A Happie, Healthy Mother's Day to all, Highlights from the Botbyl family's Fun festive Easter Festivities, and our Ultrasound results!!

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!!! Hope everyone out there has a fabulous, enjoyable, and extremely memorable mother's day, whether it's your 1st, 2nd, or 45th!!

 

 The rest of the contents in this particular post are way passed due, but I'm exceedingly excited to share our lovely Easter and spring break festivities, for which it has taken me a while to gather my thoughts and photos in order to create this post! This is all about Easter weekend!

 Fine Dining

We enthusiastically celebrated our 1st evening of spring break at Friday's, where we enjoyed some wonderful food, as you can see from Clara's wonderful one-of-a-kind chocolate goat-tee!

Egg-stra Egg-citing Egg Dying and Decorating

We thought it'd be egg-stra fun to dye eggs this year for several reasons. This is a tradition that I always loved as a child, and now that Clara is egg-stremely curious about discovering every aspect of the world around her, we knew she would find this awesome activity egg-xilarating, memorable, fun, and quite creative! Last but not least, we figured that dedicating these fun festive artistic eggs to each member of our family including baby #2 was a perfectly cute way to celebrate our family and to work on a cute Holiday craft together! Here is the wonderful footage we've gathered of our Fabulous Easter Eggies!!

A wonderful afternoon with Jon's family, including an awesome Easter Egg Hunt and meeting a new adorably precious family member was a fabulous way to spend our Saturday before Easter! Jon’s parents have a beautiful home in Bethlehem PA, so of course I took advantage of the opportunity to hide eggs everywhere, which was enjoyable!! It was also extremely fun to see Clara attempting to play monkey in the middle with her cousins who are at least twice as tall as her, but she didn’t notice, or mind for that matter, just kept at it, running around the room, focused, arms above her head trying to catch the ball. That’s my girl! (Jenn, we missed you guys, & just wanted to give you a quick shout out!)

It was absolutely fabulous meeting little John Spurlock! What a cuuutie!!!!! So adorable!

On Easter Sunday, We enjoyed Easter Brunch at Bogey's with Mom-mom and Pop-pop...and a gigantic fluffy fun-loving, but mysterious rabbit, who Clara was OBSESSED with!

Last, but certainly not least :

 Anatomy Scan

Also, several weeks ago, Jon and I received some egg-citing news! Ok, I’ll say goodbye to the “Egg-puns”, or at least put them away till next year. On to the exciting news : Baby #2 is a…BOY and will carry on the “Botbyl” name, and I would love to say that Clara is excited, which she seems to be, but honestly adding a gender to the mix has been extremely confusing for her. It’s taken about a month for her to routinely point to my belly and say “Bay”, meaning “Baby”, but attempting to explain to her that there’s a little boy in there completely throws her for a loop, to which she responds by staring at me, blankly and baffled, which is absolutely ok for now, because I know I’ll have tons of explaining to do when she actually meets this little guy and slowly comes to terms with the fact that our world now revolves around 2, not just her – a frightening realization for any toddler I imagine! This passed Friday, she just started announcing "BABY!" and is so proud that she can pronounce the word so well, along with a few other 2-syllable words. As for now, Jon and I are stretching out our time with just her for as long as we possibly can, and just yesterday, made mention of the fact that this will be her last and technically only summer without a sibling, which is unbelievable to me…how exceedingly fast time flies by! I feel like I was literally just pregnant with Clara, and she’s almost 16 months old – where has the time gone?! Well, all we can do is cherish every moment we have and try to live our lives to the fullest! Here are a couple of photos of Clara in training, as well as Me & the precious little guy!! (these were taken about a month ago, so little baby boy has grown since then, and is a tad bigger than in the picture...so has momma, and is attempting to keep these pounds off which is a post for another day!)

