Mood Swings

I don't know if it's pregnancy hormones, or what, but something is giving me some serious mood swings lately! My latest example, last night I was feeling so overwhelmed with my to-do list, primary calling, my seemingly never ending list of household chores, special projects etc. that I was full-on crying and venting to Justin before we went to sleep. (It probably didn't help that it was 10:30 at night, but still)

This morning, after coming home from visiting teaching, I knew I should start making dinner before my piano students came so I would only have to pop it in the oven later. I'd planned to try out a new recipe, so it took a little longer than normal to make. Btu I still had fun. Once I had one batch of Spinach Chicken Enchiladas in the pan ready to bake, and another batch in a freezer bag for another day, I decided that wasn't enough...

I had some blueberries and blackberries in the fridge that were on the verge of going bad. I thought, "Hmmmm, what can I do with these?... They'd probably be really yummy with cheesecake"... Apparently I didn't get over the fact that we didn't get any at the Cheesecake Factory the other night.

So for the first time in my life, I baked a cheesecake. But not just any cheesecake; low-fat, triple-berry swirl cheesecake. (I mixed some homemade strawberry jam into the blueberries and blackberries to make it triple-berry) It is now sitting on the counter cooling and it smells soooo delicious... We're gonna be eating gooood tonight!

I'm like a different person than I was yesterday! It's exhausting! (Although, today, super yummy will also be a side effect)

And just because she's so dang cute, here's Carrie (who wanted to put only panties back on after a bathroom trip earlier) reading a book to herself. I love it when she does that! She's so cute making up the stories from the bits and pieces she remembers me reading to her.

Date Night!

Thanks to our babysitting co-op, tonight was date night!! We always go to the same restaurants and wanted to mix it up a bit tonight. We had some movie passes for Harkins so I did a general search around the Chandler Harkins for new restaurants for us to try out. We decided on Cheesecake Factory, yummy!

After super gooey-cheesy chicken quesdillas, a BBQ burger with onion rings on it and sweet potato fries, we were faaar too stuffed for cheesecake. It was kind of a shame, but we had a movie time to make.

We saw "This Means War", and it was just what I was looking for! A little action, comedy, and romance... It's about two CIA agents /partners/best friends who discover they've both started dating the same woman. As they "duke it out", they use all their spy resources and gadgets to try to be the winning guy. It was really fun! A great date night movie. :)

To semi-compensate for not getting cheesecake, we stopped at Yogurt Jungle on the way home for some peanut butter ice cream and oreos.... mmmm, so decadent....

I love date night!

And just because it's been a little while, here's my latest belly pic. Taken this morning, 18 weeks :)

New Rugs!

It makes me feel old to be so excited about new rugs, but I really am! My old ones were rag-rugs and were horribly faded and literally falling apart from the several times I've washed them. It's been one of those things on my to-buy wish list for a while, but I always either forgot when I was at the store or couldn't justify spending the money. But no more! I got two new kitchen rugs today and I LOVE them! It's the simple things in life....

Horrible Wonderful Movie

Happy President's Day! For our day off we thought it would be fun to go see a movie. There really isn't anything out in theaters right now that's very exciting for kids, so we searched the dollar theater's showings. We picked "The Muppets". I was pretty excited about it. We had wanted to see it when it came out, but never got around to it. When we got to the mall, that movie and several other kid-friendly options were totally sold out! It was super crowded! I don't know why I didn't think ahead that everybody had the day off school and the movies would be overflowing....

So we headed back home and just hung out until dinner. We had a BBQ with the Beeson's for Porter's birthday and gathered at my parents' house to watch the movie "Courageous". I hadn't heard of it before, but that's probably because it wasn't ever in theatres, it just came straight out on dvd.

Holy cow! It was horribly wonderful! I describe it that way because it's a huge tear jerker, but with a wonderful message and storyline. I don't know quite how to describe it, so I'll let the "back of the box" describe it for me. Everyone should definitely see this movie. Definitely. It will make you want to be a better person.

Honor Begins at Home

Four men, one calling: To serve and protect. As law enforcement officers, Adam Mitchell, Nathan Hayes, David Thomson, and Shane Fuller are confident and focused. Yet at the end of the day, they face a challenge that none of them are truly prepared to tackle: fatherhood.

While they consistently give their best on the job, good enough seems to be all they can muster as dads. But they're quickly discovering that their standard is missing the mark.

When tragedy hits home, these men are left wrestling with their hopes, their fears, their faith, and their fathering. Can a newfound urgency help these dads draw closer to God ... and to their children?

