Refrigerator Art

Thought I'd decorate my blog with some Fall artwork from Stone. He attends a Parent's Day Out program 2 times a week at our former church and has WONDERFUL teachers. Not only are they are very creative with projects for them to do and make, they also love, love, love on him. As a result, Stone actually enjoys going to "school" and will "love" back on his teachers (not something he easily does with everyone.) So, here are a few treasures that decorate my fridge.. there are many behind the ones I took pictures of.. I'm almost out of room! (I've always wanted to be able to decorate my fridge door with my own child's handiwork, as my mom did with ours. Now I get the chance and love it!)





Okay, so this one below is not refrigerator art... it's a yummy cookie that we shared and boy, was it good!! (Not to mention, adorable!)

Crazy Sleeper

Had to post about my crazy little sleeper called my son. I think he gets his crazy sense of sleeping all over the place and rolling around from me, since Kevin sleeps in one space in one pose most of the night and I sleep all over the place. In fact, I remember waking up just last night after rolling over on Kevin and and one point, kicking him! Thankfully, he didn't remember!

On to Stone... I've caught him on film a couple of times and thought it would be fun to post them. The first one, he has a blanket wrapped around his head. Although not as good as our friend Little E, it was quite interesting.... sometimes he scares me when I come in to check on him, as he often will have a blanket wrapped around his neck! Ugh. I always try to "undo" him before I go to sleep..


This second one, look how his leg is just propped up in the air. How in the world is that comfortable? I have to lay on my tummy all sprawled out to sleep. Last night, he was laying on his back with this legs folded underneath him.. ouch! I unfolded the "pretzel" aka Stone, cause it just didn't look comfortable to me!

Turkey Day Adventures

Happy Thanksgiving! Ours has not been very traditional---we've had a good day, just kind of funny. It sort of started last night (Wed.) when my cooking attempts failed terribly. First, I made just a simple chocolate cake and used store-bought icing to have for dessert last night and for over the weekend. The cake turned out fine; however, after I iced it, it decided to fall apart! I have no idea why; maybe I didn't let it cool enough, but we didn't let it's appearance keep us from eating it. Kevin calls it "the snow-capped mountain cake." It still tasted good, even though it looked bad! Ha.. see the picture below.

Then, after I made the cake, I put a steak-roast we had bought in the oven to cook for dinner. This thing looked great--it was steak with cheese, bacon and spinach wrapped up in it. Well, I cooked it, but had no directions as to how long or what temp, so I had to make it up. I cooked it for about an hour, but apparently it wasn't long enough. I had waited until Kevin made it home to cut into it (mistake #2)... he was tied up at work and didn't get home until about 7pm. So, our steak wasn't cooked all the way through and it was getting late. I put the steak back into the oven, and thankfully, we had a grilled chicken breast left over so we ate that instead. Which meant we ate the steak for dinner tonight (thanksgiving). Not your traditional thanksgiving dinner, but it worked. We actually bought a turkey to cook, so we've saved it for tomorrow instead.

This morning, we watched the Macy's T-day parade and Stone got into that for the most part. After the parade, we went over to Kevin's parent's house to retrieve our christmas tree, ornaments and a few decorations (after all, i don't really have much room to put up many decorations).

As we ate dinner, we watched the last few minutes of the Cowboys game (in which they won.. which makes my dad and hubby happy!) Stone even got into the action... see below, as he's wearing his cowboy colors...

