Goodbye, 2010! Be Kind, 2011.

I was never more ready to start a new year than I was this year. 2010 had it's moments of happiness and many, many blessings. It was an absolute joy to see my baby bloom from a sweet little infant to a rambunctious, talkative toddler. But 2010 was also filled with plenty of challenges, the most difficult moments to date- being a single mother for most of the year and seeing my child hurt and in the hospital.

Quite honestly, the thing I'll remember most about 2010 was that it was the year of the imaginary husband. He was deployed for seven long months and then other than the two glorious weeks of leave after his homecoming, he has been pretty much gone the whole time since. I know he doesn't like being away from us any more than I do and there are other military families out there who are enduring circumstances much worse than ours, but it has been incredibly difficult nonetheless.

Thankfully, I consider myself an optimistic person and I have high hopes that this year will be amazing for the Augustines.

So goodbye, 2010! Please be kind, 2011!

Our New Year's Eve spread. You can tell it's been an exhausting year since I didn't have the energy or the motivation to set the table nicely. Mike and Grace are lucky I even cooked. I was tempted to just order pizza.

Since Mike had duty today, Grace and I spent a quiet day at home playing with all her new toys, playing dress up, and learning to play catch. I was trying to teach her how to catch a ball properly, but the girl refused. Whenever the ball rolled away, she would chase after it on all fours, pick it up with her mouth, crawl back to me, drop it at my feet, and bark. All while wearing kitty cat ears. She cracks me up!

Hello, Jesus, Whassup?

Grace likes to play 'phone' where she hands me the phone and insists I carry on imaginary conversations with random people, usually one of the grandparents. After exhausting all topics, I started to run out of things to say, so I told her it was her turn to call someone. This is what her conversation sounded like:

"Hello, Jesus, Whassup? What you doing? I got boo-boo (pointing to her band-aid). Make it all better. Talk to you later!"


And speaking of phones, I recently had to change my number because, apparently, there was a typo in some ad and I started to get random calls and texts from people thinking they were calling an escort service. It was funny at first, then annoying, then downright creepy.

Two Stitches

Today was supposed to be a stay-in kind of day because Grace and I have started the sniffles. My goal was to tackle the mountain of laundry that never seems to go away and start taking down the Christmas decorations.

Things didn't quite go according to plan.

While I was taking a load of clothes out of the dryer, Grace decided she'd put the taking down of the Christmas decorations in her own hands. She managed to climb onto her table and pull down a stocking and stocking holder right onto her forehead.

The girl cried for a second while I checked out the wound, but immediately stopped when I promised her a Hello Kitty band-aid. Although the cut was small and stopped bleeding right away, I was concerned about how deep it looked. So I took her to the ER to make sure it was okay.

Two and a half hours and two stitches later, we finally walked out of the ER. She is doing perfectly fine. I, on the other hand, could use a glass of wine (or something since I can't drink).


Loving the fact that she gets to wear a Hello Kitty band-aid.

Grace's Diner

Welcome to Grace's Diner. It is open from the moment she wakes up until she has to go to sleep at night. I don't even get a 'good morning' anymore like I used to. Now it's 'I have to make breakfast for my Baby Alive'. If you ever get the privilege of eating in her diner, you're in for quite a treat. She will serve you anything from green eggs and ham to chocolate cake. Sometimes, she will even insist on feeding you herself. It's a good thing all her meals have zero calories because this little chef likes to feed you. A LOT.

Family Pajama Day

This is not the most flattering family picture we've ever taken, I know. But I still wanted to document the laid back afternoon we had. As soon as we got back from a morning of running errands, we changed back into our pajamas and spent the rest of the afternoon lounging on the couch, watching movies and lamenting at the state of our house, thanks to all of Grace's presents.

At the end of the day, I do my best to ignore all the mess and just enjoy the simple, quiet moments I spend with my family.

Grace's 1st Friend

Jasmine is Grace's very first friend. They met when Grace was just days old and they had many 'play dates' during their first few months.

Jasmine was in town to celebrate her second birthday and it was so sweet to see how much the two girls have grown since their newborn days in Japan. How quickly the days have passed! It seems like only yesterday that these two were itty-bitties and now they feed each other birthday cake and play ring-around-the-roses.

Merry Christmas 2010

I was so excited about Grace seeing what Santa brought her that I completely forgot to take a picture of her sitting in front of the tree with all the presents piled underneath. Once I remembered, the living room was a disaster area with wrapping paper and boxes strewn all over the place that it was too late to even fake the moment. I even splurged and ordered her the holiday plaid pajamas from a fancy shmancy boutique store for the picture perfect moment. Oh well, there's always next year.

Despite the missed photo opportunity, it was a wondrous Christmas morning for all three of us. When I went to get Grace from her bedroom, the first question she asked was "Did Santa bring presents?" and I told her to go out there and see.

She bypassed all the presents and went straight for the plate of cookies and glass of milk to see if Santa ate his snack. She was quite amazed that he tried all the cookies she offered.

Then, even though she's been talking for weeks about Santa bringing her presents, she was a bit hesitant about actually opening them. Mike and I had to do a bit of prodding, but after the first few, she got the hang of the whole thing. After a while though, she just wanted to play with the presents she had already opened and told Mike, "You open them, Daddy."

After presents, Daddy and Grace played with all her cool new stuff before he had to head to work (Don't even get me started!). Thankfully he was back by early afternoon so we had the rest of the day to relax and watch Grace turn the house into a complete and absolute mess while playing with all her new toys. Mike always doubted the need for a playroom, but experiencing how quickly the house gets overrun with kiddie clutter without one, space for a play room is on the top of our list when looking for our next place.

We ended our evening with a new Augustine family tradition- movie night. In an actual movie theater! We watched Tangled and Grace liked it enough to be relatively well behaved for most of it.

We hope you and yours had a wonderful Christmas! Merry Christmas and much love from the Augustines!






Grace was so exhausted from all the Christmas morning festivities that she fell asleep while eating her lunch.