Farm Girl in the Big City

A new home

2010-09-02T10:11:00.000-05:00

literally and figuratively.

We finally made the jump from big city living down to the small town simple life. And I've created a new blog to chronicle the changes, from becoming a stay-at-home mom to updating our new-to-us 50s ranch house.

http://lifeinamericana.wordpress.com/

Hope to see you there!

An open letter of apology to my parents

2010-07-08T18:26:00.000-05:00

I love my kids. I love them to pieces, but that doesn't mean they don't try my patience and my sanity on a daily basis.

Especially the kidlet. I think her personality is a little too similar to mine. She is strong-willed, stubborn, independent and silly.

See, goofy, goofy girl.

She can go from this:

to this:

in about .03 seconds flat.

(Oh the stink eye. I remember that well. In fact, I think we have many pictures of me giving the stink eye when I'm about the kidlet's age.)

This kid, she's going to give me gray hair, I just know it.

Today, she sat on the steps in our house for five minutes putting on shoes so we could leave to go to daycare. The "conversation" went something like this (and I put conversation in quotes, because there's only so much conversing you do with a 21-month-old who can't verbalize what she's thinking).

Me: Kidlet, do you want to go outside?
Kidlet: Yeah.
Me: Then we need to put on socks and shoes.
Kidlet: No.
Me; Kidlet, do you want to go outside?
Kidlet: (while attempting to put her shoes on - backwards on the wrong foot) Yeah.... (looks up at me with the shoe half on) I did it!!!
Me: Yes you did. Now let's get socks on.
Kidlet: No.

Wash, rinse, repeat. I finally got her socks and shoes on and we went on our merry way, but not without much protest, tears and "NO. I DO IT!" from her.

I'm sorry mom. I finally understand all those times you threatened to make me walk home or said if I kept pouting, my face would get stuck that way.

She's a joy and a delight, but, phew! I fear for the teenage years.

The best chocolate chip cookies in the world

2010-07-05T14:36:00.000-05:00

Is there anything better than a homemade chocolate chip cookie, fresh out of the oven? I don't think so.

Unfortunately, not all chocolate chip cookie recipes are created equal. Some make cookies that are too crispy. Some end up too chewy. Some don't have nearly enough chocolate chips in them (a tragedy!)

However, I think I finally found the chocolate chip cookie recipe I can count on.

It's another adapted recipe from the ever useful small town church cookbook.

And it makes the perfect cookie:

Perfect golden brown, loaded with chocolate chips and pecans (optional, of course) and just the right combination of crunchy/chewy. I made these yesterday for our 4th of July supper, and they're almost all gone. I have definitely eaten my fair share today, maybe more.

The Best Chocolate Chip Cookie in the World
1 c. (2 sticks) butter, softened
1 c. sugar
1 c. brown sugar
2 eggs
2 t. vanilla
3 1/2 c. flour
2 t. soda
1 t. salt
1 package chocolate chip (I prefer milk chocolate)
1 c. chopped nuts (optional)

Preheat oven to 350. Mix together butter and sugars until well combined. Add eggs and vanilla. In separate bowl, stir together flour, soda and salt. Add to butter mixture until well combined. Stir in chocolate chips and nuts (if desired). Drop by spoonful on to baking sheets lined with parchment paper. Bake for 10 minutes, or until just lightly golden brown.

I love that the recipe is basic. It just uses the good stuff: butter, sugar, eggs, flour, soda, salt, etc... There's no oil or crisco or anything (not that those don't make good chocolate chip cookies). The hub *might* say that the chocolate chip to dough ratio is a tad high, but you'll never hear me complain that there's too much chocolate in anything. You can reduce the amount of chocolate chips to 1 cup, though, to cut back on that.

I would go have another one, but I've already had six or seven (or eight, I quit keeping track a while ago) today.

Curly Girly

2010-07-04T14:55:00.000-05:00

The kidlet was blessed with beautiful, curly, bright red hair.

Even if it has grown into a rather unsightly curly mullet at the present.

Unfortunately, she was also blessed (saddled?) with a mother who has pin-straight, fine, boring mousy brown hair and hasn't the faintest idea how to deal with a Little Orphan Annie-esque mop.

These adorable ringlets are murder to try and comb out. Thankfully, I have some internet friends who either have curly hair themselves, or have daughters with curly hair, who have given me tips. Tips like I don't have to wash it every time she takes a bath. And combing is essential, especially right before bedtime, lest it turn into a complete birds nest during the night (it usually does). And if it has turned into a complete birds nest, a little spray conditioner, water and scrunching will bring the curls back to shape (and if that doesn't work, the humid summer air will!)

I know in 10 years she'll whine and complain and wish she was born with anything but gorgeous, bright red, curly hair (and if it's anything like the hub's, extremely thick as well) but for now, I'm going to enjoy it - even if it is torture for us both to comb it out.

Worth 1000 words

2010-06-30T21:20:00.002-05:00

and smiles and laughs.

Man, I love my kids. As much as they make me want to pull my hair out sometimes, I love them.

Hot fun in the summer sun

2010-06-27T09:33:00.000-05:00

It definitely feels like summer here - temps were in the 90s yesterday. I told the kiddo that we might be able to get his little pool out once the kidlet went down for her nap.

He was very excited!

"Relaxing"

He liked to duck his head under water and let it run down his face. Goofy kid.

He also had to show me how high he could jump.

Saying goodbye as daddy left to run some errands.

Prune Hands!

This kid is 100% goofy.

But he can be normal if he wants.

The kiddo had a great time splashing. I think if the pool would have been a little bigger, I would have joined him!

I'm getting better at taking my photos in manual mode. There are still quite a few that are either just under- or over-exposed or where the focus is off, but it's getting better.

Flowers, flowers everywhere

2010-06-26T08:44:00.000-05:00

My MIL has a lovely garden on their farm. It's mostly all classic perennials: iris, daisies, coneflowers, a few peonies and some recently planted poppies.

The irises were all in bloom when we went to visit over Memorial Day and it was so pretty! Irises are my favorite flower and I loved walking around and taking pictures of all the different kinds she has.

Some close-ups:

Aren't they pretty? I think the red, deep purple (almost black) and two-tone brown/yellow are my favorites. I'm hoping that once we finally move to where we'll spend the next 30-40 years that she'll be ready to split them and we can plant some in our garden.

Ever the lady

2010-05-31T08:57:00.000-05:00

The kidlet has picked up a rather uncouth new habit.

See:

We've become fond of picking our nose (and occasionally eating it. Joy.). I know it's just a phase and we only mildly correct her if we catch her in the act, but still... Not something I enjoy seeing my little girl do, especially when she's all dressed up!

We spent Sunday celebrating one of the hub's grandma's 90th birthday with family. It was a lovely time and we are very fortunate and blessed that grandma is as sharp and active as she is. And hoo boy, she is still sharp! If you're doing something you're not supposed to be doing, she will let you know!

And Ode to Rhubarb

2010-05-26T16:32:00.000-05:00

Oh Rubarb,
Your succulent stalks
Of red and green
Beckon in Springtime
Bake with me!
You cry

Okay, that was pretty bad. Don't worry, I'm not quitting my day job to go into poetry.

I love rhubarb. Love. I remember going to visit my Grandma and cutting a big slice of her rhubarb cake (that was usually after having two or three, or six, of her chocolate chip cookies). The tartness of the juicy rhubarb combined with the spongy, cinamonnyness (I know, not a word) of the cake was heaven.

So I was extremely happy when the hub brought back a ginormous bag of rhubarb from the ILs a few weeks ago. In that time I've managed to bake

4 loaves of rhubarb bread
3 strawberry-rhubarb pies
2 rhubarb dump cake desserts

and a partridge in a pear tree...

That was just with the *first* bag of rhubarb. That doesn't include the *second* bag he brought home last weekend from the ILs.

I had a tragedy last night, though. I had an Epic Pie Crust Fail. Epic.

See, from this angle, it doesn't look too bad. A little brown on the edges, but edible, right?

But you get a little farther away and you start to see the problem.

Pie crust isn't supposed to look like that. Pie crust is supposed to be neat.

Step back a little further and it's plan to see this was a huge failure on my part.

Ugh. Bad. Bad bad bad. And I generally pride myself on being an "expert" on making pie crusts. I know what I did wrong, the humidity in our kitchen (it was around 84 degrees *inside* our house last night) combined with over-mixing the lard into the flour made for a not-very-good dough. It was just sticking and falling apart all over the place, and that was with ample flouring of my counter! Meh. Oh well, it doesn't have to look pretty, just taste good, right?

This is what a proper pie crust is supposed to look like:

From last year's post on strawberry-rhubarb pie. I can make a good pie crust, I really can!

Oh well, at least the rhubarb bread turned out nicely!

Mmmmm..... rhubarby, bready, cinnamony goodness!

Now, what to do with that last bag of rhubarb? I'm thinking preserves, even though it's been a loooong time since I've made any sort of preserves, and I've never done rhubarb. There's always a first time for everything right?

I'm pleased to say all the photos (save the stock rhubarb shot and last year's photo of pie) were all taken with my Canon 50mm F/1.8 lens. I survived without my main lens! But I still miss it. Get well soon lens!

Bummer Dude

2010-05-24T15:50:00.000-05:00

My lovely DSLR had been acting up lately - wouldn't focus and wouldn't let me take a picture. It's done this before and usually I can just take the lens off, clean the sensors with a soft rubber eraser and I'm good to go.

Only that didn't work this time. So I had to suck it up and take it to the local camera repair place.

The good news is the guy there didn't think it was my camera body. (Phew!)

He thinks it's my lens. My Canon EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS that is the lens I take 99.38% of my photos with.

Boo. :(

I had them go ahead and send it in to get fixed. And this will [hopefully] force me to step outside of my comfort zone and take pics with my prime lens instead of relying on my zoom all the time.

Get well soon little lens! I'll miss you!

Four going on Fourteen

2010-05-23T08:14:00.000-05:00

It's been a while, I know. I think I need about 10 extra hours in the day to get everything I want accomplished.

But anyway...

There are days when it seems the kiddo is four going on fourteen. The sass! The attitude! The eye rolls! (The eye rolls are the best; he even had the bakery ladies at Target laughing yesterday). There are days when he's absolutely wonderful, and it makes the tough days even more difficult, because we *know* he can be such a good kid.

I'm sure it's all payback, though, because I know I wasn't an angel child (I know, hard to believe). And I have a feeling the kidlet is going to be even more, oh, spirited.

This is what happens when I leave the hub in charge of the kids while I go out for a run. Thank goodness for washable markers!

And then there are the times when the kids are (somewhat) nicely playing with each other and it just fills my heart with joy.

Not the most flattering pic of the kiddo, but isn't that what moms are for? To embarrass their children every chance they can?

Man, I just love my kids.

iheartfaces - smiles

2010-04-26T22:43:00.000-05:00

It's been ages since I've been able to participate in an iheartfaces weekly theme, but I couldn't pass up on this one. The theme this week is smiles, and, thankfully, the kiddo always seems to be ready and willing to smile when I break out the camera. Sometimes it's his goofy KISS smile, but generally, it's his good, old gap-toothed grin. [The kidlet, on the other hand, is one tough nut to crack. Girlfriend is stingy with the smiles. But we still love her!]

I know I posted this photo a while ago, but I've yet to use it for iheartfaces. It's one of my favorite shots I've taken of the kiddo.

It's from the day I took the kids to the park the weekend where it snowed 3" Friday night to Saturday morning and then melted and was 45 degrees by Sunday. Spring in Iowa, what else can you expect?

The light was great, I managed to do a good job on the exposure and even got some catchlights in his eyes (and, as I just noticed as I was editing the photo, a reflection of me taking the photo. Whoops!).

Man, I love my kids. Even if we're going through a not-listening stage with the kiddo and the kidlet is prone to random tantrums. They're my delight.

Check out all the other great smile photos at iheartfaces. You'll be glad you did!

April ... Sunshine!

2010-04-13T22:01:00.002-05:00

It was absolutely gorgeous outside today - sunny, 80 degrees with just a slight breeze. Almost more like June than April. But, hey, I'm not going to complain! Unfortunately, the kidlet is stuck at home with a respiratory infection. Poor baby.

I don't know. Crusty, boogery face aside, does this look like the face of a kid who is suffering?

I didn't think so. This is her doing the "grumpy" face. She's such a silly thing.

We did get on a nice walk today, though, while I was home with her. And I got to take some lovely photos of our tulips!

We have brilliant yellow and red ones. This is what happens when you rototill the soil around your house before you know what the previous owners had planted. You get tulips all over the place.

Some on the south side of our house, some on the east side of our house

Some in the corner, by the irises

Some by the clematis

and even some that are sneaking their way into the front yard.

We are also taking advantage of our neighbors magnolia tree.

This isn't quite as easy to photograph, but it sure smelled good trying!

Our peonies are growing gangbusters and I see the leaves of the lily of the valley poking up on the north side of the house. I love spring!

Spring Flowers!

2010-04-09T22:11:00.000-05:00

With the warmer-than-average temperatures for a few days last week and the days around 60 degrees this week, some spring flowers have begun to bloom!

It's just a refreshing reminder, especially after the brutal winter we had this year, that, yes, it will be warm and things will grow again.

I took a few pics at the ILs over Easter weekend.

Pink hyacinth (I think)

Lovely bright daffodils.

The tulips, day lilies, peonies, iris and clematis around our house have all started to grow by leaps and bounds. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if a few tulips bloomed over the weekend. Our neighbor's magnolia tree is also full of buds, and those are always delightful (and smell heavenly) in bloom.

And while I took the kidlet out on a walk after work, I noticed some dandelions. I think I could do without those, at least in our yard.

I love spring!

Joyful Eastertide

2010-04-06T14:06:00.000-05:00

The kiddos' daycare was closed on Good Friday, as was my work, so we had a wonderful long weekend.

That weekend was also half taken up with traveling hither and yon to each set of grandparents. It was a wonderful weekend, though, and it's always lovely to see family.

The kiddos had a great Easter. They got lots of fun stuff in their Easter baskets (coincidently, the Easter Bunny knows *exactly* what kind of candy mommy (me) likes best because I am the one who ends up eating most of it).

There was a fun flower headband

Which also turned into the kiddo playing "Statue of Liverty".

But I think the Easter egg hunt was the most well-received activity.

I see one!

And some more!

Running to find the next one.

Easter egg hunts are Serious Business.

He found quite a few!

Cracking them open to check out all the loot (more candy that I'm sure I'll end up eating. Goodbye smaller size pants. It was nice to know you...).

The kidlet was still a little young to comprehend the whole hunting for Easter eggs deal, but she made her own fun. Too bad the tractor isn't green! ;)

I have a confession

2010-03-28T09:26:00.000-05:00

Despite knowing (and liking) how to cook yummy things from scratch, sometimes I like to take the easy way out.

