Her Royal Fiveness!

My sweet little miss turns five years old today. Recently, I looked back through the blog, and reread her birth story and watched a few videos from when she was a baby. I had forgotten so many of the details. I had forgotten how afraid I was after her birth, when she refused to breathe.  I had forgotten how worried I was when we brought her home from the hospital with extra gadgets to monitor her. I had forgotten the sheer exhaustion from interrupted sleep and working full time.  I had forgotten the sadness that came from leaving her every day to commute an hour and a half to work when she was so tiny.

But I remembered the overwhelming joy that she brought to our lives. I remembered the uncontrollable laughter that she causes. I remembered the sass that lives in her.  Corrin is not afraid to live out loud.  She's not afraid to stand in her truth, and let the world know she is here. Wanna know a (not so secret) secret?  I envy her that. I envy her the freedom to know what she wants and go for it without thought of what anyone else thinks. And the mama bear in me is willing to go to the mat to protect that. 

Don't get me wrong, she can be shy and hesitant at times. Surprisingly enough mostly with her peers. I'm afraid that she recognizes that sometimes those who could be friends can sometimes hurt us.  But that doesn't stop her from being Corrin. So what's Corrin up to nowadays?

I have seen your soul and it is beautiful. 

Corrin...

· is so much fun to be around. And because she attends school in the district I work for, we are almost always together. 

· is still our silly girl, who laughs at the drop of a dime. 

· is our little chatterbox. Honestly, she never stops talking. She even talks in her sleep. 

· still has a mind of her own when it comes to what she's going to wear. That's a battle we just don't feel like fighting. Sometimes she's all about comfort. Sometimes she's a princess and only a dress will do.  As long as whatever she chooses is weather appropriate and acceptable for whatever event we're attending, we let her express herself. 

· is currently baby obsessed. Honestly, she's been baby obsessed for the past two years, but just recently it's gotten to be overwhelming.  She constantly listens to my belly (by placing her ear over my stomach) so she can hear the baby that she is convinced is in there. (There is no baby in my belly!) She constantly talks about having a little baby. She's actively praying for a baby. 

Birthday Partying!

We hosted a birthday party at a local fun place called Stars & Strikes. The kids bowled, played laser tag and bumper cars, ate pizza, and roamed around the arcade.  They had a blast!  There was lots for them to do, and there were lots of friends and family members there to celebrate our little princess.  She opted for a Barbie themed cake. (There's a story behind said cake.) All in all, we had a blast, and the birthday girl hasn't stopped talking about her party yet!

Now the cake on the other hand.  This cake was so delicious.  We tried a new bakery based on reviews alone.  I'm so happy we went with the reviews. This cake was awesome!  It was delicious and moist, and beautiful. I really didn't want to cut it because it was so beautiful.  Corrin and I had originally discussed her cake, and she wanted a unicorn cake, with rainbow layers. We had searched Pinterest for inspiration pictures. We talked about this birthday cake up until we were parked in the parking lot, and preparing to enter the bakery to place the order.

The baker came out, I explained what we wanted (a birthday cake and some cupcakes), and then she asked Corrin what kind of cake she wanted.  My daughter then proceeds to change the whole game up. The unicorn cake that we had researched and talked about became a Barbie cake with bling. I was left stunned and confused, but we went ahead with the cake that Little Miss wanted, and it was beautiful, and delicious, and everything that she wanted it to be.

Silly big brother

What's Happening?

I know. I know! Exactly one year and six months later, and I’m trying AGAIN to revive this blog. This space started as a place for me to document our children’s antics as we grew through my pregnancies and their infancy and toddlerhood. My sister was deployed overseas, and I wanted to include her in the changes that were occurring.  Well now both of our children are school-aged and attend school full time.  Where does that leave this space? Still trying to figure that out...

What have we been up to in the past year and a half?  We’ve gone on a few vacations. We’ve celebrated holidays and accomplishments. We’ve suffered loss and setbacks. We’ve all aged a little and grown. Micah has started first grade. Corrin is in Pre-K4. They are both smart and inquisitive kids, who keeps us on our toes, and usually laughing. We’ve moved and moved again.  

In short, things are different, and I'm sure more change is coming, but we've done a pretty good job of going with the flow. Now here are a bunch of pictures (in no particular order), and a promise that I'll be back, and hopefully it will be long before another year and a half have passed. 

