Nursery Makeover

When we moved to Illinois we gained a life-changing thing...a 2nd bedroom!

Before we moved we had a cute little one bedroom apartment.  

Well, babies come with a lot of gear and that one bedroom apartment very quickly became very crowded.

Our living room became the living-dining-play-baby room.

We had the crib in one corner, TV in another, rocking chair/nursing station in another, swings along one wall, and two large couches thrown in there somewhere. 

I wish I had pictures because the words don't do it justice.

Our apartment was crowded, to say the least, but it was still home!

Anyways, when we moved we got a 2 bedroom apartment and with that came the chance to decorate a cute little nursery for our sweet sweet babies!

My mom came in town and we just went at it.  I wanted something bright with lots of color since we can't paint our walls here.  I love how it turned out - here are some pictures: 

                                         Before                                                                        After

My talented mama made curtains, a crib skirt, and a tablecloth out of a duvet cover we found.  They add so much to the room - and I LOVE the chevron print.

I love how the collage turned out too.

We painted wooden letters and a bunch of frames that we found on clearance 

and then filled the frames with coordinating fabric and paper.

There wasn't much to do to the changing table besides find cute baskets, 

but we did find a darling quote about twins to put on the wall.

Here's the quote

I had fun practicing my graphic design skills to create the quote about twins and the

 "I Am a Child of God" phrase in the picture below.

Kyle and Taylor gave us that picture of Christ with the two children and it is so special to me. 

I hope that we will be able to teach our babies how much Jesus and Heavenly Father love them. 

We have it hanging on the wall you see as you walk into their nursery

I had such a good time with my mom making the nursery come to life. It was so nice to have a buddy to bounce ideas off of and to dash to a million stores with and to have help trading off on baby duty with. 

She is Wonder Woman.

I think the babies like their new nursery too :)

Spencer on left, Madilyn on right. 

And we posed them like this...they definitely aren't pulling themselves up already.

Oh and a funny story I want to document happened when we were searching for wooden letters to spell out the babies' names.  We had gone to Hobby Lobby and bought all the letters to spell out their names, but each letter was $1.50 so it ended up being almost $30 for letters and I was on a $100 budget!  So we decided to make one last stop by Michael's to see if they had wooden letters for a cheaper price.  I dashed in alone while my mom stayed in the car with the babies.  

I had a hard time finding where the letters were in the store and couldn't find an employee to ask.  I finally found them and was so excited because they were only $0.50 each (1/3 the Hobby Lobby Price!).  The only problem was that they didn't have all the letters I needed and they were a different font from the Hobby Lobby ones so I couldn't just mix and match.  After tracking down employees, waiting in a couple lines, and calling nearby stores I finally bought the letters knowing that another store had letters too.  

Anyways, what I thought would be maybe 15 minutes in the store ended up being 45 minutes!  After buying the letters I hurried out of the store to get back to my mom in the car with the babies.  As I came into view of the car I saw my mom holding Spencer and singing songs to him with a slightly frazzled look on her face.  Then I opened the driver's side door and instantly understood the frazzled look.  Madi was laying on the driver's seat, Spencer was crying, and my sweet mom was trying to calm him down with songs while keeping a hand on Madi and trying to entertain her.  She was a trooper taking care of 2 tired babies for 45 min in a car while having no idea where the heck I was because I had left my phone in the car.  

Thank you mom, I owe you :)

Goodbye Minnesota

So...we moved! To Illinois!

We knew the day would come quickly, but it feels like our time in Minnesota flew by.  And we were supposed to move back in March, but the babies gave us a slight change of plans :)

Our time in Minnesota was truly amazing, we loved it there.  

It's interesting to look back on when we first moved to Minnesota, like in this and this post.

SOOO many blessings came our way because we were in Minnesota at that specific time.

I remember having a really hard time when we first moved there because of being in a new place, not knowing anyone, and having such a hard time finding a job since my teaching license didn't transfer to Minnesota.  Little did I know what was waiting for me...

I got to be a nanny for an incredible, and I mean incredible, family with 2 darling little boys.
They blessed our lives in countless ways and became our family away from family.

As I was looking for jobs in MN none of the offers I got felt right and I just did not understand what was going on.  When I was offered the job as a nanny for this family it felt very right and everything started making sense.  Shortly thereafter I found out I was pregnant with twins and so many blessings came our way because of being with this family.  Michelle (the mom) is super woman.  I was the one supposed to be taking care of her family and she ended up taking care of ours by making us meals, giving us countless baby things, helping throw me a baby shower, and much much more.  I miss those darling little boys and their family!


We also made some of the best friends we could ever ask for while we were in MN

Cami, Becky, and I were pregnant at the same time and that was definitely a bonding experience! The types of friendships we built were incredible - the kind where we were good enough friends to just walk into each others houses and were willing to change each others kids' diapers.  Now THAT's true friendship :)

And another major event that took place in MN - we found out we were having twins there
and they were born there!

