Surprise!

Saturday morning, I woke up around 8:30 which was a treat in and of itself. I noticed that neither girl was still in her room asleep and Shawn was no where around either. I headed down stairs and this is what I saw; Shawn and the girls making blueberry pancakes for me for breakfast! What a nice surprise. They loved helping their daddy and the pancakes hit the spot!

Week 4 of New Foods

We got bold this week and went for a food that I really didn't think sounded good at all; Okra. I remember eating it as a kid, but for whatever reason, we stopped eating it and I never went back to it again. Tonite we had fried okra. I can actually say it wasn't bad. Of course, I ate it with ketchup. The girls liked it to, to our surprise. I think we will add it to our menu every once in a while.

What sisters are for

We are making progress on the potty training thing with Ava. She has begun pee peeing in the potty just about every night before bathtime. She is very excited and proud of herself and sweet Elle is such a wonderful big sis. She cheers her on, reads to her while she's on the potty, and gets almost more excited than us when Ava pee pees. Go, Ava, Go!

Beatin the Boyz

We went to our neighbor's little girl's 3rd birthday a few days ago. They had it at the bowling alley. I'm not one to turn down free food, free cake and free bowling! Okay, I would have gone anyway, but it sure was nice to pretty much have a family date night for free! Anyway, the little kids got to bowl on one lane and the big kids on another. I was the only girl that wanted to bowl and Shawn, and two other male neighbors bowled also....so of course, I had a lot to prove and extreme competitiveness came out in me. First, let me start by saying that I had stated in front of all of them that "I'll be lucky if I break 100." I really did mean that but I guess my bowling ball had other plans. To make a long story short, I beat all of them...yep, all three big ol' guys. I scored a 133 and Shawn was 2nd with a 115. Can I just say that was a wonderful moment in my life. I truly live for beating men at ANYthing. Ahhhhh, that was so great! They just kind of looked disgusted with the scoring. But, I do have a theory as to why I won, (other than the fact that I rock). All those guys were using balls that seemed WAY too heavy for them. (I think their manly ego got in the way of common sense so they picked one of the heaviest balls to bowl with. ) I will say Shawn was the exception...his was just right, but he still lost to me so all is right in the world.

Thank You MLK jr!

Shawn took the day off yesterday to honor MLK jr....okay not really. Nothing against him, but I had another agenda than honoring him. I just wanted us to have a family day and have a "holiday" like almost everyone else yesterday! We have a playground just a block or two away in our neighborhood so we headed that way to meet whatever adventure found us. We had a lot of fun just walking through the fields and in the drainage area back there. It was a nice "outing" even though it wasn't too far away.

Growing like a Chin Hair

Men won't understand that title, and some women won't either. But for some of us with lots of weird chemicals in our bodies, we get wild chin hairs out of nowhere....and they don't always start off small. Sometimes I look in the mirror and I have a lone chin hair that's really long and I could swear it wasn't there yesterday. Okay, now that you'll be fixated on my chin every time you see me in the future, it's time to segue into why I wrote that title. My oldest child, who will be 5 in April is growing like crazy mentally and physically! In the last few days alone, she has memorized her address, memorized the spelling of her last name (and that's a major feat), and learned to hit a baseball, pretty well, I might add. She is working on learning to jump rope also. Our next agenda is to learn our phone number, be able to tie her shoes, and continue with the letters and numbers. She knows all the letters, but not at 100%. Same for numbers 0-9. She can count to 20 but always leave #16 out. At least she's consistent. Anyway, it is so much fun to watch her learn lately. She is soaking it up. And I'm getting a two-for-one deal with this, because Ava is her shadow and tries to do just about everything Elle is doing. Speaking of, Ava can now identify the letter "A." She can almost spell her name too! She knows quite a few of her colors. We are definitely going to have to put her in Mother's Day Out at some point, because she will be 13 days away from her 6th birthday when she starts Kindergarten and I'm thinking she'll need more than I've got in the next few years. Anyway, I leave you with some great pics of the last few days.

The 80's called...they said....keep it up! You are stylin!

(Okay I know they aren't really legwarmers...they are Gramme's socks, but they remind me of legwarmers.)

We are boring

Yep, nothing exciting happening here. Really, we are just hibernating until Spring. Every day is a do-over from the day before. But, I'm thankful for boring. December and really the three months before that, were all chocked full of lots of activities and so it's nice to just be. On Tuesday, I tried the second new food for '09, Butternut Squash. I had a simple recipe that made a puree out of it and it was actually REALLY good. It tasted quite a bit like corn which surprised all of us. The girls both liked it too. I would get it again, except for one thing. It was quite expensive. It was $4.16 and that's a lot for just a simple side dish. Hmmmm....maybe it's cheaper at a different time of the year? Anyone know??? Anyway, it was a good thing so I'll probably get it occasionally just to add something different. I will say, I felt quite uppity picking that at the veggie area because I was getting an "unusual" product....okay maybe it's just unusual to me. Whatever. Not sure what next weeks surprise is...I'll figure that out tomorrow. Any suggestions.....In other news, we started our Marriage Class tonite at church. We have 9 couples including ourselves that are taking the class and Shawn and I are the facilitators. We are really excited for where our marriage and the other couples marriages will be in 8 short weeks. It's going to be a lot of work, but anything great takes work. Tomorrow we have a lot to look forward to. It is Shawn's day off, we have a fun birthday party to go to at the bowling alley for our neighbor, and Gramme is coming for the weekend!!!! YEAH!!!! Have a great weekend!