Back to Baby Boy Botbyl, Jon and I are both extremely excited to be having one of each. The only aspect of having a boy that overwhelms me big time is clothing! We have barely any boy clothes although I do have a couple of neutral outfits that should definitely do the trick! I’m gonna hafta examine what I have and make the most of whatever I can, while sadly organizing and boxing up all Clara’s adorable little outfits, and I’ve been uber emotional lately, so I’m sure I’ll literally be sobbing while doing so. As far as our large items are concerned, we were practical enough, when pregnant with Clara, to aim to purchase (or put on Clara’s baby registry) neutral stuff from the beginning, so that if we were ever to have a boy, it would be an extremely smooth transition, in terms of car seat/stroller, highchair, and even our vintage antique style nursery, which baby boy should easily be able to move right in to. For those items, I’m extremely thankful – We’ll be using EVERYTHING again! Also people have been gracious and amazing with lending/giving us items that have been awesomely useful and wonderful, and we’re truly grateful for that as well.

Now, on to the name choosing, something that Jon and I always butt heads on! He claims that he needs to literally see the baby and the perfect name will pop into his head! Right…after several hours of labor (not that he’ll be in labor…but it will definitely be laborious for both parties involved) the baby name fairy will just show up and plant the perfect name in his head! Really Jon?? I think we can plan a little more wisely than that! I will keep working on him with names throughout the summer and we’ll see if we can agree on something besides the 100 names that he already vetoed without so much as a second mentioning.

It’s all part of this amazing journey! We are over-the-moon thankful for such wonderful and incredible blessings, and witness God working in our lives every single day, giving us such tremendous gifts! Thank you so much for stopping by, and God Bless! Have a terrific week!

 HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!!

A glimpse into Clara's future big girl room in progress : A chic mix of old and new!

Good Evening!! And Welcome to Clara's Big girl room...(come next fall.)

This particular space has been in progress for some time now; It originally began as our bright and fun guest room, shortly after doubling as the cat's #1 choice for a comfortable relaxing place of rest - under the bed, that is. Now, with baby #2 enthusiastically on his/her way, we've decided to turn it into Clara's big girl room, for which we selected a beautiful white crib that of course converts into several levels of a toddler bed, so it will definitely grow with her as the years go on, which was exceedingly important to us. As you can see, she's already settling in, and was overwhelmingly excited to jump right in the moment Jon has finished assembling the adorable piece of furniture! We are of course, moving the new baby into Clara's nursery, which is definitely gender neutral enough to easily accommodate a little he or a little she. 

 

Yes! Can't wait to move in to my new girly space!!

Thanks so much for stopping by this evening and stay tuned for our Gender Reveal results next week!! God Bless! Hoppy Easter!!

Here comes Clara Cotton-tail, hoppin' down the bunny trail with egg-citing news!!

Easter, which marks an egg-citing commencement of spring, is such an inspiring, uplifting, and creative time of year! I love love love Easter! The beautiful comforting warmth and ambiance of spring is finally upon us. With strength and hope, spring pulls us from the doldrums of these cold winter months and offers us feelings of lightness and airiness, gorgeous pastels and brightness of sunny days to come – a fresh start, a new beginning, new life emerging!

Speaking of the emergence of new life, Clara has an egg-citing announcement to make and she's been waiting extremely patiently! She has been egg-stra careful not to spill the jelly beans, but now that this meaningful and wonderful holiday is fast approaching, we decided that it's time to let the rabbit out of the bag and share our egg-citing news! So, here it is :

 

Just in case you missed the "Egg Sign" in the 1st photo, I decided to include a 2nd...and a 3rd to make sure it was self-explanatory! Then a little creative Easter egg picture as well as an adorable photo of Clara enthusiastically looking at a family scrapbook, just for fun!! Also, she's so cute in her little spring dress from target, how could I resist?! So...YES! We are "egg-specting" our 2nd child in September - How egg-citing is that? We will be going for the baby's anatomy scan in a couple weeks, and can hardly wait to find out the gender of this child. Having a little girl already definitely makes the whole suspenseful process of finding out way more interesting in my opinion! I mean, there's an added level of suspense this time - Will Clara have an awesome little brother or will she have an amazing little sister?! It's not just like "What are we having, a boy of a girl?" If we are pregnant with another girl, we feel more prepared and pretty much ready to go, but if it's a little boy, I feel that we'll have a little more legwork to do in order to prepare ourselves for the arrival of a little man! Either way, it's all overwhelmingly egg-citing!! We will definitely keep updating "Botbylsmile" and Facebook with results of anatomy scan for those of you who may be interested in finding out the gender of our 2nd baby as well.

