flowers Archives - Raising Roberts

happy birthday, sweet girl

Today is Evangeline’s 3rd birthday. It seems so crazy to me that I have had a daughter for 3 years. And though I can see her dramatic attitude taking shape, I absolutely love having another girl in the house.

young girl in yellow dress in yellow flowers

I wanted to take her to a field of yellow flowers to take some birthday pictures. We were on a time crunch and she was more interested in the flowers than taking pictures. But I did get a few that I’m in love with. I think I need to enlarge a picture or two. I couldn’t get over how pretty this little place was. We plan to go back very soon to get a few more shots when we’re not feeling so rushed.

Sometimes I feel bad about not doing anything big or exciting for the kids’ birthdays. I would love to dream up a perfectly themed party. But our lives are already so full right now. That just doesn’t work for us at this point in life. But in the meantime, I try to do little special things to let them know they are loved.

For Evangeline, that meant adding some color to the day. Last night I blew up 36(!!) balloons to fill up the living room floor and surprise her when she woke up. 12 for each year of life. I planned to video her reaction when she first saw the balloons but she and Kingston were awake before I even woke up—way too early!

I also made a colorful cake for her. And all I have is this phone snap that looks way overexposed on the laptop.

So after our traditional birthday trip to Mcdonald’s (and the worker was so kind to give Evangeline her meal for free when she heard it was her birthday!) we headed home to eat cake. And wouldn’t you know it? She fell asleep right before we got home. (Probably because she was up at the crack of dawn…but what do I know?!)

She was not a pleasant birthday girl when she woke up–it’s her party and she’ll cry if she wants to.

But the sparkler candles that I bought her, that wouldn’t blow out too easily, put a smile on her face. And cake. She is so my child. Nothing puts a smile on my face quite like dessert.

I love this girl and her love for all things colorful. Her insistence on wearing a dress…every single day. Her obsession with “Frozen.” Her requests for an “Elsa braid” or “Anna braid” every day. I love the fact that every time she notices my growing belly, she starts referring to the baby as “baby Elsa.” Her giggles. Her love for her mommy and her friendship with her best friend, Legacy. I love that you can see how caring she is when she talks to Desmond and tries to give him bites of food. And that even though it drives me crazy, that she’s strong willed and determined. I love everything about her. I keep selfishly praying that we will be blessed with another baby girl. Because nothing would make me happier than giving her a baby sister, a built in best friend.

That’s all the sappiness for now!
Happy 3rd birthday, sweet baby girl!

May 5, 2016

Blog, kingston

stop and smell the tulips

One very hard lesson I’ve learned throughout the years is that things don’t always go according to plan. I think that’s especially true when you factor in a family. In those times, it’s good to remember that God is sovereign over all things–even though we may never know why things turn out like they do.

A couple of Mondays ago, we were planning on taking the kids up to Forest Park during Don’s weekend. That was the day that Evangeline was diagnosed with an ear infection and pneumonia. So we rescheduled to the following Monday.

Well, once again, plans had to change. Our boys were coughing and feverish all weekend (which also meant we had to miss out on our church’s Bible conference.) Then on Saturday night, while driving home, our van started making horrible sounds and eventually the power steering went out. Thankfully we were able to pull right up next to our house and we weren’t stranded on the side of the highway.

Long story short–someone was able to come fix our van on Monday and it was much cheaper than we had expected! However, since the van was being worked on, that meant we couldn’t load up the whole family to go to the park.

I had a doctor’s appointment that day, close to Forest Park, so Kingston was my buddy for the afternoon. Of course it was kind of chilly–and super windy–but he was a good sport about it for the most part. We just had to rush to see all the flowers.

“The flowers smell like marshmallows!”