jay & charlotte

Melissa is back at school. She went into school the last week of the school-year back in June, but except for that she hasn’t been to work since March 11th. She is ready to be back and I’m excited for her. She loves what she does, the people she works with and is definitely in her sweet spot teaching fifth graders. It was a gift to have Melissa home for essentially the first six months of Charlotte’s life and we are gonna try as best as we can to score the same timing for our next child.

Fall means Melissa is back to school, but is also means that my traveling schedule will pick up a bit. Melissa had some teacher in service days last week and I was out of town for work so it was Charlotte’s first time spending a few days at one of our best friends house. We’re excited that our friends were on board about watching Charlotte. They have two kids of their own and were gracious enough to take on one more. We are so happy that we did the whole sleep training thing because now when our friend needs to put Charlotte down for a nap, it’s not a big long drawn out process. Charlotte spent three days there last week, but this whole week, I’m not traveling, so Charlotte is all mine.

It hasn’t been just Charlotte and me for an extended period of time since June when Melissa went into work for the last week of school. She is a whole different baby than she was back in June. I know I’m biased, but I think she is a pretty easy baby. I’m looking forward to this week and getting to spend time with her. Yesterday we took a trip to the doctor (for me), ran to the post office and played a lot. I also scored some free Chick-fil-A for Wednesday morning so that will be our first of many dates that I plan to take her on (even though she can’t partake of the heavenly chicken just yet). I’m sure we’ll go on lots of walks and read lots of books and have a great week.

All her bottles are washed, I’ve got her clothes out and ready to go, diaper bag stocked, just waiting for my little lady to wake up from her nap so we can start the day.

-jay

speaking of pinterest...

So pinterest is good for so many reasons, here is just one more.  

During this wonderful labor day, I have labored over my very first batch of purely from scratch cupcakes.  I saw this picture of these beautiful cupcakes on pinterest the other day and decided that I must try them.

They are Lemon Berry Cupcakes and it is easy to see why I fell in love with them at first sight.  After following a couple links I found out that they were from a blog that is written by a high school student in Seattle.  The blog is really cute and she has some great recipes up on her site.

I know that my cupcakes look nothing like hers, but they sure do taste good!  The recipe was easy to follow and it all went just like she described in the recipe.  Her icing looks ten times better than mine, mine came out very thin.  I think it was because I got too excited and did not wait the right amount of time before icing the cupcakes.

Either way, they are delicious and I am happy how they turned out.  The cake part is a very tasty lemon pound cake with raspberry and blackberry topping.  Yum!

These cupcakes are going to be shared with some friends tonight at dinner and some are going to be brought to school for my fifth grade team to start the school off right, or at leat start it off on a sugar kick...that is really what six fifth grade teachers need at 7:00 in the morning on the first day of school!

-melissa

goodbye summer

As summer ends and a new school year is just around the corner it makes me a little excited inside.  The end of summer is always such a great time to start so many things.  How about like cleaning the house, becoming organized, running again, eating better, getting on a great schedule, so on and so forth.

This year is just a tinge different for me than in years past.  This year while I happily trot off to go set up my classroom, prepare new binders and dream of bulletin boards and lesson plans I will be leaving something very precious behind.  My little C will either be staying home with dear old dad (aka the jay in jayhess.com) or spending the day with one of our sweet friends and her lovely family.  I have had many people ask how I am doing with being apart from little C with a lowered tone to their voice and sense of somberness in their eyes.  I know that is purely out of concern and love.  To answer everyones questions is... I am very ready!

I know that to some, it might sound awful.  I am sorry.  I have been away from something I really enjoy doing (although I might not admit it come January) for almost six months now.  I have not gone six months without a job since I was 15.  I now completely understand what a stay at home mom gig entails, and I am not cut out for it!  I know, it is a full time job, but I need to go to work to get a break! I am looking forward to my own little world again that I can mostly control (key on the mostly).  I know that there will be some days that I miss Charlotte and days when I can not wait to go pick her up.  But I know that she is in a good home around good people.  I also know that a happy mommy (and in my case, working mommy) is a happy family.

So anyways, back to the starting of new things, getting the wind back in my sails, cleaning up this place, organizing, decorating, getting fit... you know... an overall fall rehaul!  I have been working slowly on some projects and have even gotten Jay involved in a good amount of them (shocking I know, but he is such a good sport).  Here are some things that has been happening in the Hess House and Mrs. Hess’ Classroom over the past week or two:

New focus wall in family room:

It is by no means complete, but the bones are up.  We pulled some of the Richmond and Cincinnati artwork from the office, the honeymoon photo collage from the master and Jay made the sign after I showed him one on pinterest. (thanks pinterest)

In addition to what is there, Jay would like to add some smaller photo’s and I would like to add these! (thank you again, pinterest)

New mantel decor:

We used to have this large swirl candle holder from pottery barn, but it was so seven years ago and always hard to come up with new ways to decorate.  This is more simple and I think the mirror makes the room look bigger.

New family room wall art:

We made our first official family trips to two of my favorite places: Ikea and uFab.  Staple gun, one cute and handy hubby and twenty minutes later we have some interchangeable (this is just for fall) and cheap wall art.

Classroom:

These are current pictures of my ever evolving classroom.

Some new things for this year are these signs, created by my super handy husband with the ideas stolen from pinterest (yep, you should really check out pinterest if you haven’t yet).

Well, that is some of things that I have been up to, not including sewing projects for new babies, old babies and around the house.  I would like to dedicate this blog to the ladies who encouraged me to sleep train my child (so now I have time to dream and create again) and of course pinterest (because really I don’t dream and create, I just copy). Moohaha!

-melissa

mr. and mrs. vacay

We have always said that when we have kids we wanted to make sure that we took time for just the two of us.  We know that it is so important to have time to ourselves, especially when we are both working and life starts to get crazy.  Although we have not done that great on the one date a month, we have recently been able to complete our first mr. and mrs. vacation, just the two of us! For our first mr. and mrs. vacation we went to Seattle, Washington.  Neither of us have been to Washington, Southwest flies out there, and we had willing grandparents willing to watch Charlotte for a couple of days...it was perfect.

We had a great time, doing things that would be difficult to do with a five month old on a very rigid nap schedule.  Here are a few of our favorite things...

Meals with no baby on my lap.  Although we were strongly encouraged to go to an indian reservation and get fresh caught salmon by some old bird on the plane, we opted for Ray’s, a lovely and pretty famous waterfront restaurant.

Go on a ninety minute tour of the Boeing plant.  This would have been out of the question if we weren’t flying solo, this tour had some crazy strict rules, one being no children under four feet.  We know Charlotte is tall, but not over four feet yet.  This tour was great and Jay was in little boy heaven!

Hike up a huge snow covered mountain.  Mt. Rainier was amazing. You can see it from almost everywhere in Seattle and it really reminded us of our honeymoon at Lake Louise.  The trails were still covered in snow, so some of the hike was a little scary at times and we ended up doing a good amount of “skiing” down the mountainside by keeping our feet still and just sliding down.  This is one of the most beautiful places we have been to!

Touring the city.  We walked this city up one side and down the other!  We were pooped at the end of the day, but got to really experience the city and all of the hills that go with it!

We really did have a great time.  It was so nice to be able to come and go as we wanted, chat through dinners and sleep through the night.  Our first mr. mrs. vacation was a great success!

It would not have been possible without Grandma and Grandpa Hess.  They had a great time back in quaky virginia!

-melissa