Crazy 8's

Something a little different...we'll start with a picture then you can read my ramblings ;-). I like this one, it shows his true toddler-ness coming thru....he's fighting me to go and I'm smiling with a death grip on him 

Because I like knowing this weird stuff about others, thought I would share....plus I was "tagged" by a friend to do it. I don't have enough to fill all the lists, so I'll just do as much as I can.

8 TV Shows I Watch Regularly:

1. The Office

2. 30 Rock

3. The Soup

4. The Girls Next Door - So embarrassed to admit this one!

4. The Unit - T-rav's favorite

5. The Wiggles - B-rat's favorite (that's the new gang name Travis gave him ;-))

6. Sesame Street

7.

8.

8 Favorite Restaurants: You'll notice a pattern here...

1. Mi Cocina

2. Uncle Julio's

3. El Rancho Grande

4. Rio Grande

5. Eddohana Sushi

6. Jason's Deli

7.

8.

8 Things that happened Today: Keep in mind it's only 8 am on Sunday morning

1. Jackson woke up at 5:30 in pain from his molars cutting, so I gave him some tylenol, some milk, a little pumpkin muffin and then rocked him back to sleep

2. loaded the dishwasher

3. finished my BSF (Bible Study Fellowship) lesson for Jan 7...

4. synced irene with the laptop (Irene is the iphone)

5. checked the freezing temps outside

6. started this list

7.

8.

8 Things I look Forward to:

1. Going to church this morning - Chris Freeland is preaching...he's been equipped with the gift to teach, that is for sure

2. Our 1st Christmas at home as a family - just the 3 of us!!

3. getting christmas picture cards in the mail

4. coffee

5. BSF starting again on Jan 7

6. selling our house 

7. finding the next house on some acreage

8. the next little addition to our family

8 Things I Wish/Pray For:

1. for JT to know the Lord at a young age and not follow the patterns of this world

2. a good immune system for JT as he grows up

3. healthy development for Jackson as he grows up

4. for Jackson's wife to be a believer

5. Travis to have success and satisfaction with his work

6. for Jackson's teeth to hurry up and get here (he's crying again)

7. for me to be a compassionate person (I struggle with that horribly)

8. for all my family and friends to know Christ as their personal saviour

8 People I Tag:

1. How about just anyone who feels like sharing

2.

3.

4.

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6.

7.

8.

I'm completely stealing this...

This is totally ripped off from a newspaper column. It was written by Carolyn Hax of The Washington Post and is called "Tell Me About It", so I cited my so, don't call the plagiarism police on me.

by the way it has taken me three different 10 min occasions to get this typed up, because I was being distracted by my helper ;-)

WHY DON'T FRIENDS WITH KIDS HAVE TIME?

Dear Carolyn: Best friend has child. Her: exhausted, busy not time for self, not time for me, etc. Me (no kids): What'd you do today? Her: Park, play group... OK, I've talked to parents. I don't get it. What do stay-at-home moms do all day? Please no list of library, grocery store, dry cleaners...I do all those things, too. I guess what I'm asking is: What is a typical day and why don't moms have time for a call or e-mail? I work and am away from home nine hours a day (plus a few late work events). I manage to get all it done. I'm feeling like the kid is an excuse to relax and enjoy, but if so, why won't my friend tell me the truth? Is this a contest ("my life is so much harder than yours")? What's the deal? I've got friends with and without kids and all us child free folks have the same questions.
-Tacoma, Washington

Dear Tacoma: Relax and enjoy. You're funny.
Or, you're lying about having friends with kids.

Or you're taking them at their word that they actually have kids, because you haven't personally been in the same room with them.

I keep wavering between giving you a straight answer and giving my forehead some keyboard. To claim you want to understand, while in the same breath implying that they only logical conclusions are that your mom-friends are either lying or competing with you, is disingenuous indeed.

So, because it's validation you seem to want, the real answer is what you get. When you have young kids, your typical day is: constant attention, from getting them out of bed, fed, cleaned, dressed; to keeping them out of harm's way; to answering their coos, cries, questions; to having two arms and carrying one (or more) kid, one set of car keys, and supplies for even the quickest of trips, including the latest-to-be-declared-essential piece of molded plastic gear; to keeping them from un-shelving books at the library; to enforcing rest time, to staying one step ahead of them lest they get too hungry, tired or bored, any of which produces checkout-line screaming

It's needing 45 mins to do what takes others 15.

It's constant vigilance, constant touch, constant use of your voice, constant relegation of your needs to the second tier.