Like this:

Cinnamon rolls from a can. Yum.

I know they're not as good as homemade ones, and they're loaded with things I can't spell, let alone even pronounce, but they're easy - done in about 20 minutes. And they come with that little can of frosting (which is never enough, but whatevs) that I can lick out once I've finished frosting the rolls.

This is our Sunday breakfast this morning. Sweet Orange rolls from a can.

And they are tasty!

It's finally spring!

2010-03-21T19:40:00.000-05:00

Although it didn't really feel like it on Saturday when we woke up to this:

Even my poor little daffodils from Daffodil Days couldn't believe it snowed.

At least they helped brighten up my kitchen.

Thankfully, the snow didn't last long. It had already mostly melted by Saturday afternoon.

And even though it was only about 45 degrees out today, the sun was shining and the kids were running wild, so we took a nice walk down to a nearby park.

Everyone had a great time.

Watch me mom!

I don't know why he's insistent on doing the whole Gene Simmons KISS tongue in photos. What a goofball.

The kidlet was a little unsure of the playground.

But as soon as she saw the swings, she was off!

Wheeeeeeeee!

A quick stint at the slides with big brother, but then we were back to the swing.

The kiddo, on the other hand, was busy making a mess, as usual.

I believe this was him putting wood chips on the slide so he could go through them as he came down. Goofball.

He graciously posed for a pic, though I had to tell him twice to smile nice and put his tongue back in his mouth. Goofball.

Such a nice big brother to help push his little sister on the swings.

I like the playground, mom!

But, alas, all good things must come to an end. It was getting chilly and we had supper to eat!

Goodbye, park. Until we meet again, hopefully soon.

I've been practicing more with the manual settings on my camera. Just when I think I have one part figured out, another thing trips me up. I did better with the exposure on these, but was having a heckuva time with the auto focus. Wild children aren't the best practice subjects. But I'll just keep practicing!

Such a nice mommy

2010-03-14T21:03:00.000-05:00

The kidlet has really taken to baby dolls. There are two other little girls in her daycare class that are only a few weeks younger than the kidlet, and I guess it's all baby dolls, all the time with those three. It's so cute to see her play with them (the dolls and those girls.)

Sweet mommy.

Giving hugs and love to her baby.

Putting baby in her high chair.

And then covering her with a blankie. I guess her babies nap in the high chair!

The kidlet still loves to be anywhere her big brother is, and yesterday they were "playing" on the couch.

(nevermind the mess on the piano.)

Everything the kiddo did, the kidlet had to do, too.

Now, if only I could guarantee they would continue to get along like this through their teenage years!

Happy Birthday, Bubbaloo!

2010-03-10T21:00:00.000-06:00

The kiddo turned four on Sunday. How is that possible??

This year he decided he wanted a party at the Playstation, a local kiddie play place that has a whole big jungle gym/climbing area for kids. He'd been to a few other birthday parties there and thought it was just totally awesome.

He was so excited to invite his daycare friends to come celebrate with him, too.

He's all flushed and sweaty from playing. Need some pop, stat!

My totally awesome and talented sister made these really cool Thomas-themed cupcakes

(but not the rings. Those I bought off Amazon. And still have about 20 left. Anyone want any Thomas rings?)

He was a little embarrassed when we sang Happy Birthday to him, but had fun blowing out the candles.

Then came the best part, opening presents!

He got some very nice things, including this Buzz Lightyear, With Karate Chop! (The little boy who gave that to the kiddo was so excited to tell him what it was, he could hardly contain himself. He was especially proud of the Karate Chop aspect. Hee.)

And his favorite, Spencer the train for his train table.

Oh my kiddo. It's hard to believe you once were this small.

Now you're so grown up! We measured him on his birthday, and he'd grown another 1/4" since January. At this rate, he'll be taller than me by the time he's 7.

Love you forever, kiddo.

What up, D?

2010-03-06T21:56:00.000-06:00

The kidlet is a total daddy's girl. Total. It's like I'm chopped liver if he's anywhere nearby.

One morning this week, we were getting ready for work when I hear the kidlet is awake and talking in her room. She's chanting over and over, in her tiny little pipsqueak voice "daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy." So I push her door open and peek in on her. She has this look of expectation on her face and then it completely falls when she sees its me. As a peace offering, she hands me her sock. Of course, the second the hub sticks his head around the corner and she sees him, she lights up like it's Christmas morning, starts bouncing in her crib and screeches "DADDY!"

She's such a sweetheart, though, I can't hold it against her. Oh my sweet little red-headed girl.

Fun with cooking!

2010-03-05T18:49:00.001-06:00

The kiddo and I made birthday treats for him to take into daycare today because his 4th (!!) birthday is on Sunday.

One kid in his class has egg and dairy allergies. My niece has the same allergies, so I'll often ask my sister for ideas or recipes. This time, we decided to make rice krispie treats, and the kiddo helped!

Stirring is hard work!

You gotta mix it really good.

Marshmallows are sticky.

He did a great job helping! He's really been wanting to help out lately, and we've been giving him small chores to do. I think he likes the "responsibility" and it's nice to have someone help set the table!

I ended up cutting the treats and then rolling them into balls and putting them on a stick (but completely neglected to take photos. :rolleyes: ) They turned out really cute.

I was kind of bummed for the kiddo's classmate; even though I made them with dairy-free margarine and specifically told the teachers that they were dairy-free, they still gave him the alternative treat. It can't be easy always having to get something different than the rest of the kids. At least he can have the egg- and dairy-free cupcakes my sister is making for the kiddo's party on Sunday.

He's going to be four on Sunday!! I still can't wrap my head around that.

I heart faces - hilarious outtakes II

2010-03-01T16:08:00.002-06:00

This week is another hilarious outtakes theme on iheartfaces. Everyone has those shots where the camera captured a little something "extra" in the photo, and this is the week to show them off.

I completely forgot about this photo until I was going through some things on our computer. This is from the session I did when I was designing the kidlet's birth announcement. I call it "Blue Steel"

I'm pretty sure there's a lot more to life than being really, really, ridiculously good looking.

The next I call "Back in the old country"

I'd tied a kerchief around the kidlet one morning for fun and just happened to catch her making a face. My poor kids, I catch them at some of the most inopportune times. They're going to hate these photos when they get older, but I love them!

Head on over to iheartfaces for more hilarious outtakes fun!

Goofy girl

2010-02-24T21:18:00.001-06:00

The poor kidlet has to go in to have ear tubes placed early Friday morning. She's on her 5th ear infection in as many months. We can tell in how she pronounces some of her words that it is affecting her hearing.

The kiddo had ear tubes placed when he was about 15 months old, so we've BTDT, but no parent likes to see their kid hurting, or have any sort of surgical procedure, no matter how minor it may seem.

She'll have all weekend to rest and will be back at daycare on Monday, probably hearing all sorts of fun new things!

You'd never even know she was sick. I think the kiddos are having as much fun with the boxes the appliances came in as I am with the actual appliances!

Whirlwind Weekend Kitchen Update - Part 3: finished!

2010-02-24T16:48:00.001-06:00

It took staying up until 2am on Sunday night, but we finished the Whirlwind Weekend Kitchen Update in one weekend!

The finished look:

Because of the size and layout of our kitchen, it's difficult to get good angles for photos.

It's amazing how different the room feels with just a few changes. The room is so much warmer now with the paint and new flooring. And the new stove and fridge are completely awesome. I made chicken tortilla soup for supper on Monday night, and it was awesome. I haven't had a chance to test out the oven yet, but hopefully will soon.

It's too bad that I'll probably only get to enjoy the kitchen for a few more months before we [hopefully] sell the house. And then I'll get to start all over with a new kitchen update project (but more likely one that's a lot more labor-intensive).

Whirlwind Weekend Kitchen update: Part 2- during

2010-02-20T16:29:00.000-06:00

I was extremely thankful my ILs came yesterday to help. That meant my MIL got to do some of the icky cleaning while I was still at my work. Have I mentioned how much I appreciate my ILs? I know many women who have horror stories of dealing with their ILs, but mine are just wonderful.

Anyway, I didn't have to clean out this:

The side of the stove. Gross. I'm almost ashamed to be putting this out for public viewing.

Or this:

behind the fridge. See all the dirt and dust and dog hair? And after the hub and FIL moved the fridge out, we realized the previous owner 1) did not run the three-prong outlet correctly and 2) did not have a plate cover over said outlet so it was full of dust and junk.

My MIL very graciously took charge of cleaning out those areas. Bless her.

Nice and clean and ready for painting!

The paint color we chose was Cottonwood by Ralph Lauren. Home Depot was clearancing out all their RL paints, though, so we ended up doing a colormatch to a Behr paint. It's a nice soft tan that really warmed up the room.

The flooring we chose is called Corfu by Trafficmaster, available at Home Depot. It's a "floating" plank vinyl flooring, which means it can be installed directly over the previous flooring without having to tear it up or install a new subfloor. It locks onto itself by means of a tacky strip.

The gray tacky strip on the left side of the plank.

Installation really is fairly easy, except for a few dumb user errors by us. You trim the tile by scoring and snapping, and the first plank the hub tried, he snapped off the wrong edge. Whoops!

The instructions call to "stagger" the pieces so they fit and lock together better.

The kitchen part is Finished!

We are mostly happy with the way the floor turned out. It looks absolutely gorgeous, but there are some spots where the planks didn't lock together as well as we'd like. It's probably a combination of installation error and the fact we have an old house with a slightly uneven floor, but anything is better than the hideous vinyl we had previous!

The vinyl ran from the half bath, through the kitchen and out the door to the back stairs. Right now the kitchen is the only part that's completely finished, so we could get the appliances installed.

Currently the hub and FIL are making a Home Depot run for more flooring and a few little things we need to finish installing the stove. MIL and I are just hanging out. I suppose I could be doing something productive like washing and folding laundry, but updating my blog is much more fun!

Whirlwind Weekend Kitchen update: Part 1- the Before

2010-02-20T15:58:00.000-06:00

So yesterday began our whirlwind kitchen update. The ILs arrived at our house around noon, I got home from work about two hours later.

But first, a few Before pics:

Counter near the stove. Wow. You can see the outline of the cookie cutters I had hanging on the wall.

Opposite counter near the fridge. The Everything Gets Thrown Here counter.

Looking right from the doorway.

Looking left. Our kitchen really isn't that big - around 11x11 - and there are three doorways leading into and out of it, so space is kind of at a premium. The work triangle is efficient, it's just, oh, we'll say compact.

Finally, everything is cleaned off the counters and walls.

Ugliest vinyl tile ever. Blech.

Everything that was on the walls, counter, fridge, etc.. all got transferred to the dining room table, which looked like this for most of yesterday and this morning:

That meant the kids got to eat their breakfast yesterday while sitting on the couch. It's a treat that's usually reserved for Sundays, but I don't think they minded. ;)

The kiddo has such social grace, doesn't he? I'm half surprised his hand isn't down his pants a la Al Bundy.

Next up: work shots.

What did we get ourselves in to?

2010-02-17T21:36:00.001-06:00

The hub and I (okay, well, mostly me) decided part of our tax return this year would be best spent doing minor upgrades to our kitchen in the hopes that when we get ready to sell our house in a few months, a fresh new kitchen would be appealing to potential buyers.

So last weekend we had our wonderful neighbor over to watch the kids and we went appliance shopping! We bought a new fridge, range and microwave, decided on new flooring and will go back to the home store tomorrow to pick out paint.

Thankfully, our kitchen isn't that large, so it won't take long to paint or put the new flooring in. Unfortunately, our kitchen isn't that large, so there's not much room in which to remove old appliances and items from the counters and get them out of the house so we can put in the new ones.

And did I mention that we hope to get this all done this weekend with the help of my extremely generous in-laws?

The current appliances are old and rather grimy. They were old when we bought the house seven years ago and seven years of constant use and sticky toddler hands haven't done them any favors. The icky vinyl flooring has ugly gouges and cigarette burns on it from the previous owners. It was cheap when it was installed way back when and it definitely shows.

So right now I'm supposed to be helping clean off the kitchen counters in order to get things ready for painting. The plan in my head is we'll get everything cleaned and removed tomorrow and part of Friday, start painting what we can tomorrow, do flooring on Friday, have FIL and the hub go pick up the appliances later on Friday, put them in place on Saturday, do some touch up painting and get everything put back in place by the time the ILs leave Saturday night.

That sounds reasonable, right? Right? However, that is rarely how things go in this house. I should just expect that only about half of that will get accomplished this weekend. We also have high hopes of listing the old stove and microwave on Craigslist and have our utility company come by and pick up the refrigerator for recycling. Only the utility company has a 3-4 week wait on appliance pickup.

That also probably means my meal plan of meatloaf on Friday won't be happening. Nor will Saturday Night Cookie. :(

I just have to keep reminding myself that I'll have a lovely new kitchen, even if I will only be using it for a few months. But hopefully after then I'll have another, even larger, lovely new kitchen. If we ever decide what we're going to do for housing when we move back to the farm.

Super Bowl Cookies

2010-02-09T16:39:00.001-06:00

I started these babies on Saturday night, but the process of frosting them took half the day Sunday as well. Whew!

They turned out great, though.

On the suggestion of an LJ friend, I used a different sugar cookie recipe than my good, old Christmas Cookie standby.

I used this one from Recipezaar

Kittencal's Buttery Cut-Out Sugar Cookies W/ Icing That Hardens
COOKIES
- 1 cup butter, softened (no substitutes)
- 1 cup sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
- 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
- 3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt

FROSTING
- 2 cups sifted confectioners' sugar (the sugar must be sifted)
- 1 tablespoon milk (adding in more if needed for proper spreading consistency)
- 1 tablespoon light corn syrup
- 1/4 teaspoon almond extract (can use 1/2 teaspoon vanilla in place of the almond)
- food coloring (use your choice of colours)

For cookies; in a large bowl combine butter with sugar, eggs, vanilla and almond extract; beat using an electric mixer on high speed until light and fluffy. In another bowl combine the flour with baking powder, baking soda and salt; gradually stir into the butter mixture until well blended. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and chill for 2 hours.

Set oven to 400°F. Line cookie sheets with parchment paper (do not grease cookie sheets use parchment paper only). On a very lightly floured surface roll out the dough into about 1/4-inch thickness. Cut into desired shapes using cookie cutters. Place cookies 2-inches apart on cookie sheet. Bake 4-6 minutes. Remove cookies to wire racks to cool completely before icing.

