New Year, New Me

I gave up making formal and specific New Years' Resolutions years ago.  I do, however, come up with general ideas of ways to improve myself around this time of year.

This year's general idea is to be better to myself.

We're trying to eat better this year, little by little.  Over the past few years, we've cut out many processed foods, but this year we're going to take it a bit further.  To start off the year right, I made brown rice to go with gumbo and the kids not only didn't complain, but they didn't even notice.  This is a miracle.  And Evan has decided that he'll now eat my new favorite breakfast:  homemade yogurt with fruit and homemade granola.  Now if I could just get the other two to eat it instead of the store-bought kind....

I've been toying with the idea of cutting out all corn products because I've read that helps with asthma and if we could cut back on Liam's daily nebulizer treatments, that would be absolutely awesome.  Have you noticed how corn and corn products are in absolutely everything?  We've been pretty good about avoiding high fructose corn syrup, but I've been on the hunt for a kids' daily vitamin without corn starch and am coming up empty.  Apparently corn starch "holds together" all the other stuff crammed into those little Flintstone people.  And then there's the Mexican food we like to eat - enchiladas, tacos, chips and salsa, all of which use corn tortillas.  I don't know that I can convince the kids to give up tacos.

I'm also trying to work on cutting negative people out of my life.  After a six week self imposed Facebook break, I decided that life is too short to put up with people who are mean-spirited or just plain ugly on the inside.  I cleaned up my "friends" list upon my return and decided to not subject myself to such people in real life if I could help it.  I quit one of my book groups (the one with the "Santa Claus is not Christian" lady).  Of course, I didn't come out and say that's why I was leaving; I just told them that I'm so busy I don't have as much time to read as I used to (which is true).  And when we were forced to spend part of our Christmas break with a relative who turned into a Grade A jerk during election season, I kept repeating my new mantra, "God give me strength to not stoop to their level" and ignored them as much as possible.  They ignored me as well and I'd say it worked out well for everyone involved.

Next on my agenda is to get back into yoga.  It's been years since I've had the opportunity to take a class and now that we've joined the local rec center and Evan is in pre-K, I just might get the chance.  I know I'm going to hurt after stretching some muscles that I forgot I had, but I also know I'm going to feel better in the long run.

After that.....well, who knows.  Maybe I'll start taking long bubble baths again.  Or maybe I'll buy myself another canister of the awesome cocoa mix we've been enjoying.

What do you do to pamper yourself?

Max's Post

Hi!  I'm Max!  According to the vet, I'm about a year old and some kind of shepherd/basset hound mix.

I got my new family right after Christmas and I am so excited to be with them.  For a while, I was a stray dog who managed to survive on my own, but then some nice people found me and took care of me for a month or so.  They lived in an apartment and would let me swim in their lake retention pond every day.  I loved it there, but they decided that since they were in college, they couldn't really afford to take care of me and feed themselves, so I had to find a new home.

The mom of the person who found me posted my picture on a neighborhood information board and The Lady saw it and thought I was cute.  One day, The Lady, The Man, The Girl, The Big Boy and The Small Boy came to play with me at my apartment and decided to let me come live with them.

I was nervous at first.  Their house smelled weird and they gave me new food to eat.  I was quiet and shy at first; I only barked a few times the first week that I lived with them.  But then I got braver and started to play with them, especially The Girl, who always takes me on my walks and The Big Boy who seems to have just as much energy as I do.

I like to sit under the table when they're eating their meals and I keep waiting for them to give me a bite of whatever smells so yummy, but they never do.  I like to follow them around, too.  The Lady says I'm like a toddler, whatever that is.  They won't let me in their bedrooms which is a shame because they look like they have lots of fun things to chew in there, but I can go wherever I want in the rest of the house and that's nice.  And they like for me to spend the night in my crate, but that's OK, too, because they give me treat and some toys to play with.

The Girl seems to like me the most.  She pets me a lot and doesn't even mind picking up my poop when we go for walks.  She likes to boss me around and The Man says that it's good that her bossiness is now focused on someone other than her brothers.  The Girl doesn't like it when I howl along to her piano playing, though.  I'm sure she thinks whatever she's playing sounds pretty, but to me it just sounds like noise.

The Big Boy likes to give me my food and my treats.  Of the three Little People, I think he's going to be my best playmate because he's rough like me.  He doesn't like it when I give him little nips, though.

The Small Boy doesn't play with me all that much because I used to make his eyes all puffy and watery.  He keeps saying the word "allergy" and I don't know what that means, but after The Lady gave The Small Boy some medicine before bed, The Small Boy felt better.  The Small Boy calls me "sweet boy" and will throw my ball, but doesn't pet me a lot because of the "allergy".

