Makena just graduated from preschool and it breaks my heart just a little bit. I’m just so proud of the girl she has become. Lover of nature and life. She really takes it all in. I simply love this picture of her. It’s exactly what I want to do some days when it rains.  Her school did an end of the year party where the fire department came out for a water party. A beautiful way to celebrate a great year.

And now trying to decide what we are going to do with our last summer before Makena starts kindergarten. Looks like we’ll be spending most of our time at the lake and the library for their summer reading program. All the while balancing an 8 month old’s nap schedule. I’m still looking for other free things in the area. I’m kind of starting to get the idea that things really take off once your child enters elementary school so honestly I’m just enjoying these last couple of months with her at home.

The past two weekends have been spent down at the lake with family and friends. It really is my favorite place to be these days. Our neighborhood has a lake park in a cove on Lake Travis and it really is the central meeting place for everyone. And I certainly feel blessed to have this in my own backyard.

All of this lake time means that I’m marching around chasing three kids in a swimsuit. Not my favorite pastime, but I’ve been working hard to get my butt back in shape after being pregnant for the past few years. All in all, I’ve already lost around 80 lbs. since Chloe was born. I don’t really ever like to talk about my weight, but I’m kinda proud of myself these days and feel good again. I didn’t do some fancy diet. I still eat what I want when I want it! I’ve lost it all from cutting my meals in half and walking over an hour every night with Chloe. We do a sunset walk around the lake and it’s really my only ‘me time’ of the day. I need that. We all do.

This past weekend I met up with my first ever best friend. We were friends before we were born, our parents were best friends back in the 70’s.

We lost touch in junior high and ended up reconnecting on Facebook. Turns out she and her mom live here in Austin too.

So we went to lunch on Sunday, just us girls and our moms.  Just like old times, twenty years later. I missed her and am so glad she’s back in my life.

I feel like I’m constantly playing catch up in the space and I want to try to be here more often. I’ve started to feel so connected through Facebook that I’ve been ignoring my chikaustin blog and it’s really the only way I document our kids lives. I don’t scrapbook and I’m terrible with picture organization and photo books. The thought of getting my kids pictures organized gives me so much anxiety I just walk away every time. If any of you have any suggestions, I’d love to hear them.

Pfew! Well that was quite the post. Thanks for sticking with me!

For the first time in my life I started a little garden. It’s a tiny garden that is loved by little hands. And sung to by little voices at night under the stars. The kids helped to pick out all of the plants… tomatoes, jalapenos, mint, eggplant, and basil. All things we use around here on a regular basis and can survive this Texas sunshine and heat in the summertime. We want to do a big garden with a fence to keep the deer out and raised beds but decided to see if we could make this work first.

And what do my kids learn by helping with the garden? That if you love something and take care of it, it will grow into something beautiful. Even if your hands get messy in the process.

This weekend is the Renegade Craft Fair in Austin and I cannot wait. Any of my Austin crafty peeps going to be there???

I forgot to mention, we got a new dog. Rescued him from a shelter. Blog world meet Oliver (the second).

Boy oh boy do I love this man. He makes me laugh so hard sometimes. Skeleton!!! He doesn’t quite understand how the Olympic team could have passed him up. He makes me proud. He.

Needless to say, we thoroughly enjoyed our day. I’m sure we’ll be back in flip flops by Saturday. ‘Tis Texas.

I looked back in my bed and there lay three sleeping babes and my hubby. So what’s a mama to do but yell SNOW!!!! Oh and no we don’t have a family bed. We have sneaky little ones that gradually make their way into our bed when they wake up. Only to snuggle in and fall back asleep.

For all of the days that I stood on my porch, coffee in hand, wishing the drizzle were snow. Thank you God.

The kids school was canceled since we all live on back roads. Hubby is at home too. Today I’m anxiously awaiting a package from FedEx with the lasers of the Craft Hope book. Direct from Hong Kong. Scratch that, as I was typing that sentence the doorbell rang. Aaaack!

Wish I could stay and chat but it’s SNOWING!!!! And it’s supposed to keep coming down all day long. We’ve got our sleds and are ready to rock and roll!

When people tell you that your children grow up fast, they are not kidding.  When they are babies and you are staring into their eyes, wishing they would stop crying or go to sleep you don’t fully grasp how quickly it all actually goes.  Those long nights seem to go on forever.

Then all of a sudden, they are a few years older.  Taking in all of what life has to offer.

It is these moments that I don’t want to miss.  I don’t want to blink.  I don’t want to walk away.  I just want to follow them around as they explore the world around them.

The wonder in their eyes when they find a snail.  Their collection of rollie pollies.  The baby birds in the bird’s nest.

It’s the racing as fast as they can back to mama to deliver her newly picked wildflowers.  The basket full of mountain laurel seeds.

Clutching onto their favorite stuffed animal with all of their might for fear that they might be alone in this big world.

It is these moments that go so fast, that if you aren’t truly paying attention you will miss.  It is in these moments that I would not trade what I do for the world.

Thank you all so much for the well wishes for our new baby girl that will be arriving in early October.  It’s a wonderful feeling to know that we’ll have another little member of our family that will be following along with our other two.

Today it’s hot out and I’m running a fever with no symptoms other than my body aching all over. What’s that about? You can’t have a fever when it’s 99 degrees outside.

