My curbside find

This is my curbside find.  Philly has this great tradition of of putting your junk on the curb before garbage day.  The garbage man will take anything, so if no one picks it up, then it at least gets hauled away the next day.  Many wonderful finds are on the curbs of Philly!  So, I saw this gem and immediately fell in love with it, it has fantastic lines.  Better yet, it was on my own street.  I grabbed my neighbor Amee and made her help me haul it back to my house.  I forgot to take a 'before' pic before I took it apart.

The 'work zone'

This was quite the project!  My wonderful neighbor, Krista, helped me do it-- so so grateful for her help!  First we primed it.  Gave it a couple coats of Behr 'Mongolia Blossom' white.  Sanded the last coat of paint with a 320 grade sandpaper to give it a nice smooth finish.  It was looking so great.  After advice from the web and Home Depot, we gave it a top coat of polyurethane.  BIG mistake!  It turned it yellow!  It was horrible.  NEVER top a white paint with polyurethane!  I wanted to cry.

yellowed polyurethane

 So, we got to start over!  We knew what we were doing the second time through so we were able to do it in one day.  We gave it a light sanding so the primer had something to stick to again.  Primed it, painted it, sanded it again.  And debated and debated about what to do about a top coat.  We tested Poly-acrylic out, made sure it was safe before we put it on the whole thing.  I love the Poly-acrylic!  So much better.

And the finished project.  I love the look and love the extra storage in my dining room.  I'm in love!

Last Day of Kindergarten

First Day of Kindergarten

Last Day of Kindergarten

My little girl is growing up.  As much as I want her to stay little, it just isn't happening.  I couldn't be more proud of the person she is growing into. 

Bentli's last day of Kindergarten was June 12th, 2012.  She had a blast in Ms. Palladino's class.  She has learned so much this year.  She loves to read and is zipping through chapter books like its nobody's business.  She loves Judy Moody and the Junie B. Jones series. 

Tate and Macie at the Recognition Ceremony

All the afternoon classes from the Kindergarten Center

Beauty and the Beast

Bentli has now been to her first Broadway play!  When I saw that Beauty and the Beast was coming to Academy of Art in Philly, I knew I had to take Bentli.   This is the same place we went to the opera.  We bought tickets for a matinee on Saturday, June 9th.  Krista and Macie came with us and we made it a Girl's Day Out.  Bentli was so excited, she was up at 6:30 am all ready to go.  We dressed up for it and Bentli was able to pick whichever dress she wanted to wear to the show. 

The week before, I was teaching Bentli how to make friendship bracelets.  (after seeing it on pinterest, I had to teach Bentli how to do this childhood favorite of mine)  Bentli decided to make one for me, I made one for her, and we wore them on our girl's day.  I was on cloud nine that Bentli wanted to have friendship bracelets with me.  I'm treasuring this time, I'm so scared for the day to come when I am so 'completely, totally, uncool'.  haha.  Love my little girl!

Anyways, the play was awesome.  I would definitely recommend it.  My favorite song was, "Be Our Guest".  The girls were in love with it from the get-go, eyes glued to the stage.  Near the end they were getting a little tired, but they had a blast!  Bentli's favorite part was when the Beast transformed in the Prince, it was pretty cool.  It was a wonderful Mommy-Daughter Day.  Thanks Krista and Macie for coming with us!

Love the details in this theater!  The picture's color is funky from lightening the picture... it hard to get a good pic in the dark!

Its been 10 months

One year ago I was pregnant.  All the complications hadn't started yet.  That would come later in the month.  Life was feeling pretty perfect.

I miss that.  I miss the feeling of being completely content and happy with what life has given me.  Now, don't get me wrong, I am so grateful and happy for the many many blessings in my life.  I am so incredibly grateful for Bentli and Tatum.  But no one can fill the spot in my heart that belongs to Teagan.  I wonder if I will ever have that feeling of being completely content again. 

Its hard to be completely content when the happiest, sweetest moments spent with my children and husband are tinged with an overwhelming sadness.  Tinged with a longing for our sweet baby girl.  I was reading books with the kids the other day and it hit me again.  Teagan is gone, she's not coming back, I won't get to sit and cuddle with her.  I won't be able to hold all three of my children.  It is sometimes hard to watch Tate and Bentli cuddle and love on babies, when I want them to be doing that with Teagan.  These aren't new realizations or thoughts from the last ten months, but it still takes my breath away. 

Its been ten months.  It feels like longer.  And the day when I will hold my baby in my arms again seems so very far away.  I'm looking forward to the feeling of complete contentment when I can hold Teagan in my arms again.

Memorial Day 2012

Growing up, Memorial Day was always spent at my Grandpa Anderson's grave.  He died when my dad was only 3 yrs old.  My grandma never remarried, I don't know how she did it.  She was an amazing person.  Anyways, my dad's whole family (which is big and wonderful) would met up at the cemetery.  They still do gather there to honor my grandpa, and my grandma now too.  Every Memorial Day, I wish I was there with them.  Its these little things that make me wish we lived closer.

This Memorial Day was different, now we have our own little angel to honor and love on this day.  I wish we didn't.  I wish she was here.  I have faith in Heavenly Father's plan, but it doesn't change the wishing things could have been planned differently.

Since we aren't close enough to go visit Teagan's grave, we decided to release some balloons for her.  We all picked out a balloon for her.  Bentli chose a Princess one, Tate's was spiderman (haha), Jared's was a purple star, and I had the pink heart.  We wrote some notes to Teagan, the kids drew pictures on theirs and we sent them up to heaven.  We sat and watched them race up to heaven, I'm convinced that mine won!

That afternoon we had a barbeque with our neighborhood friends.  It was lots of fun to sit and chat with each other as we melted in the heat.

Lukas, Tatum, Stockton, and Cole

Bradys, Troy, Sherrie, and Caroline. 

Michelle Jolley and Sara Horne

Shawna Murphy, Alisha and Brad Packer

As we were finishing cleaning up, Ben started a water fight with the kids.  It was hilarious.  This is a pretty good sequence, I was distracting the kids with the camera and Ben surprised them from behind.

Trip to the Shore

Just some fun pics of us having fun at the shore.  This is probably one of our favorite things to do.  The kids have a blast and it is just all around a great time.  This was in May and it was really windy that day.  The beach umbrellas were more for wind protection than shade.

The kids played like this for hours

Boys playing their weird game.  It involves a hole, and is a mix of soccer and golf.

Jared and Bentli

The crew

Mermaid Macie and Bentli  (you can't tell in the pic, but Landon made these two Mermaid tails out of the sand)

CC and Judd, Sitting in a Tree...

My little sister, one of my most favorite people in the world, found the love of her life.  He proposed, she said yes... and the kids and I went home to join in the celebrations!  Celeste (known to me as CC) and Judd are such an amazing couple.  I think they will have a good life together.  She was married on May 14, 2012 in the Salt Lake Temple.  My sister is an amazing person, we are regularly mistaken for each other, and she wants to be just like me, haha, how could I not love her?!  And I think Judd will be able to handle the craziness of the Anderson family pretty well.  We were so glad to spend this time with them. 

Here are some a few pics from the trip:

The happy couple

The bridesmaids

Family Pic

One of my favorite parts, visiting Teagan.  I love seeing her little footprints in the headstone.