For the frosting; in a small bowl mix the confectioners sugar with milk (start with 1-2 tablespoons, you will likely need more milk for the perfect spreading consistency). Beat in corn syrup and almond extract until the icing is smooth and glossy (if the icing is too thick add in a small amount more of corn syrup). Divide into as many separate bowls as you wish for different colours. Add in food colouring until desired intensity is achieved. Paint the icing over the cookies using a brush, or dip edges of cookies into icing. Allow to set on waxed paper.

I'd never done the spoon or dip method of frosting, so I decided to use the outline/flood method instead. It worked, and looked okay, but it was definitely time-consuming. I think next time I'll dip or spoon.

I also bumped up the amount of vanilla and almond extract in both the batter and the frosting. I like my flavor!

I could get roughly two (maybe three) cookies from each section of dough I rolled.

They baked up to a lovely almond color, and kept their shape very well.

Who Dat?

Trying out the outline/flood method of frosting. They looked nice, but my hands were sore!

I didn't have any royal blue food coloring, so I had to make do with sky blue.

I thought it was funny how I had them lined up like they were actually on the field. The colts have 12 players, though! Whoops!

After reading Bakerella's post on her Oscar cookies, I wanted to try out some luster dust to give them a nice shine. I don't think I did it quite right - I put some almond flavoring in a little ramekin, poured a little luster dust in that and then brushed it on the cookies. I think I needed less flavoring. You can kind of see the shimmer here.

The blue luster dust made the horseshoes a little more blue,which was nice. I realized later I added too many "nails" but oh well!

The finished cookies! I got about 2 dozen cookies out of this recipe (and they were good-sized cookies, about 5" apiece). It did take two batches of frosting, though. Everyone liked them and the hub only had a few left to take into work on Monday.

I did like the recipe, but I missed the nutmeg flavor that's in my Christmas Cookie recipe. I'll definitely keep this one on hand.

iheartfaces - We heart kisses!

2010-02-08T20:54:00.001-06:00

The theme this week on iheartfaces is "We Heart Kisses."

This is from the kiddo's second birthday party. I was able to capture this sweet moment between the kiddo and his grandpa.

That was back when he would listen to us and do what we asked. ;)

Check out all the other sweet kisses at iheartfaces.

Blast from the Past

2010-02-07T08:44:00.001-06:00

This last week the kiddo's daycare was teaching the kids about "Community Helpers." You know, Doctors, Bakers, Firemen, Policemen, Dentists, Ninjas... (just kidding about the ninjas part. The kids were asked what kind of community helper they might want to be when they grow up and one of the kiddo's classmates answered ninja. I got a chuckle out of that.)

Anyway, the discussion last week brought to mind a song my sisters and I had on one of our "kids" records while growing up.

Our parents taught us a love and appreciation of music from an early age. As long as I can remember, there was some sort of music being played in our house - on the radio, on records (and later CDs), and sometimes even on the piano. We weren't catered to as kids, we had to listen to whatever our parents listened to, which was fine with us, we didn't know any different. And my sisters and I have cultivated an extremely eccentric taste in music that ranges from John Denver and Neil Diamond to ABBA and Andrew Lloyd Webber.

We did have a few kids records, though, that we could play as often as we wanted. One was a Sesame Street record that had the "Who are the People in your Neighborhood" song that was running in my head earlier this week.

Another was this gem:

Mickey Mouse Disco.

So cheesy. So chintzy. So very late-70s. But so much fun! I don't know how many times we listened to that record and danced around our living room, but it was a lot.

And you know the best part? iTunes has it in their store. You can buy this gem of a record for a mere $8.91. So I did. And the kids love it! The kiddo asks to hear "Watch out for Goofy" and "Macho Duck" (two of my favorite songs) and the kidlet just shakes her little booty when I turn it on.

The songs are still incredibly cheesy, but it's something we can all (well, me and the kiddos at least, I'm not sure how the hub would enjoy a two-hour car ride of non-stop Disney Disco) enjoy. I haven't found the Sesame Street equivalent of the record we had, but I did buy a fun Imagination Movers CD that the kids and I can all enjoy as well.

iheartfaces - Places I love

2010-02-01T21:17:00.002-06:00

This is a week off for the ladies at iheartfaces as they prepare to have fun and hang out with lots of awesome people at blissdom.

In anticipation for Valentine's Day, it's a Photo Story week. And this week it's of all the places you love (or are romantic. Or both!)

The hub and I have had some great opportunities to travel in our 6.5 years of marriage, starting with our honeymoon in the Pacific Northwest. It was an area of the country neither of us had been to, and it was beautiful in the late summer.

It was perfect weather the week we were in Seattle and Portland, and the sights were absolutely gorgeous. I'd go back in a heartbeat.

A year later, a college fraternity brother of the hub's set up a weekend in NYC. Traditionally, the guys had just gone and done some deep sea fishing, but now that most of the guys were married, the women wanted in on the fun, too!

It was my first time in NYC and I fell in love with the hustle and bustle. It's quite a difference from our own little city in the Heartland. I also fell in love with the bridges, and took quite a few photos of them from this trip!

In May 2005, after two heartbreaking miscarriages, we booked a trip to London for the upcoming New Year's celebration as a way to take our minds off everything and have one last vacation together before we [hopefully] took the plunge into parenthood. But Surprise! Two months after we booked the trip, we found out I was pregnant again, and this time it stuck.

I was nearing 30 weeks pregnant when we we traveled across the pond, and it did dampen our plans some - I had grand ideas of hitting pubs and having loads of pints of cider and just enjoying our time there. Plus, waddling around hugely pregnant in 40-degree and drizzling weather wasn't ideal for a hormonal woman, but it was a lovely time and we got to see some sights that I hadn't gotten around to when I lived there for a summer in college.

I loved this shot of the Tower Bridge at sunset.

And the NYE fireworks over the Thames were beautiful (though I could have done without the 2-hour walk back to our hotel due to the tube workers' strike).

In 2007 the same friend from NY arranged another weekend in the city for couples. This time he included a day of winery tours on Long Island and a stop at one of his favorite beaches growing up.

It was breathtaking. The winery tours were fun, too, but that's another story! ;)

Aside from our recent trip to Phoenix for the bowl game, we haven't done much traveling lately. Time, kids and finances don't exactly allow it right now, but we enjoy our time together as a family and love being at home.

Which brings me to another place I love: the farm.

Despite being nervous, scared, excited and unsure about our impending move back to my hometown, I am looking forward to having these views again. The gentle rolling hills, the wide-open blue skies, and, yes, even the cows! It may not be the most romantic place, but it is somewhere I love.

And I'm including this photo from our wedding, even though I didn't take it (I think my sister did).

It's the Campanile at my Alma Mater. Tradition states that you don't become an official student until you kiss under the Campanile at midnight. So it wasn't midnight when this photo was taken, and the hub didn't graduate from my Alma Mater, but I love this photo nonetheless.

Stop on by iheartfaces to learn about the places other people love.

Saturday Night Cookie

2010-01-31T13:12:00.002-06:00

A little late. Our internet was on the fritz last night (Very Frustrating!) so my Saturday Night Cookie post is actually on Sunday afternoon.

Paula Deen's Three Chocolate Cookies
- 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
- 1/2 cup vegetable shortening
- 3/4 cup sugar
- 1 3/4 cups firmly packed brown sugar
- 3 large eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 3 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 (12-ounce) package semisweet chocolate morsels
- 1 cup milk chocolate morsels
- 3 (1-ounce) squares bittersweet chocolate, chopped
- 1 cup almond brickle chips (I use Heath toffee bits, I don't know if they're the same thing...)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Lightly grease baking sheets. With an electric mixer, beat butter and shortening at medium speed until creamy; gradually add sugars, beating until fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla, beating well.

In a small bowl, combine flour, baking soda and salt; gradually add to butter mixture, beating until blended. Stir in chocolate morsels and almond brickle chips. Drop cookies by 1/4 cupfuls (I cut it down to about 1/8 cup drops to make the cookies more manageable) about 3-inches apart onto prepared baking sheets. Bake for 11 to 12 minutes, or until lightly browned. Let cool for 2 minutes on baking sheets. Remove to wire racks to cool.

Mmmmm..... cookie dough.....

The finished cookie. They turn out a little more brown and glossy than regular chocolate chip cookies.

Hello love.

I got this recipe during a cookie exchange a few years ago and occasionally dream about it. These cookies aren't for the faint of heart. Three different kinds of chocolate, PLUS toffee bits? Yes, please! I made them a little smaller than the recipe called for, but that doesn't make them any less tasty. It just means you can eat more (right? Right??)

I've already had four today - two for breakfast and two for a pre-lunch snack. It's really a good thing that I make the hub take the leftovers into work, or I would quickly gain back all the weight I lost last year!

Cookie Saturday

2010-01-23T23:08:00.002-06:00

I've decided to try out a different cookie every Saturday (when possible anyway) as a way to use and get used to my beautiful KitchenAid mixer.

This week's cookie is from a Gooseberry Patch cookbook we received as a wedding present. I've often looked through it but never gotten around to actually baking anything from it. Until today, anyway.

Chewy Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies
1/2 c shortening (I used margarine, even if it's not the best substitute)
1 2/3 c sugar
2 eggs
2 t vanilla
5 T cocoa
2 c flour
2 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
1/3 c milk
1/2 c nuts, chopped
1 c semi-sweet chocolate chips

Cream shortening and sugar. Add eggs and vanilla; stir in cocoa. Sift together remaining dry ingredients and add to cocoa mixture alternately with milk. Stir in nuts and chocolate chips. Drop by spoonfulls on cookie sheet (I always line mine with parchment paper). Bake at 350 for 8-10 minutes.

These were exactly as described. Lovely chewy chocolate chocolate chip cookies. They were perfect right out of the oven (well, after they'd cooled a few minutes) with a nice big glass of milk. Definitely a keeper!

Man, our 1960s faux wood laminate hand-me-down table doesn't look too appealing in the photos. The lighting isn't the best in our dining room at 11pm at night, either. Maybe next week I'll get around to making the cookies during the day, before the kids are in bed, and the photos will turn out better. Practice, practice, practice, right?

Big, Fat Baby

2010-01-22T17:04:00.008-06:00

The kidlet had her 15m Well Baby Visit last week.

She's Godzilla-esque.

height: 33"
weight: 30 lb 13 oz
Above the 95% for everything. That's what you get when you were 10lb 6.5oz and 22.25" when you were born, though.

Poor girl had 3 vaxes on top of yet another ear infection. That makes her fifth infection in about seven months. Hello ear tubes!

She is such a funny, funny girl.

She is opinionated and determined. If she doesn't want to do something she'll stomp her feet and shake her head "No no no!" She loves her big brother, the dog and her baby doll. She will fuss until I turn on some music and then she will commence with the booty shaking. The kidlet, kiddo and I had a dance party the other night while the hub was at basketball. Who knew my kids loved Beyonce and Lady Gaga?

She is getting the most adorable curls on the back of her head and I hope to God they stay forever (even if she will hate me brushing through them when she gets older).

She has about 10-15 "words" plus another 6-8 signs but will throw all-out, on-the-floor, leg-kicking tantrums if we can't figure out what she wants (I laugh, I can't help it!).

Man, I love that girl. I love her forever.

I heart Photoshop

2010-01-20T15:57:00.002-06:00

A few weeks ago, I entered some photos in the iheartfaces logo challenge. None of my pictures were chosen (bummer) but I thought maybe it would be interesting to see the original of one of the photos and how I edited it in Photoshop.

This is the original photo, SOOC.

It's a fun one of the kiddo. I still need to work on my composition, and, in hindsight, I probably could have cropped it a bit tighter to his face. Plus, I know the hat is situated a little low and covers his eyes, but I still like it.

What I wanted to do was take out the Latham Seeds logo on the hat and put "I <3 faces" on there instead.

I started off by using the Magic Wand Tool to select the green of the logo. You can hold the shift key down and click to choose multiple areas. Alternatively I could have used the Polygonal Lasso Tool (and it probably would have been faster).

Once I had the logo selected, I refined the edge (Select-->Refine Edge) slightly to encompass the few pixels around my selection.

You can adjust the sliders and see in the preview how the selection will look. After I had that set to how I wanted, I adjusted the hue (Image-->Adjustments-->Hue/Saturation) of the green to try and get it back to closer yellow like the background.

NOTE: I have the Colorized button checked on the Adjustments box. It helps when you want an all-over color change like this.

You can see that the green is more yellow now. It's not the best blending job, but it's better than it is as green.

After I adjusted the hue, I went back and used the cloning tool to fix everything. I could have used it from the very beginning, but when I first tried it on the green logo, it came out looking extremely fake.

Cloning was a very time-consuming process. I wanted to make sure the knit looked as realistic as possible. It didn't have to be perfect because I would be putting the "i heart faces" logo on there, but I didn't want it to look like I'd Photoshopped the heck out of it (even though that was exactly what I'd done).

This is what it looked like when I finished. Obviously not perfect, but not too bad.

Now it's time to add the "i heart faces" logo.

I used the polygonal lasso tool to copy areas of the green into the "i" "<3" and "faces"

And, voila!

I did a little tweaking with the eraser and the Transform-->Warp tool to make it look like it was more natural and followed the curve of his head in the hat.

The picture itself is still a little blah, so I ran Pioneer Woman's Fresh and Colorful action, set the opacity of that layer to 79 percent. I also ran her Bring on the Eyes action. Because his eyes are kind of hidden, I kept that at 100% opacity.

The final result:

Now, that probably took me about 2 hours, at least, to Photoshop everything. And now that I've let it sit and gone back to it, I can see other things I could have done to make it better.

But it's always fun to play around in Photoshop and test my skillz.

Wii!

2010-01-19T11:19:00.000-06:00

Yesterday afternoon the hub texted me that he'd won a Wii from his work.

As a creative way to encourage employees to work over the Christmas break (but without paying them overtime, which isn't in the budget), employees who worked more than a certain number of hours were placed in a raffle for various prizes. The hub won a Wii!

How cool is that!?!

I think we're about the only people we know who don't yet have one. The hub has an xBox I bought him a few years ago that he plays a few times a week, but otherwise we're not really gaming people. If I have down time, I prefer to spend it reading, in the bath or on the computer.

But I'd heard a lot of good things abut the Wii, especially the WiiFit and EA Active Sports games and accessories you can buy for it. I'm always looking for different ways to change up my exercise routine, especially as I gained back 5lbs over the Christmas holiday (darn you cookies!).

He set it up last night and played a little of the Wii Sports game that comes with the console. He said it took a little getting used to, but it looked like fun.

Now, we just have to get some accessories to go with it!

C is for Cookie

2010-01-16T21:03:00.003-06:00

That's good enough for me.

Did anyone else have the old Sesame Street records? The ones with Rubber Ducky and I Love Trash and the whole theme song on it? Sometimes I'll occasionally bust out with a verse from I Love Trash in my head, for no apparent reason.

