New Furniture!!

The view from the entryway of our home.

And yes, I know that the top of my china cabinet is an eyesore.

My next project!

Our family room/TV room -- anyone have a media cabinet?

One of my favorite walls in the dining room.

This is right above the toy box, so I figured I could safely put up baby pictures -- this is Griffin in the hospital, and in his jumper-thing.

The view from the dining room.

Our living room, complete with new furniture!

People, really, you all need to come sit on it. You'll never want to leave!


--------------------------------

I'm so excited right now, I really can't sleep, and it is after midnight! We got two new (to us) pieces of furniture, a couch and matching loveseat, that have found a new home in our living room. The couch we had in there was my sister's old one, and it had many ailments (it was fine when she gave it to us -- we are hard on our furniture around here!), including no attached cushions/pillows on the back for support (we lost or ripped the ones that it came with, but they weren't attached, and were used for throwing on the floor a lot by the boys), arms that were too high to sit comfortably, a board that bit you in the behind every time you sat down too hard on it (yeah, I'm a plopper, I plop when I sit -- I'm still working on my ladylike sitting habits!), a spring that was popping out the back of the couch, a tear on the right arm (right where your hand would rest if you could get it up on the arm comfortably -- it was so high, almost nobody used the arms), and fabric that was detaching from all around the bottom of the couch. Wow, did you enjoy all of those parenthesis (parenthisi? parenthises?)?

Needless to say, it had lived its life, and was ready to succumb to the "Jaws of Mike", A.K.A. "Mike -- Armed With A Saw, A Box Knife And Lots Of Trash Bags."

I found the new beauties on Craigslist and went berserk. Mike could tell you how excited I was... I honestly didn't think I would find something this "high quality" (okay, for $340 it IS high quality) on Craigslist. I had only been onto the site once before, when I was looking for little boy clothes, and was disappointed. But the furniture section is amazing! You just have to be willing to drive a bit -- this was about 45 minutes away -- and ask a ton of questions before you commit to purchasing it. Mike was very helpful, because anyone who knows me well knows that if I find something I like, I am bound and determined to get that very thing, and it is hard to talk me out of it. But Mike gave me some very good questions to ask the sellers, and I learned a LOT from the experience. I feel like I can go into my next Craigslist purchase armed with a lot more knowledge. Mike, is that you groaning in the background? (This was a lot of work for him. I love you, Babe!!)

My next tax refund purchase will be a laptop for use upstairs while the boys are awake, and for homeschool purposes, and also for the boys to play games on. And a bench/mirror/storage thing to go in the entryway of our home. Don't know what it's called, but it's going to come in handy for throwing all of our outerwear in in the winter. And as Grandma suggested, my shoes, which tend to end up all over the floor, hallways, bedrooms... what can I say, I like my comfort, and I tend to take them off and then forget about them. Maybe this will reform me!

Make a Card Monday # 6

This card was inspired by Bonnie's baby shower, where we tried to stick to mostly lavenders and blues because we knew that she loves those colors and is incorporating them into Diamond's nursery. In case it is too hard to read, the stamp says "Sweet One... Dimples, giggles, cuddles divine, all come together, sweetness combined." It is from a new Stampin Up! set called So Many Scallops, which is part of Sale-A-Bration.

Every year in February and March Stampin Up! has SAB (Sale-A-Bration), which means that when you buy $50 in products, you get to pick a free stamp set out of their special SAB catalog. I ordered some punches at our last group meeting, and got to pick out a free set. Well, since one of the punches I had ordered was the Scallop Circle Punch, I got this SAB set (So Many Scallops) to go along with it! Yay!! I just love coordinated products.

The colors I used in the card are Bashful Blue for the card and lavender (from Archivers) for the strip on the front. I used white grosgrain ribbon, and the stamp is also in bashful blue. Pretty simple card, but I like to keep baby cards simple and clean. Just like babies. Well, most of the time.

