Christmas Recap, Random Style...

It's hard to believe the holidays are almost over! There is waaaay more excitement that happened over Christmas that's not documented below, but these are a few highlights:

--B got some great presents and she loved opening everything - both tearing the wrapping paper and pulling out tissue paper from bags. Santa said she was nice this year, so brought her a wooden kitchen, a new doll cradle, and a doll house. She also got a new purse, lap top to help practice her ABC's, stocking, microphone to practice singing, building blocks, etc.


--We ate some seriously good food. My Dad has a Big Green Egg, which deserves its own post. These things are absolutely amazing, and the grub that he produces is out of this world tasty. In addition, we indulged in the 3 essential sides to every Christmas (and Thanksgiving!) meal: potato casserole, green bean casserole, and deviled eggs.
--B got to spend some time with her Uncle Bubbie who was in town from Cali. He's growing a mad ZZ Top goatee!


--B almost burned down the church on Christmas Eve. K decided to give her her own candle at the end of the service while we sang Silent Night. After the last verse, he momentarily took his hand away from hers and she took the opportunity to toss her LIT candle onto the pew in front of us. My entire family gasped, the entire row in front of us turned around to look at what such drama might be occurring, K yelled "get it!!," and I watched in slow motion as the plastic champagne-glass-type holder spun around in a circle with the glowing flame rotating in the middle. Thankfully I was able to grab and extinguish the flame before any permanent damage was done. Oh my!!!
--Sophie, the great dane, is now 4 months old and weighs 55 pounds. She eats 4 cups of food TWICE a day and still has a lot of puppy in her. She's adorable, even in her "hurricane" state.


--B got to hang out with a few of her cousins which was awesome.


Are we really all this old now? We used to play kick ball in my grandma's front yard and made many a trip to the VFW together to play Bingo. The most spectacular event was when we were old enough to upgrade from the boarded cards to the Bingo dabber. Those were the days...


--K grew a beard beginning during "No Shave November." I love it. Sadly, it's since been shaved off. B also got a really stylish panda hat to keep her warm this winter.


--B went to the dentist for the first time. Although it might look like the visit is going well based on the picture below, I can assure you she cried the whole time. Despite her chipped front teeth (she lost a battle with the tile on our bathroom floor back in her crawling days), everything looks good for a 19 month old.


--We made our first trip to the Dallas Zoo and it was great! B loved seeing the animals, especially feeding the giraffes and riding the bronze elephant.



--Despite the fact that I think New Years is tooooooootally overrated, I hope everyone has a wonderful time ringing in 2012!!

Playtime - old school...

One of the great things about heading home to my parents' house for the holidays is the fact that everything is the same as it was the day I left for college. In fact, my high school homecoming mums are still hanging on my bedroom wall. For whatever reason, this oddly comforts me and I love the reminders of days past. Since having B, even MORE reminders of days past have arisen in the form of old school Fisher Price toys that my bro and I used to play with.

Little People School Bus

Then:


Now:

Record Player (now CD Player)

Then:

Now:

Other great and wonderful toys that have been up in the garage all these years?

The Cozy Coupe:


And the Little Tykes slide:


There are Barbies, My Little Ponies, GI Joes, Ninja Turtles - the works - that have yet to be brought back out. When I told my Mom I couldn't believe she kept all these, her response was, "I can't either - I must've been out of my mind!!" I LOVE her for being out of her mind and holding onto these toy treasures, and so does B!

B has an announcement to make...

Yep - she's gonna be a big sis...which means - I am pregnant!! This announcement has been a long time coming, and we've had to wait a little longer than we originally thought to spread the news. When I went in for my supposed 8-week initial sonogram, my doctor told me I was only 6 weeks and 3 days pregnant. Her theory is that I ovulated late, although when I went back a week and a half later supposedly I was 8 weeks and 5 days pregnant. Regardless of the timing, I was just excited to make it to 12 weeks and hear the heartbeat so we could share the news.

Only we went for our 12 week appointment and my doctor couldn't find the heartbeat...

It was the most scary feeling as I lay there on the table while she went back and forth across my stomach with the Doppler. The only sound it was picking up was MY heartbeat. Kevin grabbed my hand and a million thoughts started racing through my head. There are days that I still haven't really even processed the fact that we're having another child, so the thought of losing this potential child was a seriously foreign concept to grasp within a time span of 2-3 minutes. My doctor seemed a little worried, but casually said, "we'll just go look." So we got up, changed rooms, and I lay back down on the table for a sonogram.

THANKFULLY - baby was in there jumping around like a little bean. As it turns out, my placenta is on top, and the baby's back is towards my back, which means that because of the positioning and the thick placenta there was no way for the Doppler to pick up the heartbeat. As it stands, my due date is 6/1/2012, but because B was a C-section I'll have a scheduled C-section at 39 weeks...

Or so my doctor thinks.