Then, we had decided to go ahead and put up our Christmas tree, as Kevin has today and most of tomorrow off. Before dinner, we had taken our tree out of its bag and soon discovered that it was missing a part of the stand...one of the 3 legs was gone. Pain. Why in the world were all 3 legs not in the bag with the tree is beyond me. It was a year ago, so neither one of us could remember. So, I go off to wallyworld to look for another possible stand so we can put up our tree. (Which, I discovered that the best day to go to wallyworld is actually on Thanksgiving night, during the time when most people are eating dinner cause there's nobody there! Wonderful! I hate shopping at wallyworld when I can't get around and then it takes forever to check out.) Anyway, back to my story. I get home, we eat dinner and then we put the tree up. Thankfully, I had remembered to call kevin while at wallyworld to see if all the lights still worked. All but one strand, but other than that, all good. Then, after "fluffing" the tree and putting lights on it, we discover the missing leg!! We have NO idea where it came from. It's our own Thanksgiving miracle!! Ha! Anyway, so now I can take back the other tree stand I bought to hold up the tree. We only got the lights and star put on after all that; we're saving the rest until tomorrow. Stone loved all the lights... here's a pic of him looking at one.

We had a good day, even with the minor flops. We wished we could have spent it with other family members, but we are thankful for all the many blessings God gives us each and every day and especially thankful for each other. We hope everyone out there also had a great Thanksgiving holiday.

The Uncut Version....

What do you get when you cross 2 very tired 2 year olds and a portrait studio? A VERY interesting afternoon!! My SIL and I decided last year that it would be cute to get M and S in their Christmas pj's and get a picture taken. They turned out so cute, so we thought we'd do it again, and keep doing it every year until they get too old. Well, our appt. was this past Saturday and we had to wait an hour! But, we did get some cute pictures out of it. The funniest part, I have to say, is after Gini dressed M in a beautiful little dress for some individual shots. The photographer pulled down the white background and just let M walk around and be herself. Well, after a couple of shots, M got down on the floor and starting rolling/writhing around (like some swim suit model)!! We were ROLLING... it was so hysterical! And of course, she entertained the entire place as well. S on the other hand, was just plain tired, so he was just ready to get out of that place. In fact, at one point while Gini and I were looking at the proofs, M opened the door (to the outside) and they escaped! Gini took off after them and M didn't hardly out the door but S went all the way down the sidewalk!

So here's a slide show of our adventure.... the uncut and unedited version!

New Hair Cut

Been a while since I blogged.. suddenly, I have found myself swamped with things at work and thus, trying also to balance home life with work. Last Saturday, we went downtown again, but first, we took Stone for another hair cut. As you can see in the before and after pictures below, he was over-due! This is not the first time I've blogged about his hair cuts, so you might be wondering what the big deal is. WELL, the big deal is that normally, he SCREAMS and squirms and makes a huge scene when he gets his hair cut. It takes Kevin holding his body down, me holding his head and the stylist holding him too and doing her best to make his hair look half-way decent. But NOT this time! He DIDN'T do all that!!!!! We were so impressed! He got a little fussy and a couple of times I had to hold his head, but that was nothing compared to the past 3 times. AND, he sat in the chair by himself, without Kevin having to hold him down!! Our little guy is GROWING up!! Yeah! I mean, boo... I can't believe he's growing up on me!! :(

BEFORE

AFTER

So, other things to blog about to catch up:

• This past Sunday, I got to speak in church... all 3 morning services. What did I speak about? (And no, I did not preach!) Well, the children's pastor and I basically told people that we needed more people to commit to teaching preschoolers and children during our church's meeting times. The children's pastor (Jeremy) actually preached a sermon and then I just shared my heart and vision for the future of the preschool ministry. I wasn't nervous at all.. which is not like me, so must have been a God thing. Also, I have MUCH more respect for our pastor who has to preach a sermon 3 times in a row... I only spoke about 10 minutes.. can't imagine having to preach a 30-40 minute sermon 3 times in a morning and then coming back in the evening! Exhausting I'm sure! I don't think we really realize how tiring it is to do that, unless you have the opportunity to do something similar.
  