Anyway...

Have I mentioned how much I love my new mixer? It's so purty.

I've used it at least once a week since I got it, mostly to make cookies. I made monster cookies for our road trip to Arizona. I made good, old Nestle Tollhouse cookies last week (only used Ghirardelli dark chocolate chips because I didn't have any good, old Nestle semi-sweet in my cupboard).

This week I made white chocolate cranberry oatmeal cookies,

White Chocolate Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies
1 c butter, softened (can also use margarine if that's all you have)
1 c sugar

1 c brown sugar

2 eggs
1 1/2 c flour (I actually used closer to 1 3/4 and would even consider going up to 2 cups. They're a little crispy yet)
1 t baking soda
1 t salt
3 c oatmeal
1 t vanilla
1 bag white chocolate chips
1 c dried cranberries

Cream shortening and sugars. Add eggs and mix well. Add remaining ingredients, dough will be stiff. Drop on to cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake at 325 for 10-12 minutes.

Even though my oven runs a little hot, I found 11 minutes to be about perfect for these cookies. Nicely golden, yet still soft and chewy in the middle.

These were adapted from an oatmeal chocolate chip recipe I found in yet another small-town cookbook. They smelled divine while baking, the hub commented they were tasty and the cookie dough was awfully good. I haven't actually had a chance to eat one yet, but I'm sure that won't take long.

I think the people who are happiest about my current baking obsession are the hub's coworkers. I always force him to take what I make into work with him so I'm not tempted to eat everything!

iheartfaces - best face challenge

2010-01-11T17:08:00.000-06:00

It's birthday week 2 at iheartfaces, and they're celebrating their actual birthday on January 12.

The challenge this week is "Best Face Photo." The caveat with this week's challenge was it had to be a photo that was taken in either December of January.

My entry this week is a photo of the kiddo I took in December. He was helping the hub put together our new bed, and for some reason decided he needed to wear his "Mr. Spiffy" glasses to do so.

I love this photo. It's just the kiddo to a T: goofy as all getout. Man, I love that kid.

Stop on by iheartfaces and check out all the other great photos for this week's challenge. And check out their awesome new look, too!

Having an existensial crisis

2010-01-08T12:53:00.003-06:00

Okay, maybe it's not that deep, but I'm still having a dilemma.

After being forced to wear my glasses for the past 10 days due to pinkeye, I decided it was high time I bought a new pair. I'd been almost 5 years since I bought my previous pair and they were just getting old and dowdy-looking.

I had to go in to my optometrist for my annual eye exam this week anyway, so I decided I would browse the frames while I was there.

I don't wear my glasses often -- usually later at night right before bedtime and sometimes on the weekends if I don't feel like putting my contacts in. But when I do wear them, I want them to be cute.

After spending hours (and I mean hours, I accidentally took a two-hour lunch on Wednesday because I wasn't paying attention to the time while trying on frames) looking at and trying on glasses, I came away with three possibilities:

They all have similar traits: They're all squareish frames with wider earpieces (is that what they're called?) The first two are a little more fun and funky while the last is more classic. I really like the first pair, but everyone agrees the beige blends in to my skin tone too much and it looks like I have floating glasses. The second pair might be a little too funky for me, but if I'm not wearing them all the time, does that really matter? And they had to order the third pair in so I could try them on and decide if I like them.

Does anyone else agonize this much about a decision for something they'll only wear about 14% of the time?

Happy Birthday, iheartfaces!

2010-01-05T22:32:00.002-06:00

This week iheartfaces is celebrating their birthday! Which is fun, because it's my birthday this week, too. Only I'm not 1. I'm 30+1. But it's still the same, right?

And this week is a fun photo challenge: add the iheartfaces logo somehow to your photo entries. This could be done any way - through photoshop, through photo composition, through whatever! It just has to be realisticish. (Yes, I know that's not a word.)

This was a fun challenge! I use Photoshop every day for my job, but it's not often I get to do really fun things like this with it. The most difficult thing was trying to create the image I had in my head. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.

Legal release mumbo jumbo:
“I am submitting this photo into the I Heart Faces logo photo contest. By entering, I am granting I Heart Faces LLC permission to consider my photo for use in the marketing and promotion of their website.”

Stop on over to iheartfaces and see all the other creative ways people have put "iheartfaces" on their photos. There are some really cool ones!

A whirlwind, Griswold-style trip

2010-01-03T17:00:00.000-06:00

When the football team from my Alma Mater found out which bowl they would be attending, I told the hub we were going, no matter what. Nevermind the fact that we would have to find someone to watch the kids for three days and really didn't *need* to take a 1,500-mile drive.

But we did anyway, and it was a great, albeit very tiring, trip. The hub's best friend joined us on the drive. I love that guy like a brother, and it was definitely nice to have another driver, especially as I contracted pinkeye on the last day of our Christmas vacation and was relegated to wearing my glasses.

We left Iowa on December 30 and returned on January 2. We drove almost 3,000 miles, round-trip, and made our way through eight states (and two snow storms). It was grueling, but we had a very fun time at the football game, celebrating NYE in Phoenix and seeing the sights. We even made a quick detour over to the Grand Canyon. It was gorgeous.

We had great seats for the football game, even though the sun was in our eyes for the first quarter.

Best of all, we won! Barely, but we did.

We even had a complete stranger take our photo, because we very rarely have our photo taken together.

Everyone should get to the Grand Canyon at some point.

It's absolutely breathtaking.

We went in on the very southeast corner, and there was a neat old stone watchtower there.

Hey, look! Another photo of us! I think we've already met our quota for 2010.

Now we're back home, which is a complete pit from all the Christmas stuff that's still strewn about. It's back to real life tomorrow. At least that includes cake at my work for my birthday!

Christmas recap

2009-12-29T11:03:00.000-06:00

It was an oddish (is that even a word?) Christmas this year. An impending weather system completely wreaked havoc on our plans.

We drove up to my parents on Wednesday night, during sleet/freezing rain. Not the smartest move on our part, but slowly and carefully we made the normally 90-minute trip in three hours.

Thursday was Christmas Eve day. I had plans of finishing some sewing, wrapping presents, maybe baking something, watching some Christmas movies and playing games with my family before having our traditional soup supper and heading to Christmas Eve service.

Instead, I slept in as long as the kids would let me, lounged around in my pajamas, watched whatever show was on Disney or IPTV that the kids wanted, ate, ate some more, took a nap, ate some snacks and then finally took a shower. Church was canceled due to the weather, so we ate our soup and rice pudding and the kids got to open their Christmas jammies.

Somewhere in there, our darling kidlet turned into a hungry baby bird.

It didn't matter that she had her own bowl of delicious homemade potato soup, she wanted what was in our bowl, so she would sit, mouth wide open, making "ungh ungh" noises until someone gave her a spoonful. Silly girl!

Opening Christmas jammies after our baths:

What cuties!

The kiddos even let me sleep in on Christmas day. There was no church again due to the weather (seriously, without church, Christmas just feels weird) so the kids didn't get up until after 8 to open presents. And we actually had to remind the kiddo to look under the tree. I think this is probably the last year we'll have to do that, though.

A noisy backhoe!

And a Little People car

The kiddo decided the week before Christmas he actually wanted a Transformer. So Santa had to make an emergency run to Target to get one. Up until then he'd claimed he wanted a noisy backhoe, which had been ordered and procured the weeks before.

But I think he was happy with both.

The kidlet got a baby doll with stroller, high chair and crib.

Even the hub got in on the present-opening action.

After all the big presents, there were still stockings to open.

Which contained fun things like new socks, a shirt and a matchbox car.

Oh dear. I fear for the girls hearts in his high school class. I fear for my heart! My little boy, don't grow up, please. I don't know if I can take it!

After we had breakfast and played a bit, it was time to head up the road to my aunt/uncle's house for another soup dinner. And it's a good thing they literally live just up the road about 1/4 mile, because by this time, the temperature had dropped from 36 to 19 degrees and the rain turned into big, fat flakes of snow accompanied by very gusty winds.

Playing with our new James train

Goodness, the kidlet loves her baby.

Trying on Great Aunt Ruth's silly springy Santa hat

All this Christmasing sure wears a girl out.

We were delayed a day in getting to the ILs due to the weather, but we finally made it there on Saturday for round two of Christmas with the hub's family.

Always a fan of new clothes (with Grandpa)

He didn't have the heart to tell her she was reading upside down...

It's always hard to get back to "real life" after the whirl of Christmas. But we're trying!

i heart faces - outtakes

2009-12-29T10:09:00.000-06:00

The theme on iheartfaces this week is Hilarious Outtakes.

When you're trying to photograph two very active and goofy children, you get lots of hilarious outtakes.

But this is one of my recent favorites.

The kidlet has realized what it means when I get the camera out now, and is starting to ham it up. She also wants to get in reeeeally close to the lens when I take photos. This is one of those times. I had a nice photo all set up and then the kidlet decided to change it to an extreme close-up.

I edited out the eye goobers and boogery nose to spare you (the healing brush tool is one of my favorites when used sparingly!) so you get the full effect of her scrunchy eyes and wide-open mouth. Girlfriend has almost all her teeth already! She also thinks it's hilarious to chomp on mommy's finger. Yeouch!

Check out all the other great photos over on iheartfaces. I know it's not nice to laugh at others, but you just can't help it when you see some of these photos!

iheartfaces - Christmas Traditions

2009-12-22T21:36:00.002-06:00

It's another week off for the awesome ladies at iheartfaces. I like these off weeks, the themes are always fun, you get to post as many pictures as you want, and you always learn so much about other iheartfaces readers.

The theme this week is Christmas Traditions. I love this theme. I love Christmas. And I love traditions!

It's been interesting to try and combine our family's traditions and forge our own for our new family over the last six years. But here are a few of my favorites:

- Listening to Christmas Music starting the day after Thanksgiving

(okay, so technically this is a screen shot and not a photo)

- Buying a real Christmas tree and decorating it one of the first weekends in December

We have kind of an odd spot for it in our living room - next to the fireplace, tucked in a corner in front of a window, It's a skinny spot, which requires a skinny tree, but we also have 10' ceilings, so we like to have a tall tree, too. We've been able to find these Frasier Firs at one of the local tree farms, and they fit perfectly (and smell divine!)

- Baking Christmas goodies to share with family, friends and coworkers

This year, the kiddo decided he wanted to help, which lasted all of about 5 minutes before he got distracted by something else. Oh well, we had fun, even if more powdered sugar ended up on the floor, the dog and the kidlet than the cookies. Mmmmm...... cookies

- Christmas Jammies!

Growing up, we used to get new jammies almost every Christmas Eve, and would wear them to bed that night. Sometimes my mom buys the jammies for the kids, but usually we do. These are last year's jammies. This year the kiddo has cute doggies wearing reindeer antlers and the kidlet has owls in stocking hats.

- Taking a family photo and designing Christmas cards

Every year we get at least one family photo in front of the Christmas tree. This year we took the photo a little early, when we celebrated Christmas with my family a week ago. I then work my Photoshop magic and design a card that I have printed. It's been fun to try and come up with new ideas every year.

- Enjoying some contemporary Christmas movies

I know it's not a cinematic masterpiece, but the more I watch Elf, the more I enjoy it. And how can you not love Love Actually? *sigh*

One tradition that I absolutely LOVE and, sadly, don't have a photo for is
- Making rice pudding on Christmas Eve
This is a tradition that my family started 12 years ago, when we had a [Swedish] Finnish foreign exchange student live with us. (Hej Emilia! God jul önskar din familj! Puss och kram!) We have soup for supper before the Christmas Eve service and make rice pudding that we eat with cinnamon and sugar. Emilia taught us that you should put a hazelnut in the pot before you serve the pudding and whomever ends up with the nut will have good luck for the next year. Then, after we've opened all our presents (Santa came to our house during church for some reason) we'll sit around and have another bowl or two while we check out all our cool stuff. That is definitely one tradition I would love to continue for a long, long time.

I can't wait to keep adding traditions as our family gets older and expands. Stop on over to iheartfaces and check out some of the other traditions people have.

Serena's Cookie Exchange

2009-12-19T11:31:00.003-06:00

I just discovered The Farm Chicks a few weeks ago. I'm a creature of habit in my blog reading. If I don't have it bookmarked, I'll just forget to read it. Lame, I know. But I stumbled upon this one from another blog I discovered while commenting on yet another blog (did you follow that?)

They're right up my alley!

Right now she's having a virtual cookie exchange, how fun! With all the time off I had this week due to sick kids, I was able to make our traditional Christmas treats: peanut clusters, almond bark cookies, gingerbread men, almond poppyseed bread and cut-out sugar cookies.

The cut-out sugar cookies are what I'm sharing in the cookie exchange. I know, everyone has their own recipe for these, but I love the one we use.

Sugar Cookies
- 1/2 c butter (3/4 c better)
- 1 c sugar
- 1 t baking soda
- pinch salt
- 1 egg
- 1 t vanilla
- 1 t cream of tartar
- 4 T hot milk
- 1 scant t nutmeg
- 3 c flour

Cream butter and sugar. Add well-beaten egg, vanilla and the soda dissolved in the hot milk. Sift cream of tartar, salt, nutmeg and flour. Add to wet mixture. Mix well. Roll to 1/4" thickness. Cut with cookie cutters. Bake at 375 for 7-8 minutes.

My notes: we use powdered sugar when we roll and cut these cookies. You can never go wrong with more sugar! On the back of the recipe card, my grandma wrote: "I got this recipe from a friend - her grandmother's recipe and her family was Swedish. Always used this recipe."

I've never seen another sugar cookie recipe that uses nutmeg, I think that's what makes this so different (and tasty!).

I had some help with these cookies. First, my gorgeous new KitchenAid mixer:

How could I have ever doubted this lovely machine? It easily cut the prep time for these cookies in half. I'm still getting used to using the mixer, but I already love it.

The kids also wanted to assist:

The kiddo helped roll out the dough

And cut out the cookies (he loved the train cookie cutter)

The kidlet didn't want to be left out of the fun.

Though, really, I think she just liked the powdered sugar!

Testing out the final product.

Yum!

The kidlet agreed. I think she ate more cookies than the kiddo did!

I still need to frost and decorate them, and will take pictures and post of the final product. I have it on good authority from Santa himself that these are his favorite! ;)
--------
Finally! Pictures of the frosted, decorated cookies:

Just your average buttercream frosting, but instead of vanilla flavoring, I use almond extract.

iheartfaces - Constructive Feedback Friday

2009-12-18T10:55:00.006-06:00

Instead of the usual fix-it Friday, today is Constructive Feedback Friday on iheartfaces. Amateurs (like me!) can post a photo and get tips/edits/feedback from pros on how to make the photo better - either through composing the photo prior to taking the pic or doing some post-processing editing work.