Toasted Pecans

MMMMMMM, we love them. We went for a flashlight walk tonight with a big flashlight carried by Mike and I (well, ONE of us carried it, it's not THAT big), and a small one that was the prize possession of two small boys and was passed very reluctantly back and forth between them every few minutes. It was a little chilly outside, so we all wore our jackets (I promise I'm getting to the pecan part of this story) and took a short walk around the neighborhood. I was quite cold by the time we got home, but I don't think the boys felt a thing, they just LOVE to be outside. When we were almost home, I decided that ice cream sounded good. Crazy, I know, but it did.

And this is the pecan part. When I was over at Bonnie's house a while back, she made me the yummy dinner with toasted pecans on the salad, and again on the ice cream. Well, I recreated the ice cream she had made me, with a drizzle of maple syrup on top and covered with toasted pecans. Griffin had been whining and pouting because he didn't want me to toast his pecans, but he took one bite and... well, I have never seen his ice cream disappear that quickly, and that's saying something!!

He then proceeded to beg from everyone else. "Are you going to eat your "Buh-cahns?"" he asked everyone at the table. He got pecans from Daddy, but Mommy was feeling a little stingy and didn't want to give hers up. Hey, I like them too! He even got some of the remaining ones from the pan and added them to his "pudding"... you know, the ice cream that has melted in the bottom of your bowl. I think he has a new favorite dessert!

MACM (Wednesday) # 5

Okay, so I forgot to take pictures of the ever-so-fabulous gift I gave to Bonnie, but I may be able to have her take a picture of it and send it to me so that I can post it here. Instead, I am posting a picture of a card I made (a pack of ten cards, actually) for my Grandma for her 80th birthday. Her birthday was actually on February 4th, but she came here to visit so that she could be at a jazz concert my brother Wesley was playing in.

We had a fun visit, and I got to spend some time with her and Mom as we went to look for a piece of jewelry -- also for her birthday, from my mom -- and went to Einstein Brothers for lunch, and visited a super-fun little shop called "Something Else" that was just chock-full of those crafty kinds of things that we could so easily make ourselves but never (make?) time to actually do.

Then we got to spend time with Aunt Susan and Uncle John, my cousin Alison and also Christy's family, eating dinner and hanging out before we all went to the concert and were totally wowed by all of the amazing musicians displaying their talents. I was wiping away tears more than once. Especially when Wesley stood there all by himself and played an amazing solo on his trumpet, so clear and beautiful, even though he was using a mute of some kind... it actually reminded me of Mardi Gras music, but the song was called Meetin' Time, and was reminiscent of a black church service down south. A baby in the audience even cried once while they were playing the song, how appropriate!

Anyway, back to the card. I used some textured lavender cardstock from Archiver's as the base of the card, and layered it with Wild Wasabi, Eggplant Envy (retired) and Whisper White, which are all from Stampin Up!... the ribbon is some lavender I picked up from Wal-Mart. I used Watercolor Wonder Crayons to watercolor the design after stamping it in Stazon ink. The stamp is from the "Long-Time Friend" set.

I love the way the colors all came together, and the card reminds me of spring and summer and all of the warmth and beauty that comes when the sun shines and warms up the earth... boy, I think I need some coffee. Or hot tea. And some warm fuzzy socks. Something to warm up my cold fingers and toes.

I'm going upstairs to do that, and I'll curl up and read a good book while I'm at it (the boys and the girl I'm babysitting are all asleep! yay!).

Because I've been a slacker...

I haven't posted a Make A Card Monday this week, and I have a good excuse, really, I do. I have been working tirelessly (okay, I have been getting SOME rest) on the lovely baby shower we will have for Bonnie tomorrow. Can you tell I hang out with this gal a lot? Yeah, well, she's totally worth all of the trouble we (me and Heather, another good friend of Bonnie's) have gone to to get this shower put together. And I must admit, I have had a BLAST doing it, too. Maybe I should go into the party planning busine.....NAH. But it has been fun while it lasted. I can't wait for tomorrow afternoon. I want to make Bonnie cry. Only because I know I will be crying too; I'm such a big baby when it comes to this stuff. Baby. Hah.