Filled with action-packed police drama, COURAGEOUS is the fourth film from Sherwood Pictures, the moviemaking ministry of Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Georgia. Viewers will once again find themselves laughing, crying, and cheering as they are challenged and inspired by everyday heroes who long to be the kinds of dads that make a lifelong impact on their children.

Protecting the streets is second nature to these men. Raising their children in a God-honoring way? That's courageous.

As I was google searching to find the description, I discovered this movie is made by the same people who made the movie "Fireproof", a story tying the fireman's motto "never leave your partner behind" into the every dealings in a marriage. I remember hearing about that one, but I never saw it. Now I'm definitely going to.

Our New Car! Hallelujah!

After almost a year sharing one car, we've finally gotten a second one again! I'm so excited to have my van back! *If you remember back to last year, my first car from high school that Justin had been driving seriously threatened to drop its transmission. It being a 1994, wasn't nearly worth the cost of fixing, so we sold it to a junk yard. It was a sad day*

Back to the present, with a combo of tax return and some help from Justin's student loans we could afford to get another car! It's a gold '03 Hyundai Elantra, four door, automatic, sunroof... I think it was a good learning experience to go with only one car for a while, but I'm glad that lesson is over now. I totally took for granted being able to run to the store if I needed to, or having a quick air-conditioned drive to the park rather than the long, long walk on super hot days.

The best part was we only had to car-shop for about 5 hours from starting to look around, finding several cars we didn't like, finding the one we did like, and exchanging money for title.

We had planned on it taking more than one day so we had planned to spend the weekend at my parents for the ease of access to most of the cars for sale in the valley and around the clock babysitters.

As I went to post about it, I realized I don't have a picture of it! Justin had to work this morning and he took his new car, and the Craigslist ad is already deleted! So, sorry! We'll try to catch a picture soon!

Therefore, here's Carrie trying to climb a tree in my parents backyard early this morning (yes, she's in her pajamas)

Step one: put one foot up

Step two: jump the other foot up and hold on tight!

Step three: pull your body up, turn around, and say cheese

Step four: climb even higher (with help from a grown-up) and be so proud of yourself you give a beautiful beaming smile

Isn't Technology Wonderful?

It's been a full week since my phone has been able to receive any text messages. Of course, I didn't realize this for a long time. I just thought the few people I'd texted hadn't texted me back. Turns out, they did, I just didn't receive them. So then they wondered why I wasn't texting them back... Goodness gracious!

Occasionally my phone just won't even ring at all and I'll suddenly have a voicemail. Or voicemails won't come through at all! The only reason I know they should have been there is if I end up talking to that person face to face, and they ask if I got their voicemail. Arrrggh!

And then there are the times when for no reason at all, my phone will just shut off on its own... Not out of battery or anything, just... shuts off and turns itself back on...

What good is having a phone when nobody can reach you through it?! I don't know what's going on, but trust me, while we're up in town this weekend, I'm going into the store and I'm going to find out!!

The Day of Love

Happy Valentines Day everyone! I feel like I've been horrible lately at doing cute holiday things with Carrie and yesterday I actually got out of my bah-humbug funk! We made heart shaped sugar cookies together!
When I was a kid, I loved helping my mom cook or bake, and I know Carrie already loves it too. Sometimes it's just easier to do it myself! Baking with kids takes a long time and can get messy! This time, however, I sucked it up and had her help me scoop the sugar, crack the eggs, mix with the beaters etc. I even felt super proud of myself for throwing in a "teaching" moment about counting/adding. (It went something like: "The recipe says we need three eggs. If we already put in two, how many do we still need?...")

Don't you love the random crown she's wearing? It's leftover from her birthday party and makes appearances in her wardrobe several times a week.

We had so many cookies that even after saving some for ourselves, we took a few plates to some friends, and sent some with Justin to work. They were really really good :)

When Justin came home from work he had a surprise for both me and Carrie. Carrie got a chocolate rose (which she pronounces "roe-zin") and I got a bag of Ghirardelli chocolates, some vanilla bean and some dark chocolate with strawberry filling. Lucky for us, Justin likes the vanilla ones and I like the dark chocolate strawberry ones! We were meant to be together! ;)

Tonight, we shared a babysitter with the Carpenters and Justin and I got to have a double date with Eli and Cori at Applebees! The food was delicious, as always, but the real perk (for me at least) was they had a caricature artist in the waiting-to-be-seated-area doing free drawings courtesy of the restaurant! We waited until after we ate to go see him and were told he was supposed to have been "off" for the night five minutes before! :( My face must have looked excited enough and then sad enough, that he stayed anyways and we were the last couple he drew! Whew!! I'm so excited we got such a cute picture! And for free! That's always awesome!

Overall we had a wonderful Valentines Day celebrating with the people we love!

