Life with a 9 year old daughter and some Valentine's Day projects

While I feel like I'm perhaps in the most intense mothering marathon of my life, I recently realized that my role of mom has been jerked all over the map in the last nine years.

Gone are the days of rising early for uninterrupted communion with Jesus and afternoon naps and early baths and premature bedtimes and buckling 4 kids into their car seats and tying shoe laces and zipping zippers and clipping those 80 fast growing nails and talking over the toddler's heads at mealtime and snacking on the sly.

These are the days of rising early only to get the kids sent off to school and kids begging to 'please stay up a little later!!!' and constant questions and annoying noises and conversations and never-ending games of Monopoly and Life and no.personal.space.

One super positive aspect of this stage of life is that I am no longer the sole cleaner-cooker-baker-washer-dresser-babysitter-buttwiper-grocery-shopper-decorator-lady in this house.

Here enters the 9 year old (going on 16) daughter

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The one who has more administrative abilities that her 32 year mother.

The one who loves to create.

The natural born teacher.

The one who loves to have adult conversations.

The one who loves to plan parties.

The one who loves shopping.

The one who is my in-home female co-conspirator.

The one who really is my right hand maid.

I'm loving this thing of not having to hold this house together on my own.

I think I depend on her more than I realize. 

"Angeline, please hold Cassie while I  __________"

"Angeline, I need you to bake some bars for tonight"

"Angeline, I just saw this cool idea on pinterest......" {boy, she's all over this one!}

She enables me to accomplish more than I ever thought would be possible while being a mom of 5.

Daughters are a good idea.

Especially first born aggressive, stubborn ones. :)

In the past Valentine's Day décor has been nonexistent around here.

This year, the combination of multiple snow days and my creative 9 year old daughter who needs no sleep, landed me with some sweet pops of pink around this house.

I found some decorating ideas on pinterest and gave her a few instructions and tools.

Then I put myself in a reclining position and watched her work because just the research and gathering of materials alone had given me a migraine.

 

  Here is a good tutorial to follow for making this wreath.

These flowers were basically a no-brainer to make after learning how to put the wreath together.

 Later we bunched together some of these flowers to make poof balls to hang from our dining room chandelier.  Perfect décor for my daughter's annual VDay Party with  her cousins.

 

 

 

This garland was another of our creations inspired by the coffee filter wreath. I ran the glue gun for this project, but Angeline did most of the work.

See why 9 year old daughters rock????

Oh. Did I mention the lack of privacy that is part of this package?

She even reads my thoughts.

Talk about accountability!!!

Even as I am typing, I have an on-site proof reader and editor.