I promise I will post MACM in two days, because I have something really cool that I have been working on for quite a while, but I can't post it yet, because it's a surprise for said shower tomorrow. Don't get your panties in a wad, I'll post it soon!

Meanwhile, here is a creation I worked on one morning. When Mike came up for lunch, he saw it and didn't say anything. Then Griffin said "Hey, Daddy!! Mommy made a PIE!!!

And Mike said "Mommy didn't make THAT!"

Which just goes to show how much confidence he has in my pie-making skilz. And yes, I do have skilz. I love me some pie, and when I make one, I put my heart and soul into it. Actually, he said that it was truly a compliment to say that my pie looked store-bought. So I accepted his statement and gave him a piece.




OH! And here is a picture of the bouquet Mike gave me on Valentine's Day. I had a rather unpleasant "yearly checkup" at the ob/gyn that day, and he knew how much I had been dreading it. He came home while I was at the doctor's office and left this on the table for me to find when I got home. Isn't that just too sweet? He knew it would make me smile... and I did. :-)



Here is the recipe for the pie.

Valentine's Day Pie

1 Graham Cracker pie crust

2 boxes banana cream instant pudding mix

1 small container strawberry cream cheese

chocolate chips (1/2 bag? 1/4 bag?)

*make pudding according to "pie filling" directions

*pour pudding into graham cracker crust

*fill decorating bag (I used the star tip) with cream cheese

*make two circles of stars around the outside of the pie

*make one circle of chocolate chips

*two more circles of stars

*one more circle of chocolate chips

*one more circle of stars, with a big star in the center

and you have yourself one very yummy pie

Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep

We had Bonnie and Caleb over the other night for "tacos"... I make flat shells, so what would that be? Tostadas? They all just get crunched up into taco salad anyway. It was a yummy meal, followed by a multitude of various kinds of ice cream and Italian Gelato.

Then we all migrated into the TV room and snuggled up on the couch to watch The Little Mermaid. Can anybody say "Under the Sea"? da-da-da-daaa-daaaa-da-daa-daa-daa-daa

Yeah. Good times.

The movie was almost over when I glanced at Sammy and saw this.

and this...

Oh. My. Goodness. It was just too cute.

MACM # 4 -- Happy Valentine's Day!!

I'm really going to have to change it to "Make a Card Tuesday" if I keep this up. Mondays have just not been working out for me. But here are a few cards, anyway. The one on top is the card we made at the Stampin' Up! club meeting last night -- we have meetings once a month, and I wouldn't miss it! SO much fun, and a real stress reliever for me. Our demonstrator, Kim DePugh, helped us make these cards using the "emboss resist" technique, where we embossed the white hearts onto white cardstock and then rubbed pink ink all over the cardstock. Where the embossed hearts are, no ink shows up. Cool, huh? I love the effect.

And here are the ones I have made myself over the past few weeks. Yes, technically I did not make them on Monday, but I can still show them off. :-)

Spider, Schmeider

We were eating lunch today, and I saw a spider on the ceiling. It was one of those "flat" ones that is about quarter-sized and can make itself almost completely flat. Strangely enough, I have never seen one anywhere but on the ceiling.


Well, being the brave soul that I am, I wanted to find out if it was alive. So I blew as hard as I could, hoping that the air flow would stir the spider and make it move.


Why, exactly, I would want to make a creepy-crawly spider MOVE, and thus creep myself out even MORE, I have no earthly idea, but I guess maybe it is just my dark side coming out. So there I was, blowing for all I was worth, and the darn thing wouldn't move!


So of course I went to the kitchen and grabbed a towel.


