Elisablog

Unwilling Couch Potato

2012-01-24T20:34:00.000-08:00

You would think that with all the time I have been sitting here on my couch, I would have gotten around to blogging more, but for some reason, I just haven't been in a "bloggy" mood. Sure, there's been a lot going around in these here parts, but every time I thought about sitting down and writing here, I just couldn't seem to find the words. Any words. I blame my pregnancy brain.

Let's start with the reason why I have been spending so much time on the couch. Two and half weeks ago, Evan and I were making dinner and I was chatting his ear off. He'd started the grill (we were going to grill a pizza for the first time!) and was going out to check the fire and I followed him outside to continue with my chatter. As I stepped down the one, single stair that leads out our back door, my foot slipped. Forgetting that I was 8 months pregnant and not at all centered, I tried to catch balance, but ended up falling sideways and felt my ankle snap. I thought that I screamed out in pain, but Evan said that I didn't scream at all, he just heard a crash and me crying. I knew instantly it was broken. I have never broken a bone in my body (except for a toe), but I knew that this was going to be a trip to the emergency room.

The thing about the fall is that it was all in slow motion for me; like those replays in football where they show the player's foot turn in a way no human foot should ever turn. I have been having issues watching football with Evan the last couple of weeks if one of the guys on the field hurts his ankle in any way.

The good news of all of this is, I did not fall on my stomach in any way. Never a cramp, never any pain.

After I told Evan not to touch me (I am one of those people who hate to be talked to or touched when I'm hurt. Yes, I realize it makes me sound like a jerk, but it has to all be on my terms.), I looked up and tried not to sob when I saw that my girls had run over to see if I was okay along with about 6 of the neighborhood kids. They were all standing around me in a semi circle...staring. I told Evan we'd have to go the ER, but I wasn't really sure how I was going to stand up, let alone hobble my gigantic pregnant self down the (all of a sudden, super long) sidewalk to my car. The neighbor came out to see if I was ok and was kind enough to help me up. Evan drove the car up to the back door (over our lawn and sidewalk, which all the kids thought was awesome) and I limped to the front seat. Thankfully, the neighbor offered to keep the girls and feed them while we went to the hospital.

I will not bore you with the details of how the x-ray technician freaked out that I was pregnant and covered me with 3 lead jackets but was by no means gentle with my very, very hurt ankle. Nor will I go into the story about how, if you are over 20 weeks pregnant, you are shuttled straight up to Labor & Delivery from the ER for 4 hours of monitoring and that, once up there, other doctors (like orthopedics who are supposed to tell you how bad your break is) have a hard time finding you and telling you the results of the xrays.

I will say that my break was a stable fracture and I did not need surgery. I was given a walking boot that I will need to wear for at least 6 weeks. I was also prescribed (yes, prescribed) a walker to help me get around. I am like an old, broken woman. An old, broken, pregnant woman, that is.

On the way to the hospital, I did break down and cry. Not so much for the pain I was in, but for the realization that I was not going to have the birth I had been planning in my head for this last pregnancy of ours. I was not going to get to spend the last few weeks of my pregnancy organizing and getting our house ready for the new person coming to live with us. To be honest, I have only recently stopped mourning the birth I had envisioned. I have (slowly) come to terms with the fact that I will be going into labor with a broken ankle and a boot on my foot. I was reassured by all the labor and delivery doctors and nurses that I was not the first lady to have a natural delivery with a broken foot/ankle/leg.

Of course, I broke my right ankle, which means no driving for me until the boot comes off. This is where I get to brag about how awesome my parents are. When I called them to tell them that I was in the hospital with a broken foot (well, Evan had to tell them because as soon as I heard my mom's voice I started crying like a baby because my mom is a fabulous caretaker and I super wanted her in the hospital with me), my dad went into protective mode. My parents had already planned a trip to come and see us in February to help after the baby was born. My parents asked if I wanted my mom to come and stay with us until my boot came off and I immediately said yes. I fell on a Friday and my dad had changed my mom's plane ticket so that she was at our house by Sunday night. Honestly, I am forever in debt to them because I do not know how we'd have functioned these last two weeks without her. Being so pregnant has made this even more tricky because I can't bend at the waist, I have no sense of balance, and I have a lot of doctors appointments I have to go to because they want to continue to keep a close eye on the baby since I had such a fall. My mom has taken over laundry, chauffeuring, and a lot of the child care while I bitterly sit on the couch wishing I could stinking get up and get my own glass of water, but knowing that I can't. She's such a trooper, too, because for the first full week I had cellulitis and was in a terrible amount of pain. I could barely hobble to the bathroom and cried a lot.

Now, I'm on the mend. I was able to "walk" up the stairs last night and actually got to sleep in my own bed. I'm feeling well enough that I'll be able to do it again tonight. I am taking bigger steps with the walker and am pretty confident that I won't need to use the walker around my house by this weekend. We've gotten to see a lot of this baby with ultrasounds making sure my placenta is where it should be and it's kind of neat to see such a big baby in utero. Right now I am of three mind sets--1. I am at that point in the pregnancy where I am ready to be done and have this baby out but 2.I really need my foot to be better so I'd like the baby to it's time because the longer it waits the stronger my ankle will be but 3.dude, I'm ready to be done being pregnant and wearing a boot.

Food

2012-01-05T13:50:00.000-08:00

Hello all!!!

Yes, it is the new year and I am back to feeling bloggy again. It's been almost a full month since I have felt the need to write down my thoughts and today was a day that I really missed being here.

Of course, once I have downloaded the hundreds of pictures I have on my camera to the computer (being 34 weeks pregnant makes you not only forgetful, but tired as well, so my camera has also been neglected) I will show you all the fun we had over Christmas break. Evan's parents came to visit along with Kyle and her boys. Their first time visiting us in our new home in Texas!!!

Recently, I told Evan that I wanted to get rid of all the sweenters in our house. I've been slowly trying to get us to be more mindful of the food we eat and what we have in the house. A year or so ago, I banned all HFCS and dyes from the house. This meant saying good bye to some beloved cereals and snacks, but the dyes were really hurting Julia's stomach and I've just never been able to get over how HFCS is made. So, my family begrudgingly agreed and, low and behold, it turns out that Evan started feeling better when dyes were taken out of his diet too. Then, I started trying to buy foods that had ingredients we could read, pronounce, and recognize. That's been harder since processed food is so easily attainable. I also said I didn't want to use sweetner anymore in our coffee. Turns out, that was one of the biggest changes we noticed. Dude, sweenter is gross.

But, throughout all our changes, we've still been keeping cases of soda in the house. I don't remember what I read or where I read it, but a couple of months ago I was inspired to wean us off of soda. All soda. I know that I was drinking about 2 a day and at my worst (when I was teaching) sometimes 4 a day. Granted, it was Diet Coke, so there were no calories, but that is a lot of chemicals and crap that I was inhaling. I've given up soda every now and then (for Lent or a diet or to try to build up my self control), but it's always creeped back into my diet.

Growing up, we never had soda in the house. My dad kept diet soda in a refrigerator in the garage, but we rarely drank any. We'd get sodas sometimes at restaurants, but it was never a daily staple of our diets. As I got older (probably around high school) I started drinking soda almost daily at school. By college, I was completely addicted to Diet Coke. Probably not an addiction my body has ever appreciated.

So, when I approached Evan about not buying soda anymore, he said no. He only drank one or two sodas a day and didn't feel it was that big of a deal. I told him that I would like to try to replace it with sparkling water (like La Crouix) and just see how it goes. Once again, he begrudgingly said he would test it out. I bought a few flavors of the water and was surprised by how much cheaper buying a 12 pack of the water was compared to buying a 12 pack of any soda. Maybe saving money would bring a positive spin to getting rid of soda.

Turns out, the water is good. It took some getting used to since the water is not near as sweet as soda, but we've ended up really liking it. And, Evan's noticed he doesn't feel as bloated and is feeling better not having soda daily. I also found sodas with real ingredients at a local store, so we are using those as treats as soda should be.

Since we omitted diet soda from our house (which was around Thanksgiving time!), I haven't really missed it. I've had 2 Diet Cokes, one consciously and one I ordered out of habit. Otherwise, we've been drinking water (normal and sparkling), iced tea and orange juice. Well, I've been drinking orange juice like it's my job, but that's just been the current craving.

Last night I started reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver (gifted to me last Christmas by my lovely friend, Melissa!) and it's the story of her family's journey to eat better. Kingsolver's fabulous narrative voice tells you how they decided to grow more of their own foods on their small piece of land in the Appalachians and to buy more locally. I am still in the beginning of the book, but am loving it so far. I'm hoping to start buying locally here too, especially since we live in Texas and farmers' markets are open year round.

I'm excited! I know that I am a lover of food and cooking, which does make me more interested in food in general, but I love the idea that I am setting up my kids with a sense of eating healthy.

I apparently love Santa.

2011-12-07T09:00:00.001-08:00

I am almost done Christmas shopping. I have a few presents to buy, wrap and mail for my family in Illinois and a couple of Santa gifts and stocking stuffers to get the girls, but otherwise, I'm pretty much done. And, I would like to thank the internets for being such a fabulous place to purchase gifts. I hate shopping and I have had to do very little of it in actual stores this year. :)

Oh, and I need to tell you my GENIUS idea this year. Instead of dragging up the wrapping paper and box of bows, tape, gift tags, etc.every time I need to wrap something, I got smart. I set up a wrapping station in my basement. I put up the card table, set up all the wrapping essentials, and as presents are purchased or arrive in the mail to be wrapped, I just bring them straight downstairs and wrap presents while I'm downstairs doing laundry. GENIUS! I tells ya!!! I don't have to wait for the girls to go to bed or stare at the mess of wrapping things because I don't want to haul it up and down stairs all the time! Best idea ever.

I am reading a fabulous book called Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship by Jon Meacham. It's about the friendship of FDR and Churchill (duh) and it is well written and has my complete attention (which is hard to do when I am growing a human in my belly). I am sad that I won't be hitting my goal of reading 100 books this year. I'm only at 68. But, like I said, when I'm pregnant, I just can not concentrate on books long. I have started and put down numerous books that I just can't get into that I guarantee, once this baby has evacuated the premises, I will be able to try to read again and be fine. It's so annoying how pregnancy just saps the brain cells from your head.

This weekend, we are taking the girls to Sea World. We have one in San Antonio, and the girls have been begging to go, but I did not want to pay good money to go when I'm pregnant and slow as molasses and need frequent breaks to sit and try to breath and whine about how slow and waddle-y I am. But, I found a coupon for military members for a free day pass, so we printed it out and are taking the girls on Saturday. They don't know yet. :) For zero dollars, I don't mind being slow and waddle-y. Plus, Julia is in love with The Polar Express (which, we have the movie but not the book...so unlike me! So, she's getting the book for Christmas :) and they have a Polar Express 4-D show at Sea World we're going to go see. She's going to be beyond excited. Then, once this baby is out and the weather is warm, we'll buy passes for next year. They have a fabulous water park that everyone keeps ranting and raving about, so I definitely want to be able to take the girls this summer when we can.

While looking around my holiday decorated home, I realize that I super like Santas. I have a lot of him. Not just any Santas, mind you, but unique one. This is my ultimate favorite Santa:

He's the one on the upper left. I bought him when we lived in DeKalb and I named him Fat Santa. Every year, I make the girls come and ooh and ahh over how beautiful he is and make my annual speech about how they can not touch him because he is breakable and if he breaks I will cry like a baby. Last year, I bought Elisabeth the Santa in the lower right corner. He is a plastic Fat Santa that she can touch and put on the tree (because she loves my Fat Santa so much, she has asked for him when I die...which is not the first time she's tried calling dibs on things of mine after I croak). She put him right next to my ornament, which I found cute.

Oh, and my lovely friend Kim bought me this cookie jar last year:

Omg, I love him. He is still sold at Target and when we go, Julia says, "Oh, look, there's your Happy Santa!".

Well, I have deemed it a baking kind of day. I have a list of Christmas cookies that "need" to be made and I have totally been slacking on it this year. I mean, it's December 7th and I just made my first batch last night! I know! I am a slacker.

Colorado visitors.

2011-12-03T16:01:00.001-08:00

The weather here lately has been to-die-for lovely. Highs in the upper 60s and low 70s. Some rain, but mostly sunny and awesome. It's hard to remember we're in December because it's just not cold. We have needed jackets, and in the mornings when it's in the low 50s, Elisabeth does need a coat to walk to the bus stop, but otherwise it's just nice, fall weather. Plus, flowers are still blooming and thriving here!

But, it is Christmas time, which is what we saw when our friends Kim and Chris came to visit us Thanksgiving week. This is the tree in front of the Alamo:

and true to Texas form, there are only ornaments of all things Texas--the state shape, the lone star, cowboy boots, etc. Not even one ornament on it that doesn't scream "WE ARE TEXANS!".

Elisabeth was so excited to have Kayleigh stay with us. It was funny, because the minute Kayleigh walked in the door, those two went invisible. They played and hung out and half the time we forgot they were even in the house.

Since it was their first time visiting San Antonio (and Texas, for that matter), we had to take them to see The Alamo.

Because it was not almost 100 degrees, we explored more of the gardens around The Alamo, which was gorgeous. Evan, the girls, and I got to see things we hadn't on our first trip.

Someone tell me what this plant/tree/fruit is:

Cause i have no idea!!

We also walked to a little shopping district called La Villita National Historic District. Honestly, it wasn't much to look at. Yes, there were some small, weird shops, but nothing where I feel like we need to go and visit again. We did happen to find an old church in the district though. I insisted on going in to take pictures.

Called "The Little Church", it was built in 1879.

Then we walked down The Riverwalk back to our car. The Riverwalk is something that everyone who has ever visited San Antonio has told us "you have to go to The Riverwalk!", but, honestly, we don't see what the big deal is. We've walked down the part where there's restaurants and where it leads to the mall, but...it kind of sucks. I'm not going to go visit a million restaurants in one day and I'm certainly not going to go to the mall all the time (omg, I hate malls). But, when Kim and Chris were here, we found a different part of The Riverwalk we hadn't seen and I liked it much, much more. No restaurants and swarms of tourists. No mall and stupid shops. It was quiet and very pretty.

These are tree roots! How creepy/cool are they?:

I told Evan maybe we should walk more of The Riverwalk (past all the commercial parts) and we might find what all the hype is about, because that small part we walked was pleasant.