It's constant scrutiny and second-guessing from family and friends. It's resisting constant temptation to seek short-term relief at everyone's long-term expense.

It's doing this while con-currently teaching virtually everything-language, manners, safety, resourcefulness, discipline, curiosity, creativity. Empathy. Everything.

It's also a choice (to stay-at-home), yes. And a joy. But if you spent all day, everyday, with this brand of joy, and then, when you got your first 10 mins to yourself, wanted to be alone with your thoughts instead of calling a good friend, a good friend wouldn't judge you, complain about you or marvel how much more productively she uses her time. Either make a sincere effort to understand, or keep your snit to yourself.

Hmm?

Do I steal someones writing style because I find it way more interesting than mine? Is it wrong? She doesn't know me and I only know of her by stumbling onto her blog....that justifies it right?! ;-) It's not plagiarism if I don't actually steal her words! Or maybe I've already stolen it a little and am just slowly going to itch my blogs to look more like hers....hmmm....good idea!

Meantime, I was cooking dinner last night and my laptop was open on the counter. The screensaver came on and there were the cutest pictures of the cutest baby in the world....8 months ago. I had forgotten just how chunky his little thighs were, which he since has walked most all of it off. It was nice to have that sweet little moment, despite that fact that it was brought on by the trusty silver laptop.

An apology and some pictures

I need to make an apology to all the working moms that I know and may read this blog. When I mentioned before that you couldn't make any excuses about not having time to cook, well I was wrong. I tend criticize most things that I truly don't understand, which is the time constraints at home for a working mom. I'm truly sorry for that comment, I hope ya'll can look past it and forgive me.

Here's some recent pictures....

I wish he would smile on command...he's starting to show his toddler side

He'll smile for the camera every time if he has his checks stuffed with food!
A glimpse of the future....making deals and working for a livin! It was so cute, he thought the mouse was a phone
Trying to hang up the phone
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Just in case you can't make it by the Kinley's for a Christmas tree light tour, here's a shot of it....

JT's little friend Benjamin giggling at Copper...his mommy and daddy need to get him a doggy too!
Baby Austin sits up now!!! This is JT's future hunting buddy

A new found love...

That's right I have a new love in my life and I think some of you will be in total shock when you find out....I love to cook! WHAT!? To be truthful, it's been coming on for a while, maybe 6 or 7 months, but it's a full blown love at this point.

Those who have known me for a long time, know that me and the kitchen didn't used to get along. I think my biggest hang up was that I hated the kitchen getting messy. I ate salads a lot or cereal for dinner so it just was hassle that my husband preferred a bigger dinner than what my palate craved. Well, the Lord works in mysterious ways, and my love for cooking being the weirdest of em all. I also found that if you surround yourself with ladies that make great things, you get to copy their recipes and then when you know what you are about to make is going to turn out super good and most of the time super healthy to boot....well who can't get excited about that?

My greatest recent find...well actually I can't take full credit, my friend Brooke told me about the cookbook and then my awesome sister-in-law got it for me for Christmas (hey, hey don't even say it, I knew what it was and when it arrived I just decided that my baby needed to start eating some new varieties of healthy food ASAP and I called to tell her that I opened so it doesn't count against me ;-)) OK so what is this great find you ask? It's an awesome cookbook called Deceptively Delicious and let me tell ya these are GREAT recipes. It's by Jessica Seinfield (yes, Jerry's wife) and she figured out how to secretly get her kiddos to eat their veggies in most of the foods they were already eating. For example, I just finished baking my first batch of muffins from this book. They are called Peanut Butter & Banana muffins...seems pretty harmless right? Well in the ingredients it calls for 1/2 cup of pureed cauliflower!! I just tasted one and let me tell ya, these suckers are pretty darn good. I do have to say that Yes it is extra work to steam and puree the veggies, but I am telling you...in my new found love of cooking, I am LOVING every step. Plus I steamed a whole head of cauliflower, a couple red bell peppers and some broccolli, then pureed them and stored them and it took maybe 45 mins at most from start to finish. Plus I didn't use all the puree so I can freeze it and use some more for later in another recipe. Even Travis likes the food that I've made from the cookbook. I've only had it since Friday and I've already made about 4 things from it, all of which Travis thought was pretty good. He was really shocked to find out that there were some "added ingredients". The best part is our worst critic aka JT loves it too. He's scarfed down so many veggies the past 3 days and has no idea, he just keeps putting those little fingers together to make the sign for "more".