I proceeded to flap the towel in the general direction of the spider, preparing myself to run in the other direction (I didn't know WHICH "other" direction, just anywhere but DIRECTLY UNDERNEATH said spider) if the spider so much as lifted a toenail...er...a leg-hair?


The spider didn't move.


Griffin had been saying something -- apparently TO ME -- the whole time I had been placing myself in harm's way (because everybody knows that all spiders are aggressive and deserve to be squished) to protect him and his little brother. But the business at hand was such that it required my full attention and caused me to tune out all other noise...


"MOMMY!"


"Yes, sweetie? OH... did he just move??? Did you see him move?"


"Mommy, I think the spider is dead."


"Really? Hmmm, I don't know. He hasn't moved, and I have hit him about 30 times... you could be right."


Reluctantly, I abandoned my post beneath the might-have-crawled-his-last creepy-crawly spider, and sat back down at the table with the boys. I kept casting glances in the spider's direction, sure that he was just biding his time before he attacked us all.


"MOMMY."


"Yes, sweetie?" (I'm beginning to sense that it is hard to get my attention sometimes.)


"Mommy, I don't think that is the kind of spider that will bite us."


"Oh, honey (rather condescendingly)... ALL spiders can bite."


"Not dead ones."




WELL, I guess he told me.

Make A Card Monday # 3

I knew as soon as I saw the uber-cute line of baby boy clothing at Janie and Jack that I would just HAVE to make a card with those colors. So here it is. And if you want to see the clothes, go to www.janieandjack.com and click on "boy"... but check out the girl clothes there too, because man, oh man, are they adorable!!!

Make a Card Monday # 2

I know, I know, it isn't Monday anymore... hasn't been Monday all day. But I'm posting it now, so at least I didn't forget completely. And I'm not going to take pictures of the entire process anymore like I did last time; that took WAY too long to upload all of the pictures here, so you're getting one picture, with an explanation of how I did it.

Okay, so I used the same stamp set as I did last week, but what can I say? I just love Doodle This from SU! The cardstock colors are Blue Bayou, Purely Pomegranate, Soft Sky and Whisper White. I used Purely Pomegranate ink and also Staz-On ink in Jet Black (you should always use Staz-On when watercoloring, or your ink will bleed). To watercolor the image, I used Watercolor Wonder Crayons (from SU!) in Rose Red, Always Artichoke, Not Quite Navy and Cameo Coral. I used the water brush to watercolor it, not sure what the technical term is for it. It holds the water in the handle. I cut out the white circle with a circle punch, and then layered the Purely Pomegranate under it with a layering tool. It was a pretty easy card to make. The hardest part was cutting out the stamped images, and even that was fairly simple.

Vegetable Delight

Here is a recipe I made up from veggies I had in the fridge. It was so good! I think I may use rice next time instead of Ramen, so the veggies would be the main focus and have most of the flavor, and so that there would be less salt. Tomorrow I will use the leftover vegetables to make quesadillas with some freshly shredded mozzarella cheese. Oh, I can't wait!

Vegetable Delight

*1 package Little Smokies, smoked sausage, or a vegetarian substitute

*2 green onions, just the green parts, finely chopped

*1/2 red pepper, cored and diced

*2 cloves minced garlic

*5 carrots, scrubbed and diced

*1 whole bunch of celery, diced (use the leafy parts, they add so much flavor!)

*1 leek, sliced into thin slices and soaked for a few minutes in cold water to remove any gritty residue

*3 heads of broccoli, and stems if you like them, dice the stems and separate broccoli into florets

*1 stick sweet cream butter, cut into chunks

about 10 oz. chicken stock

*1 TBSP Basil

*1 TBSP Oregano

*2 TBSP Seasoned Salt

*2 packages Chicken flavor Ramen Noodles (or rice)

Directions:

Yspend about 30 minutes chopping all the veggies up

Yput the little smokies into a big stock pot that has been sprayed with non-stick spray and cook them over medium-high heat, stirring every minute or so so they don't burn, until they are starting to brown

