Birthdays and weird weather

Bob and I have birthdays within a week of each other which is nice and convenient at times. It's interesting because even though it is winter our Oklahoma weather has a hard time making up its mind. Here is Blake on daddy's birthday playing outside.

Then the day after my birthday this is going down.

Although my birthday usually comes along with a little bit of snowy weather. Remember this?

This doesn't have anything to do with the title of my post, but this week we also got to go on our first trip to Children's hospital. Everything is fine now, but yesterday morning was a little too eventful to say the least.

Blake fell down and hit his head.  
His symptoms afterwards resembled a concussion to me so I decided it was best to take him in and get him checked out. I knew this was going to happen one day with my spirited child and it probably won't be our last trip to the ER either.

I'm not sure if this is how things go down in a children's ER, but they were really happy and kept saying, "oh, he's going to be fine." The doctor came in to check him one last time and said, "oh he's eating? He's fine." I guess they are used to dealing with parents who are not being very calm, but it just came across as if they were not very concerned. I'm sure they took good care of him and it is just the daily of occurrences in the ER that probably numbs them a bit.

This is where Blake hit his head :( Poor baby!

 Here he is afterwards eating some snacks I brought along. I'm glad I had those otherwise he would not have sat in the examination room while we waited.

After being cooped up inside due to all the snow, this was not my ideal choice of an outing. Oh well, life happens and Mr. Blake has already bounced back from this.

New Year Challenge

My very brave cousin started a blog to share her weight loss goals and journey for 2014. In her latest post she ended it with this challenge for herself and her readers: Name 5 positive things about yourself and name 3 things you like about your body. Here it goes, I think I might struggle completing this perhaps due to a lack of self esteem and also partly to not come across as delusional. I think it can be easier to list these things about other people rather than for yourself.

Name 5 positive things about yourself: *****

1. I am punctual and complete things in a timely manner.
2. I can cook and bake food that is quite tasty.
3. I am honest. Here's an interesting article I came across this week. Bob and I must be incredibly trustworthy ;)
   
4. I am dependable.
5. I like to try new things.

Name 3 things you love like about your body: *****

1. I can get a tan in moderate sunlight exposure while wearing sunscreen.
2. My dimples (on my face ;)
3. My arms, I like that they are a good length for reaching things, but right now they could probably benefit from some lifting and toning exercises.  

Well, that was a fun little self evaluation exercise. I kept realizing that some of my positive attributes tend to come across in the extreme and sometimes don't seem very positive. I guess that is something I can work on this year. Happy new year folks. I'll leave you with a cute picture of me and the kitty from this morning.

A Merry Little Christmas

I always love this time of year and celebrating Christmas with family and friends. Besides keeping up with my roles of wifey and Blake's mommy I tend to take on extra projects and activities during this time of year. They are never a burden and I enjoy each moment and the busyness. I realize others may not care for being busy and how hectic this time of year can be, but I guess the extrovert part of me thrives on it.

At the beginning of the month I was able to attend the Christmas party at my former school where I taught for four years. I have also made it a tradition to bring by cookies to my former coworkers before Christmas break. The first thing the music teacher said the year I announced I was not returning after having my baby was, "Who is going to make us cookies?" So far I have kept up the tradition of bringing them cookies for two years. Plus it is a good reason to come by, visit, and catch up with everyone.

 A few days before Christmas Blake got the cutest set of tiny books in the mail from a relative. I don't have much else to say about that, but I had to post the picture. I just love my little book worm!

 

 I was a little bit late getting Blake in to see Santa this year. I knew he wasn't going to like it, so here is my unhappy baby taking his picture with Santa.

This year I decided to take on a project to make something for my grandmother. During the spring I saw a pin on Pinterest around Mother's day showing how this lady made a present for her mother who had several grandchildren. I pinned the pin and was determined to make one as a Christmas gift for my grandmother of all her great grandchildren. Here is how that turned out.

 

Christmas Eve was spent with my grandmother, her five children plus spouses, her twelve grandchildren plus spouses, along with most of the great grandchildren.  We had to reserve the Family Life Center at our church in order to accommodate that many people. I failed to take any pictures, but I had a good time visiting with everyone, played Dirty Santa and won a Starbucks gift card.

Christmas morning was a little more exciting this year since Blake seemed to understand that there were (presents) new books for him to look at and read.

Two hours later he eventually tore off the wrapping paper on the box which is next to him on the couch :) I look forward to him comprehending more and being more involved as he gets older.

My sister and I along with our families went over to my parent's house for Christmas lunch and more presents. Yet again, I did a poor job remembering to take pictures, but here is a nice Christmas picture of my sister and me plus the hubbies and children.