This book would make a fabulous Christmas present to a ton of moms this year. And if you're a working mom, don't think "I don't have time for that" she has some great time saving tips. Nowadays, it's cheaper and so much healthier to just eat at home, so if you're going to be cooking anyway, why not make em something that is so super good and so super healthy. That way when you do have to make a pit stop at the fast food joint (come on this is real life, we all do it from time to time. Our fav is Chick-fil-A), you won't feel quite as bad. ;-)

Oh and I'm making Travis his favorite tomorrow.....Brownies, but he doesn't know that it will be laced with spinach and carrots.....ooooo....ha, ha, ha! Here's a link to the Brownie recipe that is on Oprah.com (Brownies, mm,mm, good!) I'm not a fan of Oprah, but she does have some great things on her show. So I remind myself to not dislike the message just because I don't care for the messanger ;-)

Oh and one more thing, I use butter instead of margarine as she suggests...it's a personal thing, I don't think margarine is good for you, just because their is nothing natural about it and it has a shelf life of forever.....clearly strange!

I'm telling ya, ya'll need to run out and get this book, it's great!!!!!!

C

What's new?

We've had a very busy few weeks. First all Crissy's grandparents came from Wyoming to visit us for Thanksgiving. It was AWESOME having them here. I (Crissy) was able to run errands, get my hair done and even go to a movie on Thanksgiving with Travis....all with out having to arrange for or better yet, pay for a babysitter. If you are one of the many parents of young kids that has family in the same town as you, count your blessings and call and thank your family for their help. A girl sure could get used to having that convenience. On the other hand I'm very very very grateful for all the great friends that I have here that I know would watch JT in a second if I called them. The only problem is they have small babies too, so I have to take JT to them....not complaining, it's just convenient to have the babysitter at my house, ya know.

Jackson wanted to take grandma & grandpa (or as JT calls them "MeMe & Babo") to the zoo and show them some of his favorite animals. My grandpa loves zoos and my grandma loves being with her grandkids, so they were up for any fun I planned. Here's some great pictures...

Feeding time at the zoo....this was a goat at the petting zoo in the Texas Wild portion of the zoo. The Ft Worth Zoo is huge and this is just a small section of it. Jackson loved being able to get that close to the animals
I'm so cute and adorable I can get the ol folks to climb in and out of an old coach wagon with me
This way MeMe and Babo....follow me I know where we're going
Me and mommy
On the other side of this fence is the horses....my new favorite animal. I know how to make the sign and when someone asks me what a horse says, I say..."eeeeeee"
Instead of the stroller we borrowed this car from my friend Jenny.....he LOVES this thing and will ride in it forever
Riding the Yellow Rose train back to the front of the zoo. It was a long day and I had wore the ol folks out, so we rode the train back
Waiting for Babo to finish putting on his walking shoes so we could go for a drive in my car down the street. My que to the ol folks that I want to drive my car is sit in it and whine and they come a runnin.....a kid could get used to this
Um....it ain't gonna push it's self ya'll

The day after Thanksgiving the grandparents headed back to Wyoming and we started getting the Christmas decorations out. We got the inside decked out on Friday and then Saturday Travis and Jackson put up the outside lights. When Sunday rolled around we were ready for our fun filled one night family vacation to the Great Wolf Lodge! If you have never heard of the Great Wolf Lodge then you need to go the website and check it out. It is a kid focused resort with a GINORMOUS indoor waterpark. The baby pool is the size of our house and it's got 3 slides just in it alone with a beach entry, plus a huge wave pool, lazy river, splash fun house for bigger kids, agility course and 5 HUGE water slides for the biggest kids...aka the parents. Let's just say that the mommy and daddy had just as much fun as Jackson
Jackson pointing to the HUGE Christmas tree in the lobby of the hotel. That thing had to be about 60 feet tall and beautiful
This picture doesn't even do it justice. You can see the water fun house and little of one of the slides to the left, but this was only about a 1/4 of it. These windows over look the water park from the lobby where you check in....great tactic to get the kids all excited and ready to go
Splashin in the wave pool before the waves came. Right before the waves start rolling out you'll hear a wolf howl out....Jackson thought that was awesome.
Jumpin a wave with daddy. The beach entry made it feel like you were really at the beach and the water was so warm as well as the air temperature
This was on Sunday night, because of all the windows in there it was a little darker than during the day, which made the pictures dark. 
After swimming for a few hours we went and changed and then headed back to the lobby to meet Santa. Jackson was very interested in looking at him but not actually touching him. He also wouldn't take his eyes off of him....it's a trust thing, I struggle with the same thing :-)

