Thank you, Lord, for Zofran and BeBands!!

Well.. I'm going to attempt to get myself caught up on this whole blogging thing! ha! Life lately has felt like a roller coaster spirling out of control. I have been so sick that I just set daily goals to make it through one day at a time. That means that EVERYTHING is catching up on me.. I'm forgetting ALOT.. and my mind is a total coatic mess! In one word.... PREGNANCY! UGH! I swear! My first two pregnancies were nothing like this! They made it look like a walk in the park! I had not a single complaint with LK and the only complaint that I had with E was that I was literally as big as a whale! haha! This one is thrown me for a loop though! If this is what normal pregnancy is like, then thank goodness my first two were easy-peasy b/c I might never had had any more children! ;)

Luckily, we finished up school last week!! THANK THE HEAVENS!! I can now lay in bed, spend an entire day in the house in my PJs, and NOT LEAVE! OH BLISS! I am surely going to enjoy these next two weeks!! The Zofran is helping alot, but nothing really helps! I am 10 weeks tomorrow, so i'm hoping that I have just another two or three weeks of this. I'm ready to enjoy being pregnant. Right now I'm just conviced that whoever is inside my tummy just hates me! ha! Not to mention that I already can't zip my jeans!!! Chris even went to Banana and bought me a size bigger and gave them to me as an early Christmas gift!! ha! God love that man!! I had to break down and go purchase a Be Band though and it's helped tremendously!! I am REALLY hoping that I dont get gigantic with this baby!

Now to recap..

On the 11th, LK had her Christmas Piano Recital!! She played Deck The Halls and did a fabulous job!! We are SO proud of her!! (esp considering that she'd only had FIVE lessons before the recital!) She absolutely loves her teacher Mrs. Amanda! Now.. we just need to find room to move the piano from my grandmother's house to ours!

Goo Goo and LK

MeMaw and LK

Noni, Papa and their babies!

MY BIG GIRL!!!!!

Mrs. Amanda and her students that performed

LK just adores Mrs. Amanda's little girl, Ellie. She wouldn't leave without a picture of her! :)

Mrs. Amanda is also E's Pre-K teacher!!

The next night, we went over to Chris' parents for dinner (YUMMY snacks!) and a drive through Starry Nights! We had SO much fun! We have made this a yearly tradition!! Noni had a gingerbread house for the kiddos to decorate, although I think most of the candy went into Ethan's mouth instead of on the house! ;)

This past week was filled with school programs and Christmas parties! On Thursday, I went to Chick-Fil-A and loaded up with THREE trays of nuggets for the kid's schools! I looked a mess for sure! They all had a blast though and are SO ready for Christmas!

E's class at 2nd Baptist!

look at my sweet little man!

T.R.O.U.B.L.E!

SANTA came to 2nd!!!! You can bet that E was the 1st one in his lap! I tell you.. my kids LOVE Santa!! We are SO excited to go see him this week! Daddy is home from work and I'm determined NOT to let my morning sickness get in the way of our fun!!

Well, I made it through the last few weeks of school! I am so proud of myself. I wasn't sure if I'd be able too! We are excited for this coming up weekend!! I'll try to post about this past weekend this week! It was filled with special birthday's and our first family Christmas get-together of the season!! I hope everyone is having a wonderful week so far!!

Our Christmas Card!

I absolutely LOVE our Christmas Card for 2010! I ordered them through Shutterfly and since I blogged about them, all I paid was $7 for shipping! What a deal!!! I have to admit that it was really hard to order them. Since I started designing stationary and selling on ETSY, I have always designed all of our invites and cards. This year I just couldn't do it though. The morning sickness definitely got in the way of my Christmas crafty-ness this year! :( All in all though, I am SO happy with our cards! I love how classy and festive they turned out! (and I love even more that they're printed on thick cardstock instead of flimsy photo paper!! i hate photo paper!) Of course, we filled it up with our family photos that Candice took for us! :)


I definitely think Huck makes the card complete!! ;) I can NOT wait wait to see who will be joining the card next year!!


I hope everyone is enjoying their holiday!! Merry Christmas from The Stickles Family!

Sharing the Good News...