 I really try to not make a habit of showing off my presents on the Internet, but at least this isn't on Facebook. Here is an unexpected gift from my hubby: A Snow White Cookie Jar. She is simply gorgeous! Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs has to be one of my favorite classic Disney animated films. I also have a ceramic figurine set that I hope to display in a china  cabinet one day. For now I will just have to settle for staring at this gorgeous piece every day in my kitchen.

That has been most of our activities thus far for the Christmas season. We still have more relatives to visit and presents to give which will probably leak over into the new year. For now I am probably signing off for the remainder of 2013. Happy New Year and God bless!

Snow day fun

In Oklahoma a snow day doesn't necessarily mean the ground is covered in snow. Rather, snow fell from the sky and the roads have become an icy mess which are undesirable to use for traveling in a car. None the less our church cancelled services this morning and we got to stay inside our cozy house all day.

I didn't think much of our activities from today until I saw a friend post on Facebook that they had used their snow day to bake cookies. We spent some time in our kitchen too. Actually it went something like this:

I made pumpkin spice waffles for breakfast.
My husband brewed a small batch of beer.
I made Hawaiian Roll Ham and Swiss sliders for lunch.
I made pumpkin cookies with cream cheese frosting.
My husband made pepperoni rolls for dinner.
I made pumpkin dip for a potluck for Bob's work tomorrow.
And Bob browned some hamburger meat to get ready for the taco soup he's taking to work in the morning.

Whew!!! I guess we both don't mind spending time in the kitchen. At least that's what we chose to do with our lazy day we had ahead of us.

What do you enjoy doing when you're stuck in the house on a "snow day"?

Containment

Ever since our little boy has become mobile there has been an ever increasing effort to keep him contained within a room and not be able to escape (get into things he shouldn't be getting into). We felt comfortable having the kitchen completely closed off and letting him have free reign over the living room and dining room area...until recently. The other night I posted this picture on Facebook.

Here is what prompted that set up.

  

 Keeping the chairs pushed in did not help at all. He would just crawl under the table, push the chair out, climb into the chair, and then climb on top of the table! When I first caught him I just thought he was having a good ole time pushing the chairs around in the kitchen and I went in there to check and there he was on top of the table. Our sweet monkey boy just wants to climb everything. Now it is just a matter of training mom and dad with the new system. One of us forgot to replace our chair after a meal and he promptly went over to climb in it.

Happy 1st Birthday!

Labor Day weekend we celebrated Blake's first birthday. It has been an incredible year of changes and firsts.

For his birthday we did another photo session at JCP and purchased the CD this time, so I can legally share the pictures here on the blog.

Here is a collage I had them make up. It's only 9 pictures. The first two rows are 1-6 months and the bottom row is 8, 11, and 12. I think 5 months old is the chunkiest he's ever been because he's always been so tall. Once he would start to get chunky he would grow some more in length :( We have tall baby problems over here at our house. Also, his jersey for his 12 month picture actually has a 12 on it. That was a lucky coincidence.

 And here is a new born picture just to compare some more.

 We invited both sides of our families over to eat lunch and watch a ceremonial cake smashing and present opening event. We opted for a banana pudding cupcake from a bakery in More called Baked! Bananas seemed safe since he likes eating them and anything super sweet he really doesn't care for and we were wanting a guaranteed cake smashing  to go down. And our little boy delivered.

It has been such a busy year. We can't believe our baby is one year old already. Happy birthday Mr. Blake!

From today's walk

On most days when the weather is cooperating I usually go on a walk in our neighborhood with my little man in his stroller. It has been a nice little routine that usually induces a nap for him during and afterward.

Today I went around noon and it was a very unseasonably cool August afternoon in Oklahoma. I noticed some girls at the end of our block playing in the front yard. What caught my attention was their art work of sidewalk chalk all over their sidewalk and driveway. I asked them if I could take a picture of it and assured them I was trying to not be a creeper, but I really did liked their pictures. Tomorrow will be their first day of a new school year. They seemed to be soaking up the last few hours of summer. They were really sweet and asked about my baby and I asked them if they had art class at their school (no, they don't...for shame MPS). I know they were just drawing doodles, but I thought the pictures were pretty good, cute at least.

Yes, that would be Ariel, the mermaid and a Canadian flag. They also had a British flag on the sidewalk and lots more drawings, but I was trying to not come across as a creeper, so I did not get an incredible look at all of it.

Speaking of walks. Our little man is taking a few more by himself these days: from couch to couch, and across the room. Here is our best video of him walking from the couch to the rocking chair. This was taken on Tuesday and he has even gotten better since then.