumbed to the life of having toddlers and a baby. The work is still fresh in your mind. But now I remembered what life was like before I had to spend a half an hour looking for shoes before I could leave the house, and what it felt like to go to the grocery store by myself, and best of all sleep in my bed without feet or a fist in my face.  I relished in my new found freedom and comforts. I had paid my dues and now I was reaping the benefits! Life was very, very good!

But God wasn't finished with us yet! Baby Nash was meant to be a part of our family. Yes, he did surprise us, but he is not an accident. Our family was missing someone and now he is here and we feel very blessed he made it! He is a happy, smiley, chubby cheeked ball of baby goodness! Yes, I have to change diapers again, breastfeed every 2-3 hours, and practically pack a suitcase before I can leave the house. But, honestly there is nothing else I would rather be doing then taking care of this little guy who slid into our family like a baseball player slides into home base, at the bottom of the ninth, to win the game and everybody cheers! And our life is still very, very good, and just maybe even a bit better!

To celebrate here are nine pictures from Nash's first nine weeks of life- 

Aww, now ain't he cute!

The Meme of the Mommies

Meme is such a weird word, isn't it? I have to admit I pronounced it incorrectly until recently, very recently, actually. In fact, it was just last week that my 12 year old daughter laughed in my face when I said "mems". I really had no idea that it meant anything except pictures of animals with funny captions that get posted on pinterest. So I googled it, of course, and an idea for a blog started forming...


A meme (/ˈmiːm/; meem)^[1] is "an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture."^[2] A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena. -wikipedia

A blog is a unit that carries ideas from person to person!  This blog is truly a meme for mothers. My intent is to pass along my ideas through writing about my life as a wife and mother to 5 children. There is no right or wrong way to experience it, so if your way is different than mine, then that's ok. It doesn't make your way wrong or mine right, just different, and that's great! I want to learn about your style and I hope you like reading about mine. 

I want to start something here on this blog, something positive. A place for good ideas,a place to be uplifted, to read about a new trend in the latest and the greatest new products, and hopefully I can pass on a few laughs... There will always be something to add. And I plan on making it being worth reading and sharing!

So, it looks like I better get started.