Kim and Chris were here for Thanksgiving. Since we'd already had a traditional Thanksgiving when my parents came to visit, we all decided to just have a Chinese take-out feast. We had a big order.

It was awesome. It was relaxed and yummy and the clean up was super simple. I would not be opposed to more Thanksgivings like that one.

Don't worry, I totally still made a pie...a pumpkin pecan pie. It was yummy.

All too soon, Kim, Chris and Kayleigh had to go back to Colorado. The girls were sad, but we've already made plans for more visits (including us going to visit them in Colorado in June!).

I love haivng friends that are family.

Solitude.

2011-11-28T07:48:00.001-08:00

Saturday morning, I woke up feeling grumpy. Never mind that it was my sleep in day and I slept until 9:30. Never mind that Evan and the girls were in a fabulous mood. I was a big, fat, pregnant crab. I wanted to wake up in a small apartment that only housed me, where I didn't have to talk or interact in anyway with anyone.

Ever have those days?

Thankfully, my family did not take it personally. They gave me some space and went about their (annoyingly) jolly ways. It really wasn't personal, but some days I just long for solitude. I long to be in my own little bubble where I have no one depending on me, monopolizing my time, expecting anything from me. On those days, I would stay in bed as long as I liked. I'd wander into the kitchen and make 2 eggs over medium with an english muffin lathered in butter. I would curl up on the couch, cover myself in blankets and lose myself in a book. I'd have a hot cup of never ending coffee at my disposal, followed by endless glasses of Evan's sweet tea when I was done drinking coffee. I'd probably watching mindless tv while crocheting beautiful scarves and afghans. I'd take a nap and start all over again, never having had to talk to anyone in real life or on the phone. I'd take a walk (cause my pregnant body would not be tired or swollen) and then go to bed early. That is my ideal isolation day.. Saturday was one of those days.

But, for every one of those isolation days I long for, I am given a day filled with silliness and giggles; questions and bickering; random hugs and a few stolen kisses; exasperation at ears that won't listen and a feeling of overflowing love at a glance of two sisters getting along in a loving manner; small kicks and pushes from the newest of our babies growing in my belly.

As I was reminded quite recently (after complaining about a certain 3 year old who must have tabs on my whereabouts at all times) by someone who used to have a little boy who was most demanding in the attention department, I will miss all this someday. I will soon have teenagers instead of small children. And even those teenagers won't be sticking around long before I will have grown up children. I hear that happens much faster than I can imagine.

So, I shall take these days of overwhelming madness and try to appreciate them (though I know full well, I probably won't the majority of the time). I will try to minimize my need to hermit away because some day I will have plenty of hermit days...and I will probably long for small giggles and little hands that instinctively reach for mine.

It's hard being a Juju.

2011-11-21T08:42:00.001-08:00

Julia has been exploding into a preschooler lately.

She has an insatiable appetite for letters and numbers. She is constantly asking me what different letters are, making me trace my finger along the words while I read, helping her count past 20, and insisting on me writing the numbers and ABCs so she can trace them.

Her verbal language is expanding too. She is figuring out more words and better sentence structure, but that makes her stutter as she tries to say the words in her head outloud. When she stutters, it totally breaks my heart. Yes, I know it is totally age appropriate. Yes, I do realize that just this past spring break she was a stuttering fool when she was bursting with new words and that the stuttering went away once she had it mastered. Yes, my mother-in-law is a speech pathologist and at my disposal for any questions or concerns (she is not concerned by any means). But, that doesn't mean that listening to her stumble over her words is not the most heart wrenching thing to listen to. I have had to tell Elisabeth that we don't interrupt her or try to finish her sentences for her; mainly because that pisses Julia off to no end and usually causes a full blown tantrum, but also because she needs to be able to figure it out without pressure.

And, as with every developmental growth, Julia has been a bear to deal with. Julia has also been determined to do things on her own. She gets herself dressed and undressed. She uses her stool to try to reach what she can so she doesn't have to ask for help. She is furious (FURIOUS) if you at all try to do something for her when she is determined to do it solo. And her temper? Boy howdy, that girl is a tiny volcano. We have really had to scramble to figure out ways to deal with her outbursts. Obviously, hitting or kicking are not allowed, but when she's mad, she needs to physically let it out (unlike our Ebeth who either needs to talk/cry it out or pouts somewhat quietly). So, we've been letting her leave the room/table/area where her anger started and do her own thing until she can calmly come back and be human again. Sometimes, when she has decided to throw/slam/destroy things in her anger, we give her the option of going to her room to chill out by herself or with our help. Honestly, she usually asks us to come with. Once she's in her room, she snuggles into her bed and we read books or cuddle or she cries until she can talk about why she's so mad. She is much more of a "3 year old" than Elisabeth ever was. As I've said a million bajillion times, they are so opposite of each other.

Julia's definitely on her way to being her own independent person, even if she does need to have me in her line of vision at all times.

I am most curious to see how she will do when this new baby I am growing in my belly joins the outside world.

Why I am thankful we kept our stupid cats.

2011-11-20T15:01:00.001-08:00

Our cats were an impulse buy in June of 2009. We'd always promised Elisabeth that we would get cats when we moved into a house instead of our apartment. Evan and I had both grown up with cats and enjoyed them over dogs. So, one day, while out and about exploring Colorado Springs, we decided to stop at a Petsmart and see the cats there. We ended up leaving with a 1.5 year old male Tabby cat that we named Roosevelt and a 4 month old gray and white kitten we named Figaro.

Now, I am sure that for those of you who own pets, I don't need to state the obvious; that taking care of pets is much more time consuming than being a child whose parents take care of pets. Yeah...we know that now. Honestly, after the first couple of months, we were tempted to give them back. They both had their claws, so they were scratching the crap out of our furniture. We weren't sure how'd they do being left alone in the house at night, so we shut them in the basement every night, which led to them climbing the insulated walls and tearing them to shreds. I didn't realize that cats could be so picky about when their litter needs changed or that they'd find new places to pee if they felt there was no more room in their litter box. We also found out that Roosevelt prefers to be outside about 75% of the day, which we were unsure about since he tended to hop the fence and wander the neighborhood.

But, the thing that has kept us from every getting rid of the cats (who still claw the furniture and meow at our door at night to be let in so they can sleep at our feet) is that they are so good with our kids. Actually, they are good with almost everyone's kids, because now that we live in Texas and have no fence, they wander around our yard and everyone else's yards. Roosevelt is a total pet junkie and will roll onto his back for belly rubs the minute any one comes over to say hi to him.

He is kind of camouflaged here (he's at the base of the tree that Julia is climbing):

but Roosevelt follows Julia around like a puppy. They honestly play tag together outside. It is hilarious to watch. He lets her pick him up and carry him around willy nilly and never fights or tries to get away.

He even lets her jump with him on our little trampoline.

He is friendly and playful and is Julia's buddy. He likes to be in the middle of everyone and the neighborhood kids love it when they see him outside. Of course, they all flip the eff out when he scales the trees, but I think I have convinced them all that he is just fine because, you know...he's a cat. They do that kind of thing.

As for this massive cat:

he's not near as friendly and bold, but he is also very good with the kids. If they can catch him, he goes limp in their arms and allows them to carry him around (which is hard for Juju because he is "sooo heavy"). Plus, he and Roosevelt are very much best friends for life. They snuggle and are usually always hanging out together. I mean look at them:

That is true cat love people. How could we ever separate them?

Preschool

2011-11-18T05:39:00.001-08:00

Julia will be 4 in June. We've always planned on her going to preschool at 4 because...well, because we think she'd love it. Plus I'm an advocate of preschool (um, I have taught it for goodness sakes) and know the benefits of being apart of a preschool class to a little one. If we were still in Colorado, she could have even started this year (at age 3), but I probably would have kept her home until she was 4.

But, here in Texas, at the school district Elisabeth attends, preschool is not offered until age 4 and it is an all day program. Yep, all day, as in, 7:45AM-3:00PM. That is the same schedule my 3rd grade Elisabeth has.

Evan and I discussed it and we just can't justify sending Julia there for an all day preschool program. It's a long day for someone so little (and four years old is quite little, which I think people forget). I looked at the schedule on the school's website, and there are a lot of things that she would love, but eating lunch and napping at school at age 4 feels more like I'm sending her to day care instead of preschool. It would be different if I needed her in day care, then that full day preschool would be a godsend because it's free through the school district, but I don't. However, I am going to call the school and see if just taking her for half the day is an option, because if it is, then we'll definitely sign her up. I do think she'd love preschool, just not a full day's worth.

The thing is, I feel all this guilt about her not experiencing preschool, but I never went. I started the whole school experience when I walked into my first day of Kindergarten. And, it's not like I'm worried about Julia's development or learning abilities--she's pretty smart and inquisitive with no red flags that would suggest she needs any early intervention. I used to be concerned about her timidness in situations where she had to leave me behind (because the girl might love my company to no end), but enrolling her in dance class has really shown us that she is fully capable of being in an environment without me when it's something she loves to do (and she does lovelovelove to dance!).

Plus, um, I have my bachelor's (and some master's classes!) in EDUCATION. I am fully aware what she needs to know to be ready for Kindergarten and am pretty sure that I could, you know, teach her things needed to know before she steps into her first day of Kindergarten.

It just seems so odd keeping her at home with me another year when Elisabeth started day care at the age of 2.5 and loved every single minute of it. Ebeth was begging us to go to school so she could meet friends!! Granted, I worked in the same day care (in the room right next door!) and was able to see her all day, every day. She also flourished in that kind of environment because the girl thrives off of interacting with other people. Plus, we had no choice--Evan was in law school and I had to work to make ends meet. It's just different with Julia. I'm home all day and don't have to work. She has never been in a day care experience at all (and I don't think she would have taken to it the same way as Elisabeth did).

So, overall, I feel much better with our decision that, if half day preschool is not an option (because paying tons of moola for a private one is not something we're willing to do...mainly because everything here is a million miles away and also because private preschool is EXPENSIVE!), then Julia gets to stay home with me and the new baby next year. She can start Kindergarten (which is also full day) when she is five.

Exploring San Antonio with Memaw and Pepaw

2011-11-16T06:10:00.001-08:00

While my parents were here visiting, we took them to some new places we'd been waiting to visit until their arrival. One of the nice things about living somewhere new is acting like a tourist because, well, we are!!! The weather was so lovely and we were able to do everything we'd planned.

One of the things we'd been waiting to go and see was right on Ft Sam Houston (and just mere blocks from our house). It's Ft Sam's Quadrangle. Built in 1876, this place is still actively used.

We'd been waiting to visit this place until my mom came because one of the attractions of the Quadrangle is the wildlife that live in the park in the middle. There are deer and lots of birds and, if you bring food, you can feed them. We didn't tell my mom about the deer (which are her favorite animal) until we had walked into the Quadrangle's grounds and she saw them in the distant. She was most excited.

Elisabeth was able to feed at least 3 deer. They seemed to really like her...and the apples I'd brought along.

Eventually, one of the deer actually ate from my mom's hand, which totally made her day.

There were tons of geese and peacocks roaming the grounds too.

My dad super loved all the history. There were plaques everywhere telling about all the things the Quadrangle had been used for and the important people who had worked or visited it. This huge tree:

was here before they even built the buildings, so the Quadrangle was built around the tree. It is huge and gorgeous. It was fun and I told the girls we'd definitely be back and maybe next time we could have a picnic.

Across from The Alamo is Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum, which Elisabeth was beyond thrilled to find. We told her that Pepaw would definitely want to visit that with her, so we spent a day there. It ended up being much more interesting than I anticipated. I actually learned. Here are the girls sitting in the largest tire ever made for use:

They also had cool mind-trick attractions. This was a tunnel that spun (with lights that my camera's flash whited out) while you crossed a bridge. It was very funny to watch people losing their balance while crossing. My sister was convinced that the bridge moved too, not just the spinning tunnel, until I made her stand with me at the end and watch people go through. I think the girls (and my mom) went through at least 3 or 4 times.

Part of the Ripley's Believe It or Not tickets included going to the wax museum next door. Ebeth was ecstatic to see the Harry Potter crew.

And Abraham Lincoln. (Have I told you that she is really hoping the baby is born on Lincoln's birthday on February 12th?)

Of course, since I do have a membership (!!!), we had to take my parents to visit the zoo. It was a pretty cool afternoon when we went, so lots of animals were actually awake and active...including the BEARS!!!!

This bear:

is 30 years old. She has a sign by her area that says, due to her age, she is allowed to do whatever she wants, which includes spending days inside the inner pen area if that's what she so desires. Elisabeth was most excited to actually see her since she's never been out the few times we've been before.

It was a fun visit. The girls are already thinking of new things to do with them the next time they fly down.

Memaw and Pepaw come to Texas

2011-11-11T15:43:00.001-08:00

My parents came to visit us the day after Elisabeth's birthday and left this past Tuesday. They were the first ones to visit us in our new home! The girls were most excited to show off their rooms and our house. Since my sister and her husband are also stationed in San Antonio, we had an early Thanksgiving together. We haven't had a Thanksgiving with all of us in 6 years. My mom was on cloud nine. Evan grilled our turkey and it was THE BEST TURKEY THAT HAD EVER BEEN EATEN!!!! Not kidding, we are grilling our turkey every year from now on. And! It only took 2.5 hours.

What I enjoy about my parents visiting (and Evan's parents as well) is that there is a lot of time hanging around the house and playing with my kids. Yes, we go places (and I'll tell you more about that tomorrow in another post) but there is a lot of reconnecting time--something the girls and our parents need since we aren't around each other a lot anymore.

My parents bought the girls this awesome race car track (from QVC, of course) that was a huge hit. Julia can not wait to show Ethan it when he comes in December.

The weather was lovely the entire time they were here. It was chilly in the mornings and warmed up nicely by the late afternoon. It even rained, which my parents had never seen in their previous visits to my sister's house (Terra and John have been stationed here for over 2 years).

Since they were here the day after her birthday, my parents took Elisabeth to a Build-A-Bear equivalent at the mall and let her and Julia pick out a stuffed animal to make and dress. Elisabeth has been asking for one for a couple of years now and it was a perfect gift to come from my parents because they love that kind of thing.

Elisabeth picked a bunny that was like her friend Mabel's.

Julia picked a sheep and declared it a boy. A boy sheep who played soccer.