Yturn the heat to medium, add all of the chopped veggies and stir to mix

Ystir in the butter

Ywhen veggies start to soften, add the chicken stock and seasonings

stirring frequently, cook the veggies to the softness you like... Sammy likes his veggies pretty soft or he has a hard time chewing them

Ymeanwhile, cook the Ramen noodles or rice according to the package directions

Yserve Ramen/rice in bowls topped with the cooked vegetables

Make A Card Monday # 1

So in the scrapping and card-making world, today is Make A Card Monday, and I thought I would join in the craze. Every Monday (it is actually just really late on Sunday night) I will make a card and take pictures of the process and post them here. Some people even post video of their card-making, but until I have video capability, you will just have to put up with my shaky-hand photography skills. Here goes!

picked out some colors and a patterned paper

cut out the Soft Sky paper into 5 1/2" x 8 1/2", then folded it into half, making it 5 1/2" x 4 1/4"


picked out my stamps

inked up my background stamp

the card after being stamped with the background stamp "Stitched"

cut my papers into strips 1" x 4 1/4" -- you can see I had changed my mind on the patterned paper, and I also decided not to use some of the cardstock I had picked out, just to keep it simple

chose ink colors for my stamps and decided on placement of papers on the card front

inked up the flower stem

cleaned off the stamp on my stamp cleaner pad (wow, I took pictures of everything)

put my ink away... okay, I just wanted to show you a piece of my world... this is a corner of my scrapping table, where you will find me most days during the boys' naptime/bedtime :-)

inked up my flower head

stamped the flower head on the Soft Sky paper

stamped the greeting (sentiment?) on a piece of the cardstock

picked out my scissors

cut out the flower stem

began to adhere the layers together

turned the flower head around until I liked the placement

got out my big glue dots

divided one glue dot into 3 pieces and stuck them to the back of the flower head

the finished product -- it says "Be Yourself -- Nobody is better qualified!"

And here is a list of what I used:

YCardstock - Soft Sky, Elegant Eggplant and Wild Wasabi (Stampin' Up!)

YPatterned Paper - Oh, Baby! (Basic Grey)

YStamp Sets - Doodle This, Smarty Pants and Stitched (Stampin Up!)

YInk - Elegant Eggplant and Wild Wasabi (Stampin' Up!)

Play-Doh Fun

Mike went by himself to Pickering's Pub last night to watch KU beat Missouri at basketball (Beak 'Em, HAWKS!!!), since we didn't have the appropriate channel on our ghetto cable, and no one could babysit for us. We seriously need to find a permanent babysitter. Also known as a live-in nanny. I'm sure that would help everything tremendously. Except perhaps our financial situation.


I was very gracious and allowed him to go because what I had planned as a morning out with Bonnie quickly turned into a whole day out, and it was a BLAST!! (more on that later) But I felt a bit guilty for having been out for so long, so I told him to just go and watch the game while I stayed home with the boys. It was a fun night for all of us, as Mike got to stay at the pub and play free poker -- one of his favorite things to do -- and I got to spend time with these two precious little boys. Sammy wanted to be right next to me most of the night; I guess he was keeping an eye on me to make sure I didn't leave him again.



Anyway, back to my day with Bonnie. We had breakfast at Einstein Brothers, and it was so amazing! We both got the Vegetable Panini sandwich, which is layers of eggs, tomato slices, spinach (they forgot the spinach on my sandwich, but it was still yummy), cheese and a spicy cream cheese that I seriously need to learn how to make, all sandwiched between crispy crunchy, um, panini bread? Not sure what the bread is actually called. Is it ciabatta? Yumm-O!