We told the kiddos about their new sibling last Wednesday. I went to the doctor that day and got the OK that everything looked great, so we decided to let them in on the news!! We knew that LK would be excited... she's been wanting another baby for the longest time. We weren't sure about E though.. you never know! (and he's VERY attached to me!) So.. we sat them down and told them...

They were ecstatic! :)

LK immediately reminded me that she wanted a baby sister (I guess she thinks that you can just decide and it will happen! ha!)

Chris showed them the ultrasound picture and explained to E that the baby was in my tummy.. I dont think he's looked at me normally since then! ha!

We attemped to get an "announcement" picture on Saturday, but E was NOT feeling it.. I got a cute one of LK though! :)

See what I mean??! ha! We framed this one and gave it to our parents and grandparents when we told them. I'm going to still try to get a better one though!

We are SOO excited about Baby #3!!! You can definitely already tell that I'm pregnant! I swear.. by the time you get to #3, I think you become a whale the day you find out! ha! ;)

Well.... it's official!

Baby Stickles #3 will be here in July!

Yes.. I am pregnant! I've hinted around a little bit at it lately, but have waited to let the world know! I am 9 weeks, so still very early, but with the way I've been feeling (aka - world's worst morning sickness) we decided to let everyone know a little sooner than planned.

We found out the weekend before Thanksgiving and couldn't be more excited!! So far, I have been sick from sun-up to sun-down and look absolutely TERRIBLE.. but I LOVE it! ( I wasn't sick one bit with LK or E.. so this is COMPLETELY new!! ) No one really knows, but we tried for SIX months to get pregnant!! We were beginning to think that God only had 2 babies planned for us.. well, we should have known better than to think it would happen on OUR terms.. it would only happen on HIS! Just when we decided to stop trying, we found out! Isn't God just amazing??! We are blessed!

Lilly Kate and Ethan are more than excited! I think they've told practically half of Memphis! ha! Of course, LK wants a sister (I do too! ha!) and E wants a brother (whom he has endearingly named "Snake Boy"! haha!), so either way we will be SO INCREDIBLY happy!! We already have fabulous names picked out.. but there wont be any revealing of that for quite a while! ;)

I will try to post as much as possible in the next few weeks, but if I skip a few days.. you know why! :) I will also try to start doing weekly "bump" posts next week! EXCITING!!

The Nutcracker 2010

This weekend was crazy busy and very exciting! Lilly Kate performed in her ballet company's performance of The Nutcracker! It was her first time to perform in a stage production. She's only had yearly recitals up to this point. It was SO exciting watching her perform on stage like that!!!

We had THREE performances this weekend... yes, THREE! Two on Saturday and one today. We are definitely exhausted but it was completely worth it! Her age group performed as the mice in the show. They were the cutest mice I've ever seen! :)

Everyone came to watch!!! Goo Goo and Lacie came yesterday...

as well as, MeMaw and Sally..

I forgot to pictures of Noni & Papa and Grandma Smith. They came to the show today. Hopefully, Noni will send me pics! ;)

LK and her sweet friend, Avery

her mouse face

me and my sweet girl. this was right before the 2nd show yesterday, so if I look exhausted, it's because I AM!

WE ARE SOOO PROUD OF HER!!!

we couldn't use flash during the show, so this is the best I could get! :(

I turned it during the final bows though! :) Isn't she adorable!!

We were so tired after the show! We stopped for a quick bite to eat and went straight home.. and pretty much straight to bed!

a few of the mice with their sweet teacher Mrs. Erin

While we were gone all day yesterday, Chris and Ethan went and picked out our tree! They did a fabulous job!! It's perfect for the spot we chose! Tonight, we all decorated it! I still have a few quirks to work out.. mainly, Ethan bunching all his ornaments in one spot! ha! But, it already looks great!

so sweet!

Hopefully, I'll get the rest of the decorations up and ready soon! For the most part, they're up... I'm just not 100% sure that they're where I want them! That's the tough part of being in a new house.. figuring out where everything looks it's best!

Tonight, I have curled up and attempted to get all the Christmas cards addressed and ready to mail!

Well, that's pretty much our entire weekend.. Nutcracker.. Nutcracker... and more Nutcracker! We are SO looking forward to LK's paino recital next weekend. It will be our first to hear her play outside of practicing!! :) This coming up week, I am determined to finish up my Christmas shopping.. only a few more things to pick up! I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend!!

Thanksgiving and SO much going on!