One of my favorite moments during their visit was when my dad and Julia were playing outside (Julia claimed Pepaw as her own personal playmate and drug him outside to play as much as possible); they were sitting on chairs facing each other. I hurried and grabbed my camera and took some pictures through my kitchen window.

It turns out they were telling each other stories about magic beans and Jack and the Beanstalk. It was so sweet and cute. Julia was belly laughing and adding things of her own to the stories. It as a very sweet moment.

It was a nice visit. The next time they come to visit, they will be here to meet the newest member of our family...how weird is that?!

Flowers just for you!

2011-11-09T14:59:00.000-08:00

I realize that a lot of you are seeing snow today. I thought you might want to see what's blooming down here in San Antonio. Don't hate! You all had a gorgeous, fall colored autumn and I had tons of jealousy about that!

My parents left yesterday, so today was a hanging out around the house kind of day. My poor Julia is such a beast when her routine is messed up. Don't get me wrong, she super loved having her Memaw and Pepaw around to comply with her every wish and whim, but she is a routine oriented child and she was melting down a bit by those last two days of their visit. She slept for 2.5 hours today for her nap. So, even though I had a couple of errands I needed to run, we just stayed home today. I did laundry and she watched tv and trashed the living room playing house.

The last 3 days have been cloudy here! Dude, it is never cloudy here. It's even rained sporadically and today never went above the 60s in temperature. It was awesome. Of course, this weekend it's supposed to creep back up to the 80s, so I'll take this chilly weather for as long as it will stay. And, even though I am not a fan of the heat and humidity, it is super nice to still let the girls play outside almost every day. Yesterday they played outside from after we dropped my parents off at the airport until supper time at 6:30. Just swinging and riding bikes and jumping rope. I guess Texas does have a few advantages.

Friday is Veteran's Day and Evan and Elisabeth both have the day off!!!! We're going to hang out and go see a movie in the theater (Puss in Boots, which Ebeth has been begging to see). We don't see movies in the theaters often, which my mom finds appalling. Growing up, we'd go see a movie almost every weekend (and my parents pretty much still do), but, honestly, I can think of better ways to spend our time and money. I'd much rather go to a museum or try out a new hiking trail at a park we haven't been to yet or go visit some bookstore I haven't had the pleasure of meeting. So, going to the theater is a big deal for my kids and I like that.

I just watched the movie "Never Let Me Go" based off the book of the same name by Kazuo Ishiguro. I read the book earlier this year and have had the movie dvr-ed for a while now. I have to say, the movie did a decent job in trying to create what the book was. I am by no means a Kiera Knightly fan, but she did a great job with her role as Ruth. I also about drove myself batty trying to figure out who was playing the grown version of Tommy and had to wikipedia it--turns out it was the guy who played Eduardo in "Social Network". If you have read the book (Rachel, I am staring at you...) then I'd definitely recommend the movie.

Well, it is time for some dinner making. Hope you enjoyed the gorgeous flowers I stumbled upon this weekend. :)

Settled.

2011-11-03T13:01:00.000-07:00

My parents are coming to visit us today! They are flying in and staying at our house until Tuesday. The girls are beyond excited. They're our first house guests and the girls are dying to show off their rooms. I won't lie, I'm dying to show off our house too. I love our house.

Part of the reason that I love our house so much is that it feels like home. We've settled into a routine and our life here in Texas and it makes such a difference in our moods. We still have to finish the nursery and the guest room is going to be rearranged now that Evan has my dad coming to help out, but otherwise, everything is where it's supposed to be.

Eating lunch with Elisabeth at school (isn't Julia's face lovely?):

I am 25 weeks pregnant. I told Evan that I feel like it's flying by, but also like I've been pregnant forever. It's weird how it can feel like both things at once. Of course, we found out I was pregnant pretty early in the pregnancy. I wasn't even 4 weeks along. It's really going to hit me that we're adding another person to our family after the holidays when it'll just be a little over a month before #3 makes her debut.

Julia has finally decided to show an interest in clothing and unclothing herself. I swear, that girl has her own time clock about when she should meet milestones. She has shown zero interest in figuring out how to be independent in the clothing area, but in the last couple of weeks, she has started stripping and reclothing herself willy-nilly. She also has been shoeing herself. I told Evan that I don't know why we try to push her to do things before she's ready--she's never, ever complied. She crawled when she wanted to, walked when she wanted to, weaned herself when she wanted to, talked when she wanted to. Why are we surprised that she took her time potty training herself and has yet to want to poop in the toilet? It's aggravating to no end, but it totally goes with her personality. Her stubborn, ornery, sweet, unique personality.

One thing that she has super excelled at is her gross motor skills. That girl can ride a bike! She was getting too big for her tricycle, so we found Ebeth's old training wheel bike. It took Elisabeth weeks to get the hang of riding a bike; it took Julia 4 times going up and down the sidewalk before she told Evan she could do it by herself.

Just look at her go!

Nine.

2011-11-02T11:11:00.000-07:00

My Elisabeth is nine today. I know this because she ran into our room this morning at 6:30 and jumped on our bed and declared it while we sleepily wished her a happy birthday.

It is both hard to believe that is was 9 years ago that I delivered a beautiful baby girl that the hospital staff kept telling me I'd get to take home with me. I'd bounce back and forth between awe and terror that this tiny, tiny baby was now my responsibility. I kept petting her pitch black hair as she laid snuggled against my side and practiced feeling like a mommy.

Now that little baby who was 7lbs and 18.5 inches long is 9 years old and 4'8". She earns reading awards in 3rd grade and loves to read Harry Potter together at night before bed. That little baby, who was so ready to be in her own crib at 3 months is now in a full sized bed that she just got yesterday and said feels like she's in her own hotel room. My sweet little baby who cried like a lamb now tells me often how she just can't wait to be a grown up.

She's still that same little baby, but I can also see parts of that grown-up that she is longing to be.

Happy birthday, my sweet Ebethers. You are so very loved.

All Hallows Eve

2011-11-01T19:48:00.000-07:00

Ah, Halloween. My favorite holiday.

This year, I had an awesome house to decorate. I had 2 kids with cool outfits. I had a neighborhood that was all about being out on their front porches and participating in the trick-or-treating. It was a great day.

This year, Julia dressed as her Pink Baby doll (dress made by her Nina, complete with matching hair bows) and Elisabeth was Hermione from Harry Potter.

Hermione with her Crookshanks.

Evan holding his Pink Baby holding her Pink Baby.

Julia was all kinds of excited to go trick-or-treating. I didn't even have to walk up to the door with her. She ran to every front door and was the first one to ring the doorbell.

In our neighborhood, we have these beautiful, white historic houses that the higher ranking officers live in across the street from our house. They have these gorgeous wrap-around porches and most all of the people living in the houses were sitting on their front porches waiting for the kids to come. It was so nice. A few of them even were dressed up.

One house in particular, the girls went to walk to the porch and noticed the front door was wide open. It was pitch black inside. Elisabeth decided that they should just knock on the open door. As the girls started to walk up the sidewalk, the Imperial March from Star Wars started playing. A double bladed, red light saber was seen coming closer from the depths of the dark hallway inside. All of a sudden, Darth Maul appeared at the door with a bucket of candy. Both girls stared at him in complete and utter awe. When he took one finger and crooked it at the girls to come to the porch, Julia turned tail and booked it back for me as fast as her stubby little three year old legs could take her. Elisabeth, however, walked right up to Darth Maul and said, "Trick or Treat." Julia, holding my hand, also finally made her way to Darth Maul. He gave her candy and she said in the smallest voice, "Thank you." She was visibly shaking. As the girls got to the street, they turned to watch Darth Maul slowly back up into the dark hallway of the house. Then, in a small whisper, Julia said, "That was so cool."

It was a good night. We were out for maybe an hour and the girls got to see their neighborhood friends all dressed up. And, oh my goodness, the haul of candy they brought home is the most ever.

The girls have already started talking about what they will be for Halloween next year (because they are my children and love to plan their costumes early). I love it!

I am an organizing machine.

2011-10-27T07:38:00.000-07:00

This week, I have been focusing on finishing up the last bits of organizing and sorting that need to be done after moving into this house. I am a bit slower than I was when we moved to Colorado due to being pregnant and all, but I finally organized all of the girls' clothes in the basement. We have sooooo many tubs of clothes. And, since it looks like this baby I am growing in my belly is also a girl, I wanted the clothes to be sorted and ready for each girl as they grow into and out of sizes. I also have a whole area in the basement dedicated to a future garage sale. And, I have been trying to get the tubs of holiday and house decorations and random things I've kept put together as well. Needless to say, I may be already nesting.

My parents are coming to visit us next week! Our first visitors in our new house!!!!! It has been a great motivator to get the rest of the things on the walls and get the crap out of the guest room that we hadn't gotten around to yet. The girls are so excited. We are going to have an early Thanksgiving meal with my sister and her husband while our parents are in town. We haven't had a Thanksgiving together since 2004. I'm sure you can imagine how happy my mom is about getting to see us all together. My sister came over for dinner the other night and we made up the menu. Turkey, cranberry sauce, potatoes, corn, ham, pies, cobblers...a super traditional Thanksgiving like what we would eat when we were little.

After my parents' visit, our dear friends Kim, Chris, and their daughter Kayleigh are coming to see us the week of Thanksgiving. We're going to order Chinese take-out on Thanksgiving day. It was their idea to not make a huge meal. I heart them.

The weather here has been gorgeous lately. Highs in the low 80s and high 70s. The girls are constantly outside playing and digging and riding bikes. That is one nice thing about living in Texas--the weather allows for a much longer amount of the year that the girls can be outdoors. I've been trying to get the front of our house looking nice. I've decorated for Halloween and am tackling the flower beds that have been sorely neglected. But, there are some rose bushes that are fighting to grow and one of them actually decided to bloom! See:

There is a nursery near our house and I think I am going to pay them a visit and see what I can plant that will grow at this time of year. There is also an old tree stump that had tons of weeds and vines growing around it. It looked like a garbage pile. I went and attacked it a couple of weeks ago and found that the tree is trying to grow back. It's just a baby, but I've decided to leave it and see how it does. I also have tons of wild Purple Queen growing everywhere around my house. I love it. The butterflies love it. I'll have to take some pictures and show you. The purple flowers are so delicate and beautiful. I can not wait until spring so I can plant away to my heart's content in the garden.

I plan on taking some pictures soon of our house and giving you all a virtual tour. Hopefully by next week, it will be picture worthy. I did want to show you this though:

It's the play area we created by the living room. Julia is not one to let me leave her sight, so I knew that putting all of her toys in her room or making a play room upstairs would just be a waste of time since I spend most of my time in the kitchen and living room area. But, we created a nook in the corner between the living room and dining area for her enjoyment. She actually loves it. I want to get a rug to lay in the middle, because she usually brings the toys she wants to play with to the living room because there is a rug there.

Today is story time at the library and Julia said she might go and sit with the kids on the circle rug instead of sitting on my lap or by my feet. I'm starting to lose my lap, so hopefully she works up the gumption to sit closer to her peers. It's still so amazing to me how completely opposite of each other my girls are. Elisabeth would have been right up front answering questions and telling the other kids her name. Julia won't let go of my hand and rarely smiles. Makes me wonder what this third kid we're having is going to be like. Will she be a mixture of the two girls? Will she be the opposite of both of them? I am only 5 months along, but I am dying to meet this little person I am growing.

When Evan leaves, things fall apart.

2011-10-24T08:04:00.000-07:00

I don't know if you are aware of this or not, but when your spouse leaves for an extended period of time, things that normally would never happen, happen. It's true. Last week, Evan was gone to Virginia (the state) for a class. He left Sunday morning and things were going smoothly until late Tuesday afternoon. That's when Elisabeth asked if she could go play at a friend's house down our street. I said sure. About 20 minutes later, I hear her come in and take off her shoes. As she's headed toward the living room, I ask her if her friend had to stop playing. "No. I came home because I fell out of a tree."

Elisabeth and the friend were playing in the girl's tree house (it's actually more of a platform). They were trying to decide what to play when a bird in the tree flew towards Elisabeth, she panicked, and she fell backwards out of the tree. It was a good 9ft drop. The friend asked if she was ok and Elisabeth told her she needed to go home. When she fell, she fell on her right side, hurting her leg and she hopped all the way home. Mind you, Elisabeth did not tell me all of this when she walked in the door. She wasn't crying or freaking out; she's just weird and has a high pain tolerance.

Well, I asked her how her leg felt and she said sore. She couldn't put any weight on the right leg and after half an hour (and calling Evan and Kyle for advice) I decided to take her to the emergency room around 6:00PM. At 10:30PM, we finally got to go home. Elisabeth was examined and had x-rays done. Nothing was broken, but she definitely had some trauma to the leg after such a big fall. They gave her some crutches and told me to give her tylenol and sent us home saying to make a follow-up appointment with her pediatrician on Friday.

Well, Ebeth, who obviously is not a complainer about pain, was coming home crying after school about how much her foot hurt. The ER doctor said she'd probably slowly start to use her foot by the weekend, but by Thursday night, there was no improvement and I was worried that we were making her worse. When we went to the pediatrician on Friday, the doctor asked if Elisabeth had been given crutch training. I said no. She was not pleased. Turns out, Elisabeth needed to be taught how to put some weight on her bad foot with the crutches in order to allow her to slowly start using it more. She also learned how to properly go up and down the stairs (I had been telling her the opposite of what she should have been doing, but since I've never used crutches, I had no idea) and she learned some foot stretches to help her muscles. By Sunday, she was walking around crutch free! I am so glad we went back or the follow up appointment.

Also, while Evan was gone, the girls had a dentist appointment. This was Julia's first trip to the dentist. She was nervous.

But, thanks to my sister, who suggested the dentist to us, the staff and dentist were fabulous with her and she was a super patient. They gave her cool sunglasses so the light wouldn't bother her. They also had Toy Story 2 playing so she'd have something to distract her. She was told her teeth were clean and perfect.

Ebeth was also told her teeth were fabulous except for one cavity that she is having filled this week. Elisabeth LOVES the dentist, which is why she insisted on keeping the appointment even though it was the day after she fell out of the tree.

Besides endless doctor appointments (cause I had my own baby doctor appt too), my car's brakes decided to take a dump, causing me to have to take them to Just Brakes. Don't worry, it wasn't just that pads needed replaced, but that my right back caliber needed to be rebuilt. I was carless most of Thursday and part of the morning Friday. It was awesome.