I took this photo of the kiddo when we were at the farm for Thanksgiving. We're riding in the pickup to go see the combine working out in the field. That's my dad behind him. The photo was taken around 3:30 in the afternoon, and the sun is already starting to set by that time. No flash, playing with different camera settings.

Here's my straight out of camera shot and here's a link to the full-rez photo.

Deets:
- Taken with a Canon Rebel XTi
- 1/160 shutter speed
- shutter priority
- f/3.5
- ISO 200
- 28mm

And then a quick edit job (just levels/curves) to lighten it a little:

I use Photoshop CS4 on a Mac for all my photography stuff.

Things I love about the photo: the catchlights in the kiddo's eyes (I can never seem to get those!), his goofy sort-of smile (so him!).

Things I don't like: the overall darkness (especially the shadows on the left side), the blue sky on the top right corner (distracting?).

Any comments, suggestions, edits are much, much, much appreciated! I'm always trying to learn how to take (and edit) better photos.

Check out all the other CFF entries on iheartfaces.

Desickber

2009-12-17T11:51:00.000-06:00

It never fails. It seems someone is *always* sick in December. Always.

We went through a horrible bout of stomach flu a few years ago. That is the one and only time the kiddo has been hospitalized, thankfully, due to dehydration.

Every year since then we've had at least 2-3 days where the kiddo or kidlet has been home from daycare due to some sort of illness.

This year, the kiddo ended up getting sick on the way home from my sister's after my family's Christmas on Sunday. He was in the truck with the hub, so at least I didn't have to deal with it (sorry hub). Then the kidlet was sent home early on Monday due to fever.

Whatever the kiddo had hasn't completely gone away as he had his first big "accident" since being potty trained. Poor kid. He probably didn't even know it happened and thought he was just tooting. One sheet change, bath and new jammies later, he was back asleep like a baby.

One thing is for sure, being a parent sure makes you immune to the effects of bodily fluids on your person or furniture.

But these little redheads, I think I'd put up with anything from them.

I took this shot last weekend, anticipating using it in our Christmas card, but I changed my mind and used one of the entire family instead.

Being home with both kids today may prove interesting, though... If I can get the kidlet to nap soon, I told the kiddo he could help with making Christmas cookies. That will be an experience!

i heart faces - fix it Friday

2009-12-11T16:04:00.002-06:00

Every Friday on iheartfaces, the gals offer up a SOOC shot to edit to your little heart's desire. I always want to try this out, and always seem to forget until sometime on Sunday!

But I was slow (and procrastinating) at work today, so I decided to play around with it a bit.

The original:

And my edit:

I used an action called Platino V1 I'd found for free online. After I ran the action, I adjusted the platino layer to 55% and the b/w mixer layer to 60%. Then I used a mask on the blur layer to highlight certain areas of the photo - the detail on the horse, the cowboy's face, the dirt. Then I cropped it slightly to showcase the cowboy and the steer.

I love the gritty, faded effect of the action. I think it turned out pretty cool, and it's a cool photo to start with. So much about photography is subjective, though, and you may have another idea of what would look cool.

Check out the other fix-its on iheartfaces.

SNOW!

2009-12-09T16:39:00.000-06:00

Having lived in the Midwest my entire life, there are two things you can count on: at least one good storm during the winter and everyone to go a little crazy when that first storm hits.

They started the predictions on Saturday/Sunday - that there was a big cell heading straight towards us with the potential to drop 8-10" of snow and winds that would increase until it was blizzard conditions.

Yes! Blizzard!

We've learned to take weather predictions with a grain of salt because, well, weather is rather unpredictable. Meteorologists can only do so much with their models and radars and whatnot. Sometimes Mother Nature follows suit and sometimes she just laughs at you.

This time she followed suit. By noon on Tuesday, the snow had picked up and by mid-afternoon, there were times where it was coming down pretty good. Daycare had decided to close after lunch yesterday and remained so today, along with all the local schools and the hubs and my work. So we had a lovely snow day today!

The plow going down our side street. Yes, that's a car buried under almost a foot of snow!

The branches on the trees are all weighted (weighed?) down.

Almost 5pm and it's still going strong!

One of the drawbacks of living in an older home - the windows aren't particularly efficient. This is the window on the landing of our stairs. There probably shouldn't be frost on the *inside* of the window, huh?

One good thing about having a snow day, the house is now completely decorated for Christmas. I put the finishing touches on the tree last night.

I've been trying to play more with the manual settings on my camera (with not always the greatest success) but I thought I'd try and capture some with just using the Christmas lights for lighting.

Willowtree Nativity set that is on our piano.

Two of probably nearly 30 Santas on our mantel. I have a lot of Santas.

Another Santa. This one is probably a tad dark, but not enhanced in any way.

They're okay. It's hard to hold the camera steady to get some of the low-light shots.

The only way I'll get better is practice, though.

Goofy kids

2009-12-06T21:46:00.000-06:00

Oh my kids. They fill my heart with laughter.

One or two more couldn't be that much trouble, could it?

Harvest time

2009-12-04T17:11:00.003-06:00

I'm finally getting around to uploading the pictures from our trip back to the farms over Thanksgiving.

The kiddo was very excited about seeing Papa's big tractor, so Thursday afternoon, after we'd eaten our fill and rested our stomachs, he and I went out to help Papa (my dad) do chores.

It was a bit chilly, but every good Farmer needs a seed corn company hat. This is a classic. We <3 Latham Seeds!

Papa helped us up to the big tractor. Aside, that stocking cap my dad is wearing is older than I am, but it's the only one he will wear in the winter.

We had fun "driving" the tractor, too (but we had to take the key out, so it wouldn't be noisy).

Ah, corn. The bounty of the harvest.

Watching the combine finish a row

And then dump its load into an awaiting truck

Once the truck is full, it's taken back to the farm where the corn is dumped into the dryer pit so it can be dried to the proper moisture content to be stored in one of the silos grain bins. (Thanks for correcting me, dad.)

That look like this. (Actually, those are the silos, I didn't take a picture of the grain bins).

Of course, every farm needs a good farm dog. This is Smokey. She's a Blue Heeler, a good cattle dog.

The field they were working at is just east of the home farm, and there's some great scenery around it (even though I broke a cardinal photography rule with this one - the horizon should not be centered in the photo!)

To get there, you take an old gravel road. Not too far off the turn is this big, old cottonwood tree. You can see it from our farm when the corn is out. Dad claims it was a landmark for the old settlers. I can believe it, you can see that tree for miles. There used to be some bittersweet that grew around the base of the tree near the surrounding fence, but sadly it all died when the field got sprayed.

Just down the road from the farm, there's a wind farm. It's neat to see all the generators, though it was a shock at first - there's just so many of them!

There was also a beautiful sunset that night. Another weak attempt at sun flare. I'll get better, I just need more practice!

Lovely. *sigh*

This is the latest harvest in more than 50 years. I still don't know if they're completely done.

Where's. My. Pie!

2009-12-04T16:55:00.001-06:00

That's from one of the kiddo's Backyardigan's episodes: Samurai Pie.

As figured, I was tasked with making the pies for our Thanksgiving feast (and I also made two for Thanksgiving the next day with the ILs.)

I made the traditional pumpkin and then a super yummy Sour Cream Pecan pie. I got the recipe from an internet friend a few years ago, and it's become a favorite for special meals. It's extremely easy and extremely delicious.

Mmmmmm...... Pie......

It didn't last long.

Sour Cream Pecan Pie
3 eggs
1/2 c sour cream
1 c sugar
1/2 c dark corn syrup
2T butter, melted
1t salt
1t vanilla
1c pecans

Beat eggs. Add sour cream and mix well. Add sugar, corn syrup, butter, salt, and vanilla. Mix. Add pecans. Pour into 9" pie shell. Bake for 35-40 minutes at 425.

I heart tooshies

2009-11-30T20:48:00.000-06:00

The fine ladies at iheartfaces are turning things around this week. Literally! By popular demand, it's I Heart Tooshies week.

I'd hoped to use a cute one of the kidlet from her birthday party when she was crawling away from me and all you can see is the brown of her tights and onesie and then an explosion of tulle from her tutu. But that didn't look as good when I tried to crop and edit it (there were some toys in the foreground that were bothering me).

So I searched through my photos and found this one instead:

It's from our trip to the pumpkin patch in October and happens to contain my three favorite tooshies. The kiddo and the hub were pulling the wagon to pay for the pumpkins and the kidlet was having a blast "helping" by "pushing" the wagon. I tried out some different actions before I settled on this one. I like how it gives a faded feel.

Check out all the other cute tooshies at iheartfaces. You might even try and pinch a few through your screen!

Nervous and a new bed!

2009-11-30T12:39:00.001-06:00

So last we met on Thursday, I was all excited about my new KitchenAid mixer and bemoaning the fact I had to get up early for insane Black Friday shopping.

The shopping went smashingly. Got all the deals I was looking for and my Christmas shopping is about 67% finished. Yay!

However, once we got home on Saturday, I started actually researching the mixer I bought. And I saw some unnerving things. That the motor burns out easily. That it leaks oil. That the gears strip and scatter metal shavings into whatever delicacy you're mixing at the time. Granted, out of nearly 700 reviews on Amazon, those only account for about 50 of them. But still, it's enough to give me pause.

And the kicker is that I saw the 90th anniversary mixer at the store (remember, they were sold out online) and was very tempted to buy it and then take the other one back once it arrived. But I decided against it. Now I really wish I would have. Argh. I'm always second guessing myself like that!

Oh well, as the hub tried to calm me down last night, he reminded me that ours could be perfectly fine. We don't even have it yet! Just in case, I've been hunting down old (and I mean old, like mid-60s) KA mixers on different auction sites.

One good thing came out of the weekend, at least. The hub and I bought a new bed.

Isn't it purty?

We've been using a cobbled-together monstrosity that the hub built himself with 2x6 boards and steel bolts the year he graduated college - 11 years ago. It does the job, but it sure ain't pretty. I saw the special in one of the furniture ads from this weekend and we went and looked at it yesterday after church.

It's solid, sturdy and looks a heckuva lot better than what we have now. Sold! It should be here tomorrow.

That will also be a good incentive to finally clean behind/under the bed and get rid of the army of dust bunnies that has slowly been mobilizing since our last major cleaning in May. We also need to fix and touch up some of the trim behind the bed. Just one (small) step closer to getting back to the farm!

Thankful and I must be crazy

2009-11-26T18:43:00.002-06:00

I am thankful.

I am thankful I have a loving and caring husband who drove two hours up to my parents even though he's not feeling 100% yet.

I am thankful I have two darling and hugely entertaining children that fill my life with love and smiles, even when they're crying and whiny and want to be held all the time.

I am thankful I have good health, a lovely home, a wonderful job, and a supportive family.

I am thankful for all of God's blessings He has given me.

I am thankful.
--------------------------------------------------
We had a wonderful Thanksgiving meal.

A wonderful, large, tasty, filling Thanksgiving meal. And I've been grazing on pie the entire afternoon.

We browsed through the Black Friday ads after the meal. After my experience last year, I wasn't sure if I wanted to try it again, but there are some really good deals to be had.

The only problem is that we're at my parent's, which is nowhere near any major stores or shopping malls. So I will be getting up around 3 am tomorrow and driving half an hour to the nearest "city" so I can elbow people out of my way and grab my desired goods. Oy.

Thankfully, I was able to purchase one big item online. I've wanted a KitchenAid stand mixer for a long time, but could never justify the cost for one as we really don't have the room in our tiny little kitchen. But one of the department stores had a really good deal on one as a Black Friday special, and it was available online.

What I really wanted was the super cool 90th Anniversary mixer with the glass bowl, but that was sold out already. *pout* Instead, I got the 6qt professional series mixer for a good deal, including a $50 rebate, which made it just over half the original price.

Isn't it pretty? I still have no idea where I'm going to put it in my tiny kitchen, but I don't care anymore. Besides, I'll hopefully have a new, larger kitchen within a year.

Ode to a Crock Pot

2009-11-24T17:22:00.000-06:00

Or the more fashionable term nowadays, the slow cooker.

Today was our annual Thanksgiving potluck at work, or as I like to think of it, the annual pre-Thanksgiving warm-up stomach stretch. We had ham, smoked turkey, party potatoes, baked beans, scalloped corn, rolls, potato salad, fruit, apple pie, caramel cheesecake and chocolate chip cookies.

Phew.

As we have no oven and only have two microwaves at work, I brought my contributions (the ham and the party potatoes) in crock pots to heat them/keep them warm for the meal.

It worked wonderfully, even though I had to get up shortly after 6 to finish the potatoes and get the ham in so it would be thoroughly heated by the time we ate. Need I remind you I am *not* a morning person?

About 10 o'clock this morning, the lovely smell of ham was wafting through the office. By 11:30 the potatoes had joined them and I was practically drooling on my computer. It didn't help matters that my desk is right next to our "party" room (and by party room, I mean back office with the big table) so I was extremely close to the food.

I work with some great people, and we always have a good time when we have these little potlucks. Our hour-long lunch stretches an extra 30 minutes or so as we chit chat and give each other some good-natured ribbings.

The other bad thing about having a desk so close, is that the food is generally left out the rest of the afternoon, so I'll inevitably make my way back to the table three or four or five times for a bit of this or another taste of that or a mid-afternoon cookie.

Oh waistline, we had some good times this year. I'll miss you.

Oh Lordy

2009-11-22T20:45:00.000-06:00

I'm not used to little boys. I grew up with two sisters and all the accoutrements that accompany girls - Barbies, dress-up, playing Beauty Parlor, etc...

So I can't help it if I'm folding laundry and my darling little boy comes up to me and says "Hey mom, look at this" and has his pants pulled down to show off his goods, I laugh so hard I start crying. Even though I know that just encourages him and I should be parenting him. And I have to try and compose myself to tell him that we keep our private parts in our pants unless we're going potty. But I start laughing again, because little girls just don't do that!

And then, the hub comes in from taking the dog outside to go potty and I start laughing/crying again because I have to recount the entire story for him.

Oh Lordy. These children. I love my children, but oh man. They don't tell you about these moments when you're taking those prenatal classes at the hospital. And I think I want another one? I better hope it's another girl. I can handle those, I don't know what I'd do with another boy!

Obsession

2009-11-18T16:38:00.000-06:00

My current obsession (which means that's what I do at work instead of actually working) is looking at house plans online.

As we're hopefully moving back to my little hometown in the next 4-6 months, we've been see-sawing on whether to build or buy a house. In the country. On an acreage.

There aren't that many houses for sale in my hometown on acreages. Not houses you'd let two troublesome children run around in anyway.