I don't have pictures of this, but another I am so grateful for are the people we met at church in MN.  We were part of an incredible group of people.  I absolutely loved getting to be a leader for the teenage girls, they taught me so much and I am amazed by their strength.

I can't convey the awe I have at how things fell into place as we settled into our home there.
We truly did love it there and are so grateful for the people we met.  I remember praying and praying that we would make friends and be able to recognize opportunities to get involved in our community.  Those prayers were certainly answered.  I met some of the most genuine, compassionate, and fun people I have ever met in my life while we were there.  We miss it already.


Moving is definitely a whole new world with 2 little babies!  But, with the help of a bunch of people, we managed to pack up our apartment and head to our next destination, Illinois!  Martin is in a program that gives him experience in different areas of the company, which means moving every 8 months or so for a couple of years and Illinois is our second stop.

I'm not gonna lie, our first impressions of Rockford weren't too great.
We learned that the crime rate here is very high, which made it interesting trying to find an apartment in an area that we'd feel comfortable in.  It didn't help that someone told us that they recently went to a lake, but were sent home by police because they found a body in the lake....comforting, right?

Well, if I learned anything from our move to Minnesota it is that attitude is everything...not that I'm sayin' attitude will make the crime rate go away, but you know what I mean.  We get to choose how our experience will be here!  And we are diving right in to make the most of it!

A perk of moving around so frequently is that it has really encouraged us to get involved, be outgoing, and explore the area as much as we can. Knowing that we are only here for 8 months makes us want to see the surrounding area as much as we can.

I am extremely grateful for our church too. No matter where we go we know that one of our congregations will be there and that they will give us responsibilities, opportunities to get involved, and that they will have our backs when we need help.  Like how we were able to contact the bishop before moving out here and coordinate help unloading our moving truck - which was SO nice considering the babies screamed for half the drive and we were two tired parents.  With everyone's help the truck was unloaded, our furniture assembled, and a family brought us dinner within 2 hrs of pulling into our driveway.  What tender mercies.

Here are some pictures of our new place.
Oh, and going from a 1 bedroom to a 2 bedroom has been FABULOUS!
The babies no longer live in the living room :)

The view from our front door into our kitchen

 Hallway leading to the bedrooms

 Our living room

 More living room

 And our porch!

*Shout out and special thank you to Kandace and Chad Hyland for the tip on the clearance on Target patio furniture, we found a great set that works perfectly with our porch :)

So, we are adjusting well and are even making some friends! We really miss the people we met in Minnesota, but we're excited for our new adventure here.

And one picture of the babies, just because :)

Weddings and Baby Blessings

A couple of weeks ago we got to go to Colorado for the wedding of the beautiful Paige, one of my best friends from high school.  It was an incredible weekend!  We took the babies on their first plane ride - I was SO nervous about how they would handle it, but they did pretty well and only screamed a little bit.  My brothers and lots of other family members got to see the babies for the first time too!

The wedding was absolutely beautiful up in the mountains of Colorado. And thank goodness the weather was kind enough to give Paige a gorgeous day.  

They are a truly great couple and I am so happy for them!  All of the wedding activities were a bunch of fun, the ceremony was so special and sweet, and the reception was great.  Here's a pic of the gorgeous couple:

I forgot to bring my camera so I found these pictures on Facebook that other guests took...hope that's not too weird, but I had to document it!

Well, we decided to make an even bigger party out of the trip!  We had family coming in town anyways so we decided to bless Spencer and Madilyn in church while we were there.  The blessing of babies in our church is when a special prayer is given for the baby to establish their name and give them guidance for their life.  Marty gave the blessings for both Spencer and Madilyn and it was wonderful to hear him bless our babies.  Personally, I believe that God is sending very strong children to earth.  As I hold my babies I can feel that they have a great work to do.  It is very humbling to know that I get the honor of being their mother.

Here they are in their darling outfits.  Thank you so much Lindsay and Tiffany!  My good friend Lindsay Pratt made Madilyn's dress and Spencer's pants and they were darling.  She has an etsy shop under Lindsdpratt if you want to look at it here.  My sister-in-law, Tiffany, let us use a really cute outfit of her boys' for Spencer.

We were lucky enough to have tons of family and friends come to their blessings.  Lots of people came from out of town and it was so incredible to see everyone and have their support.

Here's a big group picture

And many many more pictures

I'm also so glad that my brothers got to meet their first niece and nephew (blood related at least).
Especially because Danny is leaving for Brazil for a 2 year mission for our church.

Between Paige's wedding and the baby blessings It was such a great trip to Colorado and I am so thankful to all of our family and friends for making it so wonderful.
These babies are very loved.