But, Evan came home late Friday night and now all is right with the world. Elisabeth's leg is better, my car is fixed and Julia has outgrown her tricycle and is now on a training wheel bike!

She is super proud of herself.

Now that my week from hell is over, I can focus on the important things...like Halloween and Elisabeth's 9th birthday next week and the fact that my parents are coming in a week from Thursday!

Virtual Coffee

2011-10-18T06:47:00.000-07:00

Hey, you guys!! Thanks for coming over for some coffee. For once, it is actually cool enough to enjoy a hot cup of coffee!!! The highs for this week are in the mid to low 70s and I am excited for them. I have some long sleeves that I'd love to wear. I told Julia she'd need a jacket for dance class this morning and she was shocked. "Why?! It's not hot today?"

This girl goes out and rides her bike every morning. Obviously, she's getting a bit big for that tricycle, but she loves it so much. We have a bike with training wheels in the shed that used to be Elisabeth's. We're going to get it out this weekend and make sure it's working right and show her how to ride it. I think she'll love it.

So, Evan is gone for the week at a JAG course in Virginia (the state). The girls are missing him like crazy. It's all they talk about. I printed off a calendar for Julia and we've been counting down the days until he comes home. It's been easier this time with him gone because Julia is older and almost completely self sufficient. Last year, when he was gone in July for 2 weeks, it was rough. Julia was still super intense and I couldn't be out of her sight for a minute. Now, she's a bit more independent and can be in a room near me and just check in. A lot.

Do you realize that Halloween is in less than 2 weeks?! I love Halloween. My girls are going to try on their costumes this weekend and make sure we have all the things they need. Julia is going to be her favoritest doll, Pink Baby. My mother-in-law made her dress and she is so excited. She's going to take Pink Baby with her when we trick-or-treat. Elisabeth is going to be Hermione from Harry Potter. We are going to finish the 4th book tonight and the movie is in the mail and should be here today, so we're going to watch it this weekend when Evan is home. I have really enjoyed reading the series to Elisabeth. She's so into the story and loves to predict what's going to happen. I bought her her own HP book collection for her birthday. She doesn't know it yet, but I am pretty sure she's going to scream with excitement when she opens them. But, I am only going to give her the 4 books we've read and then as we finish the last 3, I'll give them to her so she can reread them as many times as she wants. She asked me if she could keep my books in her room. Um, no. Those are mine (aren't I such a first child?) and I have 2 more kids I have to read the series too. Then she asked if she could take mine with her when she moved out. I laughed at her. Now, it won't be an issue because she'll have her own. Julia has already asked if I will read Harry Potter to her when she's bigger. I am looking forward to it.

I have been wanting to make some cut-outs to put in the windows for Halloween for a couple of years now. I got the idea from my Martha Stewart Halloween magazines (dude, that lady has some FABULOUS Halloween decorating ideas). This year, I finally got around to making them. We have so many windows, I was excited to take advantage of them.

I am super excited with how they turned out!

The owl is in Julia's room. She has a witch's face in the other window. Elisabeth wants to make her own owl, so I've left her some black posterboard for her to draw on.

Evan's been calling every night on our "big" phone. We finally got a landline so Elisabeth could call her friends in Colorado without having to beg to use our cellphones.

Oh, you noticed that it's a rotary phone? Yep! It was mine from when I was little. We've been saving it for when we would eventually have a landline again. The girls love it. And, the sound quality is WAY better than cordless and cell phones. We love it.

Well, it's time to take a very excited Julia to her dance class. That girl loves dance. Signing her up was one of the best things we've ever done for her. She smiles a huge smile the entire time she is there.

Thanks for stopping by!! I'll see you next week!

Fire Station and Oktoberfest

2011-10-17T07:14:00.000-07:00

Julia has recently acquired a love of all things having to do with fire fighters. Well, I guess this interest started last year when we went with Elisabeth and her class on a field trip to a fire station in Colorado Springs. But, lately, Julia's interest has peaked.

At the library on base, the story time librarian told the kids that some firefighters were coming to read books and talk to them during National Fire Safety week. Julia was beyond excited. She talked about it for weeks. Then, when the day actually came, she wore Elisabeth's fire hat and told me all about how we couldn't be late (which? we are rarely late, thankyouverymuch). The fire chief read stories and then one of the fire fighters showed the kids how he puts on his gear and what he sounds like with his mask on. Julia, who never ever sits with the kids on the rug during story time because she prefers my lap or sitting by my feet, actually sat in the circle. She also turned to me to loudly declare, "Mommy, this is so cool!"

When it was over they all got to color a picture of a fire truck and received their own fire hats.

As they were leaving, the fire fighters told the kids that on Saturday, the fire station was having an open house where the kids could come and climb the fire trucks. You'd have thought it was Christmas morning with how Julia's face was beaming with delight at the idea of actually getting to visit the fire station. We'd already planned on going to Ft Sam Houston's Oktoberfest on Saturday, so we made a day of it and started with the fire station first.

They had a band playing at the fire station. Julia got her groove on:

Now, here's where my Julia is so different from her big sister. Julia, when actually presented with the opportunity to explore and touch the fire trucks, totally turned into the shyest child alive and shut down.

Elisabeth, who barely cares about such things, was climbing up in the seats and taking pictures with her camera.

When it was Julia's turn to sit in the fire seat, she about started bawling her little eyes out.

So, we very slowly and calmly walked around the fire trucks. We didn't make her touch anything if she didn't want to.

And, like we knew she would, after a few minutes she started to warm up.

She even got excited and started smiling and asking questions.

After the fire station, we headed over to the base's Oktoberfest where they served German beer (much to Evan's delight) and schnitzel and pretzels (much to my delight). The Army's polka band was playing in the biergarten tent. Julia danced and clapped and found it just a bit loud.

Then we headed over to the kid tent for games and prizes. (Do you see my uber cool 8.75 year old in her sunglasses? She cracks me up. Oh, and she has a sucker in her mouth, not a small cigarette, which is what it looks like in every picture I took of her.)

Julia declared it the best day ever.

Today.

2011-10-07T08:48:00.000-07:00

Today is one of those days where I could do a bunch of things and be super productive, but first I'd have to find the get-up-and-go needed to do said things.

Today is also one of those days where Julia needs to talk all day to me about every little thought going through her 3 year old mind. She does this while following me around everywhere. Some day, I will totally get to use the bathroom solo again...someday...

(This little bird sits on my kitchen window sill with two of his little friends. They make me very happy when I'm washing dishes.)

Today is one of those days where I don't feel pregnant, I just feel like a giant monstrosity. I will be five months along next week. How weird is that? This pregnancy has kind of flown by...probably because it's my third one and I kind of feel all "been there, done that". Of course a pregnancy that flies by quickly in the beginning will probably drag those last couple of months and then the baby will be here before I know it. I'm anxious to meet this baby. I'm wondering how it will differ from it's big sisters personality-wise. Do you think this one will talk less? Yeah, I don't think so either.

Today is one of those days where I miss being in Colorado. I miss being able to just call my friends and say, "Dude, I'm bored and I'm coming over in 5 minutes." I also miss the mountains. I am trying really hard to give Texas a chance, but when you're heart belongs to another state, it's hard. This weekend I think we'll do some more exploring of the city. I'm trying to take advantage of the loveliness that is Groupon and visit new places and try new things. Now that it's not so hot, both girls have been outside more and have befriended the countless neighborhood children. Even my shy little Juju has been initiating conversations with the kids she meets.

Today is one of those days where I'm not saying "no" to much. Can we read a million books? Sure. Can I go outside and play in the rain? Yes. Can we build block towers? Of course.

Today is one of those days. How's your day going?

The Playground.

2011-10-06T07:17:00.000-07:00

In less than a month, Elisabeth will be 9. (Please be aware that you will get the year blog post with pictures of her much younger and me weeping about how my first baby could possibly be so big.)

I think one of the hardest things about parenting a soon to be 9 year old is explaining to her why some people choose to be unkind and that some of these people are her peers.

Ever since Elisabeth was a toddler, I have been drilling it into her that we don't pick on others. When she was 4 and in day care, there was a boy (who had been in the 3 year old class I taught) who was still having problems potty training. One of the girls in the class told all the other kids not to sit by him in center time because he was gross. Elisabeth came home and told me what the girl had said and that's when I started talking to her about kindness and respect. The little boy was probably one of the sweetest people you'd ever meet. He was a ray of sunshine. I asked Elisabeth how she thought the little boy felt when no one would sit by him. I told her what has become my number one parenting mantra: "You don't have to be friends with everyone, but you do have to be kind."

If you know my Elisabeth, you know she has a big heart. She's never met a stranger. And, until Julia started walking and talking and showing us her own personality, we'd never really seen Elisabeth be frustrated or unkind. (Siblings tend to bring out unknown characteristics in each other.) (And siblings of good friends...like Peter...right, Rach? :)

For the last couple of weeks, Elisabeth has been coming home from school with playground issues. It turns out that another girl from a different class has been unkind to Elisabeth for playing with a mutual friend. She's been whispering (loud enough for Elisabeth to hear) rude comments about Elisabeth when she walks by. She's been telling Elisabeth that no one wants to play with her. And, as of the last couple of days, she's been seeking Elisabeth out to sabotage what Ebeth is playing or to try to hurt her.

Of course, Evan and I are concerned. I've been giving her some tools to use (telling the girl how you feel; ignoring and walking away; standing near a grown up so the girl won't bother her), but when it starts to get beyond normal girl squabbles and pettiness and into bullying, then we need to take it to the next step. Elisabeth is going to ask her teacher to talk about her playground problems and I emailed the teacher last night. Thankfully, her teacher is marvelous and I know this will be nipped in the bud.

But, what about next year? What about in junior high when it seems that it gets even worse? What about in high school? How do you tell your child that some people just suck and there's nothing you can do about it?

I am thankful that Elisabeth is comfortable talking to me and Evan about her problems. She said one of the girls asked why Elisabeth was tattling to me (Elisabeth told them that I said not to hang out with them if they couldn't be kind). Elisabeth said, "I'm not tattling. I'm telling her my problems and she's helping me."

This is when I wish I could just keep her home in a bubble. But, even if I kept her home in a bubble until college, she'd encounter these same bullies in the grown up world. At jobs and in parenting groups and at social functions, those bullies are still alive and lurking. They are still just as mean and it hurts just as much.

"Mom, if they don't like me, why can't they just ignore me?"

I don't know sweetie. But, please know that so many more people love you oodles and oodles and bunches and bunches. You are a good person and it is their loss.

Snore.

2011-09-29T06:47:00.000-07:00

You guys, I am a walking zombie today.

Last night my hips were KILLING me. I hate that part of being pregnant. I have to sleep on my sides because I obviously can't sleep on my stomach or I'll squish the baby's house. I can't sleep on my back because I can seriously feel my heart stop beating because the baby house is killing my internal organs. So, it's my sides. Except, my hips are expanding (cause they should totally expand...and make me feel even larger...I'm totally cool with that) and it HURTS. So, I toss and turn and curse my body pillow for not supporting my hips more.

Then, for the last week, Julia has insisted on sleeping with every light in her room on. Not a big deal, Ebeth did the same thing around that age and Evan did too when he was little. But, Julia will wake up randomly and, since the light is so bright, she has no idea if the sun is up or not. So, I have been going to her room before I go to sleep and turning off the overhead light (but leaving the desk lamp and the night light glowing). Well at 6:00 this morning, I bolt out of bed because I can hear her calling for me and I'm assuming she's super pissed to find out that I've turned off a light when she's sleeping. I walk into her room where I WAKE HER UP BY OPENING THE DOOR. I say, "Juju, did you call for me?" She then looks at me like I am a moron and says, "No. And will you turn dat big light back on?". Awesome.

Thinking I'd dreamt it all, I go back to my room, knowing full well she's not going to go back to sleep for the next hour like I am hoping for, to hear that same noise again. I tell Evan what happened and he says, "That's a cat making noises outside. I think it can see our cats through the windows." For the love of all that is holy.

As predicted, Julia is up as soon as she hears Elisabeth use the bathroom (at 6:30) declaring that she pooped her overnight pants. I try to tell her to make Daddy change them (cause I am an awesome spouse) but she says he's in the shower. So, I very grumpily stomp around to get stuff to change her pants (I need to let the entire house know that I am not happy with any of them and that I am SLEEP DEPRIVED for crying out loud), change her and tell her to go downstairs, without yelling at Elisabeth for once in her short little life, and eat something because I am going back to bed. Evan comes to kiss me goodbye and to see if I'm getting out of bed.

Nope. No way. I am exhausted and my hips don't hurt right now.

He then asks what he should do with Julia who is awake and fed. And, that, dear people, is when I say:

"Turn on the tv."

MOTY

Don't worry, though, because Julia came into my room as soon as Evan left to sit on my bed and stare at me while she talked to people on her play cellphone about how I was still sleeping and she was just waiting for me to get up because it was morning.

There is not enough coffee. But, today, the baby growing in my belly is going to get more than one cup.

Virtual Coffee

2011-09-27T09:27:00.000-07:00

Hey there! So glad you stopped by for coffee today! I am having an iced coffee due to the high today being 100 degrees. Yep. Still kind of hot here in Texas.

So, while we chat away, I'm going to show some more "cool" fall pictures of when we went apple picking in Illinois. It makes me feel better.

Today, I am going back into high gear of getting this house completely unpacked. There are a couple of rooms that I won't be able to finish (the nursery and guest room) until we've gotten things replaced by the movers since they broke/lost some things, but there's no reason the rest of the house can't be done. Especially our bedroom. It is a dump right now.

Dude, there are NO pumpkins to buy anywhere here yet. The grocery stores don't have any. WalMart doesn't have any. It's so weird. I know they are shipped in from other states (due to the drought and Texas not really being an ideal place for pumpkin patches), but I kind of thought they'd be here by now. I'd like to decorate the front of my house with pumpkins.