Massive Grocery Shopping!

For the last little while, I've been slowly driven crazy by my dwindling supply of pantry essentials. It seemed like every time I went to make spaghetti, I had to go buy a new jar of spaghetti sauce; because I'd only buy one at a time.... The same idea goes for canned goods, pasta, cake mixes, cream-of soups etc. Every time I went grocery shopping I'd have to buy everything the recipe called for because I had nothing already stocked up.

When we were first married we got a few "food storage" things and had them stacked up in our closet. We'd slowly use them, and occasionally as we lived in our two apartments since Carrie's been born we'd do a little light stocking up (In one apartment, our food storage got stacked in the the extra shower). When we moved into our house (almost two years ago), we finally had a big pantry and all the food we owned fit in it. So once we worked our way through the pantry, there was no other "stockpiled" supply hidden somewhere else in the house.

Last night I finally did something about it. I went up and down every aisle in Walmart grabbing 6-8 of everything. Tuna, peanut butter, ranch, soup, crackers, pasta, rice, bbq sauce, oatmeal, mac 'n' cheese, toilet paper, shampoo.... You name it... I loaded up one cart until I couldn't possibly fit anything else in it and was only about half way done with my list. So I pushed it up to customer service and asked if they could watch it for me. I proceeded to do the same with a second full cart. The customer service girl actually let out a little laugh when I shoved my second heaping cart up...

They opened up a checkout lane just for me and $417 later.... (Mega ouch on the price category!! I wasn't expecting it to be quite that bad! Good thing it's tax refund season!) By the time it got bagged and re-stacked in the carts, it took three carts to haul it all out. Luckily they got someone to help me take it all out and load it into my van. The nice thing is now, for the next several months, the only thing I'll have to shop for are perishables and maybe the rare obscure pantry item I happened to not pick up on my massive trip.

I spent 2 1/2 hours at the store and with tons of help from Justin spent one hour unloading and reorganizing our pantry. (Even though I didn't get home from the store until 11pm) I'm so incredibly pleased with the final result that I took a picture. Of my pantry...

Boring, but Good

I had a boring regular old doctor's appointment today. It was nice. :) They found the baby's heartbeat on the first try with the doppler, my blood pressure was good, and there was basically nothing left to do but schedule my next appointment.... For the ULTRASOUND! Woohoo!! We're so excited for it! March 1st, be on the lookout for an exciting post!!

from last weekend- 15 weeks

Is She Canadian?!

Around here, we're big "How I Met Your Mother" fans. There's an ongoing joke among the characters about Canadians (the character Robin is from Canada). The basic premise of the joke is that Canadians are too nice. If you bump into them, they're the one to apologize, even if it was obviously your fault.

Lately, we've been wondering if Carrie is secretly Canadian... A few examples...

This afternoon my mom came over, just to visit and hang out for a little while. As she was leaving, Carrie and I were standing on the driveway waving goodbye. My mom slowly swerved a bit as she was backing up, to avoid scraping her car against the low tree branches hanging over our driveway. Therefore, in the process of turning into the street, her front tire drove over the corner of the rocks in the yard.

Carrie saw it, snicker-gasped, raised her hand in the air with a single wave, and yelled, "Sorry 'bout that!"

I almost started laughing out loud! She had the right idea, but it should have been my mom doing that, not Carrie! It was hilarious!

The cuter, more sensitive story though, happened earlier in the day. For whatever reason this morning I was in a particularly crabby mood and Carrie did something that made me snap at her. She sulked off, but a few minutes later came back over to me and said quietly, "Mommy.... I'm so sorry that you yelled at me...."

This time I was stifling both a laugh and an "awwwwe". All I could say back was, "I'm sorry too sweetie". She reached up to give me a hug and said, "I love you so much...".....

I LOVE moments like this. Even if she was a little bit confused ;)

Weekend Full of Friends

Obviously today was the Superbowl, but I'll get to that in a minute.

Last night it was our turn to host our babysitting co-op. We have 4 families for a total of 9 kids. We each babysit all of them once a month and then get three weekends of babysitting for free! It ended up that two families worth of kids were sick yesterday so it was just going to be Carrie and another family. Their parents decided to drop their kids off, grab dinner by themselves, and then come back to our house to play board games! Basically it was like we didn't even have to babysit and we got a nice double date with our friends!

After church, I made these delicious caramel-filled snickerdoodles for our friends Superbowl gathering.


Yes, they're as delicious as they look!

We got together with the Carpenters and Hands and ate all sorts of yummy appetizer-type foods and treats. And enjoyed watching football of course! It's been a long weekend, but full of fun and friends!