We then headed over to a resale children's clothing store where I looked for clothes for Griffin. I do believe he has been getting a couple of inches taller in his sleep every night. Bonnie even found a few things (can you say cute baby shoes and baby bunny slippers???) for baby Diamond Giselle, who will make her appearance in April. The shop was having a dollar sale, everything that had been "gently used" was only $1. They have new things too from overstocks at children's clothing stores, and those are marked at half the price of what the store was selling them for. DROOL... I found some really cute stuff that fits Griffin now and that Sammy will be able to grow into. The beauty of having two children of the same gender!



When we were done at the resale store, we headed over to Whole Foods, another store I am completely enamored of, and we walked up and down aisles, drooling (I drool when I'm excited, kind of like Gordon) and sniffing perfumes and shampoos and soaps and remarking over the prices of the vegetables, which weren't too much more expensive than you'd get them for at Wal-Mart, only at Whole Foods they are Organic and are displayed so temptingly and beautifully... The gumbo soup sample was so amazing that we both bought some kale so that we could attempt to make a soup that will be as delicious as that gumbo was, even though they didn't actually have the recipe for the soup they were handing out samples of, and couldn't actually tell us what all of the ingredients were in the gumbo (what's up with that!?).



We went back to Bonnie's house after stopping at my house to put my groceries away. When we got to my house, we realized that everyone was sleeping, even Mike, so we just left quietly and I left him a note telling him where I'd be. Bonnie made me (...well, and Caleb) the yummiest Eggplant Parmesan ever, and a spinach/mixed greens salad with raspberry walnut dressing and TOASTED PECANS, Y'ALL!!! And Garlic Texas Toast, and for dessert a blackberry (it was blackberry, right Bonnie?) and apple pie with ice cream with a drizzle of maple syrup and Toasted Pecans on top of the ice cream. Oh, the yumminess of it all. Talk about drool.

So then we headed back to my house, and Bonnie went home to prepare for a visit from her mother. Yes, people, the woman is 7 months pregnant, was expecting her mother to arrive that very evening, and still hung out with me and cooked me a fabulous meal while making more dishes and work for herself. WOW... now that's a friend!! We haven't had the chance to hang out for a very long time, though, so it was a visit we both thoroughly enjoyed.



Anyway, on to the pictures from my Play-Doh filled evening with the boys. But first, a short explanation must accompany these pictures. I am attempting to use my camera without the flash, as it tends to make people look washed out and gives them red eyes which take me a very long time to edit out of all my pictures. The drawback to not using flash is that the slightest movement causes the subject to blur, so most of my pictures turned out blurry. So I apologize in advance for any dizziness or squinty-eyes you may experience while gazing adoringly at these photos.



And now, without further ado... our Play-Doh Evening.

Yummy Soup

We got to have Bonnie and Caleb over for dinner tonight, which is always fun. Bonnie had worked long and hard yesterday making a very tasty rye bread with dill in it that went really well with the soup I made tonight.

I am going to attempt to remember how I made the soup, because it turned out beautifully and was extremely yummy, a definite keeper. Here goes!

Cheesy Veggie Soup

Y1 box chicken broth (about 3 cans worth)
Yabout 15 small or medium red potatoes, scrubbed and quartered
Y5 large whole carrots, scrubbed and diced (don't need to be peeled)
Y1 sweet red pepper, washed, cored and diced
Yabout 5 celery stalks, or the middle leafy part of the celery stalk with the surrounding stalks,
chopped
Y1 bag frozen sweet corn
Y1 pint half and half (or milk if you want less fat)
Y1 TBSP dried oregano
Y1 TBSP dried basil
Y1 TBSP Lawry's seasoned salt
Y1 cup cubed Velveeta

Pour chicken broth into large soup pot, on high heat. Add potatoes, carrots, red pepper, celery and corn. Bring to a boil, then turn down the heat to medium and simmer until potatoes and carrots are tender, could be 15-30 minutes depending on the size of your potatoes. Take out about 3/4 of the mixture and place in a blender (I used a VitaMix, but a regular blender will work, as long as it can blend hot foods). Add the half and half to the soup pot so that it can heat up while you use the blender. Blend mixture until most of the big chunks are gone, or less if you like a chunky soup (or skip this step if you like lots of chunky veggies). Put blended mixture back into soup pot, then add oregano, basil, seasoned salt and Velveeta. Heat over low heat until cheese is melted. Serve hot with crusty bread!