So I've been drooling over house plans instead. We (and by we I mean me) have a list of things we Must Have and things we Would Really Like.

Our Must Haves:
- two-car garage
- open floor plan
- 4 BR
- at least 2 bath, 3 would be better
- large kitchen
- fireplace
- some sort of outside entertaining space, be it a porch or deck or patio

Our Would Really Like:
- finished basement
- high ceilings
- lots of windows
- mudroom with shower
- some sort of separate office space

We'd also like to incorporate some "green" elements to the house, such as recycled wood floors and possibly geothermal heat.

Our current house is charming. It's 90+ years old, has wonderful hardwood floors, 10' ceilings on the first floor and oodles of character. It also has one teeny tiny full bath and a small kitchen. And no garage. Well, it has a garage, but it's not large enough for us to park in. So it's a storage shed for the lawnmower and snowblower and table saw and all that good homeowner-y stuff.

Part of me is really excited about the prospect of building a new house that's exactly what we want. Part of me wants to throw up because it's also really expensive to build a new house and while the cost of living will decrease when we move, so will our income. Unless I can come up with some brilliant solution for what I'm going to do when we move.

So many things to think about!

Raising Arizona

2009-11-16T21:20:00.000-06:00

A few photos of my trip to Phoenix. My camera was on the fritz, so I didn't get as many photos as I'd liked. Of course, it would choose to wig out during one of our hikes when I actually wanted to take numerous photos. Oh well...

The "mountain" we hiked on Saturday morning gave a great view of downtown Phoenix. Unfortunately, it was still hazy and the view wasn't very clear.

Put yer hands up! I just liked the shadow the cactus made behind it.

A weak attempt at sun flare. Need more practice with that one.

And Murphy, my friends' Great Dane.

I took the camera with me this weekend to the farm, but didn't take a single photo. How sad is that? I was gone all day Saturday and opted for a nap on Sunday afternoon instead. Next time, I guess...

This and That

2009-11-16T16:58:00.000-06:00

I feel like I haven't had time for a proper post lately. We've been here and there and everywhere the last few weeks. I took the kiddos up to my parent's this past weekend so grandma could babysit and I could go to the final football game of the year (thanks Grandma!) The hub came up the next day and has been helping my dad with farm work. It's good practice for next year.

We have some big decisions coming up in the next few months:
- when to move
- to build or to buy
- what will I do? Stay at home? Freelance? Find a job in town/in a nearby town?

So many things to think about!

One of the good things is the outside of our house is finally DONE! We had the exterior repainted and a new roof put on. It took ages because the weather decided to quit cooperating sometime in mid September, but now it's finished and it looks lovely! The color went from a strange butterscotch to a lovely olivey-brown. The flashing around the chimney is fixed so that means no more water in our bedroom! And the hub has been slowly working on refinishing the screened-in-porch upstairs. We have some touch-up work to do inside (okay, a lot of touch-up work in some rooms) but then it will be all ready to put on the market. The most difficult thing will be keeping it presentable for showings. Not too easy with two boisterous children running around.

I'm excited about the next chapter in our lives. Nervous, but excited.

I heart faces - Thankfulness

2009-11-11T11:53:00.002-06:00

Each month, the fabulous ladies at iheartfaces take a week off from the challenges and post a generic "My Story in Photos" theme for the week. It being November and all that, it's only fitting the theme this week is Thankfulness.

I'm thankful for many things: my wonderful husband, my goofy kiddo and my independent kidlet. The warm, dry weather that's finally allowing for harvest. The gracious gifts that God has given me.

But right now I'm especially thankful for my family.

And for doctors. Because without them, I wouldn't have the sassy niece on the far right.

Right now my nephew (the one in the middle who's actually kind of smiling in a picture for once!) is on his way to a larger children's hospital 30 minutes away from where we live (and 90 minutes from where my oldest sister lives) due to complications from pneumonia he contracted after having the flu. I'm thankful they're doing everything they can to make sure he gets better. I'm thankful we have the resources nearby that allow for him to get better.

I am thankful that I am blessed with a wonderful family. We support one another, we care for each other, and we have fun together. I hope that I can build the same kind of relationships with my own children and they feel the same towards their siblings.

When my sister calls, saying they're at the hospital, I'll offer to do whatever she needs to make their stay easier. I know she would do the same for me. Because we're family, and that's just how we are. And I'm so thankful for that.

See what other people are thankful for over at iheartfaces.

Where I've been

2009-11-10T17:15:00.001-06:00

I managed to find a great deal on a ticket to Phoenix to fly out and see one of my good friends from college. So that's what I did last weekend.

I flew out on Thursday afternoon (with a layover in Denver) and arrived in Phoenix around 8:30.

I don't mind flying, it's kind of fun.

And you get to see some great scenery.

I had a great time in Arizona. My friend and I hiked two mornings, went shopping, went out to eat, went shopping again, and just had fun. I hadn't seen her since last March (more than 18 months ago), but it's always like no time has passed when we get together.

It was difficult to leave the 85-degree weather and come home on Sunday (on an early morning flight no less!) but I managed to make it, despite a very bumpy connecting flight from Denver to Iowa.

Home sweet home state.

The hub and the kids went to the ILs so the hub could help FIL with his field work and the kids could wear out Grandma. I do believe both were accomplished. This weekend we have plans to head up to my parents so the hub can help my dad with their field work. It's been an unusually late harvest due to weather, and help is always appreciated. Besides, it's good training for the hub for next year.

Fly by

2009-11-03T16:58:00.000-06:00

With baking and Halloween and recovering from Halloween and the time change, I haven't hardly had a chance to post.

We had a muscle-bound Spiderman:

A darling butterfly (who wouldn't stand still for a picture):

A Progressive Insurance Flo:

And a live Rick Roll (which was great in theory, notsomuch in execution):

It was a fun weekend. And I think I could get used to wearing a bumpit more often, but can pass on the black eyeliner and red lipstick.

Willpower!

2009-10-28T21:55:00.000-05:00

It's taking all my willpower to not dive into these mini loaves of pumpkin bread I baked for our church's Harvest Bazaar bake sale this weekend.

Doesn't it look yummy? It smells divine.

I still have a loaf of banana bread to make tonight, too, and tomorrow I have to bake two, maybe three pies. Plus I have the treats to get ready for the kiddo and kidlet's daycare Halloween party, but those are just cheese & crackers and grapes, so those won't take too much time.

We're heading into my favorite time of year - the Holiday season - where baked goods abound. My waist may not thank me, but I can worry about that in January.

Pumpkin Patch!

2009-10-27T17:10:00.002-05:00

We took a nice little trip to the Pumpkin Patch on Sunday, something we'd never done before with the kids (or ever, for that matter).

We had a great time!

There were lots of pumpkins of all different sizes

And pony rides

And pony ride watching

And tractor driving (even if it was the wrong color)

And a neato barn

And a spooky old tree

After wandering around a while, we finally picked out our pumpkins

And loaded them up in a wagon

And paid for them so we could take them home!

The kids had a wonderful time running around and looking at everything (despite having been to both grandparents' farms quite a few times). The kiddo was very brave and went on a pony ride (he's a very cautious personality). The kidlet was just having a ball trying to walk everywhere and would pick herself right back up when she fell and start walking again. She even climbed into one of the little red wagons and was standing up in it. Tenacious and not cautious, that one. She will definitely give us gray hair!

Roasting Pumpkin Seeds

2009-10-26T17:01:00.000-05:00

We took a trip to the Pumpkin Patch yesterday and came back with five lovely pumpkins (one for each of us, and the dog).

I told the kiddo we could only carve two into Jack O'Lanterns, which we did. I haven't carved pumpkins in ages, and I'd forgotten how messy (but fun!) it is.

I decided to go all Martha Stewart, though, and save the pumpkin seeds for roasting. It actually turned out to be easier than I thought it would.

First, we (and by we, I mean me) separated all the pumpkin seeds from the pumpkin guts.

After that messy process was done, I took them inside to wash them off.

Don't they look all nice and clean now?

Then, in my big jelly roll pan, I drizzled about 1T of EVOO and spread it around with my fingers to cover the bottom of the pan.

After I did that, I added the pumpkin seeds and tried to flatten them out into one layer as best I could. Then, I drizzed some more EVOO on top and sprinkled about 2t of kosher salt. Then I mixed all that mess up with my hands and respread it on the pan. (I don't have a photo of this part because my camera battery died and I charged it while the seeds were roasting in order to get a photo of the final product.)

The pan went into a 375 degree oven for about 25 minutes. At 10 minutes or so, I kind of shook/stirred/respread the seeds around to make sure they were all evenly roasting.

I didn't think the seeds were quite done at 25 minutes (I had a lot of seeds, plus they were pretty wet) so I gave them an extra 3 minutes in the oven. That was just about perfect, because this is how they turned out.

Very tasty!

Though these guys may not agree.

i heart faces - week 42

2009-10-26T14:46:00.001-05:00

The theme this week on iheartfaces is Halloween Dress-up!

I was never really big into dressing up for Halloween, as I posted about here, we always came up with our own costumes when growing up, usually cobbled together from whatever clothes we had in our dress-up box.

So when the kiddo was born, I decided he was going to have a proper costume. And, as always, Grandma (my mom) came to the rescue! She whipped up this super cute Monkey costume in about a weekend. We <3 Grandma and her mad sewing skillz!

His daycare provider at the time took Halloween off to be with her family, so the kiddo and I hung out together that day. We stopped by my office to see everyone so he could woo them with the cuteness. It's hard to believe that cute little monkey is almost 4 now, and is going to be Spiderman for Halloween this year. How fast they grow!

Head on over to iheartfaces for more cute, spooky and just-plain-fun Halloween Dress-up photos!

Homemade Macaroni and Cheese

2009-10-22T21:25:00.001-05:00

It's a gloomy fall day today - dreary and rainy and gray and wet. The kind of day that just screams Comfort Food. So I decided I was going to make Macaroni and Cheese for supper tonight.

I've never been a fan of the boxed, electric yellow stuff. I don't know if it's because my sisters would eat it all the time while growing up (that and potato buds, you know, dehydrated potato flakes? Barf.) but I just couldn't stand it.

Then, the hub and I went to NYC a few years ago with some friends, and went to a bar where one of our friends ordered some mac and cheese as an appetizer. I had a bite and have been in love ever since.

I searched around a little on the internets, but finally found (and slightly modified) a recipe that comes pretty darn close to what we had in NYC.

The Cast Of Characters:
10oz elbow macaroni (or shape of choice)
1/4 c butter
3 T flour
2 c milk
4 oz cream cheese
4 oz sour cream
1/2 t salt
1/2 t pepper
1/2 t garlic salt
1 T dijon mustard
1 c shredded cheddar cheese
1 c shredded pepper or monterey jack cheese
1 pkg cooked, diced ham (optional)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Bring pot of slightly salted water to boil.

Add pasta and cook 8-10 minutes, until al dente, drain.

In a saucepan (I use a stock pot) melt the butter over medium heat.

Stir in the 3 T of flour

Cook for about 1 minute, until smooth and bubbly, stirring occasionally.

Mix in milk,

cream cheese, sour cream

salt, pepper, and mustard (the mustard is what gives it the yummy, slightly spicy flavor).

Mix well and continue cooking until sauce is thickened.

Now, because we have to have some sort of protein (preferably in meat form) at every meal, I like to add some cooked, diced ham. You can leave it out, too, it's just as tasty.

Add the pasta to the cheese sauce.

And then add the shredded cheeses.

Mmmm..... cheese........

Mix well

and add the diced ham.

Make sure they're all combined happily into one big cheesy, pasta-y, meaty mess.

And then pour into a 2 qt casserole dish. This is Corningware I received as a wedding present 6 years ago, and think I've been able to use exactly twice. Scratch that, make that three times now. Woo hoo!

Sprinkle some Panko bread crumbs (about 1/4-1/2 c, just enough to barely cover the top) and parsley (optional) on top. I just discovered Panko bread crumbs. How did I not know there was such goodness on this earth?

Pop it into the 400-degree oven for 15-20 minutes, or until the top is nice and brown and the sides are bubbly. My oven runs hot, so I put it in for 16ish minutes. Perfect!

Pair it with your favorite side (yes, those are brussels sprouts) and you're good to go!

This is probably the only mac and cheese I'll ever eat.

Here's the recipe again.

Homemade Macaroni and Cheese

10oz elbow macaroni (or shape of choice)

1/4 c butter

3 T flour

2 c milk

4 oz cream cheese

4 oz sour cream

1/2 t salt

1/2 t pepper

1/2 t garlic salt

1 T dijon mustard

1 c shredded cheddar cheese

1 c shredded pepper or monterey jack cheese

1 pkg cooked, diced ham (optional)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Bring a pot of slightly salted water to boil. Add pasta and cook 8-10 minutes, until al dente, drain. In a saucepan (I use a stock pot) over medium heat, melt butter and stir in flour. Cook for about 1 minute, until smooth and bubbly, stirring occasionally. Mix in milk, cream cheese, sour cream, salt(s), pepper, and mustard. Stir well and continue cooking until sauce is thickened. Add cooked pasta and shredded cheeses (and ham if so desired). Mix well and pour into 2qt casserole dish. Sprinkle 1/4-1/2 c bread crumbs and bake 15-20 minutes until golden brown and heated through.

Happy Birthday Mom!

2009-10-20T09:49:00.001-05:00

As always, I'm running a little late. Mom's birthday was actually Sunday.

Inspired by my sister (okay, so I'm copying her), I'm dedicating this post to our mother.

How do you describe someone who has taught you basically everything you know? Who has been there for you when you need her, and sometimes even when you think you don't (but you do, and she knows that because she's your mom and moms know everything). Who is willing to drop everything at a moment's notice and come down to help clean or babysit or bake or sew or whatever. Who let you play Beauty Parlor on her when you were 8 and sat patiently while you applied frosted blue eyeshadow up to her eyebrows or accidentally got a touch close to her ears when you were practicing with the curling iron.

That would be our mom.

We are blessed with a fantastic, talented mom.

A mom who can sew wonderfully, and made all the bridesmaids dresses for my sisters' and my weddings. Who taught us all to sew, and is the reason all three of us have sewing machines today.

A mom who taught us how to cook and bake from an early age, so I now know how to make a proper pie crust and love to bake cookies from scratch.

A mom who oversaw roughly 16 years worth of 4-H projects from my sisters and me. Who volunteered in foodstands and as a leader. Who taught us how to hang wallpaper and refinish furniture.

A mom who inspired a love of reading in all of us as well.

A mom who loves and supports us unconditionally. Who sits back and lets us make seemingly stupid mistakes/decisions for ourselves but is right there when we need her.

