Hazel & Olive WIW1

Okay so I wrote a little bit about Hazel & Olive in my previous post and I finally got around to buying something! They have the cutest clothes, are constantly restocking their site

(weekly!) and you guys, free shipping. Even to Hawaii. I kid you not. I wouldnt joke about something so amazing. Check them out on facebook and IG for giveaways too.

 

Anyway I bought 2 tops and wore one of them today.

(Mint big dot tie top)

 

Weird and unflattering but Brooke was my photographer

 

 Selfie taken at work

Is it really almost April?

Life is sure different this time around. Having a 2nd baby I realized that I would have to return to work 6 weeks after baby since I had just started my job, was not tenured yet and didn't want to take too long unpaid leave. I did not nurse Oliver for many reasons and I will be completely honest-- I think it has helped me to truly ENJOY this baby-hood. I love every single moment this time around and this little dude has me wrapped around his tiny grubby fingers. Brooke is a full-fledged little girl now, not a baby. She can read small words-- really and truly read -- by phonetically sounding out words instead of guessing or looking at the corresponding pictures. I am flabbergasted and so stinking proud of my two offspring.

 

Little dude started eating solids at around 4-5 months

I might take the cake for "worst parent of the year" but this little girl CANNOT stay indoors to save her life. I know this is a good thing, but sometimes when I'm exhausted and Vance is at work I feel like just telling her to be a normal 3.5 year old and watch TV. Never works :(

No comment :)

 

House update: stairs

I know what you're thinking ... who redoes their stairs?! It seems so unimportant, so blah. But we HAD TO. Here's a picture of what the stairs looked like when we first moved in:

Taking off the weird paneling:

No paneling 

Re-carpeting: (See where the paint/texture had scraped off on the sides? That stuff was like, glued onto the stairs. Every time we tried to scrape it it took us HOURS. We finally decided to rebuild the stairs)

And the after: It took Vance SO LONG to do these stairs but it was so worth it!

 Please excuse the mess upstairs. I didn't even bother to clean up!

House update: Kitchen

While we're not 100% finished with the kitchen, we've done a lot within the past few months.  Here is what the kitchen looked like before:

We took down the top cabinets, added pendant lights and took off the mirrors off the bottom cabinets and put chalkboard paint

Took these mirrored doors down, hung a rod and curtains (a la Pinterest), purchased a new washer/dryer, which we stacked and added a new storage compartment to make up for the cabinet space we eliminated

And here's the tentative after:
As you can tell, when we installed the granite countertops the drawers no longer fit perfectly. Vance still needs to take the drawer-face off and reposition them. He also wants to re-paint all of the cabinets and the entire kitchen, which I am hesitant about because I know what a huge project that is!

I love the subway tile that Vance installed

march

I'm back so hopefully that means my blog will remain a part of my life. Still haven't figured out how to upload pictures to my blog so these are all instagram pictures (lorieiko)

If you haven't yet, head onto hazelandolive.com-- they have the CUTEST clothes at amazing prices and free shipping! They add new clothes every Friday... I'm hooked on their stuff :)

Keeping this short because let's keep it real-- my (almost) 5-month old still won't nap and my 3.75 year old will be up soon demanding to go outside to play, dinner won't make or buy itself and the hubby has to work overnight tonight so here we go...

Vance & I were lucky to sneak out of the house for a belated Valentine's dinner. We had a kid-free hot pot dinner at Ichiriki and it was wonderful. I ordered my first beer in over a year (and didn't get carded, boo!)

Always wide-awake with fingers or feet in mouth

This lady will be 4 in 2 months! Thankfully the tantrums have substantially diminished (still get them every now and then) but the whining, OH THE WHINING! It makes my ears bleed.

Poor dude is using all of his big sister's pink hand-me-downs 

Yesterday marks the hubs and my 7 year anniversary date. So amazing to see how much has changed!

life, lately

I'm really not sure if I'll continue blogging. I just find that I don't have the time ... or the interest to blog. With that being said, I do still read everyone's blogs & love keeping up with what's going on ... we'll see. Oliver is 4 months, a super happy smiley baby who refuses to nap. It's exhausting but I am crazy about him. He rolled over twice a few days ago and seems to have forgotten how to do it since then. Ha!

Brooke will be 4 in about 3 months. I was a chaperone at her field trip to the zoo yesterday. I was so tired after the field trip-- major props to preschool teachers! I give them so much credit. 

Here are some snippets of our life:

Picture of the sunrise while driving to work, no filter! Hawaii is gorgeous.

My "happy" family :)

10 year reunion

Ya'll, it's been 10 years sine I graduated from high school. Scary. I was REALLY not looking forward to going to my 10 year reunion 2 months after giving birth, but whatev. I wanted to have a great night with my girlfriends and was able to-- for a short while. That night Brooke came down with a mean stomach bug and cut my night of fun short. I rushed home to tend to a vomitting little girl and a sleepy newborn. Oh well.

It was fun while it lasted. It was great to see high school friends again, I feel so blessed to have attended such a great school filled with (mostly) amazing people.