I'm weird about wanting to keep baby inside as long as possible. With B, after my failed induction I carried her almost 41 weeks before I finally gave in and scheduled a C-section. I figured if she was happy in there, I might as well leave her in there since I felt great up until delivery [with the exception of PUPPS - horrible pregnancy rash - which I'm PRAYING I don't get again]. Plus - B's birthday is 5/24, and it is VERY important to me that our children are far enough apart to be able to celebrate their birthdays independently. The reality of it is that I'll likely be planning 2 parties in the same week [yikes!!], but I refuse to combine celebrations as I want to show each child that they are individually cherished in their own way.

So I asked my doctor if I could carry till 6/1 and she said no. :-/ Apparently 2nd babies tend to be bigger, and with B being 9 lbs. 4 ounces then I could have a baby Goliath growing in my stomach. She tentatively checked the 2012 calendar and decided that 5/28 would be a good day; however, she wasn't certain if that was Memorial Day or not. IT IS!! "If it is," she said, "then we would probably have to do it 5/30 or 5/31 based on my call schedule." Thankfully she is very understanding of my desire to have the 2 babies as far apart as possible, so she's pretty much ruled out the prior week.

Did we plan it? Kind of, but not really. Can you really plan when you're going to have a baby? Mostly we are just joyful and excited about our new addition. While it will be a challenge to have 2 so close in age, let's be honest - we're not getting any younger. The older I get the more I value my sleep, which means I'm ready to get the sleepless nights behind me sooner rather than later! AND - I haven't really been motivated to lose the baby weight from B knowing that I'd be gaining 30 pounds with baby #2, so now's the perfect time to just keep eating Taco Bueno, Chick-fil-A, and Whataburger.

It was hard to keep the secret initially as my belly bulge started early. With a stretched out uterus from B and an extremely short torso, baby has no where to grow but out. This pregnancy is definitely different. I've had no morning sickness, but been more nauseous, and have also been surprisingly less tired. With B I went to bed at 8:30 almost every night during the first trimester. This time, I've made it up till the start of TMZ at 10:30 almost every night. :-)

Please pray for a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby. It still feels surreal, but we are so thankful for God's precious blessing of another child!

Santa? Not so much...

In an effort to avoid the mall madness this weekend, we opted to take our sweet daughter to Home Depot for a visit to see Santa. No princess dress, no tights, no black patent leather shoes, but instead jeans and her new Converse one stars. [Yes, one day this girl will know how to throw a baseball and like the outdoors.] Needless to say, she didn't really bond with the giant jolly fellow, and pretty much reached her arms out to us and started crying the instant we put her in his lap. When I asked her what Santa says, followed by, "Ho Ho Ho, Merry Christmas!!," her response was "Da-dee." Maybe next year?

Thanksgiving Firsts

This was a great Thanksgiving for us - one that provided the opportunity for several new experiences outside of the annual feast that we're used to indulging in. I'm still stuck on small lists after my last post, so here are the firsts - one through three:

1) I made a Christmas wreath. And it looks AWESOME!! [in my humble opinion :-)]



K's cousins M and D stayed with us over the past few days, and D is seriously talented when it comes to crafting. I could not have made this wreath without her and cannot take much credit for how beautiful it turned out. The best part about it is that the silver and red go perfectly with the green lights K got for our porch. Talk about some festive decor!!!


2) K processed his own venison.


Rather than take it to Kuby's like usual, K decided to learn how to cut and package his own game after going hunting last weekend. This was a multi-step process, and we're saving the most fun part for last - the grinding, which will be done via an attachment on my beloved KitchenAid mixer. I'm very skeptical about it on multiple levels, but have chosen to trust that my hubby has watched enough YouTube videos to know what he's doing...


3) I made homemade tortillas. And they were AMAZING! [in my humble opinion :-)]


You know how D is a master crafter? Well - she's also a master chef. Again - I can't take much credit for the tortillas, but mostly just appreciate the time and effort she put into teaching me how to make new things. With her encouragement and guidance I was able to do stuff that I previously viewed as completely out of my realm.

Happy (late) Thanksgiving!!

Officially enthralled...

...with 2 things:

1) NBC's The Sing-off. Have I written of my love for this show before? It is incredible. Especially this season's Pentatonix from Arlington. My FAVORITE performance of theirs is as follows. The bass and beat boxing are amazing!!!!! Can you say dance party in the living room??



2) Our new chairs. We inherited these from K's grandmother, and when we got them they were a lovely celery green velvet. I remembered to take a "before" shot as K was loading them up into his car to take to our design guy for a face lift.


Here is the after. Only one is complete as of now, but the final pair will go in the master bedroom. Am loving the update, especially the pattern!!!


And can you believe Thanksgiving is this week? Where has this year gone???

Today

Today is Friday, y'all. Fridays are usually dubbed as "no clean" day in my book. It's like my day off from household chores, although sometimes I've been known to do a load of laundry here and there on a Friday. But today - I got a mini cleaning streak in me. It's been brewing for a while. I really want to have a clean house, and I feel better after I clean knowing that everything's in order, but I get so DISCOURAGED because I know I'm just going to have to do everything all over again in a week. And that's just a downer. Ugh.