I've realized that a whole bunch of pictures in the blog are broken because of the foolishness with Photobucket charging roughly $400 per year to continue to host them.  I'll be honest, I'm never going to pay that much money for anything to do with this blog, so I'll be (slowly) going back through the blog and replacing pictures as I can.

What Now?

My poor, neglected blog. It's been more than a year since I've last made an update. I've thought about updating the blog. I've thought about taking it down completely. I couldn't make a decision. So I didn't. Then I forgot about the blog completely for a while, because life got to be too much. It was all I could do to make it through the day to day. Blogging was not a consideration let alone something that was going to be scheduled into the week.  In the end, the blog just sat here; abandoned.

There have been lots of changes in the Giles household recently!  With those changes, it looks like Growing Up Giles may make a comeback!  I won't make any promises, but we'll see if we're able to stick with it this time.

Look for a slightly updated look to the blog soon. In the mean time, here's a picture of the munchkins!

State of the Giles Family 2015

Did you watch the State of the Union address?  I did not watch the live address.  The reason is ... The reason really doesn't matter. Anyway, all of that to the side, Google and YouTube have come to the rescue, and I was able to watch a recording of Obama's speech. The social media commentary was enlightening, but I thought I should check it out for myself.

Typically, I greatly dislike politics of any kind, and I tend to avoid watching anything politically driven.  I think I've said it before here, but I'll restate that politics make me anxious. I like to avoid anxiety when I can, and this is one area where I can and do avoid. Disclaimer aside, I have decided that I will provide a State of the Giles Family address to let you know how we've been doing since my little blog break, and our goals for the year.  So here goes:

*****

Family, Friends, anyone who stumbles across this patch of internet space:

The Giles family is doing just fine. The past year has been trying at times, but mostly pretty awesome.  We celebrated birthdays, graduations, and five years of marriage.  We've played in the first snow of two little people's lifetime.  We've laughed and cried.  We've learned to crawl, then walk, then run, then jump, and finally climb. 

Corrin has grown by leaps and bounds.  It's hard to believe how tiny and fragile she was only a couple years ago.  Now she is running, jumping, and climbing.  She's sleeping through the night. She talks constantly, and is learning new words and expressions every day.  She has such a fun personality. The silliest things are hilarious to her.  She loves shoes and clothes. We're working on her sleeping in her own room. Right now she sleeps in the room with Micah. It does not look like it's going to be an easy transition.  We'll also work on potty training.  That should be another fun experience.

Micah continues to amaze me.  His vocabulary and ability to have a conversation have grown exponentially.  He's a funny little guy.  He's so caring, and always wants to be sure that everyone is happy. He started preschool!  I'm sure I was much more sad than he was.  He loves his classmates, and they love him.  Micah got his big boy room. It's still a work in progress, but we're making progress.  In 2015, Micah is working on learning all his letters, numbers, shapes, etc.  He should also be working on not jumping on the couch.  We'll see how that last one goes.

Mikey and I have mostly been taking it easy. I big chopped again, and cut off all my hair. Mikey decided to grow his hair and loc it up.  I went horseback riding for the first time. Like I said, 2014 was pretty laid back.  In 2015, we are going to work on being more present when we are with the kids and each other. I want to work on being more fit and healthy.  We plan to get fit as a family, starting with family bike rides using our Christmas gifts.  We also have a list of activities that we want to do together as a family. It's our family 2015 bucket list. I want to work on taking more and better quality pictures.

There are lots more goals, but ultimately, the Giles family goal for 2015 and beyond, is to make each day better than the last. Working together, and loving each other through thick and thin, I'm sure that the ultimate goal is easily within our reach.

Radio Silence

I find it extremely frustrating to be listening to the radio and suddenly find myself listen to dead air. Two seconds later I have either flipped the station or turned on my iPod. So imagine my surprise when I took a moment to visit the old blog, and realized that I had not posted anything since March 2014! I have reasons that I haven't been posting. I won't share them, because frankly, I'm sure you don't care. Moving forward he goal is to blog more consistently. Some things have changed, so hopefully, it will fit into my schedule better to blog again. Honestly, I miss blogging and sharing what it like to be growing up Giles.

So now the silence is over. Lots of things have changed. Things look different around the blog. The little Giles have grown. The big Giles have grown too. So I'll be working on keeping you up to date on what we Giles are up to, starting with an update on some of the things we got up to in 2014.