Sesame This, Sesame That

I asked Griffin yesterday if he had been watching Sesame Street in the TV room, and he said something that had me laughing so hard I had to drop everything and run and tell Mike, who was working from home in his basement office. Here it is:

"I don't LIKE Sesame Street," he pouted, then turned on his most charming impish grin,"I like Sesame CHICKEN!!!"

Which is true, actually, the boy knows what he likes, and sesame chicken is right up there with broccoli and olives in his "Food Favorites."

Hope it made you laugh too. :-)

Pennies for Potty

Our potty training days have become much more structured (can you say "structured" and "potty training" in the same sentence without causing a crack in the universe somewhere?) since we have started a little thing called bribery...ah, I mean... monetary inspiration. We got an old jar, and every time Griffin goes #2 in the potty, we add 2 pennies to the jar, and then he dumps them out and counts them to see what the new total is.

So far he has 29 pennies in the jar (he had one taken away when he did a #2 in his underwear), and I have been slacking since I haven't been feeling well (stomach virus of some kind, I assume), but we have been telling him that when he gets 30 pennies in the jar, we will make a special trip to the gas station and let him pick out his very own candy. He has been going on and on about "potato candy" whatever that is, and he knows that is what he will choose. This gas station has a row of candy on the bottom for 10-15 cents each, so he will be able to pick 2 or 3 pieces. Fun for Griffin!

We don't give him anything for #1 during the day, but he gets 2 more pennies if he stays dry at night. He has that one down pat. Forget Pull-Ups, we skipped those completely. I just told him one day that he was a big boy and needed to go in the potty at night if he had to go, and we walked him step by step through the path to the potty at night, making sure it was lit with nightlights at the appropriate places. He has had a couple of accidents, but as he is the first child, he really wants everything to go the way HE wants it to, and wet underwear is not in his plan. (I'm not saying middle children are dirty, they just don't seem to care about this stuff quite so much, plus it gets them attention, and what could be better than that for a middle-born?)

Well, I just know you all have thoroughly enjoyed this invigorating discussion, but such is the fabric (pun intended) of our lives these days.

Sammy's First Sentence

Sammy came toddling into my closet the other morning as I got ready for the day. He looked for all the world like he had something he really needed to say, and finally he just blurted it out. "He...HIT...me!!" he managed. Wow. What a first sentence! And I'm sure there will be many more to come. :)

More From the Homesick Front

We are beginning to decorate for Christmas, and once again I am struck by how much STUFF we have. How could we possibly have accumulated this much stuff? It couldn't possibly be because I am an impulse shopper and often come home with things we don't really need.

NAH.

That can't be it. Maybe there is a little elf that mysteriously plants things all around the house that just accumulate and accumulate until I have a breakdown. Yeah, that's GOT to be it. An elf.

Well, the stuff has to be moved to make room for Christmas stuff, so I will be dragging out the bags and boxes to stuff with the stuff that we don't really need so that we can store it until after Christmas when we can bring it out again and decide what we want to keep and what we should throw or give away. Or perhaps I should give it all away as Christmas presents.

Yeah.

That would work.

HA! Watch out, everyone.

You never know what I might wrap up for YOU this year.

So I went to the doctor yesterday and was diagnosed with bronchitis. Well, THAT explains the month of coughing I have had! I had waited so long to go to the doctor because it didn't really hurt, and if it doesn't hurt, I don't go to the doctor. The decision to go was made when I couldn't taste anything for several days, and my life was a living misery. I LOVE taste. I am DRIVEN by taste. Taste is what helps me get out of bed in the morning (sad, isn't it?), what spurs me to go to the grocery store, what makes me love my husband so much when he comes home with a box of Godiva chocolates just for me (can I make a more obvious hint?). And I wonder why I need to take off a few pounds. I don't eat because I am trying to avoid starvation. I eat because the food tastes SO darn GOOD. It is *stopping* eating that presents problems.