The Man isn't home very much, but when he is, he's nice to me.  Unless I dig a big hole in the back yard and then he's not so happy.  When The Lady and the The Three Little People came home late one evening, The Man fed me my dinner and took me for a walk.  He even brought me a new bed to relax on.  I think he's warming up to me.

The Lady is home more than anyone else and she's the one who feeds me breakfast and takes me for walks when The Girl goes to school.  The Lady lets me go outside and play in the back yard when it's not raining.  She usually vacuums when I'm out there which is good because the vacuum scares me.  The Lady also wipes my paws off when I come back in.  At first I didn't like that, but now I'm used to it and I automatically sit on my mat when I come in from the back yard.  I also didn't like it when she gave me a bath; she didn't look as though she liked it much, either.  I got her big bathroom nice and messy, but she said I was stinky and needed it.  When my tummy wasn't feeling too good (probably because I chewed up one of The Girl's jackets), The Lady gave me some homemade chicken broth.  I guess that means she kind of likes me even though I occasionally hear her mutter something about being a "cat person".

So far I've got a pretty easy life.  Two square meals a day (literally - my food is shaped in little squares), some toys to play with and people who mostly seem to like me.

I think I'm going to like it here.

Tap, Tap....Is This Thing On?

Anybody still out there?  Or has everyone deleted me from their blogrolls?  I wouldn't blame anyone who did, that's for sure.

So, um, yeah....it's been a while.  But I'm going to try to do better.  In fact, I think I'm going to try to emulate Andria and really try to post at least once a week this year.  Now that we have a new computer (yay!), it should be easier.  Well, maybe not easier, but at least a lot less frustrating.

I also thought I'd copy Andria and sum up our year in one post, especially since I didn't post anything for half of it.  Oops.

January - Sydney recovered from her tonsillectomy and Ryan had his terrible seizure-induced car accident.  I have no pictures of that; it's definitely not something I really want pictures of anyway.

February - We spent the month getting used to being a one driver household and began planning our backyard makeover.  We also celebrated Go Texan Day (the start of the Big City Livestock Show & Rodeo - yeehaw!):


(Cutest cowboy ever.)

March - A visit to fondue restaurant to celebrate my birthday and Spring Break antics, including pillow sumo wrestling:



April - Easter, Sydney's choir concert and our yearly bluebonnet photos:


(Believe it or not, this is the best one of the 20 or so that I took of the three of them)

May - Sydney's 9th birthday, the end of school and Evan's 4th birthday (with a light saber cake, of course):



June - Vacation Bible School, our annual trip to San Antonio, a quick trip to Schlitterbahn:



July - Another church camp, a loyal viewing of the Summer Olympics and our family olympics with a dozen events and medal ceremonies:


(Sydney during the long jump event.)

August - We were all excited that Ryan was able to drive again and school started back up.  Only I was excited about this, though.


(Liam's first day of Kindergarten.)

September - I agreed to become the Girl Scout Troop treasurer and the Children's Bell Choir Communication Coordinator (because I'm not busy enough already) and Liam started soccer:



October - A new computer, pumpkin patches and Halloween:


(This is Sydney as the Greek goddess Artemis.  Evan went as Spiderman and Liam went as Darth Vader.)

November - Liam's 6th birthday and a trip to Tennessee for Thanksgiving:



December - Christmas, Christmas, Christmas.  And a new dog named Max whose picture is still on my iPod.  I'm sure there will be plenty more in the future if we can get poor Evan's allergies under control and if I don't kill him because of all the chewing on things he's not supposed to chew (Max, that is, not Evan)!

So, that's our 2012.

My hope for 2013?  Contentment.

So far, we're off to a good start.

Voting Day

If you don't live in Texas, you probably had no idea that our primary elections were held today.  If you do live in Texas and didn't know that, please tell me where you live so I can move there to get away from the robo-calls, wasteful postal flyers and millions (not kidding!) of campaign signs that make our roadways look like they're covered in huge pieces of confetti.

When Ryan got home from work this afternoon, we loaded the kids up in the van to go vote.  Evan was only half paying attention when I told them where we were going.  His eyes lit up and he exclaimed, "We're going to get a boat?!?"  I wish, kid, I wish.


Despite the huge "I just got off work and I am grumpy" crowd, we managed to get in the building and  the kids did a great job of sticking close to us.  The boys accompanied Ryan to his voting booth and Sydney accompanied me to mine.  She's watched me vote before and understands the importance of it (hurray for the Voting badge for Girl Scouts!), and was convinced that I was going to let her turn the dials and push the buttons on the machine.

I informed her that she couldn't push the buttons until she was old enough to vote herself.  The election clerk overheard me and turned around to smile at us.  And then it dawned on me:  at the age of nine, Sydney is halfway to voting age.  Scary!

