Giveaway winner!!

The lucky Starbucks gift car winner is......................................... Number 7 Stephanie Thigpen!!

Miss Stephanie please email me  @ youngmammatales@yahoo.com your info so I can get your gift card in the mail!!

And for those of you that didn't win? By the weekend I will have a SWEET give away up- give ya a little hint....It's from France :)

This weekend

We decided to get brave and take Jasper camping. We haven't been camping since right before I got pregnant- so almost 5 years ago!! 

We headed up to Grand Lake early Saturday morning to meet up with our friends who had reserved two camp spots. This was seriously the best campground ever for kids. They had a little river to play in, a petting zoo open all the time so you could just walk over and make new friends (which jasper definitely did) a marshmallow roast at night, horse back riding, a sweet playground and lots more!

 Why yes, I apparently AM showing at 5 weeks pregnant. I'm either having twins or an 13 lb baby..

 The horse back riding was So much fun! You didn't just go around in a circle, they actually gave you the horse to walk around, said to follow a trail and be back  in a half an hour. Crazy right?

 We headed into town so the guys could check out a beer festival and we could get some delicious ice cream, sit by the water and play at the park. Best way to spend a Saturday evening if you ask me!

                        All those pine trees are dead because of some beetle? So sad.

                                                         Jasper on Beauty- or boooty as he called her.

                            I was Thrilled to be somewhere cool enough to wear a scarf!!

What I wore:

Saturday
Dress and belt : Forever 21
Boots: Long story; these are my grandmother's in Sweden. Or they were. When I was there in July (she passed away in March) I was going through some of her stuff to bring some small things back to the states for all my siblings and discovered we were the same size shoe! So I had to grab these beauties. I have no idea how old they are, but my uncle (in Sweden) thought she had had them forever. So I guess they are definitely vintage! And I can tell kind of by the inside- I need to buy something to put in them to make them a little softer.

Sunday:
Shirt: Forever oo21
Jeans: Gap
Boots: Grandma's vintage boots from Sweden
Scarf: Urban Outfitters

Linking up with Steppin' out Saturday and What I wore Wednesday

His first day of school

That was today. A day I have been looking forward to and dreading at the same time for months.

He was excited. SO excited. He barely ate a bite of breakfast he was so excited.

Drew took the morning off and we all went together.

Once in the class room he took off from station to station. He couldn't have hid his excitement if he tried. Finally it was time for us to go. He gave us hugs. Started to walk away and came back for more.

As I walked away from him he had a big grin on his face and I felt the first tear run down my face.

I turned away quickly so he wouldn't see me crying.

The tears fell silently as I walked up the steps. And then I hear 'Moooom' ( even with over 40 kids around I knew with out a doubt that was meant for me.

I turn around as he is bursting out the door, followed close behind by a teacher telling him he can't go out the door.

He needed a few more hugs. And this time I couldn't contain the tears.

I smiled through the tears and told him he was going to have SO much fun and I would see him soon.

I smiled and encouraged him when all I wanted to do was pick him up and run out those doors. Keep him MY little boy forever.

But I walked out. Got in the car. And drove away.

And pulled into the next driveway. Where I sat for the next 2.5 hours. In case he needed his mamma. I needed to be close by.

He didn't need me. He did great! And while it hurts my heart that I feel like I'm losing a part of him, I'm so happy and proud of him.

I know I'm not Really losing him to school. But I am loosing part of our day. For the past 4 years and one month it's been the two of us. All day. Every day. But we both need this and it will be So great for him.

PS Tonight is the last night to enter my Starbucks Giveaway , we had unexpected in laws visiting yesterday so I didn't get to it but I will draw the winner late tonight and announce the winner tomorrow!

Thanks for all the congrats!

We are super excited!! I can't wait to start telling everyone, but we are waiting (or at least Trying to wait) until we go four our first appointment September 19th. I want the next few weeks to FLY by!! I'm thinking it will since as of next week Jasper starts pre-school (agh!!) and then he starts Swedish class and soccer, and THEN Jasper and I head to Wilmington, North Carolina for my sisters wedding. Right after we get back from our little beach vacay it's time for the appointment!!

So does anyone have any blogs they can recommend of pregnant mamma's?  I wasn't blogging or reading blogs while I was pregnant the first time around so it would be fun to be able to do now! Plus, it's been over four years since I was pregnant and I honestly can't really remember what it was like so I feel like I'm starting from scratch!