After having both the kiddo and the kidlet, my mom came and stayed with us for a few days. She was invaluable - helping clean and cook for us and taking care of us (mostly me and the new babe).

Mom and the kiddo.

Mom and the kidlet.

Thank you, mom, for being such a wonderful mom and role model. We are blessed and love you.

i heart faces - pink week

2009-10-19T16:51:00.006-05:00

This week it's all about Pink on iheartfaces. The challenge was to show something that represents Pink Week to you.

Like everyone, I've been touched by breast cancer. My dad's sister had a round with it a decade ago, some very dear internet friends have battled the cancer beast. One is NED for nearly five years, another is still doing everything she can to beat her cancer beast (both of these women were diagnosed in their 30s!). My photo isn't as touching or endearing as some of the other photos on there, but I'm still proud to post it.

I call this "Self-Portrait in Pink" and I took it right before I left the house around 7:20 am to head to the 5k for breast cancer I walked in a week ago. (FYI, there were more than 12,000 registrants for the race and it raised more than $233,490 for free mammograms and other breast-care services for local women in need. AWESOME!).

I rarely have photos of me, and self portraits are even more rare (because they never seem to turn out well - hello chin!), but sometimes it's fun to put a face to the person writing all these words (right?)

So here I am, in all my early morning, bleary-eyed glory. Have I mentioned I'm not a morning person?

It was so worth it. The walk was an incredible experience for me and I'm so glad I could do it this year. I even found out that I placed second in my age bracket for walkers! How cool is that! Some day I hope to do the 3-day walk.

Please, please stop on by iheartfaces and see what Pink Week means to everyone there.

It's official, we have a walker!

2009-10-12T21:42:00.005-05:00

The kidlet has been taking more and more steps on her own lately. She's even almost walked across the room a few times (as long as she's holding something in her hands and is distracted from the fact she's actually walking!)

Video proof from tonight:

She was walking towards the dog (which she can say, kind of) and the hub and was rewarded for her efforts by sloppy, slobbery, germ-infested dog kisses (which she loves - I just prefer not to think about it).

She even decided to go for round two five minutes later.

It's so fun to watch her wobbly, tentative steps (which we affectionally call the Drunk Monkey walk). I'm not sure if I'm ready to have another biped child, though. She's already wicked fast when she wants to be and has a tendency to get into trouble. If we turn our backs even for a second, she's headed straight for the stairs. She loves to play in the sink in the bathroom, and has figured out how to climb up her brother's step stool to reach the water.

Oh Lordy, she will be the reason I go gray, I just know it!

i heart faces - week 40

2009-10-12T19:50:00.003-05:00

I'm so excited! And I just can't hide it!

The theme this week on iheartfaces is Excited!! (yes, the two exclamation points are totally necessary).
My entry this week is a photo I took of the kidlet when we were at the IL's farm for Easter. I don't know what had her all giddy, but she was smiling up a storm and just so animated.

This photo makes me laugh every time I look at it. Her expression is just priceless and the big, open-mouthed, toothless grin is great. The fact she has a touch of the crazy eyes makes it even better. Man, I love having all these silly photos of my kids with which to embarrass them when they get older. :)
Hop on over to iheartfaces to check out more great excited photos. You won't regret it!

It was a great morning

2009-10-11T17:25:00.002-05:00

to walk a 5K. A little chilly, but I battled that with long underwear, lots of layers and cute pink scarf, hat and mittens.

It was an absolutely amazing experience. Including the late registrations this morning, there were almost 12,000 entrants. I'd say it was a good mix of runners and walkers, plus there was a 1 mile fun walk that was geared towards families.

They had opening ceremonies about 20 minutes before the race started, had some speakers and then a lovely prayer and song led by some hospital employees. Each year the race hands out a certain color of shirt for entrants to wear - this year it was brown. All you could see for hundreds of yards was brown shirts. It was so cool!

I finished my walk in right around 40 minutes. I was definitely power walking, and my legs are going to pay for it later! How sad is it that I can almost walk a 5K as fast as I can run it?

After I went through the finish like, I walked back to where I'd parked my car. It happened to be on the same street as the last leg of the race, so I stood and watched the rest of the walkers go by. Of course, after the race was done I remembered I'd brought my camera and left it in my car. I did take a self-portrait before I left for the race, but I'm planning on using that for iheartfaces Pink week. So that will have to wait.

I would definitely do this race again, maybe even run it one year! Some day I hope to do the 3-day walk, too. How amazing would that be?!?

It's only October 10

2009-10-10T16:48:00.005-05:00

and we woke up to flurries and a slight dusting of snow.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised, it is the Midwest after all. Anything can happen here when it comes to weather.

So tonight the expected low is 18. Brrrrrrr!

I'm going to have to pull out the down comforter and shake it out. And put the flannel sheets on all the beds.

And tomorrow morning I'm going to be braving the cold and walking in a 5K

I won't be running as I haven't run since the 5K my sister and I ran in July, but I can walk a 5K no problem. A friend and I had signed up to walk the race two years ago, but it got rained out. I couldn't do it last year because I had just had the kidlet. I'm walking solo because the said friend had a prior commitment, but that's okay.

I'm really looking forward to it. I went and picked up my race packet this morning and discovered my tag number was 10,700. That means there are more than 10,000 people signed up for this race. That's awesome! It's a run/walk race, and this is the first year men have been able to sign up for the race as well. I really kind of liked the idea of it being women-only, but if it raises more money for breast cancer research, then heck, let dogs run too!

I'll try and take pictures. The race starts at 8:00 am, and I should be there at least 30 minutes before the start. I may not be pretty, or awake at that time, but I'll be there. And I'll be wearing my snazzy new hot pink stocking cap and hot pink gloves to ward off the cold. :)

Missing: one willpower

2009-10-08T16:24:00.005-05:00

I seem to have fallen off the exercise/good eating wagon. This isn't a surprise, it happens every now and then. But there's one major culprit:

My fall candy mix. A bag of candy corn (I like the "Indian" corn with the brown tops), a small bag of M'n'M's and a jar of dry roasted peanuts. Divine! It's the best combination of salty, sweet, chocolate, crunchy and chewy. I've even figured out the perfect ratio of peanuts (2-3), chocolate (2 M'n'M's) and candy corn (1).

Unfortunately, I've been snacking on it for the past week and I'm starting to notice it's catching up to me.

It doesn't help that with sick kiddos, birthday parties and yucky weather, I haven't exactly been exercising as regularly as I had been.

I mean, come on, this is what the weather has been like this entire week:
Cloudy, rainy, gloomy and chilly. Despite my best intentions, I haven't gotten up early to exercise like I have planned in my head because it's so dreary and chilly in the mornings and bed is so warm and comfortable!

But I haven't worked so hard the entire year to just stop and let it all go to pot. So I'll take my little break, enjoy some time off, and then get back to it.

Falling off the wagon is only a setback if you refuse to jump back on.

Brown paper packages tied up with string...

2009-10-05T18:26:00.005-05:00

... these are a few of my favorite things.

Didn't you want to be one of the Von Trapp children in that movie? I know I did, who wouldn't want to scamper around the Austrian countryside with a guitar-toting singing nun governess? (but I could have done without the curtain frocks).
This week on iheartfaces, we're taking a break from faces and posting our favorite things. In no particular order, these are mine:

the farm
the hub
the kiddo
the kidlet
walking
my iPod boyfriend
Ripley (despite the shedding)
candy (sweets of any kind, really)
fonts
wine
lip gloss (I have a slight addiction)
traveling, London especially
magazines
cows
photography
flowers
microbrews
long soaks in the bath
Lavanila vanilla grapefruit body butter (YUM!)
cute heels (despite the fact they make me really tall)
reading
baking
my family
my wedding rings

I had a lot of fun going through my photos and taking some more for my favorites!

Head on over to iheartfaces to check out more favorites. Maybe someone else's favorites will be your favorites, too!

Birthday Girl

2009-10-04T21:20:00.009-05:00

The kidlet had her first birthday party yesterday with the fam. It was a good time!

She was dressed to impress in a cute onesie my sister found and darling tulle tutu the same sister made.

Oh, I love those cheeks!

And even those cheeks.

My same awesome sister made the cupcakes

And darling "smash" cake

She had fun opening presents (with a little help from mommy)

She wasn't quite so sure what to think about the cake

What is this stuff?

Are you sure I can eat it?

She started digging in more a little bit

Messy hands

The final carnage:

It was great to get all the family together to celebrate and she, and the kiddo, had a great time playing with aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents. Thanks for coming to celebrate everyone!

They're two, they're four, they're six, they're eight

2009-10-02T22:07:00.003-05:00

Shunting trucks and hauling freight...

Last weekend, we went to the Day Out With Thomas event at a scenic/historic railroad about two hours away. It was a great time!

It's Thomas!

The hub and the kiddo with Thomas. There were also electric trolly rides available, but the kiddo thought the whistle was too loud.

You could buy a ticket to go on a train ride where Thomas "pulled" the train. You got to sit in the coach cars and watch the landscape whiz by! Okay, so the train didn't exactly whiz along, but it was fun to ride in a Real Life Coach Car.

The kiddo waits for the train to leave.

Watching the scenery pass by.

He decided you could get a better view if you actually stuck your head *out* of the window.

The kidlet wasn't quite as excited about Thomas, but she enjoyed it nonetheless.

Grandpa was silly and tried to get her to wear his hat.

After the train ride, you could walk around the area and do all sorts of fun things. They had a tent set up with coloring pages, stamps, and trains to play with; a train car where they had story time; pictures with Thomas and Sir Topham Hatt; and of course a gift shop tent where you could buy just about anything Thomas-related your little heart desired.

The kidlet thought it was more fun to practice walking with Grandpa.

She's getting closer to walking on her own!

But it sure took a lot of concentration!

Because we waited so long (what? us procrastinate? Never!), the only time that fit in our schedule (and still had tickets available) was 9am on Saturday morning. It actually ended up being a good thing; we got there right away and were able to see Thomas up close and do the other activities without having to wait in much of a line. It was a little cool, but the sun was out and it was a beautiful day.

All these shots were taken on my Canon (now that it's working again. Yay!). I kept trying different settings, though, and some of my pictures ended up being too underexposed. I edited all of them in Photoshop CS4 using the Pioneer Woman actions Boost (at 30%) and Warmth (at 25%) to help counteract the coolness of the morning light. There are a few I really like, but I need a lot more practice. I should unearth my Understanding Exposure book, too, that I've been meaning to read for forever.

One Year Old (and one day)

2009-10-02T12:32:00.006-05:00

Official One Year Photo.

And the progression:

I'm glad to say she's feeling much better and even got to go to daycare today! That also means I'm at home (and am supposed to be cleaning in preparation for her party tomorrow) but this is more important, right? Right?

One year ago today

2009-10-01T09:34:00.004-05:00

I was sitting in the hospital, big fat and pregnant, waiting for the OB on call to come around and check me so we could get the induction party started.

I looked like this:
That's 10+ lbs of baby and a lot of amniotic fluid in there, yo.

It was a busy day in the baby ward, and it was almost noon before the OB got there to check me. He broke my waters (and there was a lot) and we were on our way!

We had a fabulous L&D nurse, Ann (who took this charming picture - don't we look relaxed?)

She was a crack up and helped keep my mind off the fact I was about to deliver a ginormous baby. The contractions started increasing after my water was broke and I spent a few hours on the birthing ball, leaned over the bed and making permanent grip impressions on the hub's hands.

A couple hours later I'd decided I'd suffered enough and called for the epidural. The sweet, blessed epidural. I know giving birth is a very personal experience, and in my experience, I do best with adequate pain management. That's all I'm gonna say on that.

So after I was relegated to the bed, we popped in The Princess Bride and waited for my body to progress. It did, beautifully (according to Ann, anyway) and by 6ish, I was ready to push - we just had to wait for the OB who was busy delivering a set of twins.

But he finally arrived and at 6:42 pm, the kidlet made her way out into the world. All 10lb 6.5oz of her.

That's a big baby!

All clean and snuggly.

Happy Birthday baby girl! You have gotten to be So Big!

The poor dear is sick with rotavirus and yet another ear infection, so she can't even really enjoy it.

I'm not ready for that yet!

2009-09-22T15:42:00.003-05:00

I had to stop by Target today on my lunch hour to pick up a few things. While there, I decided to look through the toddler's section for some more long pants for the kiddo. As much as I don't want to admit it, today is the first day of fall and he won't be able to wear shorts to daycare much longer.

At 3.5, the kiddo is wearing size 5T clothes. 5T! The next step up is big boy clothes. I'm not ready for that yet! He's still my baby, he can't be wearing those sizes yet.

In my head, the kiddo still looks like this:
Cute little rubber band wrists, ample rolls on his thighs and multiple chins.

But he doesn't look like that anymore, he looks like this:
He's leaned out. He's strong. He has better abs than I do! He's tall and solid and built exactly like his daddy, the hub, who was an athlete in his pre-marriage/pre-kids life.

I know in 10 or so years, the kiddo will be towering over me and eating us out of house and home. But for now I'll enjoy the fact that he can still (willingly) sit on my lap and give me hugs and kisses. *sigh* Everyone says they grow up so fast, but you don't really believe it until it happens before your very eyes.

My dream life vs. my real life.

2009-09-21T12:19:00.002-05:00

In my head, I have the ideal way of how my days would go:

up at 6 with a workout, showered ready and in to work by 8. Home and dinner eaten by 7, kids in bed by 8 and me in bed by 10.

It never, ever happens that way. Lately, we've been rolling out of bed closer to 7:30 and I've been getting into work closer to 9 (thank goodness for flexible bosses!!). We don't get home until almost 6 and dinner isn't usually eaten until almost 8. That means the kids don't get to bed until 9 (which then has an affect on getting them up and out of bed the next morning) and by the time we do our things around the house, I don't get to bed until almost midnight.

I really need to change that. But I'm having a very difficult time actually doing anything about it. I'm just not a morning person - ask anyone who's lived with me. And I think our kids have inherited that trait. We need to do something, though. I don't remember the last time I actually had time to style my hair before work!

iheartfaces - completely candid

2009-09-21T10:44:00.002-05:00

The theme this week for iheartfaces is Completely Candid. Looking through my pictures this week, I think I found the perfect photo.

I know I've shared this one before on here, but never as an iheartfaces entry. Every time I look at it, it makes me smile.

The kiddo was not quite nine months old in this picture, and these are the hub's grandmas (so the kiddo's great-grandmas). Collectively known as The Grandmas, they almost always come as a pair. They're both widowed and live in the same small town, attend the same small-town church and do a lot of things together. We love The Grandmas.