• Also this past Sunday, I got to meet with a few ladies to discuss the Women's Ministry at our church. Very interesting.... how, in the past, nobody has really stepped up to lead this important ministry. We are praying for God to raise up the woman(en) to lead this. I mentioned how much the Mom to Mom ministry has blessed me and would love to help start that.. just so much to think about and organize and I have my hands MORE than full with preschool right now. I do hope that can come about though.
• Kevin's company continues to depress me and make me angry. They keep pulling junk on him.. the latest is that he has to work Saturdays for the rest of the year. He will get "compensated" for these work days (he has to work 6 Saturdays to get 4 extra vacation days) but doesn't get the vacation days until the later half of NEXT year.. WHAT??????????? (We are praying he has a new job before then, which means he won't even get to use those extra days!) ON TOP OF ALL THAT, they've already ruined Thanksgiving and Christmas.. making everyone work right after those dates to do inventory, which means nobody can be off or travel to see family. Kevin's mom's family is having this big reunion thing in MS and we wanted to go, but it's not going to happen. Which again, sticks. Sorry to be negative.. just reality right now.

Guess that's all for now...

Some results...

Had my "upper half" checked out this morning via ultrasound and all is clear. So, definitely a praise! They think it's just dense tissue and not even a cyst. Still working on all the other stuff and the next to tackle is the GI issues. I don't see a GI specialist until Nov 21, but in the meantime, some stronger acid-reflux meds have been helping, although not completely fixing the problem of pain in my stomach/chest area. After a recent conversation with a girl in the Monday night Bible study I attend, I think it could possibly be a hiatal hernia and/or ulcer. So, hopefully all that will be discovered and diagnosed soon. Thanks to anyone/everyone who has prayed!

Saturday mornings

For the past 2 Saturday mornings, we have enjoyed the downtown area. It started with last Saturday when, after trying to decide what to have for breakfast, Kevin said, "We should go downtown and just walk around and get breakfast at one of the coffee places." I said okay (to his disbelief since I like to be lazy on Saturday mornings and hang around the house) and off we went.

What fun we have had! And, of course, being that we're outside, Stone has LOVED it. The first week, the weather was still at that perfect temp---what I call the 70's. Not a cloud in the sky and just perfect. We made our way down to the river, where, to our dismay, Stone decided to take a plunge. Yep, that's right, he ended up in the river! Mind you, this wasn't planned (and for those of you who don't live here, we aren't even allowed to be on the rocks that jut out into the river or be in the river to swim, etc.) Here's what happened... Stone kept pointing at the water and wanting to go near it. Kevin took him down to the water's edge (as you can see from the last picture, the big rocks jut out into the river, so Kevin went out slightly onto the rocks). I was back a little ways with the stroller which had all our stuff and my purse, so I didn't want to stray too far. I was also digging out the camera to take what I thought would be an awesome picture of the 2 of them on the riverbank. Before I could get my act together, I remember yelling at Kevin to watch Stone. Before Kevin could turn around, Stone had walk off the edge of one of the rocks, slipped and fell into edge of the river. He didn't go under (like plunge), just kind of slipped and fell.. enough to get him drenched save for his head. Of course, he started wailing, from the fall and from Kevin picking him up and fast moving him onto the grass. I was upset because now Stone was freezing from the water and because he had his brand new shoes on (which weren't cheap) and they got soaked as well.

Thankfully, there was a public restroom close by and I had a change of clothes. The only thing I didn't have were a change of socks and shoes, so he had to go barefoot the rest of our trip! Ha! He didn't care, he just wanted back into the water. Now, this is the same kid who won't get on the inflatable blow-up things or ride a little caterpillar train ride at the fall festival, but will plunge into a river and the ocean!! Funny kid. This past Saturday, we enjoyed another morning downtown, even though it was a little cooler. The Farmer's Market was there and we also played in some fountains by letting Stone throw some pennies in them. He thought that was cool.

Here are some pics from the first Saturday we ventured out. The first 2 are from him looking out over the river and before the plunge.



After the plunge, barefoot, and at a little children's garden called Linky Stone Park. We thought it was neat that it was named after our little Stone. (not!!)


A picture of the river downtown.