This weekend we are going camping for the first time in almost 5 years- we are heading up to Grand Lake, CO (we have never been!!) and our friends are joining us. They have a 4 year old girl so it should be lots of fun for everyone! Anyone else have any fun weekend plans?

I found out about you in Whole Foods

August 22nd.

We had been actively 'trying' for you for a few months- and I was getting SO frustrated! Then this past month we decided no more trying. No more looking at the calendar to see when I was ovulating. So imagine my surprise..

Your dad has a hunch about these things. He had it with your big brother Jasper and he had it with you. He randomly sent me a text yesterday asking when my period was supposed to come ( Sorry if that's TMI, but you will learn soon enough that in this family? We share everything) 

I hadn't even thought about it, since remember? No calendar looking. It was due yesterday. Not weird at all since I've been late frequently since we started 'trying' for you. Still didn't think anything really of it- but on our way to Whole Foods we decided to swing by Safeway to pick up a test to take later that evening.

As we pull in I have the urge to pee- I grab the test and think why not? At least I will find out I'm not so I can have some wine with dinner.

Jasper went in the stall next to me, and within 2 seconds, two lines appeared. TWO! I'd been seeing one line for months that for a second I couldn't breathe. 

We washed our hands and headed out to wear your dad was waiting. He knew instantly from the big grin on my face. I kept saying "Oh my gosh aren't you SHOCKED!" He responded " Nope, I just knew"

At home I had to take another test, just to double check. And there it was again. 2 lines. 

I couldn't possible be more thrilled. Or excited. Or nervous. 

I keep touching my stomach and getting goose bumps. Last time around I had no idea the love I could have for another person. This time, I know. 

I had planned on not posting this for weeks- but I just Can't keep it in any longer! We aren't telling people for a few more weeks, till our appointment on September 19th- but I haven't told anyone in real life about this blog- so I needed Somewhere to let it out!! 

A fun Saturday

Saturday morning after our regular Starbucks, park combo we headed to go get Jasper a haircut. Just a trim. I can't stand the though of him with short hair!! I don't think he would look like him. I don't care if people sometimes thinks he's a girl- I love my little long haired boy.

After that we had lunch out on the patio of my most favorite place in town to eat Cherry Cricket!! If you ever make it to Denver? You Have to go there! And I will meet you there since it's two blocks from our house :) Then I stole a few hours to myself to get a haircut. It felt great to get out, get a scalp massage (Love Aveda!!!) and a hair cut!

And THEN came the exciting part!! Jasper had a sleep over at a friends house and Drew and I got to go to the Bronco's game! I'd never been to Invesco field- so it was lot's of fun. A guy from work gave him his tickets, and in row 32 they were pretty great seats!

We tried to get a cab the 4.5 miles back- but it was insane after the game so we ended up walking for about 2 of the miles before finally getting one, but it was so nice to just walk together, enjoying some us time. 

Someone found my blog by googling " Young girl tails" Creepy! Sorry for your disappointment you won't find any young girls with tails here!

A GIVEAWAY just because YOU guys are awesome!

So I've thought once I got to a certain number I'd do a giveaway- and while I never had decided what number was the magic number, as soon as I saw the number 200 followers I thought "give away time!!"

So this afternoon I headed to Starbucks to pick up a $20 gift card for one of your lovelies, to show my appreciation for following along. Ever time I see a new reader, or a comment, it brightens up my day. It's because of YOUR lovely comments that make me want to do a better job commenting on blogs.

So, to enter- all you have to do is be a google follower (on the left.) That's it.

Leave a comment telling me you follow and you are IN! Who doesn't want free Starbucks??

If you want extra entries- follow along on twitter (@darls10) and let me know you do

And lastly, if you blog or tweet about the giveaway let me know and that's another entry.

Giveaway ends a week from today, August 29th and winner will be selected via random.org.





Not required for the giveaway- but could you spare a couple of clicks?

4 year old stats

Just got back from jasper's 4 year check up- since last august he has grown FOUR inches and only gained 3 maybe 4 lbs- How is that possible? He's such a skinny minny.

He's in the 75-80th percentile for height and 40-50 percentile for weight- so I'm Pretty sure that means he is going to be tall and skinny like my brothers!

    Jasper with two of his uncles (my brother on the left, Drew's on the right) who are both over 6 feet tall. Can heigh skip a generation? Because I'm 5'6 and Drew is about 5'8- so no giants here!!

Make sure you check back tonight for my FIRST GIVEAWAY!!!

Zoo day!

Last week we had a relatively cool morning- meaning by 9 AM it was only 80, not 90- so we took advantage and headed to the pool for a few hours. Since we have a year pass and only live 25 blocks from the zoo I don't mind just going for an hour or two, so we go fairly often.