And, in typical Grandma fashion, they're encouraging the kiddo to get in to trouble. Nevermind the fact that at 9 months old he wasn't supposed to have popcorn yet. Really yummy fancy gourmet popcorn from Chicago at that. But he doesn't seem deterred, and neither do the Grandmas. The look on their faces is priceless, I just wish I had a better angle of the kiddo's face. I'm sure he was more than delighted at this new experience!

God bless The Grandmas. I hope they're with us for a long time to come.

Head on over to iheartfaces for more fun candid shots!

Fixed!

2009-09-20T18:07:00.004-05:00

My DSLR started acting up a few months ago - the auto focus wasn't working right and I couldn't get it to take pictures half the time.

In typical fashion, I let it sit in the camera bag for a good month before taking it out and remembering "oh yeah, it doesn't work."

And so I would put it back in the camera bag and forget about it for another month wherein I would take it out and remember "oh yeah, it doesn't work."

And I would look at the little error code that popped up on the display screen and I would tell myself "Okay, I need to remember that, so I can Google it and figure out what I need to do."

And, inevitably, I would forget. Because that's how I roll. I can remember random facts about celebrities or pop culture, but I can't remember the important things to save my life. But I kick butt at Trivial Pursuit, 90's edition!

So this past week I was slow at work while my Mac was being fixed. And I remembered! Well, kind of. I had a vague idea of what the error code said, so I Googled approximations until I came up with something that sounded about right.

And you know what? It was the easiest fix ever. All I had to do was take a regular old pencil eraser to the lens/camera body connections. That's it.

It worked like a charm! I haven't had any issues so far (knock on wood). I also haven't taken many pictures since I fixed it, so only time will tell.

I practiced taking some pictures of the kidlet using the available light from the big window seat in the dining room. I think I need a lot more practice with that. I also need to practice focusing and holding the camera steady when I have the flash turned off. Oh well, it's all a learning curve, right?

Motivation

2009-09-17T12:33:00.002-05:00

I am in dire need of some right now.

It doesn't help that my main computer at work has been down for the past week so I haven't been able to do much "real" work. I've been unsuccessfully pretending to appear busy, but I don't think my boss is buying it much. We're rather slow right now, anyway, so it's not like I'm the only one.

But that lack of motivation has passed on to my housework. I have baskets of laundry that need to be folded, floors that need to be vacuumed, bathrooms that need to be cleaned and toys that need to be picked up. I just look at them when I get home from work and think "Eh. I'll get to it tomorrow." Only tomorrow comes around and I think "Eh. I'll get to it this weekend."

It doesn't help that summer has finally arrived (in mid-September, no less) and it's been absolutely gorgeous out the last few days. Temps in the high 70s, practically no humidity. Perfect for opening all the windows and letting the breeze flow through the house, along with that yummy fallish dry leaves smell. I love fall.

iheartfaces - contemplative

2009-09-14T15:20:00.004-05:00

This week's challenge on iheartfaces is Contemplation.

I took this photo about 6 weeks or so ago, during our one warm spell of the summer. The kidlet was clad in only a diaper and was playing in the living room. She picked up one of her toys and was starting at it intently, probably deciding whether to play with it or eat it. (I'm sure eat it won out - it usually does.)

She just looked so darling, though. Those cheeks! That chin! Those eyelashes!

It's not the greatest, composition-wise, but it's sweet.

Head over to iheartfaces to check out some other contemplative photos.

Four generations

2009-09-07T13:54:00.004-05:00

Last Saturday, I took the kids to go visit my grandmother in the nursing home.

It was a good excuse to get out of the house, let the hub have a few kid-free hours to paint and to visit my grandparents who, despite living less than 40 minutes away, I only get to see about 1-2 times per year.

I am very blessed to have both my maternal grandparents still living. Grandma has had some health issues the past few years, so we are thankful she's still here. She is no longer able to care for herself due to very poor eyesight and arthritis and it's too difficult for my grandpa to take care of her due to his own health issues, so she was moved into a nursing home a few months ago (despite her very vocal displeasure).

God bless grandma. She's Scottish and very stubborn. Someone may or may not have inherited that stubbornness...

Here are the four generations:

It was such a lovely day on Saturday, we sat outside and enjoyed the weather. The kiddo had a great time running around and pretending he was Captain Terrific (thanks to that morning's Imagination Movers episode) and flying around.

The kidlet got to enjoy the wonders of grass for the first time. She was nonchalant about the whole ordeal, except when trying to eat it.

What is this stuff?

It feels kind of funny.

What do you mean I can't eat it?

I hope to get at least one more visit in to see grandma before it gets too terribly cold out. I know both she and grandpa would appreciate it.

Happy Anniversary!

2009-09-06T20:26:00.006-05:00

After a bottle of wine, that title isn't so easy to type!

Today is the hub's and my 6th wedding anniversary. We celebrated by getting up, going to church, getting groceries, working on painting the garage (the hub), taking the kids on a walk (me) and grilling out a very yummy dinner of steaks, eggplant, sweet potatoes, onion and drinking the last bottle of wine we have from our Long Island Winery tour the last time we went to NYC.

This is my favorite wedding picture:

It's right after the whole cake-cutting ordeal. Instead of giving me a nice little sliver of cake, the hub scooped up a big chunk of frosting on his finger and gave me that instead. He knows me well, I love good, sugary buttercream frosting.

I love this picture because it so perfectly captures that moment. We aren't posed, we don't have cheesy frozen smiles on our faces. In fact, we're making rather goofy faces, and we're rather goofy people.

Happy Anniversary hub!

Where has the time gone?

2009-09-01T16:30:00.003-05:00

How can it be September already?

And how can my sweet baby girl be 11 months old?

She's just so big! She's also going to be the reason the hub and I go gray. The girl has figured out how to climb up the stairs by herself and now even likes to climb up her big brother's step stool in the bathroom so she can play in the sink.

She's a tad goofy, too, just like big brother.

And the kiddo? Well, he's practically big enough to drive.

Pretend drive the tractors at the State Fair anyway...

We're up to our necks in projects for the house: repainting, reroofing, cleaning, decluttering and general fix-it-upping in preparation to sell the house sometime this year.

We've been so busy I didn't even commemorate my 1-year blogiversary in July. And things are just going to continue to be busy the next few months with football games and anniversaries, birthday parties, potential train rides and more football games. Have I mentioned we like football in this household? Not to mention preparing (hopefully) for a move. Never mind the fact that 1) our current house isn't ready to be put on the market 2) we still haven't finalized any details with the guys and 3) we don't have anything to move into once those details are finalized. Details, schmetails, right??

Booyah!

2009-08-28T15:20:00.003-05:00

I stepped on the scale this morning after my shower and saw a number I haven't seen since the summer after my senior year of high school 12 years ago.

I'm down almost 45 lbs from the beginning of the year. That's a lot, I know.

But it feels so good!

And I think I'm even more fit than I was 12 years ago, thanks to Jillian and her daily ass kickings.

I know this is hard. It's SO hard. Limiting myself to XXXX calories per day (those 100-calorie snacks are a Godsend!). Making sure I get in at least 30 minutes of exercise (usually more), but fitting into my favorite skinny jeans is worth it. Wearing cute fitted shirts is worth it. Feeling strong and healthy is worth it. Even though I know I shouldn't focus on the numbers, seeing that on the scale is worth it!

I have about 5 more to go before I hit my "goal." Maybe 10 more, if I'm feeling really motivated, though I think I'd be okay with 5. Now if I could only get rid of all those lovely stretch marks that the kidlet gave me...

Busy Bee

2009-08-20T21:14:00.003-05:00

I've been working on a freelance design project for a local high school which has kept me insanely busy the past couple days. But I finished and uploaded it to the printer and now I'm freeeeeeeee [to do regular work].

Had a wonderful day at the State Fair on Monday. Ate all the good (but bad for you) foods that we only get once a year, enjoyed the sights and animals and sounds and fun stuff. Sadly, I only took a few pictures this year - all of the kiddo up on the big tractors. Last year he was too scared to get up on them, so that's an improvement. He's growing up!

Mealtimes

2009-08-13T12:31:00.004-05:00

Oh my. They have become a battle with the kidlet to see what can get messier: her face or the floor.

Sweet potatoes and turkey doubles as a great hair product, don't you know?

And a face mask.

The view from above. The dog is very happy, though, because she gets whatever falls overboard, which is about half of what goes on the tray.

I think she does it for the baths. The kidlet loves her baths.

Happy Birthday Princess LC

2009-08-11T16:36:00.002-05:00

My sassy, silly, girly-girl niece LC turns four today.

It's a rather momentous occasion because four years ago, we didn't know if she would be able to make it through her first night.

Unbeknown to my sister and her husband, their second daughter was born with a life-threatening birth defect called a Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia.

Just hours after she was born, she was transported via ambulance from the small-town hospital where she was born to a larger children's hospital in a city two hours away. My sister recounts the experience of LC's birth and the following hours/days in her blog today. It's a lovely and beautiful post.

Happy Birthday Princess LC! We are so blessed and thankful to have you in our family. See you on Sunday at your party!

I heart faces - crazy, funny, silly faces

2009-08-10T18:17:00.003-05:00

This week on iheartfaces, the focus is on crazy, funny, silly faces.

This is the perfect theme, because I have loads of photos of the kiddo making crazy, funny, silly faces because, let's face it, he's a goofy kiddo.

But, my poor little sweetheart of a daughter often is overshadowed by her goofball of a brother, so this week she gets the spotlight.

I took this a few weeks ago when we were back at the farm for the fair and my parent's 40th wedding anniversary. We had finished lunch and she was climbing up the furniture at the Country Club. She seemed so pleased with herself, which she promptly announced with an ear-piercing screech.

You can't see the fact that she's starting to get cute ringlets in the back of her gorgeous red hair, but you can see that she'll definitely have the hub's pretty gray-green eyes.

Oh my sweetheart baby girl. I lub you so much!

Check out tons of more crazy, silly, funny faces over at iheartfaces.com. Your abs will thank you!

Ten Months!

2009-08-08T09:53:00.004-05:00

The kidlet turned 10 months old last week. Sometimes it's hard to believe she's already almost a year old. It seems as if just a few weeks ago I was complaining about being fat and pregnant and worrying that I would go into labor the same weekend the hub was going to be gone.

But here we are, 10 months later.

We are doing lots of fun and exciting things including pulling up, crawling everywhere, cruising on furniture, eating finger foods like crackers and cheese bits and "talking." She loves Peek-a-boo and "So Big!" and loves to "sing" songs with me (and by singing I mean screeching at a pitch only dogs should be able to hear).

She has to be involved with everything the kiddo is doing (which usually leads to a lot of "MOMMY! She's touching me/my toys/the air" whining) or be by one of us. She's a lot more determined than the kiddo was at this age and we think she'll be walking by the time she turns one.

Visually, she looks so much like her older brother: the same stocky stature, red hair, wide-spaced teeth and goofy grin. It looks like she might have inherited the hub's curls (Yay!) and gray/green eyes as opposed to the stick straight hair and brown eyes the kiddo got from me.

She's a sweetheart and we just lub her so much!

Absence makes the heart grow fonder

2009-08-07T12:22:00.002-05:00

Or something like that. I guess you actually need readers for anyone to miss you!

I've been MIA. Not much exciting happening in the farm girl family lately, so I don't feel as if I have anything interesting to write.

Plus, my beloved DSLR is currently broken (it says it needs to have its sensors cleaned?) and I have been too busy (and by busy I mean lazy) to take it in to have it looked at. So I don't have any fun photos to share.

After a cooler-than-normal July, it seems summer has finally decided to show up for August. Of course, it's raining today, but tomorrow it's supposed to hit 90. Maybe that will finally ripen some of our tomatoes. I'm really looking forward to fresh, home-grown tomatoes. Our poor cucumbers, though... I think they're a loss. Oh well. Hopefully we'll have the room for a real garden next year.

We've been busy

2009-07-23T12:46:00.003-05:00

Much of last week was spent back in my hometown enjoying the county fair.

Despite being abnormally chilly and windy for July (it was in the mid-60s on Friday - brrrrr!) we had a great time.

The kiddo actually liked going around and looking at animals this year. He also was excited about riding the little train that goes around the fair. Last year he was too scared to ride it.

And, wonder of wonders, he even went on a few midway rides! Of course, he threw a fit when I said we were done and it was time to go home, but it's a definite improvement from last year.
Here he's enjoying the firetrucks (he really liked ringing the bell).

He was also navigator in a blue truck. He loved it.

My parents had a full house, too. Both my sisters and their kids came back for the fair and we all stayed at the farm. It was a little chaotic with five kids aged 10, 6, almost 4, 3, and 9 months, but everyone got along well and I think my parents secretly liked it (though I think dad could do without all the dirty diapers in his garage).

On Sunday, the entire family went out to eat to celebrate my parent's 40th wedding anniversary.
They were actually married on July 20, 1969 - the same day the man walked on the moon (which makes it easy for my dad to remember). I feel very blessed to have parents who are such wonderful role models for my own marriage. Things may not have always been perfect, but they worked through them together. Congratulations mom and dad. We love you!

They're leaving for a wonderful vacation in Ireland, England and Scotland. Do you think they'd notice if I stowed away in their luggage?

Things have settled down for a bit now, which is good. If only the weather would cooperate. It's been cool and rainy lately - I want summer back!

I heart faces, I mean feet!

2009-07-20T15:25:00.003-05:00

This week on iheartfaces, the focus is on feet.

I love baby feet. They're just so precious and smoochable and tickleable (is that even a word?).

These are the kiddo's feet from a few years ago. His pants were always too long because he was so big, and I just loved the way his feet peeked out the bottom of his jeans in this pic.

Thanks to genetics, our poor kids will never have tiny feet, so I have to enjoy them while I can. I'm sure in about 13 years, the kiddo will have size 16 feet like his daddy.

Stop on over at iheartfaces to check out more feet pics!

i heart faces - pets!

2009-07-13T11:43:00.004-05:00

This week on iheartfaces, the focus is on "sports in action" and pets. Seeing as how I don't have any action shots of any sports-related things on my hard drive, I'll have to go with a pet photo.

This is Ripley, our first "child."

She's a Rat Terrier/Spitz mix dog we adopted from the local shelter a few months after we got married. She's smart -- too smart sometimes -- and a great dog, even if she does shed. A lot.

She's not too fond of the fact she's been knocked down to 3rd child after the kiddo and kidlet (nor is she too happy the kidlet has discovered grabbing the dog's tail is "fun". She does like the fact the kidlet has started eating finger foods because more usually ends up on the floor than in the kidlet's mouth.). But she's a dear, and very protective of our family. How can you resist those eyes?

I can't wait until we move out into the country and Ripley has some room to run around and chase the squirrels. She won't know what to do with herself! Check out the other cute pet and sports photos at iheartfaces.