But back to today.

So instead of cleaning our hardwoods, shining up the stove, or doing something that would noticeably impact the cleanliness of our house to the naked eye...I decided to do something that no one will ever see or know about, but that will make a big difference in the cleanliness of our laundry room.

I cleaned our washer!!!

While surfing the home decor section of pinterest, I became inspired by a blog post that had been done on cleaning out your washing machine. I don't think ours has ever been done. Like as in EVER. I do laundry all the time, but really - who thinks about cleaning something that cleans? I was so inspired that I even took before and after pictures to see if it would really work.

First I lifted the lid to see if it REALLY needed to be clean. I think there was part of me that was still secretly hoping I could suppress this weird cleaning desire that cropped up on a no-clean Friday. But alas - take a look at exhibit A for proof that indeed, our washer needed some TLC:



So I loaded it with hot water and put in 2 cups of white vinegar. It didn't quite fill to the top of the center spin thing, so I used a measuring cup to add in a lot more water. I thought that was probably a dumb idea at the time because surely the washing machine knows its own water limit, but the grossness on the spin thing was still exposed and I knew it needed to come in contact with the water / vinegar mixture to get clean. I set our kitchen timer for 60 min and let the solution work its magic.

After an hour, I let the washer finish the cycle. I put it on the shortest one to speed up the process and get to the next step, which was to fill the washer AGAIN, and this time put in 2 cups of bleach instead of 2 cups of vinegar. Did you know that bleach goes bad? That's what K tells me, and I think it's true - because once I spilled tea on the white shower curtain in B's room and when I washed it with old bleach the stain was still there. So I opened up new bleach and put it in the sink with the stained shower curtain and it came right out. That was a while ago, and I used the same beach in today's cleaning process, so I hope it hasn't since expired - but I digress....

Because of the length of time involved in this project, I definitely lost steam midway through. When I saw the grossness was still on the center spin thing after the vinegar cycle, I started to think, "seriously? why did I even get started on this? I need a nap."

But I somehow mustered up the strength to forge ahead.

I decided to take a sponge and put white vinegar on it and see if I could scrub some of it off. Thankfully, it wasn't too difficult. The bleach might have taken it off, but I felt it better to jump the gun to ensure it would be gone once and for all. In retrospect - instead of going through the entire process, I think I would've just taken the sponge with vinegar to the center spin thing from the get go. Maybe next time. Here is the finished product:



Wow. This is the longest post I've written in a long time. And it's about cleaning our washing machine. Just go with it...

Our Lil' Strawberry!

So for Halloween this year, B was a strawberry. Wasn't she a strawberry last year, you might ask? Yes, yes she was. This is what happens when you wait until the last minute to buy a costume, and the only thing left in Old Navy's $5 bargain costume bin in her size is the exact same thing you dressed your child up as the prior year. Except this year she's a RED strawberry versus a PINK strawberry. Big difference, I promise.

On Saturday we celebrated Halloween early at our neighborhood block party. You know you're getting old when you actually look forward to such events. They had a petting zoo and pony rides in addition to a fire truck, food, costume party - the works. We're all about trying new things with B even though she's not so excited sometimes to branch out. Case in point - she doesn't like horses yet. I'm not really sure if it was the horse that actually scared her, or the strange man right beside her that was walking the horse. Either way - she was not having any of it.


Was feeling experimental so decided to try antique finish in iPhoto for this shot:


On Halloween, I took her to the Arboretum during the day to take a few pictures with the pumpkins. We didn't stay long as it was surprisingly crowded and hot. She gave some adorable smiles this year, along with a couple signature gazes off into nowhere while holding her BFF, Mr. Wocket.






Dad got home early from work and we carved a pumpkin on the back porch, then went trick or treating. I didn't have time to get a pumpkin for B this year, so she used her purse to collect candy. What girl wouldn't love having a purse full of candy on a regular day?




When we got home we took a festive picture on the porch with Abby and our pumpkin before B had a past-her-bedtime meltdown. All in all it was a memorable holiday. Happy Halloween!!!

Meet my new sister!!!

I have a new baby sister!! Her name is Sophie, and she is the most adorable great dane puppy you'll ever see. My parents brought her home last week and have been enjoying her playfulness and curiosity since then. :-)




The word "baby" will not be applicable for long, as Soph will likely grow to be 150 lbs or so. Cannot wait to make a road trip to Mom and Dad's to meet this sweet new addition before she grows up!!

State Fair of Texas!!!!

Okay y'all - you know how much I love the State Fair. So you can of course imagine how excited I was to go this week with my fam for our annual outing. The best part about it was seeing B experience the greatness. From her first corny dog to seeing the animals at the petting zoo to walking around the car show, she loved every minute of it!!