This time we decided to hang out by the sea lions (or sea horses as Jasper calls them) and polar bears. We sat there and watched them swim back and forth while snacking. It was actually relaxing instead of trying to see as much as possible as we used to do when we lived 30 min away.

Then J had a blast playing in the little river play area they installed a few months ago.

Wow I just hit 200 followers! To ME that's amazing!! I have a give away in the works but it might be a little while so in the mean time I'm going to do a little "mini give away" for having such Awesome readers!! Come back tomorrow to check it out!!

Friday Faves

I decided to start a little segment ' Friday Faves' --I've written posts about some of my favorite products, and I keep meaning to write more as I come across some great ones, so this will be my way of making myself actually follow through!

First Fave I want to talk about is a new obsession. LUSH! I've heard about them online, and for the past 2 months there has been a Coming Soon sign in our mall, and finally on Sunday I popped around the corner as the boys were buying our movie tickets and it was Open!

While I was looking around, one of the ladies working offered to give me a free facial- Uhm YES PLEASE- I sent the boys to play since our movie didn't start for an hour- and she have me a great little facial using a bunch of different products. Of course I went home with some..

I brought home a facial serum ( think? it's a bar so no label so it could have been a toner? Like I know the difference), a  bar of shampoo (waah shampoo in a bar form??) a massage bar and a shower lotion bar.

I've tested out the products several times now and WHOA. I'm in love. Totally found my new favorite shop. For reals. I was a little sketched out by the bar of shampoo at first, but I was feeling super adventurous when I bought it. I hadn't washed my hair in three days- gross, I know, but I'm trying to go longer inbetween hair washes, but ya know what? It worked!! Just rubbed the bar of shampoo in my hand, worked up a little lather and applied to my hair and voila- clean hair!

The shower lotion dealio is my Favorite product so far. It has little bumps for exfoliation also and it felt amazing. Like being in a spa or something.

All in all? I will SO be heading back to Lush very soon now that I have one 2 blocks away!


*I wasn't paid OR given free products to say any of that, but I totally should have been right?? :)

I was inspired by a post on Early Mama to write this. The post was about young moms, and people thinking we can't do anything with our lives.

I have definitely felt that. That people look down on because we are ' young parents.' To some people young parents=irresponsible parents. I don't want to brag about how that isn't us, about how responsible we really are (because we totally are) but I do want to share something that people told us there was No Way we would be able to do because of our 'situation'.

Our situation being that we got pregnant in the middle of our Sophomore year in college.

We had always planned to study abroad. Just not together. I was planning on going to Italy Junior year and Drew (now my husband) planned on studying in Prague. We talked for months about all the places we would meet in Europe; Switzerland, Greece, England, Spain..but then we found out over Christmas  that we would become parents in the summer. We were 20 years old.

Like everyone else, we thought those study abroad dreams were over. We pushed those dreams aside and focused on getting through the school year, getting jobs, and raising our beautiful baby boy. I switched to online college classes and became a stay at home mom slash part time nanny while Drew worked full time (50+hours/a week) while continuing to attend a private University 18 hours a week.

One night a couple of weeks before Jasper's first birthday, Drew and I were laying in bed at night, revisiting some of our old dreams. Mainly, the dream to study abroad. Drew was the one that brought up the ' what if....what if we could still do it? The three of us? What if we could spend a semester abroad as a family?'  

Once those thoughts popped into our head we couldn't get them out. We decided to schedule a meeting with the study abroad coordinator- just to see if it was even an option.

To make a very long story short...6 months later we departed from Des Moines International Airport for Stockholm, Sweden.

It wasn't an easy journey to get us to Sweden, where we spent the best 7 months of our lives. Drew worked even more hours than he was working before, I started working part time in the evening at a jewelry store so we could save save save! We basically had no social life for months  because any extra money we had- went into our Sweden fund.

It took a lot of meetings, tons of emails, paperwork and a lot of help. I was amazed at how many people were rooting for us, willing to help us out with any questions and paper work. A lady in Sweden worked  hard to find us an apartment suitable for a family, since the average exchange student lived in the dorms.

But for every person rooting for us, there would be 10 people telling us there is no way to study abroad with a baby. That it was selfish of us. Irresponsible. That we just plain couldn't do it. Including some family members.

I'm proud to say we proved them wrong.

