Aiva

My little (ok, maybe not so little) girl just makes me smile all the time. Aiva has had quite a summer filled with all sorts of fun stuff. She's friends with some girls up the road who she just adores. They want to play with each other all the time...I mean all the time. Aiva wakes up asking to play with Abbey and Rianna and she goes to bed asking about what they're going to do the next day. Another "friend" who she recently talks about is cousin Tarah. Tarah is actually Nate's cousin but Aiva has fully adopted her as HER cousin. Now that Tarah lives close to us, Aiva wants to go over to her house all the time...I mean all the time. Aiva loves making pictures for cousin Tarah and asking all the time when she can go back. Tarah and her fiance, Scott have just recently bought this house and they are fixing it up. As soon as Aiva stepped foot in their house she wanted to get to work helping Tarah. Makes me laugh, and at times sad, that she wants to grow up. Just within the past two weeks, Aiva has started showing signs that she's ready to enter into the next level...whatever that may be. I've been telling her all along that when she's ready to get her ears pierced to let me know and that I would take her. Well, on Friday it happened. She announced that she was officially ready. It was at that moment that I realized that I wasn't! After she went to bed that night I crawled up on the couch and had a silent cry. It wasn't supposed to go this fast. I was supposed to have a few more years of innocence. I'm half way dreading this year of first grade. The things that she's going to see and hear...I don't want to think about it sometimes! I think all of this growing up that she's doing really hit me on Saturday though. I was inside cleaning the house when she ran in proclaiming that she could now ride her bike. I ran outside and got the camera ready. Aiva loves doing movies so she wanted to be sure to get this one on camera for her dad who wasn't there. So here I am, trying to watch her, get it on camera and not cry (yeah, right).

She was so proud of herself and so was I. Sorry for the video with no sound. For some reason it didn't upload right so all you get is the video! Think back to how it was years ago! Getting back...I kind of wish I had Friday back again when Nate took her training wheels off. It very much reminded me of Karen Kingsbury book about the "lasts" your kids will have and remembering all of them like they were firsts. My baby will never again ride her bike with training wheels. Just saying that sounds funny. Yes, she is getting bigger and I better fasten my seat belt because it's gonna be a wild ride. Ready or not, here it comes...without training wheels!

Hoarding

OK...so I looked and saw that my last post was on Stockpiling and I had to laugh. I've been having an internal debate with myself on whether I'm truly stockpiling or if I'm hoarding. My cupboard overfloweth with stuff which is a good thing but I'm having a hard time actually giving up the stuff. I've told myself all the excuses about being prepared, being wise, being a good steward but in reality I'm not being so wise or a good steward. After having all these feelings, I read an article from one of my favorite blogs, Money Saving Mom, and she gave me a good what for. Click here to take a look. I've found that I have been buying stuff that's really cheap or free but I have so much that it's coming out of my ears. I've decided to really purge and ask myself a hard question...Do I already have a stockpile for the next 6 months? If the answer is yes, then it's going in the basket to go to WARM (Westerville Area Resource Ministry). I certainly haven't gotten to the point of some of the people on "Hoarders" but I can totally see how they got there after going through some of these mind games with myself! Yikes! It really does give you a rush when you have a cart full of stuff and you're paying next to nothing for it. I just need to not be so focused on that to where I'm missing out on the real reason for doing it. Thanks Money Saving Mom for the insight!