What a good big sis, pushing little sis in her swing.

I've been babysitting my neighbors 3 month old 2 days a week and both girls REALLY want to help a lot...which I'm all for!

Ban on Resale

****Thanks to everyone who wrote me not long after this was published to say that the government clarified that resale items would not be affected by the new law. Thank you God for hearing my prayer and answering it in a way that makes it a little easier to pay the bills!

Have you heard yet, that as of Feb. 10th, there will be a ban on the resale of children's articles, like clothes and toys unless they are tested for lead levels. That includes all resale shops, ebay, craigslist, Goodwill, etsy stuff, and garage sales. What that means, is that for the most part, all of those places will cease to exist, at least in the sense that you won't be able to buy children's used items anymore. I don't get alarmed by much, but this alarms me. This is how my children stay clothed and has been since Elle was born. I urge you, if this concerns you in any way, to write your congressman and let him know what you think. I just did. I just typed in "Write your congressman" and eventually got to the right page. Here's what I wrote:

I am just hearing about the new law that will take effect in early February
banning the resale of pretty much all children's items unless they are tested
for lead. I am not a person that becomes anxious or worries too often,
because I know God will care for me. Unfortunately, upon hearing of this
new law, I am feeling very concerned about how I will afford to clothe my two
daughters that are 2 and 4. I have bought resale clothes from them since
birth and now, I'm not sure how I will afford to clothe them. This
couldn't come at a worse time, considering that we are in the midst of a
recession and money is so tight. Now, I must worry about how I'm going to
afford to buy brand new clothes when the spring arrives and for that matter,
when my 4 year old starts Kindergarten in August. Surely, there is
something that can be done to correct this. The ramifications on an
already abused and beat up economy will be devastating. Please do
something to correct this so that all of us who buy resale out of necessity, can
continue to clothe our children.

Past week in short

Thurs: Grocery day
Friday: Wrote thank u's, exchanged a christmas present for a new MP3 player which I love!, drank the sparkling grape juice that we forgot to drink on New Years Eve.
Saturday: got really bored, girls got really bored, everyone went stir crazy, burned 9 months worth of pics onto CD's
Sunday: Went to church, then went to see the Trans Siberian Orchestra...pretty cool. Even better that our friends won the tickets so it was free for us!
Monday: Bunco and trying out new art supplies with the girls
Tuesday: Started babysitting a 3 month old neighbor. I'll do this on Tues/Thurs, till her mom finds a full time job and then she'll go into daycare.
Today: Library, Office Max, Target, and HEB

Also, my SIL reminded me that I haven't blogged about the 52 new foods project. For week one, we bought Mozzarella Fresca, which is the mozz in water type stuff. We made homemade pizza last night and used this new mozz and it was really good! The only thing I would change is adding WAY more....it's so much chewier and has a better flavor than the plain ol' shredded stuff. So, for week one, it was a success...we tried something new, and liked it! I'll try to keep a weekly post on what we eat...I'm still deciding on next weeks. Any ideas on a food item that's a little out there?

A New Year

For some reason I'm feeling all warm and fuzzy right now and it's not the non-alcoholic grape juice from last night. It could be the 70 degree weather and prickly legs though. Yeah, that's probably it. All the Christmas decorations have been neatly packed away, the "normal" decorations are back out, the little green fake pine needles have been vacuumed up, and all the pictures have been loaded onto the hard drive. Everything is in order ( that is a dangerous statement to make, I've found, because about the time you say that, all heck breaks loose!) Anyway, I am really excited for this new year...I don't know if it's my old age talking, but I'm feeling more mature on my outlook. This year, I'm not trying to rush for anything to happen. It's the first year that I haven't gone into it holding my breath and just hoping to come out at the other end alive. I'm planning to just take each day as it comes and find the positive, laughable, sweet moments that are hidden in each day. I can't wait to see what is in store for our family. Lord willing, Elle will start Kindergarten and Ava will be potty trained and talking in a totally understandable language by the end of this year. Most likely this year a decision will have been made as to whether two is perfect or three is even better. It will be wonderful whatever happens. Two new projects I'll be working on this year: #1 I will be trying one new food each week of the year. I am going to make a small scrapbook about our culinary journey and I'm excited about that. To define the "new" food it has to be something I've never bought at the grocery store, or something I've never eaten. The second project is a 365 scrapbook meaning, I'm going to take one snapshot every day, probably mostly abstract of our random dailiness and then make a scrapbook from those things. I have wanted to do something like this for a few years, but never did because it seemed too daunting. I've found a kit that hopefully I'll be able to order soon, and it will organize all of that for me. Hope you take this year to grow closer to God, nurture your relationships with people, and find the good in whatever is put on your plate....unless it's sauerkraut.(Niko)

Oh and also, we made a big change for two major tight-wades. We went organic with milk. It was $5 a gallon which is painful, but with two girls, we felt like it was a small price to pay for fewer hormones in their systems....anyone with girls knows that the last thing they need is more hormones!