So now that I can't taste anything (7 days later), I am having to find other ways to amuse myself. I have taken up scrapbooking. Wait, you say, wasn't I doing that before I lost my sense of taste? Well, it means so much more now. Everything does, really. I am finding other things to fill the place that food used to fill in my life. So bring on the tasteless food. This is GOOD for me.

Soft, fuzzy socks, a warm blanket to wrap around me and Sammy, since he is now a permanent addition to my side -- more on that later -- a nice sweater and a cute pair of jeans, a clean house (did I just say that?)... these things mean so much more to me now that I don't have food to make me continually happy. I can't just run to the kitchen for a snack when I get bored now. Well, I could, but there would be no joy in it. I have found other ways to amuse myself. So goodbye, food addiction. This is a brand new me.

And oh, it is amazing (as I was just telling Mike last night during dinner -- and yes, I do mean *night*... I wasn't motivated to cook until 7:30pm, so we ate dinner while the boys should have been going to bed). I can actually tell when I am full now! Either the "FULL" switch in my brain wasn't working before, or I just wasn't paying attention to it, but it is easy now for me to realize when I am full and have had enough to eat. Since the food doesn't taste very good, why eat more???

So more on Sammy. I took him to the pediatrician a couple of days ago, because he had had a three-day-long fever, which finally broke, and when it did break, he was stumbling around running into doors and walls and tripping over his feet, and generally just acting very, well, drunk. He wanted me to hold him nonstop, and did not want to eat much at all.

They think he has mono.

SHEESH!!!

Anyway, he is not so woozy anymore, but he is definitely still tired, cranky, whiny, and has a sore throat. All classic signs of mono. Well, except for maybe the cranky, whiny bit. If he is not better in a week (by next Monday) we'll be going in to get bloodwork done on him so they can tell us he has mono and "You can't do a darn thing about it, so just deal with it -- oh, and keep him well hydrated."

This should be a FUN Christmas. We might be spending it at home by ourselves! No one wants to get this stuff, I'm quite sure of it.

So good things and not-so-good things are coming out of our sick time. I am trying to focus on the good, since we know these things are not going to kill us. I am sure that God is using these trials to make us stronger!

cough.. couGH....... COUGH...........ugh

Well, we have all been sick now for over a week. This bug has taken its toll on all of us, and we are ready for it to be gone! It's too bad that you don't become immune to colds after having one once. Needless to say, we didn't go to church AGAIN. I think this is the 6th week, or maybe the 7th, that we have missed. Well, we're staying away until I know we are all better. There is no use exposing an entire congregation to this stuff. At least we are not nursery coordinators anymore, like we were at our last church. We needed to be there every Sunday, and that just wouldn't work right now!

Sammy has had a fever of 100-103 for the past three days. He is still a bit more warm than usual today, and has been moping around and willing to snuggle at a moment's notice. Griffin had a cough for a few days, but his has lightened up considerably. Mike and I have been up and down for the past few days. I'll just say... it is a good thing he was on vacation this past week, because he would have missed a lot of work anyway! We both have chest congestion and head colds, and are just waiting for the madness to end.

The good part about all of this is that is has forced us to stay at home more, spending time together and relaxing. It has been a restful week, and that is nice.

Mike and I stayed up and wrapped all of our Christmas presents last night. Well, he wrapped. I made bows. He had to stop and wait for me to catch up, because I like to be just a bit elaborate with my bows, so each gift took me a while. We had fun, but were very tired and ready for bed when we were done.

Well, Griffin is waiting for me to change his diaper, so I suppose I had better end here.