I have pulled out the fall and Halloween decorations for the house, though. I love it when the girls cheer to see some of their favorite things. I have a ghost pillow (that I love) that Elisabeth always insists on cuddling as soon as I pull it out of the tub. Both girls like to reminisce about where we bought the decorations or why they like them so much. Christmas is the same way too. Gotta love holiday memories.
(some of the apples were...um...gross)
So, tell me how it's going with you? Whatcha reading? I'm still working my way through The Scarlet Letter. I had never read it and I am loving it. It's hard for me to concentrate when I am pregnant (I totally gave up reading when pregnant with Elisabeth and even a few months after due to my lack of concentration), but I'm almost done with the book. Apparently, The Scarlet Letter is one that most high school kids are made to read, but somehow I missed out. I might watch the Demi Moore (1995) movie afterwards. I'm sure it's going to be a perfect rendition of the book. ;)

This weekend, I am taking Elisabeth shoe shopping. She has one pair of shoes right now that fit and she asked me nicely if she could maybe have a couple more pairs. Oops. In my defense, she just grew out of children's shoes and is now wearing a women's size 6. Do you know how sad that is?! And her feet are so narrow, I can't just go out and grab a few pairs for her, she actually has to be there with me. But, the girl LOVES shoes, so she's all kinds of excited to get some new ones. I think my sister is going to go with us and Evan's keeping Julia while we're gone, so it's a total big girl day out.

Well, Evan's on his way home for lunch. Have I told you how much we love living on base? Evan has an 8 minute walk to work, so he usually walks there every day and walks home to eat lunch with us. Julia loves it. She gets an entire hour with him in the middle of the day. And, we're so close to the commissary and the gas station, we are barely using any gas. It's awesome. Definitely worth the wait.

Well, thanks for stopping by. Please make sure and see the lovely Amy at Lucky Number 13 if you are in the mood for another cup of coffee and more chatting. I'll see you next week!

Oh, and happy birthday, Kyle!!!!!!!

Celebrating 30 at the zoo.

2011-09-26T06:36:00.000-07:00

This past Friday, I turned 30.

As is my birthday tradition, Evan made me a pumpkin pie instead of a birthday cake. I like pie.

I had lots of people ask me how I felt about turning 30. Exactly the same way I feel every birthday--excited it's the day of my birth!!!! Can you believe some people don't care when it's their birthday? I think that's insane. I love my birthday. And, I've never been all worked up about turning 30. Maybe I'll feel different about different birthday milestones, but the idea of turning 3o just didn't freak me out.

For this birthday, I couldn't think of anything I really needed or wanted. And, since last year at Christmas I told our friends and family that I'd rather have them gift the girls chances and opportunities to make memories and experience things, I decided to take my own advice and told Evan that all I wanted for my birthday was to go to the San Antonio Zoo. So, Saturday we went and Evan bought us a membership! Best birthday gift EVER!!!!!
The high on Saturday was 95 degrees (stupid Texas heat), so we got there in the morning when it was still nice and balmy. There are lots of flowers at the San Antonio zoo. I may have taken a ton of pictures of them. I'll just share a couple with you today.
We really enjoyed the zoo. It is HUGE and a small aquarium in it that Julia loved. She even wore her fish dress to show the fish at the zoo. There was this weird, ugly, tired turtle that I kind of couldn't stop staring at:
And there was this spotted sting ray that looked like a cow that I loved:

More flowers...
The girls liked it. There was so much to do that there was no way we could do it all in one day. I kept telling them we'd be back a million times and we'd totally do it all.
Have you ever seen an alligator like this before? Or is it a crocodile? Crap, I can't remember.

By 1:30, we were done. It's was creeping up into the 90s and Julia gets just as cranky as I do when she's hot and sweaty. We made one last trip to see the elephants and got to watch them being fed...and happened to stumble upon the hippos who were comically cuddling underwater.

I told the girls that this zoo will rock during cooler weather because we'll get to see the animals move around more. Plus, it never gets too cold, so it's a zoo we can visit all year long!!! It was a great birthday weekend.

Virtual Coffee

2011-09-20T09:57:00.000-07:00

Hello there! I know it's been forever, but would you like to have a Virtual Coffee with me today? Cause I could totally use a good friend chat this morning and we haven't caught up in forever.

If you were really here this morning...I'd probably show you around a little and remind you that the house is still a work in progress. I totally plan on giving a "virtual tour" of the house once we're done, but these last couple of days I haven't been in the mood to organize. I've been in the mood to veg.

Thankfully, the kitchen is fully done (except that one counter that is a catch-all because we're still trying to find homes for some things). It's always the first room in the house that I need to have completely organized when we move in. It's what makes me feel "at home" in a new house. Right now, I totally have everything where I want it and I'm ready to start cooking and baking to my hearts content again. Oh, and did I mention this place has a gas oven? Cause it does. It's fabulous.

If you were really here for coffee today...I'd tell you how the weather has been pleasant lately. Highs in the low 90s and cool enough in the morning to not feel stupid for drinking a hot cup of coffee. We even were able to go venture to the park after dinner the other night.

The park is just down the street and definitely geared more for big kids and not toddlers.
But, there are swings, so that makes my Juju happy.

If you were really here for coffee today...I'd tell you that, right now, I'm not feeling trapped and lonely. Yet. Part of it is that I'm still so busy getting the house together that I haven't really had a chance to think about my lack of friends here. However, unlike when I moved to Colorado and had a "I'm the loneliest person on the planet" meltdown, I am taking some preventative steps. I am starting a new book club in October, which I am kind of excited about. Well, I guess the part I'm most excited about is that the restaurant they hold the meetings looks delicious!!!! I have been really craving baked goods this pregnancy and the restaurant has a fabulous delicatessen selection. Mmm....

There is also a breastfeeding group at the hospital on base that meets weekly that Julia and I will be visiting soon. Nothing like a bunch of nursing moms to develop some friendships.

Well, I have laundry calling my name and, even though I don't feel like it, I have some rooms and some unpacked boxes that need my attention. It was so nice of you to stop by for coffee. I have missed our chats. No worries, I will be here next week with a nice hot cup waiting for you.

Our Illinois Trip

2011-09-19T06:53:00.000-07:00

I must warn you, this post is picture heavy. We spent 8 days roaming around Illinois, visiting friends and our favorite places, and I'm just sharing a smidge of the pictures that I actually took.

I heart taking pictures.

Thankfully, I have a digital camera, because could you imagine how much money I'd be spending on film and development?!?! It'd be billions, I tell you.

As you might remember, we started off our trip in Chicago to celebrate my dear friend Melissa's wedding. While we were there, we took advantage of exploring the city. Poor Julia hadn't been to Chicago since she was 6 months old, so it was all new for her.

The girls were most excited to have their Nina and Papa with us.
Melissa had booked an architectural boat tour of Chicago as part of her wedding weekend. It was so interesting and we got to see a part of Chicago we'd never seen before. They also served lemonade and cookies, so the girls were content.

After the boat tour, we walked over to Navy Pier for some lunch and rides. Julia saw the ferris wheel and fell in love instantly. She could not wait to ride it.

After the ferris wheel, Jana and Ebeth rode on the swings...
and Julia took a ride on the carousel.

The view from our hotel rooms was gorgeous. I just love Chicago. I need to make sure I don't go so long without visiting.

Why is she so big?
After Chicago, we headed to DeKalb to visit some of our favorite places and friends. Julia was so excited to get to play on a playground. The poor thing hasn't been able to play at a park because of the super hot Texas weather.

Elisabeth went to visit her dearest friend, Avery. It's so fun to see them reunite.
And then, we finally made it to Pekin where this little red head was waiting for us. (Look at those curls!!!!)
Owen is 15 months old now, and though he is protesting the walking (he is a night time walker only), he made sure to be involved in all the big kid playing.

And then there was my Ethan, who is sooooo tall and still moves too fast to get a ton of pictures (although, he does stop and smile for pictures now if you can catch him fast enough!).

Owen loved Evan. He would seek him out for nap time snuggles or reach for Evan if he saw him. It was super cute.
Julia got to take Ethan to preschool one day. Ethan showed her off to everyone. :)

We got to see my grandparents, which I always am excited about.

We went to the Marigold Festival for the first time in years and Julia got to watch her first parade.
We had a great trip. It's hard to only see family once a year (as Elisabeth declared on the car ride back to Texas), but it does make the time you do see them more special.

The Best Wedding in Chicago.

2011-09-16T06:18:00.001-07:00

Dude, you guys, yesterday it was only 87 degrees around 7:00PM! We totally went down the street to the park and played for a while. I told Evan that if the weather was more like that, I would complain about Texas less.

So, Evan and I were talking about how this is our first weekend in our house. Well, there was that weekend that was spent unpacking boxes and eating off the coffee table because there was nowhere else to eat, but that wasn't much of a "weekend". You see, one week exactly after we moved into our house, we packed up and headed to Illinois.

In case you were wondering, driving from San Antonio to Chicago takes 20 hours. Yeah...it was a long drive.

But, it was all worth it because A) we hadn't been to Chicago in almost 3 years and I have missed that city like you would not believe and B) we were headed to help my best friend celebrate her wedding weekend. This is my sunshine, Melissa:

She married her fabulous fiance Scott and I was the matron of honor. I'd been impatiently waiting for this wedding for months because I knew it would be such an awesome, happy occasion.
They got married in the heart of Chicago (where they both live and work) in a gorgeous hotel that overlooked the river. The views were amazing!!!

Elisabeth was the Official Greeter and got to get her hair done with the rest of the bridesmaids. That girl loves having her hair done.
She looked so grown up.
The wedding was gorgeous and we all had so much fun. It's so nice to watch an amazing couple get married. Especially when you know just how happy they are to be around each other.
I got to give the toast. Thankfully, my pregnancy brain did not interfere and I remembered everything I'd planned on saying.
Instead of wedding cake, they had an ice cream sundae bar. It was a fabulous choice on the bride and groom's part.

Jana and Keith came up for the weekend to help us out with the girls during the wedding and to explore Chicago with us. They also got to watch my children dance during the reception.
I don't know about anyone else's kids, but my girls LOVE to dance. It's like they have to dance or their bodies will self-combust. It's super fun to watch.

We have had a hard time getting our girls to take respectable pictures with us, so we've settled on a compromise. First we take a nice picture:
Then silly faces:
A nice picture:
Silly faces:
Look! It's like high school all over again...except Nena and I are married and have kids and Mel's in a wedding dress.
Why is Ebeth laughing so hard? Because Evan is singing "It's a Wonderful World" in his Louie Armstrong voice. She was belly laughing at him.
At around 9:45, while dancing to a slow song with her Papa, Julia crashed and called it a night. She'd been dancing for a good 1.5 hours.
Congrats to you both Mel and Scott! We had a fabulous weekend and you two throw an awesome party!!!!!

Back on the Wagon

2011-09-15T14:17:00.001-07:00

Hi. It's me and I am back.

Miss me? :)

Dude, I haven't blogged in so long that I don't know where to begin. I guess I could tell you how the move to Texas has been.

It's been hot. Super hot. Break records as the second hottest summer in San Antonio on record hot.

We left in July for Texas and it was the LONGEST TWO DAYS OF DRIVING EVER.

I rode in the car with our two drugged up cats while Evan drove with the girls. The first night we planned on staying in Amarillo, TX and got in around 9:30 only to find out that Amarillo is the only city that has hotels in a good 200 mile radius. Everything that would except cats was booked. We were ready to have to sleep in our cars for the night (I am not kidding) when a very nice man at a Holiday Inn that had rooms but would not let us bring our cats into the air conditioned hotel (it was in the 90s even at 10:00 at night) said he found one "inn" that had a room for us. You know how in the vacation comedy movies (like all the National Lampoon vacation movies) the characters end up in some backwards hotel that there is no way anyone in their right mind would actually stay in? Yeah, we totally stayed in one. The room smelled like an old Moose Lodge, the air conditioning didn't work, the other guests were all pretty sketchy, etc., etc. We made it through that horrific night and made it to my sister's house the next day around 7:00PM and thanked her endlessly for her clean house and her air conditioning that worked properly.

We stayed with my sister and her husband for almost exactly one month. And while we were so appreciative of their hospitality, I am a pregnant mom and needed a place of my own. I won't get into the details of how every time I called the housing office on base they would tell me I was a different number on the wait list (sometimes 9th, sometimes 14th or 15th) and it got to the point where i would cry whenever I had to talk to them. I will tell you that, after almost exactly a month, we got the call that a house on base was available. Oh, and they wanted to know if it was ok that it was a 4 bedroom instead of a 3 bedroom. We said we could live with that.

So, we moved in to our new house exactly a week before we were to leave for a 12 day trip to Illinois.

I won't lie, I am not a Texas fan yet. It is too hot to outside and there are no mountains. I could forgive them the mountains if the weather would stay out of the 100s for longer than a day. Unfortunately, the girls feel the same way. When Julia gets overly tired or is upset, one of the first things she says is she wants to go back home to Colorado. Her "real" home. It makes me cry every time she asks.

But, now that we're back from our Illinois vacation, I am determined to make this place "home". Our house is beautiful inside. All wood floors and lots of rooms for everyone. I am almost done with the downstairs living area (with the exception of the office/guest room, which is now a dumping spot for things we don't know where to put yet) and the girls rooms are set up with the exception of pictures on their walls. We're back to setting up a routine similar to what we had going on in Colorado and I am hoping we'll get to where this place is where we most want to be.
We've done a tiny bit of exploring (when the weather was under 100 degrees) and we definitely plan on doing more as we watch the temperature drop for "autumn".
My parents are coming in early November and our lovely friends Kim and Chris are coming for Thanksgiving with their lovely daughter Kayleigh. We have school and work and dance classes and a baby growing in my belly who will be born in the Army hospital 10 minutes from our house.

So, that's kind of where we are right now. Trying to get ourselves rooted here in this oh-so large state. Thankfully, we now have internet, so I will be blogging more again.

Denver Aquarium

2011-08-09T10:43:00.000-07:00

One of the other things we did while Jana and Keith were visiting us in June, was go to the Denver Aquarium. My lovely friend Rachel and I had planned on taking a trip to the aquarium as one of our summer field trips and it turned out the best day to go was on Julia's birthday.

I must warn you that we are kind of spoiled by Chicago's Shedd Aquarium. It is enormous and you could easily spend an entire day there and not see everything. It is one of my favorite places in Chicago. Not that the Denver aquarium wasn't nice, but it was kind of pricey for not being near as large as I'd expected it to be for a big city. (So definitely try to find coupons and deals before going.) Rachel had one of her kids, the little girl she babysits and 3 of her siblings with her. We had Jana and Keith with us, so we were able to all get in at a group rate (10+ people), which helped out the price.

The aquarium starts off with local fresh fish that live in the Colorado river. Then you "follow" the river to the ocean.