Well, we survived Thanksgiving 2010! It was actually a really nice week since the kids and I were all home Tuesday through Sunday!! We LOVED it! We, of course, spent Thanksgiving Day running around to all the different family members' houses and by the end of the day we were all stuffed to the max! It was delicious!!

Somehow, I convinced Chris to take me Black Friday shopping! Luckily, Chris' parents offered to keep the kiddos Thursday night, so we were able to get out bright and early Friday morning. We started at 5am at Pottery Barn Outlet and I was able to stock up on LOTS of Christmas gifts!! Next, we hit Target. Luckily, we went to the Target in East Memphis so it wasn't as crowded. We scored some major deals! I am so proud to say that 90% of the kid's christmas gifts are hidden away ready for Santa to drop off! ;) All I have left is a few gifts for family members and some gift cards to pick up. THANK GOODNESS!!! I am determined to make the holiday's as relaxing as possible this year! (we'll see how that goes..... ha!)

{haha! isn't that the truth!}

That pretty much sums up our long weekend. We decorated the house for Christmas, so hopefully I'll get some pictures posted soon. There is so much going on around here, so it's been a little crazy. I promise to get back on the blogging wagon really soon! :)

I hope everyone had a fabulous weekend!!

Just a quick update...

I don't even have pictures to post!! I can't remember the last time that happened! ;)

We had a VERY low key weekend around our house! I think the time change really did us all in this past week. I've even been ready for bed around 7:30 every night! And let's be honest... Mine and Chris' night out last Saturday didn't help matters much!! Sleep deprivation sure does hit you a lot harder when you're not 21 and you have kids!! ;)

Friday night, we decided to order in. Chris stopped at Pei Wei on his way home (and gosh... Do I LOVE online ordering!!!) and picked up some yummy noodles and ginger beef! After that, we all curled up on the couch and watch some Veggie Tales. Ethan was very cute Friday afternoon. While we were waiting in the carpool lane to pick LK up from school, I told home that he had soccer practice that night. He looked straight at me and very seriously said,"NOPE! I'm going to the Memphis Tigers basketball game!" haha! Apparently someone at school told him that there was a basketball game that night and he decided that was going!!! Chris just beamed when I told him! Looks like my little man is going to follow in his daddy's footsteps and be a Memphis fan! (I still have hope for LK being an Ole Miss girl!!!) :)

Saturday morning my grandmother came to visit and luckily Ethan's soccer game was canceled because of the rain. We spent most of the morning just relaxing and enjoying the rain. That night the kids spent the night with my mom. They seemed to really enjoy themselves!! But who doesn't love getting spoiled by MeMaw??! Chris and I took advantage of our kids free evening and enjoyed a QUIET dinner (can't say that very often!), some more Christmas shopping (I'm almost finished with the kids shopping!!), and even a movie! (Charlie St.Cloud was VERY good!)

Today, we went to my Grandmother's house to help her with a few things around the house and then came home and did more stuff around here. I was able to get a little bit of cleaning accomplished and even managed to get all the fall decor put away. We are SOOO ready for Christmas around our house!!!

Well, that's our weekend in a nutshell! Definitely nothing exciting! Ha! It was honestly nice to relax though! Our weeks tend to get so hectic and usually the weekends are just as busy, so it's nice to take it easy every once in a while!

Well, I hope everyone has a great week! I'll try to have a better post later in the week!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Shutterfly Christmas Cards!

It's about that time... Christmas Card time!! :) One of my favorite things to do each year is to search high and low for the PERFECT Christmas card! Shutterfly has really outdone themselves this year. I have to admit... the past few years, I have designed and printed my own. But with all this cuteness from Shutterfly this year.. I will most likely be purchasing! :) I am so happy to announce that Shutterfly is giving away 50 free cards to bloggers!!! They have SO much to choose from.. Holiday Cards, Christmas Invitations, and more photo cards than you can even imagine! :) Go HERE to sign up! Here are a few of my faves:

Are these not just precious??! I have NO idea what our Christmas card will look like this year, but I'm looking forward to deciding! Good thing we had Candice take all those great photos for us!! Now I have PLENTLY to choose from! :) I LOVE LOVE LOVE Christmas cards... to send and to receive! :) Definitely go and take advantage of this great offer. There are SO many other cards to choose from.