We spent the first 7 months of 2009 learning how to use public transportation with a 1 year old (became a pro at pushing the stroller up onto buses, the train and subway),  

exploring in the dark (when we got there in January we only had daylight from about 9AM till 3PM)

falling in love with our most expensive Swedish purchase, our pram (most expensive baby purchase ever, to date),

figuring out the best parks in the city (hands down 99%of Swedish parks are better than any park I've been to in the US) 

figuring out how to walk on ice..tricky at first but we all got good at it, including our 19 month old,

learning how to live by  the Swedish saying ' there is no bad weather, only bad clothes', 

figuring out that our own legs are the best mode of transportation (as long as you have a sweet stroller..our American stroller didn't stand a chance in a foot of snow),

And learning that we didn't need the entire suite case of toys we brought Jasper (window watching from our 4th floor apartment in downtown Karlstad was his favorite activity), 

Jasper grew to love his pram ( 2 years later he asks to ride in it often),

We took many trips throughout Sweden, norway and Finland- and on bus, train or boat he was always content in the pram, even cozied up while it was raining out. 

While we loved our 550 sq feet one bedroom apartment in the city, we spent the majority of our time outside..

And once summer hit, we were at the lovely beaches daily. 

We made friends with a guy who had a boat (and no that's not the only reason why were were friends             with him) and loved going out on the water. 

We all became more independent, while somehow becoming even closer as a family. We had only each other to depend on, and every day was an adventure. 

I can't say enough great things about our 7 months abroad. We experience so much, learned a lot, traveled, and brought back many Swedish traditions that we live out daily. We are currently trying to figure out how to get back to Sweden. To live more. Travel more. And if we had listened to everyone who doubted us? We wouldn't have had those best 7 months of our lives.

Sunday morning, while the boys were showering I quickly threw on a dress, scribbled a note and left the house.

Alone.

Jasper is FOUR and I still don't do this very often. As I was walking, I honestly couldn't remember the last time I had left the house alone. Id had probably only been a couple of weeks- but the fact that I couldn't remember? No bueno.

Mamma NEEDS this time alone! And I never get it. It's my own fault really- I don't take the initiative and just tell Drew I'm leaving. I guess it's because we don't have enough family time as it is that when we are together I don't feel the need to go. But I'm going to start doing this more often.

All I did was go for a little walk, wind up at Starbucks (where they were Shocked that I was in there alone..told ya they know me) and walk back. Slowly. Sipping on my ice team. It was the perfect 40 minutes. And I walked into two boys who were very happy to see me.

First 'back to school' shopping trip!

With Jasper starting preschool in just two weeks...pause to have a minor panic attack...we want to make a big deal out of everything. We want him to get super excited about it. We have come up with a few things to make going to school extra special.

-Big shopping trip
-Special dinner the night before he starts school
-Going out to eat breakfast all three of us the morning he starts (Drew is going in to work late so he can go with us to breakfast and school)
-New back pack
- Back to school party with his friends

We decided Saturday afternoon was a good time to do the shopping trip since we only have a couple weekends left.

We have lived in CO for about 5 years now and have never gone to the outlet mall thats about 30 minutes away in Castle Rock- crazy right? I guess I always just forget about it- plus we have always lived within a couple blocks to super nice malls so I never saw the point. But this seemed like the perfect time to check it out!

This is the first time we have gotten a Ton of clothes at once- I go to the mall so often that I just pick up things here and there, but we knew this would be super fun for him. PLUS we just went through all of his pants since he has been wearing shorts all summer- and came the the conclusion that he's grown 3 inches this summer because out of the dozens of pants he had- about 7 of them are all that fit now.

                                                                         His Loot

                                               Uhm cutest little boy shoes ever!

I set myself on a $250 budget to see how far I could get with that- and I'm Pretty pleased with all the stuff he got, and I only went a little over. This isn't his whole wardrobe obviously (not even close)- since I've been buying the next size up forever once he had way more than enough for 4T. But now? My just turned 4 2 weeks ago is in 5T- which are supposed to last till he's 6- Yeah Right!!

Anyway for 250ish, he got 12 pairs of pants, 6 t-shirts 8 long sleeved shirts, 3 sweatshirts, a vest, two pairs of shoes, and some underwear. Pretty good right?? Mostly from Gap and Carters, but some from OshKoshB'Gosh. At Garter and OshKosh I printed off coupons for 20%off $40 or more (first time using coupons- Sucess!!!) so that helped for sure!!

With all those stores- I was so focused on shopping for Jasper that I didn't even really look for myself, but I did get a super cute cardi from Gap and some fudge. In the words of Charlie Sheen-who I can't stand...Winning!