Our friends Brooke, Ben and their son Abram went with us. It was great having some other adults there to watch Jackson so Travis and I could go down the big slides, which by the way were so cool. Ben is our friend that just returned from serving in Iraq. It was fun to get to hang out with him and Brooke. Abram is 2 even though he looks like he's 3 or 4....I call him "tank"
Playing on the stairs...so much fun!
Every night they have an interactive story time at the clock in the huge lobby. Here's JT and daddy watching the show
There was some songs involved so of course JT had to jump up and dance....that kid loves music
Back home again. I went to go check on him and he was sitting in his room reading a book. I love that he has a love for books so early. He will run to his room and bring a book out to you for you to read to him....it's so cute

What I've learned this past week

Well actually I learned this a week and 1/2 ago, but I almost did it again yesterday so I thought I would share. I find it funny, well because I like to laugh at myself I guess, makes life a little lighter and fun!

So the first time it happened was last Wednesday, which is the one of 2 days during the week that I have to be out of my house by 8:45 am. I'm a morning person, but I don't like having to get anywhere right away. I like being able to give my baby breakfast and then us playing in our p.j.'s in the backyard for a few hours (well he plays and I rake leaves....Will they ever stop falling?!) OK so I'll set the scene for you. The mommy was being lazy the night before and didn't get our lunches ready and JT's school bag packed with his essentials so of course I'm trying to get that done, plus feed the baby breakfast and get myself ready all with in an hours time.....next to impossible I might add. So finally I get us all packed into the car ready to go (of course we're running late) and I start the car and hit the garage door opener. Well if you ask me they should but a faster motor on those things for people like me :-) because when I thought the door was up far enough for my car to pass under I put it in reverse and.....boom, creeeeek, silence.....that's right I backed right into the bottom part of our garage door as it was coming up and it drug across the top of the back of the car....nice. Oh wait it gets better....so my first thought was "did I just knock the door off it's roller? and "it's going to fall on top of the car" followed with "I better hurry and try and get out of the way of it falling" (the doors are the original ones from 1976, are wood and weigh about 200 lbs, so the thought of it landing on top of me and Jackson in the car was flashing fearfully through my mind). So in my attempt to protect my precious baby in the car I hurry and put it in drive and tap the gas with my foot....umm wrong thing to do with the Honda!! You see this little CRV may be just a 4-cyl but she's got ump like you wouldn't believe. I have to be careful because if I step on it off of lights I'll end up peeling out....I love that little car! Anyway, so in my fear I tap the gas with my foot and the car leaps forward about 6 ft and Bam!.... smacks the fridge that we have in the garage....what a nice finish, I think! I hop out of the car and check the damage.....garage door still on runners and won't fall on car....check......fridge door slightly dented with a mark of green from the car.....check.....front bumper has a little smudge.....check.....top back of car....not quite as good as the rest.....really bad scratches all along the edge from the garage door scraping against it.

I get back in the car and think "did I just dream this?, did this really happen?" I look in the back seat at 2 little sparking blue eyes staring back at me with confusion (I figure that look will appear a lot over the next few years...hey, he has Crissy for a mommy, you can't blame the kid) and think to myself....SLOW DOWN, this could have turned out so much worse. So I call Travis to tell him that the car and the garage door got in a fight in which the garage door won and I was just an innocent by stander, and he tells me the same thing that I was thinking earlier....SLOW DOWN!! Then he started laughing at the thought of all this happening, which by that point I had found it pretty humorous too, so we had a good laugh together.

The best part was when I finally got to BSF, part of the lecture was about delegating responsibility because we can't do it all and one of the reasons we delegate responsibility is so the family can be on time for things and not always running late. Wow, it still amazes me how God does know every intimate detail of our lives....especially my habit of running late. I have since asked Travis to help lay out Jackson's clothes for me and pack his backpack for school the night before and STRIVE to be out the door at least 20 mins (better if it's 30 mins) before I have to be somewhere. That way I don't have to be trying to slip under the garage door to buy an extra 20 seconds or making Jackson feel rush and panicky because we are late. I plan to change this horrible habit that started young for me and I don't want my son to pick up on it and then be like his mommy....the one everyone is always waiting on. I know it will be a struggle and that I will still be late a few times, but if I keep striving eventually it will be a habit to be on time. I've already started this habit for Sundays long before the garage incident, but I have help on Sundays, so I need to do it without the extra set of arms.

So just picture me playing bumper cars with the garage door and the fridge and you might just get a giggle too!

Here's a few pictures just cause....

I love apples
Want some mommy?