The only way to stay cool in Central Texas during the summer is to stay in the water.

Any ideas how to keep a Golden Retriever puppy out of the kiddie pool?

Since having children I have become more aware of our carbon footprint. You know, those marks we leave behind on the earth. Tread lightly is what I tell myself.

We have made some changes around here such as shopping with reusable bags, recycling, buying local, eating organic, buying old rather than new, etc. I do think the greatest thing we can do is to teach our children about the earth and how to nurture it. Instinctively, they enjoy playing outside and digging in the dirt. It’s the simple things with our children that make them the happiest.

I’ve been toying around with opening an ETSY shop for some time now. I’ve been kicking around the idea of what to sell. What is my craft? Earth day got me thinking about re. Those two little letters stuck in my head all day long yesterday until it hit me. I will open a chikaustin re store where all items are either recycled, repurposed or reused.

So during nap time I hurried upstairs and got to work. I’ve only got a few items listed but will be adding more today. I’m going to take custom orders for vintage pillowcase dresses. Most of what I have on there now are all vintage embroidered pillowcases. Very sweet. Just the thought that someone a very long time ago sat down and spent a good portion of her day creating this pillowcase for her family makes my heart melt.

I also made a storybook bird mobile featuring Where the Wild Things Are. I will also take custom orders for these as well. The mobiles are made using repurposed materials, recycled cardboard, an old children’s book and newspaper.

And of course, you all know my love for thrifting so I will list some items that I find while out and about. Right now there is a rockin’ 1970’s hand tooled vintage leather wallet.

The shop is small right now but I needed to start somewhere. I would love some feedback from you shoppers out there and even you ETSY shop owners. The shop will continue to evolve as needed. Thanks for checking it out and all of your comments!

Also, right now we have these wormy things dropping from the oak trees. In fact, it’s so icky when you walk under an oak tree you are engulfed in their webs. Now I’m sure they aren’t worms and I’m even more positive they aren’t web building worms, but it sure does feel like it. I think they are caterpillars building their cocoons. Nonetheless, I wish it weren’t where we spend most of our time. So now we are sitting under the cedar trees. Thank goodness it’s not cedar fever season.

Amidst all of nature taking its course, we still managed to get outside.

Make a few wishes.

Read Amanda’s new book. Oh, how we need a bigger blanket.

Pick flowers.

And build a fairy house. Yep, you guessed it… under the big wormy webby oak tree. The rest of the time was spent looking for decorating accents for the fairies. Of course they’d like fresh flowers to come home to. Then it was off to hunt through the yard searching for fairies. Maybe we need a vacancy sign.

I woke up bright and early to go look at all of my beautiful newly planted (by the moonlight mind you) geraniums.  As I was wiping the sleepy out of my eyes, it all came into focus.  Devastation.

We have somehow created a buffet for the deer and they keep coming back for more.

Needless to say I have plucked the sole survivors out of the ground and they have been transported to the decks, far away from harms nibble.

Do you ever go into a store and come out with so much more than you planned? I do that at Ikea. I go in for tea lights and come out with a shopping cart full of God knows what. I get home and I’ve got a ladle, candle holder, picture frame, dog bowl, glasses, cutting board, napkins, wrapping paper, bamboo, etc., etc. It never fails, it happens every time.

This week I had a similar experience at Lowes, a home improvement store. I went in for a bag of potting soil and came out with $600 worth of plants. Now mind you, I did not buy any of the plants and I did not steal them either. As I was loading the kids into the car, without the potting soil because they didn’t have the organic variety I was looking for, several people began loading plants into my car. They were taking plants off of these seven foot high rolling carts. There were signs on the cart that had the actual retail value ($594). That price was marked out and $10 was circled. There were begonias, geraniums, this and that. All kinds of plants were being pulled off of the shelves. You could buy an entire cart valued at $600 for $10. I quickly made a mad dash back inside to purchase my own gigantic cart of red geraniums.

Supposedly a freeze had come through the night before and some of the plants were damaged. I guess one yellow leaf makes a plant unworthy of selling because my cart might have had five yellow leaves in the entire group. Makes you think about all of the plants that must be discarded on a regular basis.

It only took us two trips back and forth from the store to get all of the plants home. Makena and I spent the past two days attempting to dig holes in our rocky dirt to no avail. So we moved on to ‘landscape design’ and placed all of the plants around the yard to wait for Miles to come home and dig some holes for us.

It was dark by the time Miles got home. So there we were, two lovers in the moonlight planting the 10,000 geraniums and whatchamacallits in the garden. Miles was the digger, I was the planter. It really is a good thing we live in the country because if we had close neighbors, they would think we are crazy. Oh what the heck, we are crazy. And you know what? That has to be one of my favorite memories living in this house… and it was only yesterday. As taurus, the big dipper and the little dipper watched over us we talked about life, jobs, family, and everything in between. We talked about why the dirt is hard in this one spot, but one foot over it’s perfect soil. We talked about our dreams, our kids and how absolutely beautiful it was outside.

We’ve managed to plant about $250 worth of plants and have run out of room. The rest of the plants will be handed out to helpless victims. I only hope that when they plant them, they plant them under the stars at night. You should try it, it’s a life changing experience.