Anyway, all three kids got "I Voted" stickers and as crowded as it was, I'm glad we took them - modeling positive behavior and all that good stuff.

I just hope they weren't listening too closely when a woman promoting a candidate that I absolutely loathe approached us to encourage us to vote for said candidate.  My response to the woman was not exactly a model behavior.  ;)

What We've Been Up To

We have been so busy the last few weeks that I literally have not had time to sit down for more than a few minutes at a time.  We hosted Sydney's party, we had a crawfish boil the next week and then we hosted Evan's party (pictures coming soon!) the day after that.  All of the parties were successes, but the amount of prep time for them took up most of my free time.

We've also been redoing our backyard.  Ryan pulled up our deck and we installed this:



Before it looked like this,  however, we had to dismantle it in someone else's backyard and haul it to ours. We laid down nearly two pallets of grass, replaced several rotten boards and then I spent countless hours cleaning the play set and re-staining it.  Considering it's almost ten years old, I'd say it looks pretty good now.  Not too bad for a free play set, either!  (The previous owners were putting in a pool and said we could have it for free - all we had to do was get it out of their backyard.)

The deck was moved closer to our back door and while I don't have any pictures of it, I can tell you that it, too, looks pretty darn good for used wood.  We re-used the boards from the old deck and I sanded, cleaned and stained them, too.  We feel like Dave Ramsey would be proud of all of our home improvements - we only bought a few things to put a whole new back yard together!

The next project is my garden. Who knows when that will get done, though.....

In addition to all of this, we said goodbye to our tenant and started a search for another one.  We received lots of calls and we found our new tenant through my old play group in The Big City.  The new tenant would like to move in June 1st, so now that all of our parties and back yard renovations are over, we are now focused on getting the rental house repaired and cleaning up the yard.  There's nothing like spending countless hours cleaning and repairing a house and yard that you don't even get to live in!

We have managed to have some fun, though, throughout all of this chaos.  Ryan took the boys camping one weekend:





And we snuck in a trip to our neighbor's bay house and took a ride on their boat:







And found some time to relax:


(This is one of my favorite pictures of them - ever.)

Hopefully, our lives will get back to normal and I can start blogging regularly again.  I kind of miss it!

Flower Pot Party....

....or as Ryan called it - a Pot Party.  (I didn't think that was an appropriate title for a nine year old's party, though.)

For Sydney's birthday party, we had my painting teacher friend come over to teach Sydney and her friends how to paint flower pots.  The girls had a blast!



Sydney's finished product:



I had fun making the cake(s), too.  Ryan said I was channeling my inner Martha Stewart:





(It's chocolate cake baked into a flower pot with chocolate icing and crushed Oreos on top - yum!)

I paid attention to what my friend taught the girls and used the leftover cake pots to create end-of-year gifts for the boys' teachers.  Instead of filling with them with cake, though, I transplanted some of the mint from our herb garden into them.

Fun!

Friday Funnies

Look!  Posts two days in a row!  What is the world coming to?

A few funnies from the past couple of weeks....

...Evan and I went to a dollar store in search of cheap pool noodles for his upcoming birthday party.  We walked in and he said, "What is that smell?  Ew."  You know, he's right.  Why do all dollar/discount stores have a certain stench odor to them?

...We were watching a dvr'd Austin City Limits one evening when the headlining group was Coldplay.  Evan was dancing in his seat and Sydney sat there completely enthralled.  When she declared that "Paradise" was her favorite Coldplay song, Ryan was so excited.  It is one of his missions as a parent to ensure that our kids are exposed to good music as opposed to most of the drivel on the radio (his words, not mine).

....Speaking of drivel on the radio...I must make the kids listen to my Adele Pandora mix way too often.  In the past week, Sydney has asked me:
    -"What is a rumor?"
    -"What does 'chasing pavements' mean?"
    -"How exactly do you set fire to the rain?"
I explained the metaphors the best that I could, to which she replied, "Well, if that's what she means, why doesn't she just say that in the first place?"  Smart girl, that one.

...We told Liam that once he's completely night potty trained (we're almost there - he's been dry every night for two weeks in a row - yay!) that he could have a friend sleep over.  He told me that the friend he wants to sleep over is his best friend at pre-school who just happens to be a girl (we'll call her A).  Um....I don't think so.

...A's mother told me that after a day of A's baby sister being clingy due to a cold, A said, "When I grow up and marry Liam and we have a baby, I'm going to hold her all day long while Liam does the cooking and laundry."  Seeing as Liam and A are zoned to the same schools and are in the same Sunday School class at church, I think we're going to have to keep an eye on those two!