While reflecting over the last year of our lives, I can't help but to picture this itsy bitsy little baby in a comfy soft bunny suit! I absolutely can not fathom how insanely fast one year has flown by. Here are a couple egg-stra special photos of Miss Clara from last Easter!

 

She is going to be an amazing BIG SISTER and a gigantic help to mommy, that's for sure!

Hope everyone is having a wonderful time preparing for this awesome spring and the lovely holiday to come! Please check in with us for my next post which will be all about Clara's Big Girl room. Have a terrific week and God Bless! Thanks so much for visiting with us today!!

Good Afternoon!!

I’ve made the important decision, among the chaos of benchmark grading, selecting choir music, staying current with weather forcasts, strategically planning dinner, salvaging enough energy to physically entertain Clara and her best friend the Cat (more on that later), not to mention dealing with a horrible stomach ache from eating too many amazing strips of  bacon for breakfast, to blog! I’ve been slightly neglectful of my beloved blog space, which is extremely important to me, and I feel that I need this creative outlet, from time to time, to keep from going completely crazy – Blogging definitely lowers my stress level and allows me to artistically exist in space, while pulling me away from all these roles I play on a daily basis and letting me take off my hats, for just a moment, even if a mere moment is all I have to compose a sentence or two…and that feels wonderful, and strong, and evident of commitment towards keeping my blog going no matter how incredibly busy, confusing, or demanding life becomes.

Now on to my blog post, Happy Valentines Day everyone! I feel like Valentines day has definitely crept up on us this year, but not without me taking a moment to wish everyone an extra-special Happy Day, filled with gargantuan amounts of love, admiration, and happiness! I’m going to make it a point to be extremely loving, nurturing, and understanding today and over the weekend, and hopefully not stopping there; I normally try really hard to be generous, kind, and accepting, but I need to make a conscious effort to be more appreciative and focus on all the little wonderful things, the small amazing miracles that occur daily, and if something happens that I feel the need to complain or gripe about, squash it immediately. I’ve noticed lately…well, I’ve always noticed, that there are some people out there who always need something to complain or be upset about, and reflects such a scewed, pessimistic, non-productive way of thinking and living our lives. It’s definitely a fact that life brings about multitudes of challenges, some anticipated, some completely unexpected, and we are continuously required to think critically and act upon and/or combat these challenges. Why would we ever want to add more weight by creating more difficult and unpleasant challenges or problems that we are then forced to face? This is something I feel exceedingly passionate about – Thinking positively, spreading optimism and standing up to our problems, and being as happy as much as we possibly can – and something that definitely goes hand in hand with the whole feeling and concept of Valentine’s Day! I feel like I’ve learned more about being truly happy from my 1 year old than I’ve learned from some adults that I’ve observed. However, there are a couple of very positive, enthusiastic, innovative, inspiring individuals that stand out in my mind as exceptional role models, and I attempt to learn as much as I possibly can from optimistic productive people about how to be more efficient, productive, optimistic, awesome, accepting, and loving (I’ve mentioned those words too many time.) With that said, have a wonderful, loving,…truly happy Valentines Day! God Bless!!

Catching up in wonderful 2014!

Good Morning! Can you believe we're having another snow day?! Unbelievable right?! This weather has been absolutely crazy!!

I'd planned on blogging before the Christmas Holiday was over but, as one could've guessed, that definitely didn't happen, and that was over a month ago. Wow! Where has the time gone? So much to catch up on! Life's extreme, yet always creative and thrilling unpredictable-ness strikes daily, as everyone knows from their own lives. A small child sits under my computer chair holding a stuffed squirrel in half a pair of pj's (the child wears the clothes, not the squirrel...yet) 

Let's cut right to the chase : My plan for this post is to highlight the Christmas Season, New Years, January fun in the snow all in one! Speaking of one, Clara also celebrated her 1st birthday which I will post about next! (crap! I just ran over clothes-less squirrel - Way to go Mom!) Let's go back a month and celebrate the Holidays all over again shall we? What a fabulous and inspiring season!

 Clara's 1st picture with Santa at Groff's!

 

New Years Eve in Cape May!

Snow day with mommy and Daddy at Applebees and excitement on the slopes!

All in all, this has definitely been an adventurous winter no doubt! Have a wonderful day!