I've never seen a starfish hug something before. Well, except in Finding Nemo.

Um, there were tigers at the aquarium...yeah, it was odd...
Unfortunately, my camera died in the middle of this field trip. I was very irritated with myself about that. Overall, it was the perfect amount of time for a short field trip. We ate lunch at the restaurant they have in the basement of the aquarium and the food was pretty good, but the fish exhibit in the middle of the restaurant was gorgeous. Julia had a lot of fun, and since it was her birthday, I am thankful. If we were still living in Colorado, I wouldn't be making a second trip to this aquarium, but am glad that we did check it out.

A little bit of catch up.

2011-08-08T06:30:00.000-07:00

I realized that, due to my all day being pregnant sickness throughout June, I neglected to tell you about some of the things we did before we moved to Texas. So, since my camera cord is packed in some warehouse and I can't download my pictures until I unpack it (dude, I am so mad that I forgot that thing!!), you will just have to enjoy some Colorado pictures until I can share Texas with you.

Evan's parents came to visit us in June. They surprised the girls by showing up to see Elisabeth's dance recital and stayed through Julia's birthday. While they were here, Jana found this place to visit:

Rock Ledge Ranch is located in The Garden of the Gods and I hadn't even heard of it before!!!

As they explain so nicely on their website:

The Rock Ledge Ranch Historic Site is an educational, non-profit living history farm and museum that depicts life in the Pikes Peak region in four time periods: American Indian area in 1775; 1860’s Galloway Homestead; 1880’s Chambers Home and Ranch; 1907 Edwardian Country Estate.

The girls loved it. Elisabeth was most interested in the volunteers dressed up in the time period of the house they were representing. She asked lots of questions and watched the demonstrations in awe.

Julia liked being able to touch and explore. She was in love with this "house".

In fact, she didn't want to leave and was most upset when we had to move on, which you can see in the picture below.

Elisabeth wanted to be one of the children who got to dress in the time period and give tours of the houses. I could totally picture her playing that role.

This is definitely a place I'd recommend taking your kids. Both my girls loved it, despite their age differences. There were lots of trails and open spaces to run around, a little grocery that sold nickel candy and sodas, and very interesting demonstrations. I really wish we'd have discovered it sooner because they offer tons of events throughout the year.

Texas

2011-08-02T06:02:00.000-07:00

So...I now live in San Antonio.

Well, I now live in my sister's house in San Antonio. We are on the wait list for on base housing, so we have a 1-3 month wait for our own house to live in. I have lots of things in storage that I kind of wish I had access to. Like the cord to load pictures to the computer. So, for now, you will have to just look at my lovely phone pictures.

I could sit here and tell you how much Texas is different from Colorado. I could talk about how freaking hot it is (highs in the triple digits daily and lows in the 80s-90s at night) or how it's kind of like winter here because you can't really go outside during the day, so you're kind of all cooped up in the house. I could lament that there are no beautiful mountains and that I have sweated more in the past 12 days than I have in the past 2 years living in Colorado. But, I'm sure you can imagine that I find Texas doesn't measure up to Colorado without hearing me complain.

Evan has started his first full week at his new job. While he is adjusting to his new job and his new co-workers, the girls and I have been slowly getting to know this HUGE city. To travel around San Antonio, there are only interstates. It's pretty big and running errands is not just a quick jaunt down the road. I've gotten to know a new grocery store (H.E.B.) and registered Ebeth for school and the girls for dance classes. We're getting our library cards today, which we're excited about.

The nice thing about being forced to move to new cities and states is that you can act like a tourist while you're living there. We have visited The Alamo and walked around downtown San Antonio for a bit. There is a Riverwalk that everyone is always talking about, but being pregnant and sweating makes me kind of grumpy, so we're going to explore that more when it decides not to be over 100 degrees everyday. We've heard we need to check out Sea World's water park and go to Six Flags Fiesta. I've already decided we need a membership to the zoo. I don't think we'll be bored often.

Living with my sister was a super easy transition. She has plenty of room for us and since she and her husband both work full time, the girls and I are able to just hang out and do our own thing without feeling like we're imposing. My sister has 2 cats and 2 dogs, so our cats have had to learn to adjust. I've been taking over the cooking of the meals (for those of you who know Terra, you are well aware that the kitchen is not her favorite place to be) and we've been splitting groceries and cleaning. The girls LOVE being with Terra because she likes to do their hair and paint their nails (things that I never think about).

So, even though we all miss being home in Colorado (Julia calls it our "real" house, which is heartbreaking), we're doing ok being in Texas.

Plus,I super want to buy cowboy boots and they sell them everywhere here, even at WalMart!

Virtual Coffee

2011-07-12T12:00:00.000-07:00

Hi. I know, it's been ages since we've had our virtual coffee chats. But, I'm feeling up to having a sip today with you...if you can forgive me my absence.

You see, a lot has been going on around these parts and I haven't been able to focus at all.

We move to Texas in 9 days. We're packing up what we need for the car and to stay at my sister's house until we have a house of our own. I've been trying to tie up loose ends and spending time with those we love very much here, but it's been hard because most days I'm lounging on the couch trying to focus on not vomiting because...

I am pregnant. Yep! We found out early in June. So, I am exhausted and feel bleh most days all day long. I haven't been able to enjoy cooking because smells are really bothering me, so Virginia Cooks has been sorely neglected as well as this blog. We're expecting this new addition around the middle of February, which is awesome since it means I won't be super pregnant in the terrible heat of Texas.

But, today hasn't been too bad. I felt well enough to walk at the Y for 30 minutes and was able to eat lunch. I'm starting to feel kind of queasy now, so I'd better go and find a spot on the couch to concentrate on not being sick.

I have missed you though. I promise to try to get around to these here parts more soon. Thanks for stopping by for some coffee...even though I only drank iced water because coffee is not appetizing to me AT ALL right now.

My Julia is 3.

2011-06-26T18:14:00.000-07:00

This past Thursday, my Julia turned 3 years old.

She's still my Julia, but she's just a little bit older.
It's kind of hard to think about how fast time goes. Remember when she used to have this little haircut?:

Evan's parents came to visit us for a week and were able to celebrate Julia's birthday with us. Jana made an Edible Pink Baby out of marshmallow fondant for the top of Julia's birthday cake.

We had some friends over to celebrate the day before her birthday. There was out door playing and lots of bubbles.
We grilled out hamburgers and hotdogs.

And played a lovely game of pin the tail on the donkey. One of the kids informed me they hadn't played that game in YEARS!!
When it was time to open gifts, Julia was shy but polite. She played with her hair in between presents.
One of her favorite gifts was a new pet. A fish she promptly named Fink. She is most proud to have her own pet.
We sang Happy Birthday to her and she shyly enjoyed the song.
But, she needed my help when it came time to blow out the candles.
On the her actual birthday, Julia opened up presents from us and her Nina and Papa. We got her a t-ball set.

And a very big present that Elisabeth helped me pick out and bring home...
A pirate ship playhouse. She LOVED it!!! I found it at a garage sale in perfect condition.

We then spent the day in Denver at the Aquarium which was loads of fun for the girls. It was a lovely birthday and Julia was so happy to turn 3...because now she can finally chew gum just like Elisabeth. :)

Driving up Pikes Peak

2011-06-20T14:46:00.000-07:00

First off, I need to apologize about the lack of blogging. But, alas, it is summer and I am not home near as much as I am in the school year. Plus, we move in a little over a month, so we're trying to do as much as we can before we head to Texas. So, I will try to at least post our weekly field trips and more if I can.

Last week we decided to make the drive up to Pikes Peak as our weekly field trip. Evan, the girls and I had taken the Cog Railway up to the top 2 years ago in July, but we'd never driven. Evan took the day off and we went with Rachel and her kiddos and Kim, Chris and their Kayleigh. We met at Kim's house around 10:00AM and headed off.

It was one of the best days I've ever had.

The lovely thing about driving to the top was there were lots of stops along the way. One of them was the Crystal Reservoir.
We stopped halfway up to have a picnic lunch.
And to climb some trees.

As we climbed higher up, the road became more steep (as did the drop offs to the side).
We were quite excited to get to the summit. And, because we didn't take the train, we had lots of time to explore.

Of course, we had to eat some of the world famous donuts from the restaurant at the summit.

Julia checking the map while standing on the train tracks.

On the way down, we stopped at the Bottomless Pit. I won't lie, I did not leave the car for this stop. I had no interest in looking down a bottomless pit due to my immense fear of heights.
I did venture out to climb around Devil's Playground. There was a lot of snow to play in.

I am so glad we were able to have this experience. The entire day was fabulous.

A beach in Colorado?!

2011-06-10T19:30:00.000-07:00

Yep. It's a man made one, but still! We went to the beach!!!

For our field trip last week, we ventured out to the Aurora Reservoir.

It was lovely. So lovely.

The water was cold, but the kids didn't seem to mind too much.

Julia kept telling me how much fun she was having. I really hope she remember bits and pieces of the things we do in Colorado.

The kids begged to go back and we promised we would before the summer ends.

Virtual Coffee

2011-06-07T07:18:00.000-07:00

Good morning!!! Holy cow it is gorgeous outside here today!!! No humidity and the high today is 83 and it's already 70. Perfect.

Of course, I still need my coffee to get me going this morning, so I'm glad you stopped by for some Virtual Coffee.

If you were really coming to my house for coffee this morning...you'd notice that I have two dogs at my house. No, they aren't new to our family, we're just watching them for some friends of ours. They'll be with us till Friday--a full week. Now, if you know me, you know I am by no means a dog person. These two little guys (a daschund and a yorkie) are so sweet and well behaved that I have done nothing but enjoy having them in our house.

Well, except that these two guys:
have been hiding out because they are pretty furious that we dared to bring in dogs to the house. Roosevelt has bitten the bullet and ventured upstairs to still go frolic outside and try to get attention while the dogs are sleeping, but Figaro is in full-on protest. And I miss seeing our cats lying around the house and demanding to be petted. I guess this also means they're not going to be thrilled to meet my sister's pets when we live with her while we wait for our house to be available in Texas. Sigh.

Have you heard about the wild fires in Arizona and New Mexico? Yeah, they're pretty terrible. We've seen a lot of their smoke and some days it's so thick in the air that the mountain's completely covered by smoke. But, all the haze has made interesting sunsets.

So, what have you been doing lately? Do you have kids home for summer break? Are you melting in a puddle of sweat wherever you are? We've been doing a lot of outside things--swimming in our new blow up pool, going to parks and playing at friends' houses. I do enjoy the schedule of summer.
Well, it has been lovely having you over for coffee, but I must go and begin my day. I will see you next week, though!

Summer days...

2011-06-03T07:35:00.000-07:00

spent putting on sun block and trying not to lose sunglasses.

Taking trips to parks to play for hours while mom reads on the park bench.

Riding bikes and eating popsicles. Begging to buy ice-cream from the ice-cream truck who makes nightly trips down our street.

Going on field trips with our friends to hike trails and swim, to have sleepovers and build forts.
No tv after 10:00AM. No coats. No schedules.
Just fun and friends and lazy days.
Definitely enjoying our summer. How about you?

Bear Creek Nature Center

2011-06-01T20:41:00.000-07:00

I know that I have talked about this place before. But we just love going here.

It's summer time again, so it's time for weekly field trips with our lovely friends. This week we chose the Bear Creek Nature Center and Rachel, her kids, the little girl she babysits and one of her nephews joined us.

We started off on the trails.

Julia realized she was way ahead of me and came back to make sure I hadn't left her. (Not that I EVER have mind you.)

(Omg, I love this kid. He is my favorite.)

Julia would declare quite often that she did not need me to hold her hand....until she did need me to hold her hand and then she'd panic if I didn't do it fast enough.

Henry found a skull. I'm thinking it's a deer, because, as Evan pointed out looking at the picture, it only has molars and no carnivore-type teeth.

Elisabeth found part of a lower jaw of the same kind of animal as the one Henry found. (Our kids were SUPER excited to have found such great treasures. And, yes, they totally kept them and they are drying them out.)

We had so much fun. The kids hiked for about 3 hours and most of it was in the creek. They were muddy and wet and so, so happy. It was a fantastic day.

6 years ago today...

2011-05-28T07:35:00.001-07:00

Six years ago today...

The church was decorated with doily cones full of tulips.

Small cousins played together in fancy clothes waiting for a ceremony.

A certain 2.5 year old was her usually bubbly self.
Evan found the exact chalice he wanted to use during communion.
My best friends were lined up looking beautiful in periwinkle blue.
My dad walked me down the aisle and he didn't do one ornery thing along the way.
The flower girls tried their very best to entertain themselves.
Our friends and family watched as Evan and I said vows that couples before us had been saying for centuries.
I danced with my husband to Frank Sinatra's "Easy to Love".
Matt danced with his soon-to-be wife Kyle.
Evan's best friends stopped talking and laughing long enough for a great picture of the 4 of them.
Elisabeth looked beautiful in her dress.
I married Evan, who I'd been dating for over 6 years.
It was a beautiful day.

Virtual Coffee

2011-05-24T07:58:00.000-07:00

Good morning. I've got a full pot of coffee for us today. Today I think we should probably sit on my couch to chat since it's a stormy day here in Colorado. If you're chilly, I'll try to pry the red, warm blanket from Julia (who claims it every day as her own and uses it to snuggle or make a tent or try to wrap the cat up in).

I miss thunderstorms. They are more frequent in Illinois and so rare here. So, you won't hear me complaining about the weather today. Rain and storms with spots of sunshine. It kind of matches my mood today, too.
What are your plans today? I'm planning a trip to the Y and the grocery store, but otherwise, I'm hanging out at home today doing some cleaning and organizing and whatnot.What are you reading? I'm in the middle of reading World War Z by Max Brooks. It's a post zombie war book. I won't lie, it totally has captivated my imagination. I'm not a zombie "fan" (although, I do enjoy watching The Walking Dead on AMC...have you seen it?!) but the idea of this book sounded super interesting. But, as you can see from looking to your right at my list of recent books I've read, I'm not one to read only one genre of books. If you recommend it, I'll read it. Recommendations from all different genres is how I've ended up read some amazing books and authors.
So, tell me what's new with you. Any plans for this weekend? Summer outings that you're excited about? It's almost here, you know.
As you leave today, I'd ask you please keep my cousin's daughter in your thoughts. She's only 10 and is in the intensive care unit. She's been sick for a month now and they in need of a miracle. If you are the praying kind, your prayers would be much appreciated. If you're the positive thoughts kind, those are just as needed. As a parent, I can't imagine what my cousin and his wife are going through. It breaks my heart. She's been on my mind constantly.

Palmer Park

2011-05-23T08:42:00.000-07:00

In the middle of Colorado Springs is a huge park called Palmer Park. I had heard of its loveliness from friends who have hiked the trails, but we had just never made it there yet. Yesterday, since the weather was perfectly lovely, we decided to go explore.

Julia did an awesome job; better than she did even in the fall. She wanted to climb all the big rocks like Elisabeth and was determined not to be left behind.

When did Elisabeth get so big?

She refused to smile for pictures...
so I had to be sneaky about capturing just how much fun she was really having.

One of my favorite pictures ever:

We'll be going back to explore the other half of the park. It was beautiful and so much bigger than we'd thought!

Scavenger Hunt Sunday

2011-05-22T08:51:00.001-07:00

For this week's Scavenger Hunt Sunday, I learned what the word ethereal meant. Not what I originally thought, which was "earthy". Ah, the power of the internets. :)

1. MY PASSION

2. SOUND OF MUSIC

3. INNER BEAUTY

4. ETHEREAL 1. Characterized by lightness and insubstantiality; intangible.

2. Highly refined; delicate. See Synonyms at airy.

a. Of the celestial spheres; heavenly.

b. Not of this world; spiritual.

4. Chemistry Of or relating to ether.

5. SHARP

Chicago

2011-05-19T08:35:00.000-07:00

I enjoy a good rummage sale. I'm always on the look out for antiques or unique things that I can use in my house that have special meaning to me, Evan and the girls. And, since becoming part of this blogging world, I am always inspired by what the lovely Amy at Lucky Number 13 and the dear Melissa at Miss Sew & So are finding when they go out rummaging.

A couple of months ago, Evan, Julia and I browsed around a little antique and craft store that I'd found to kill a couple hours while we waited for Elisabeth to finish a girl scout tea party.

As Evan tried to entertain Julia, I found some fantastic old postcards. I love old postcards, especially when they are written on by the people who visited the places on the front of the cards. It's a nice little piece of history.

I ended up finding some postcards that were postmarked from the 1920s of Chicago. I've really been homesick for Chicago lately. I never went there a lot as a kid, but when Evan and I started dating (12 years ago!!), we made trips to Chicago 3 or 4 times a year. And, when we moved to DeKalb, which is only about 1.5 hours away (on a good traffic day) we went there even more. We haven't been to Chicago in 2.5 years now and I miss it. Thankfully, we'll be going there in September. I have lots of things I want to see in the 2 short days we'll be in the city.

So, when I found all those old postcards, I had a great idea of what I wanted to do with them. There were about a dozen of them, but I chose ones that were places Evan, the girls and I had frequented.

A view of the skyline...

The Science and Industry Museum...
Marshall Field's...
and Lake Shore Drive...

Then I framed them and put them on our wall.
A nice reminder of one of our favorite cities and home.

Curls

2011-05-18T07:17:00.000-07:00

Evan and I are both avid foodies. We love trying new foods, restaurants, recipes. When we visit places on vacations or move to new cities, trying out fabulous local restaurants (aka: not chains) is top on our list of things to do. So, when we moved to DeKalb in 2005, we started asking around for great places to eat.

We found a great Thai restaurant within walking distance to our apartment that we decided to make a top eating priority. The inside was super nice and the smells? Oh...the smells were heavenly.

So, one day we walked with our then 2.5 year old Elisabeth to said Thai restaurant.

We ordered our food from a college girl who was not thrilled to see we had a child with us. Here's the thing: If you are a childless person in your early 20s, please don't be rude to the people in their mid-20s with their small kids. Just because we have kids does not mean our taste buds have all turned on the bland switch. It does not mean we don't like frequenting nice restaurants. It also doesn't mean we're going to let our young child run amok in your restaurant. Be kind. Don't look at our kid like she's a parasite. And pray that your birth control is 100% effective because apparently you are not quite ready to be birthing a child yet.

As we waited for our food, the restaurant's owner came out to see us and introduce herself. She was a very small, middle aged Thai woman and she bee-lined it to Elisabeth. She told us how beautiful our daughter was and how much she loved Elisabeth's hair. She then said, "Can I take her in the back? Yes? Good."

And that's when she took Elisabeth's hand and walked her back to the kitchen (which shows you how much Ebeth has always loved people, because Julia would NEVER go anywhere or even talk to a brand new person like that). Evan and I smiled at each other and kind of chuckled at how much the owner liked Elisabeth. After about 5 minutes, we realized that maybe one of us should have, you know, supervised our child while she explored a kitchen in a restaurant we'd never frequented in a town we'd just moved to a few weeks earlier.

After 10 minutes we wondered if they planned on keeping her.
After maybe 15 minutes or so, the owner came back with Elisabeth. The owner told us how much the kitchen staff loved her and then she wandered off. We looked at Elisabeth and noticed that her hair was much frizzier than when she'd left us. "Did you get to see the kitchen where they make our food?"

"Yeah."

"What'd you do back there?"

"Nothing. But, they kept petting me."

After a bit more prying, turns out that the kitchen staff super liked her curls and were petting her much like you would a golden retriever. When we came back to the restaurant a few months later, Elisabeth asked if we thought they'd pet her again and if she'd get to see the kitchen. She told us that she liked seeing where the food was made.

Definitely a first time trip to that restaurant that made an impression.

Virtual Coffee

2011-05-17T07:59:00.001-07:00

Good morning!!! I've made a lovely pot of coffee for us, so come on over. And, no worries if you're still in your pajamas cause I am too!

I have to run to Walmart today. I hate going to Walmart. It's too big, too crowded (no matter what time I go!) and I always end up buying more than what's on my list. But, I need things that the regular grocery store doesn't sell (like hangers and rubbermaid containers for endless amounts of girls' clothes my daughters are growing out of), so I need to go.

Yes, I could run to Super Target, which is nicer but is also more expensive and I still end up leaving with more than I intended. Sigh.

I love these pictures of the girls walking their babies up and down our sidewalk. It was super cute to watch.

Elisabeth's last day of school is the 27th. The next day is Evan and I's wedding anniversary. I know this because I double checked the calendar. I don't know what it is about our anniversary that I can not remember the date to save my soul. I always want to say it's the 25th and not the 28th. Anyway, we're thinking of going to the top of Pikes Peak to celebrate. We haven't been to the top since we moved here in 2009 and it's something I want to do before we move in July. Plus, Julia keeps talking about how she's going to go to the top of the BIIIIIIIG mountain and I will take her picture. She might even remember going since she's almost to the age of remembering things.
It has been 2 weeks since I've been to the Y to exercise. I am a slacker. Granted, one entire week I was too sick to go, but I've been better for almost a week now. It is most discouraging when you are the one to blame for your own exercising demise. But, I am trying not to guilt myself because it just doesn't work with me. Instead of motivating me, it does the opposite. I'm one of those people--negative/criticism comments do not make me want to prove you wrong, they just discourage me more.

I am so fun. I don't understand why there weren't more suitors trying to win my hand in marriage!!
So, today's a new day and I'm going to log in more miles on the treadmill and possibly start trying to conquer that stupid stairmaster again. (grumblegrumble stupid stairmaster grumble)

Thank you for stopping by today! Maybe next week we'll spice it up and have coffee at your place!!!! :)

A Zoo Overnight

2011-05-16T07:58:00.000-07:00

This past Friday night, Elisabeth and I went to an overnight at Cheyenne Mtn Zoo with her Girl Scout troop. Now, you all know how much I love zoos, so when they said that parents were welcome to attend if they paid for themselves, I immediately said YES!

We arrived at the zoo at 5:45. The gates closed at 6:00PM and would not be re-opening until the next morning. We stayed at this cabin:

I didn't even realize the zoo had cabins! This cabin is hidden behind the sky line entrance, so I've walked by it a dozen times and never really seen it. The zoo has overnights for anyone who is willing to pay. You could have a family reunion there and rent out the cabins if you so wished. They provide dinner and breakfast the next day!
I brought sleeping bags, but the other moms were all way smarter and brought blow up beds. I was pretty irritated that I hadn't thought of that myself (a mistake I shan't make again!). I'm too spoiled to sleep on the floor, I tells you.

After a dinner of pizza, the girls were ready for their night time tour.
We started with the hippos. We got to watch the hippo keeper feed the hippos their last meal of the day--about 20lbs of grass/hay.
I've never seen a hippo move so fast. As soon as they saw their keeper, those two giantesses booked it out of the water and straight to the grub! Watching them eat was both mesmerizing and kind of icky. Ever played Hungry, Hungry Hippos? Yeah, that's exactly how they eat! Just with grass drool. We hung out there for a while, asking questions, visiting the other animals also in that building and watching the hippos play with a giant green ball in the water after they had eaten every last piece of grass/hay.

The evening views from the zoo were breathtaking. Look, it's downtown Colorado Springs:
Here's the view from the Primate House:
We kind of hurried through the Primate House because the orangutans and the gorillas are used to having their lights out at 7:30 and most of them were all snuggled down for the night when we showed up. Here's an interesting tidbit--babies and mommy primates cuddle together at night until the babies are about 4 or 5 years old. We watched the mommy gorilla cuddle her 2 year old baby; lovingly petting his head and kissing his ears. It was sweet and the girls made lots of comments about how their mommies used to cuddle them like that.

We also went to the Giraffe House to say goodnight to them. This giraffe was so excited to have Ebeth feed him crackers, that after I took this picture, he promptly sneezed on her. She was completely grossed out.

The giraffes are one of the best things about this zoo. They love to be fed their crackers and are very gentle.

Our last stop of the night tour was to The Loft. The Loft hold things like snakes, spiders, mice, parrots, turtles, bats and this de-scented skunk. (Turns out some college kids thought having a skunk as a pet would be a great idea. They had the stink glands taken out, but quickly learned that wild animals do not care about carpet or furniture. They donated Lily the Skunk to the zoo where she happily lives in a blanketed hollow log in The Loft and is sweet and friendly even at 9:30PM on a Friday night.)
We headed back to our cabin around 10:00PM. The girls had a snack, got in their jammers and played card games till 11. Our tour guide was going to be back at 6:00AM for a very early morning tour before our time at the zoo was done.
After drinking about 4 cups of coffee and eating a bagel, I was human enough to start the morning tour with everyone else.

We visited all the big cats, but made a stop at one of my favorite animals at the zoo--the Pallas Cats. These guys are the oldest type of cats (pre-tigers, lions and leopards) and originate in Asia. These guys are NEVER out when we visit the zoo, but because there were no crowds and it was super early in the morning, they made an appearance. I was quite excited.
Elisabeth was thrilled when the bears woke up and came by to start fishing for their breakfast.
The whole thing was an amazing experience. I know I'm a bit biased with my extreme love of zoos and all, but getting a private tour was so interesting. After our tour guide said good-bye, we were free to roam the zoo for the rest of the day if we liked. We stuck around for a little bit, but by 9:30, both Elisabeth and I were starving and I was going to need another round of caffeine if I was expected to drive home.

When I asked Elisabeth what her favorite part of the overnight had been, she said eating lunch with her friends and playing on a giant rock by our cabin.

Scavenger Hunt Sunday

2011-05-16T07:27:00.001-07:00

I completely forgot to post this yesterday, but here's my finds for Scavenger Hunt Sunday!

1. GIVE ME FLOWERS

2. VISUAL CONTRAST

3. FRIENDSHIP

4. BEFORE AND AFTER

5. DARK

Virtual Coffee

2011-05-10T12:02:00.000-07:00

Hello! It's our Virtual Coffee date day!

So, how have you been lately? We've been sick. Stupid spring colds. It just seems cruel that once the weather warms up and you actually want to go out and frolic in it, that a virus should enter your home and knock you out for a week. It's just mother nature's weird sense of humor.

If you were really here having coffee with me today...I'd show you the new blender Evan and the girls bought me for Mother's Day! I super love it. We've only ever had hand-me-down blenders and the last one's motor burned out months ago. This one is super powerful and I have lots of recipes I'm itching to try with it.

I also received yarn! And this yarn is just for me to make whatever I want. Can you believe that my yarn supply had dwindled down to nothing?! I guess if you didn't see the 2 large canvas bags I used to have full of yarn, you wouldn't know how shocking that statement actually is.

Sitting in my house at my kitchen table...I'd offer you some cookies I baked last night. They are a soft chocolate chip cookie; a recipe I'd never used before. They actually turned out soft! I am so excited. I'll have to make them again and share them on Virginia Cooks later this month. I love soft cookies and have never found a recipe where they actually stay soft a day after baking them. Elisabeth has only 13 days of school left. I'm kind of excited about summer. Julia's bigger now and since she doesn't nap, we'll be able to do more this summer where we can be gone all day without a major melt down from missing nap time. Plus, we'll be spending over half the summer trying to squeeze in everything we love here in Colorado before we move to Texas. There, we'll be spending the rest of the summer exploring our new city. It's hard to believe we'll be moving in a little over 2 months. It just hasn't really sunk in yet.
As we finished off our coffee...I'd send you with some cookies so they aren't around the house tempting me. It's one of the tiny negatives to my love of cooking and baking--I always have food around. I try to share as much of it as possible so I'm not tempted to nosh on it all day long.
Thanks for stopping by! I'll see you next week!

Butter

2011-05-09T11:47:00.000-07:00

Some days it's like butter. Smooth, easy, sweet. I'm the mom I want to be--I'm patient, involved, present. I'm the wife I want to be--supportive, loving, fully doing my half in this marriage. Sometimes I'm even the person I want to be--responsible, caring, making a difference in my little corner of life.

Most days, I struggle. I snap. I'm impatient. I'm lazy. I find myself reverting to old habits and characteristics that I'm trying to either rid myself of or at least stifle. And I'm frustrated. Frustrated that I can't just find the "will power" to kick all those bad qualities I have that I struggle with daily.
Lately, I have had a lot of butter days. The house has been cleaner, the tv's been on less, the girls aren't arguing as much. I've been feeling very blessed!
Then, one day, despite my oncoming illness I can feel building up in sinuses, we need a couple things for dinner, so I throw the girls in the car to go to the store. As I'm backing out, I forget that Evan was the last one to drive the car and he'd pulled my car closer to the left of the garage than normal because I'd complained that he'd parked too close to his own car for me to open my door and carry the stuff in my lap out of the car. So, I back the car out like I normally do, looking for children on bikes and pedestrians with dogs that might be walking across out driveway. That's when I hear the crunch and see my driver side mirror shattered and hanging from the car. I hadn't checked to see if the side mirror would clear the garage wall...

I would like you all to know that I did not say one swear word in front of my two small children. Nor did I cry when Elisabeth gasped and said, "Oh no! Daddy's going to be sooooo mad." Nope, I just calmly got out of my car and retrieved the duct tape from the house and taped it as best I could to my car. I then proceeded to try, again, to leave for the store just as Evan pulled up all smiling and happy to see us--his loving family. To say that Evan wasn't happy about the car is a very honest statement. To say I was even more unhappy is also a very honest statement.

The mirror was fixed today and my idiotic mistake was a tad expensive to say the least.

Not such a smooth as butter moment...sigh...

Scavenger Hunt Sunday

2011-05-08T10:42:00.001-07:00

Scavenger Hunt Sunday--one of my favorite link ups!!

Here's what I found this week!

1. STRAIGHT OUT OF THE CAMERA

2. SPROUTING

3. ISN'T IT IRONIC? (I found this picture (via 1988) of me and my sister (the little brown haired swimmer) swimming at my great-aunt's house in Florida. I wanted to swim in the deep end. This is how my dad allowed me to "swim" in the deep end. Ironic, yes?)

4. LAZY

5. SMELLS LIKE SPRING

My mom and my mom's mom and my mom's mom's mom...

2011-05-07T19:02:00.000-07:00

For most of my childhood, my Grandma (my mom's mom) lived in Iowa. She married Grandpa Bud when I was about 6 years old and moved to Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I remember the day it finally clicked with my little sister that Grandma lived in Cedar Rapids...not See the Rabbits.

Grandma is the one who taught me to crochet. I was seven. Every visit I would dutifully make sure I brought my crocheting hooks and some yarn so I could sit next to Grandma on the couch and watch her hands fly making stitches while I patiently waited for my hands to learn to move just as fast.

Grandma always made our favorite foods when we visited--homemade ice-cream, chicken salad, cookies, cucumber salad, roasted mushrooms. She also had itty-bitty cans of soda, which I was so excited about.

Grandma remembered the names of my friends, what I did as extra-curricular at school, and what books I'd been reading. She brought little gifts when she visited--yarn, newspaper clippings she thought we should read, books, pictures, treats--things that she saw and thought of us.

My Mama (Grandma's mom) lived in Florida my entire growing up. We didn't get to see her very often, but my parents made sure we made trips every 3 years or so to see her.
Mama and I were pen pals as soon as I could write sentences. Every other week I'd either be mailing or receiving a letter. When we visited, Mama made root beer floats. She'd show us quilts she was making or afghans she was crocheting. She'd bring out old pictures and tell us stories about when my mom was a baby (which was so hard to visualize!) and stories of the Papa (her husband) that we never got to meet because he died before I was born. When Mama moved to Illinois in 2003, we'd visit her at the nursing home and Elisabeth would entertain her with dancing and songs. She lived to be 94 years old. She had the softest skin and the prettiest hair.

When I was little, I wrote a story about my Mom. In it I said she was over 7 feet tall. Since she is barely over 5 feet, she must have liked feeling tall for once.

One of my first memories involving my mom was when I was three. (I think I might have shared this with you all already before) It was bath time and my little sister, Terra, was crying from our bedroom. My mom told me to take all my clothes off and wait for her before I climbed in the tub. I was almost done taking my clothes off, when my mom brought the cranky Terra into the bathroom and told me to get in the tub. I looked down at my socked feet and said, "But, Mom..." "Ginny, I said get in the tub." Ever the diligent child, I got in the tub, with my socks on. As my mom started shampooing my hair, she looked at my feet. "I tried to tell you my socks were still on." I got to take the entire bath with them on.

My mom was always the first one up (something my children do not experience often). Even if I was up earlier than normal, my mom was up with coffee in hand. She was always smiling a hello, asking how I slept--even when I refused to answer or would only growl a response. (I've never been a morning person). When my mom slept in, we all knew she was ill. Then, of course, there was panic since moms are never to be ill.

My mom was the mom who drove everyone to school--us, our friends, our cousins. She was everyone's emergency contact. She was the one who opened her house to the entire neighborhood so she didn't have to worry about where we were going or who was watching us. My mom was the disciplinarian to everyone. My ornery cousins were good at our house because they didn't want Aunt Debbie mad at them. She was the one who my aunts called when loose teeth needed to be pulled. And even though my mom was strict, my cousins knew (and still know!) that she loves them. She went not only to all of our school programs, but other kids' too. She was safe and even during the junior high and high school years when I butted heads with my mom the most, my friends sought her out to tell their problems and cry to, knowing she wouldn't make them feel stupid.
Happy Mother's Day, DebbieMom. I'm sure I speak for all your "kids" when I say how very, very loved you are.

Pirates.

2011-05-06T09:23:00.000-07:00

This past Tuesday, Evan had taken the day off to take Elisabeth to her class field trip to see a movie. But, then we decided to bump it up a notch and take a family field trip instead.

Denver has a Nature and Science Museum that we had never visited before and we heard that they had a pirate exhibit. Once we all heard the word pirate, we were sold.

So, we called saying Ebeth wouldn't be coming to school that day and headed out to Denver for the day.

Believe it or not, I completely forgot my camera at home. I know! That is like leaving one of the kids behind! So, you'll have to settle for my phone and Evan's phone pictures. :)

The museum is quite large. Not only is an entire day's worth of exploring, it's jam packed full of awesome exhibits. We visited the wild nature exhibit, the space exhibit and the rock and gem exhibit.
We ate lunch at their T. Rex Cafe, which had excellent food at reasonable prices! I was expecting to fork over my arm and leg for the girls' meals, but they were only $3.95 each. Plus, the kids' macaroni and cheese was super yummy.

Then, we made our way to the Pirate exhibit. The kids all got a treasure map when they entered the pirate exhibit. Julia thought that was flipping awesome.
We weren't allowed to take pictures inside, but the entire exhibit was amazing. A crew of historians had set out in search of a well known pirate ship that had sunk while trying to make it back to the East Coast (Rhode Island, I think?). Anyway, they were able to find it and bring up some of the things from the sunken ship including some of the eating supplies, treasure, cannons and a lot more. It was so interesting and we all loved it.

When you left the exhibit, the kids exchanged their treasure maps for a pirate hat and a "tattoo".
After the pirates, we wandered over to the Prehistoric exhibit.

The bone that Kayleigh is pretending to nosh on is an actual bone from a triceratop's leg!!!
This little old man was a wealth of knowledge. He was peppy and informative and obviously loved volunteering at the museum. I love it when the people in the exhibits are so enthusiastic about what they know and love.
Lastly, we headed over to the health exhibit. Next to the pirates, this was my absolute favorite. This picture I took:
Was an actual human digestive system. Someone donated their body to science and this was preserved and now used to show you how a granola bar is digested in your body. Each little jar next to the digestive system was the granola bar at a different stage of it's trip through you. It was fascinating!!! And Julia was in awe of the poop in a jar. I think she finally realized why we all poop after that illustrative explanation.

They had a bunch of different stations that showed you how your body worked or how different things effect your body.

They also had a play area for small kiddos.
And a science lab where you actually got to do experiments. Elisabeth spent most of her time in there and we didn't see her for over an hour.
Julia found the very fun impression peg board thingy. Pink baby had a turn...
Evan had a turn...
And Julia really threw herself into it...
We were at the museum for 6 full hours and really only got to see half of what we wanted to see. There were still three other exhibits we didn't even get to! I told the girls we'd definitely be making another trip before we moved.

We've been kind of busy...

2011-05-05T08:30:00.001-07:00

At least, it super feels like we've been super busy. Seems like when it's spring time, it's time for a bunch of field trips or traditional excursions. You know? School's wrapping up (which is always full of things to attend) and summer's approaching (so we're finding more things to go to outside).

In April alone, we seemed to have something planned weekly. We went to the Colorado Springs Auto Show at the World Arena. Not a huge car venue (like the Denver Auto Show we went to last year but missed this year). Evan loves auto shows and we've been attending them yearly since I was pregnant with Elisabeth. We've been to auto shows in Peoria, Chicago and Geneva, Illinois and now the ones in Denver and Co Springs.

Julia was stoked to see Muno at the car show. She's a Yo Gabba Gabba fan.
I have no idea what this thing is, but Ebeth thought it was adorable.

A couple weeks later, the church the girls' attended on Wednesday nights had a "end of the season" party at Skate City. Ebeth has her own roller blades from last Christmas and Evan has some too, so they skated together while Julia and I played some skiball. I don't want to brag, but I won a lot of tickets due to my skiball skills.
Rachel and her kiddos were there too. Elisabeth is all about odd faces in photos these days...
Sometimes Elisabeth didn't cling to the wall!
But, most of the time she did.

Julia was so proud of Evan for skating. At one point she told him, "Hey, I need wheels too!".
There was face painting. How cute is Ebeth's face painting?! I love the cloud nose.
Mabel chose to be a dog. I was borderline on being creeped out (I hate fully painted faces. It freaks me the eff out).

At the end of April, Elisabeth and I went to see a production of Pippi Longstocking. Kyle bought Elisabeth the book and the tickets to see this show for Christmas.
Elisabeth is such a theater junkie. Not that she's ever had a choice in the matter. We've been taking her to see plays since she was barely 3.
I was very impressed with the production. It was a musical and the cast was excellent. It was a community theater troupe that does child friendly shows. There were booths an hour before the show with crafts and activities for the kids to do that kind of introduced things about Pippi. The program was full of games and activities as well.
After the show, there were cookies and milk and the cast would sign the autograph page in the program. Elisabeth loves getting to meet the actors.

It was so much fun. Definitely a community theater troupe to take your kids to if you live in the Colorado Springs area.

Don't worry, May is just as packed full of activities. I'm super excited about a couple of them (like the overnight at the zoo!!!!!!!)

Some spring time thoughts.

2011-05-02T07:47:00.000-07:00

So, spring around here in lovely ol' Colorado means a lot of this:

Rain. Snow. Wind. More wind. And then...more wind.

But, when the sun comes out, it is gorgeous and pretty warm. I'm trying not to complain too much because when we go to San Antonio (and I die from sweating into a puddle of sweat) it'll be most warm at this time of year (like 80s and 90s).

Today is this little lady's half birthday:
That might be one of my most favoritest pictures of her ever. Seriously, she's going to be so beautiful when she's grown up that Evan's already talking about getting a shot gun. She is 8.5 today and that means in six months she'll be 9 and then I might need to cry because she'll be a year from 10 and that's double digits.

As for this child:
She has not slept well the last three nights due to a cold and wakes up whimpering and crying. It's so sad. Sometimes she doesn't wake up at all; she just makes the noises in her sleep. When she does wake up she just wants a few cuddles and to be re-tucked in. Nothing tugs on my heart strings more than when the girls make sad noises in their sleep. You can't do anything for them but don't you wish you could jump into their dreams and make them happier?

This week the weather's supposed to warm up again, so I'm hoping for more trips to the park.
Oh, and where did April go?! Cause I feel like I can't account for most of the days.
Guess I'll just have to pay better attention to May.

Fire Station Field Trip

2011-04-28T07:27:00.000-07:00

Last week, Elisabeth's class took a fieldtrip to the local fire station. Julia and I met her there. Ebeth was excited to see us.

I always enjoy going on Ebeth's fieldtrips because I get to see her interact with her classmates. She has a sweet personality and it's nice to see that she doesn't become someone else at school (like a nasty little punk). I also find it amusing to see how many parents show up for fieldtrips. I don't remember having that many chaperones when I was in grade school, but maybe I just ignored them all.

Did you know they don't really push the whole "Stop, Drop and Roll" thing anymore? And that they only were telling kids that in the 70s because their pajamas were not fire retardant? Turns out that kids were stopping, dropping and rolling when they saw smoke or weren't on fire but saw fire instead of trying to get out of the house. Now they encourage kids to get out pronto. See, you learn something new every day.

One of the kids asked if fire stations ever need to call another fire station because of a fire in the building. Turns out, fire stations were often frequently in need of help putting out fires in their stations because they'd all leave for a call and leave their stoves on or the grills or whatnot. Now they have timers for their stoves and grills and other things so that they automatically turn off if they all leave in a rush and forget to turn it off themselves.
Julia did a great job participating. She was a dog toward the end and was crawling around and barking, but we were outside, so it didn't matter.

Getting to go on fieldtrips is just another reason that I enjoy staying home with the kids. I like being able to help out with school functions and not having to use vacation time to do it. Speaking of, Evan's taken the day off for Elisabeth's next field trip to see Disney's Big Cats. Ebeth is sooooooo excited that Evan actually gets to come and meet her class.

Virtual Coffee

2011-04-27T09:54:00.000-07:00

Hello! I am posting these lovely flowers this morning because I woke up to 2 inches of snow on the ground and I want to look at something that is solid proof that it really is spring.

It just super likes to snow in the spring here in Colorado.

So, what are you up to today? We're heading out to the Y after our coffee date here. I've got some miles that need to be logged and Julia has some kids to play with. I really hope that the Y we join in San Antonio has just as friendly and nice of a staff as this one does here. Julia loves her teachers in the kid area, which says a lot since she's so shy and timid.
I feel productive today. I've checked off lots of things on my to-do list and still have more to do and I don't feel overwhelmed about it. I've mentioned before how much I hate errand running and phone calling, but today it's not bogging me down. We'll see if this productivity lasts all day or not.
Tonight we are going skating with the church the girls go to on Wednesday nights. Their Wednesday night program is done for this school year and they're having a last hoorah at Skate City. Evan and Ebeth will be skating while Julia and I play a few serious games of skiball. I have my quarters ready and everything. They'll have face painting and whatnot there, so the girls are super pumped. I won't lie, though, I am kind of sad that Evan and I's Wednesday date nights are done. It was nice have 2 full hours to ourselves. Sometimes we'd go out to dinner or go to stores we wanted to visit kid free, but sometimes we'd just go home and hang out.
Well, Julia is literally trying to pull me out the door. She has some playing to do at the Y.

Swing by Amy at Lucky Number 13 if you need some more coffee! I'll see you next week!