dang this is hard!

I started the diet/exercise stuff today. So far I've done ok. The tough part is that I have no food in the house, well let me correct that, I have beer & pizza here. The husband is off dumping a load of brush (that I busted my rear cutting down today) and the boys are sleeping so I'm stuck here at home, S-T-A-R-V-I-N-G!!! I'm cranky too! I haven't had my daily Dr Pepper and I haven't had a nap.... this all equals up to being super cranky. The urge to go grab a beer is a tough one but I want to make Jenny proud so I'm going to refrain and just stick to the water :(

Busted - TWICE!

the other day my son I and were in the car and we passed someone doing this

so of course Logan asks me why they are doing that and I said because they are not being very smart or safe. You know as a parent we are always trying to teach our kids right from wrong! In response to my answer Logan says "but you do it too"... DAMN! In my defense I look more like this

I know I know, way to set a good example... I'm working on this!

And the second bust is slightly more embarrassing! Now I don't care who you are we are all guilty of hopping in the shower with our man every now and then! Well yesterday we were getting ready to meet some friends for dinner and my hubs was in the shower. Logan was outside playing and Riley was taking a nap. I thought that in order to help conserve water (you know me, always trying to help the environment!) I'd just hop in real quick with the husband!

Seriously there was no hanky panky happening, I jumped in as the hubs was finishing so we were pretty much just switching places. However.... Logan walks in the bathroom and asked Sage where mommy was. Of course Sage could only laugh and Logan says, "She's in the shower too isn't she!, I wanna see!"

My first concern is why was Logan's first guess that I was in the shower too? Seriously he's 5 it's not like that is something that they write about in childrens books! And then my second concern, come on Sage, LIE!

stress & deadlines

I blogged awhile ago about our tenant bailing on us and stealing our washer & dryer and trashing the house on her way out. Well we have spent the last 3 weeks or so getting the house back together again and it's finally coming around! We meet with our new tenants tomorrow to sign contract and hand over the keys. I've spent the last 2 days painting and cleaning.... stress stress stress! I've had to try and paint and then keep an 11 month old baby amused (and out of the paint) at the same time.... he and I spent 9 hours there today, talk about a tiring day! Luckily tomorrow I just need to go and do a final sweep through so that shouldn't be too bad.

This morning I woke myself up around 5am because I felt a pain in my neck. Instinctively I reached to the sore area and found a lump.... a very painful lump! I'm assuming it's a lymph node but I am not sick at all. It's a little freaky, I'm hoping to start getting sickly feeling so that I can get some reassurance. Guess if not I'll be heading to the doctors on Monday to check this thing out. It seems to have gotten slightly larger through out the day and definitely more painful! Like it's even painful to turn my head to the side to look behind me.... cross your fingers that I get sick this weekend!

more important things

I'm sure that by this point everyone has read about or watched the debates on whether the First Lady should wear shorts. My thoughts.... well thanks for asking! Give me a break! The photos that they are speaking of are of the President and his family on vacation! Is it necessary for the First Lady to wear a gown while visiting the Grand Canyon with her family? She is not wearing daisy dukes, her boobs aren't falling out of her shirt, she's not showing too much arm... I see nothing wrong with this picture!

The part that irritates me the most about this is that the public is wasting time trying to figure out if this is "right or wrong". Seriously, get over it. We have soldiers still fighting a war, more and more people are dying trying to defend our country. Some soldiers are currently serving their 4th deployment. Why don't we try and get things taken care of so we can get our boys home? Or how about all of the people without health insurance because they can't afford to have it? I've been there, I was a single mom with a very limited budget so I could not afford health insurance through my employer. One might think that the state could help me out, one might be wrong! Apparently I made "too" much. Really? I made $16,000 and was a single mom. I didn't realize that $16K was the jackpot, guess I should have relaxed a little bit more! I could continue to go on and on about things that need worked on (price of gas!) but I'm sure you all have heard the topics before.

I guess my main reason for blogging my irritation is just to see if anyone else saw something wrong with this? Was it more wrong that First Lady wore shorts, or that the American people spent so much time debating it?

Wordless Wednesday

Baby boy is 11 months old today (so much for wordless! lol)

ugh, sorry for the appearance

I'm trying my darndest to make my layout a 3 column template, or whatever the correct computer literature is.... so far it's not working out well for me! :(

Tips?

Weekend Adventures

Friday: I was sorta grumpy with my husband. Baby boy had been sick for 2 days, we're talking nasty diarrhea and diaper rash so bad that he and I both cried while I changed his diapers. So when my hubs called after work on Friday to tell me he was stopping for a couple beers with the guys I was just slightly upset with him. Our night ended with us not speaking and both sleeping by 9:30. Yes I know I was probably acting like a baby but when dealing with a sick baby it's nice to have a break.

Saturday: Husband worked. Baby boy was still sick. I joined my sister & her fiance for the bridal fair. Here are some pics from that

Check out this classy bride to be! lol

Then after the hubs got home from work we headed to the open house at a ranch I grew up riding at. Good times were had! A hay ride, pony rides (we opted out of that one), hot dogs, line dancing.... oh the good times!

Once we were done with the ranch fun we decided it would be nice to get baby boy to bed and for us to watch a movie. (oh yeah, we had made up by this point!) I chose (drumroll) The Hannah Montana Movie. Oh dear Lord what a waste of 2 hours! They should have edited the movie better, the acting could have been better, and it was so fake! I had to keep reminding myself that the movie was made for 13 year old girls so just to look past the imperfections.....

Sunday: the morning started out wonderful! Wonder why? Baby boy slept from 9:30pm - 6:30am without waking up AT ALL! Plus! Diarrhea was finally gone! I got up and fed the baby and luckily he went back to sleep so I got to sleep until 9. Then I pulled out all my horse gear and headed back to the ranch to spend a few hours playing with the horsies. I got to ride a beautiful mare named Reba, she's coal black and absolutely a lover!!! I neglected to take my camera with me so I'll have to get some pics of her next time.

Hope everyone had a great weekend! Jenny, over at Lucky in Love, I think I'll take you up on the workout thing.... not sure how we'll do it except for maybe just be each others cheer team! :) Start this week? Next week? Oh how I need motivation!

(btw, the lack of mention of Logan (5yr old) is only due to the fact that he spent the weekend with his dad!)

my biggest challenge yet

I want to lose 40 lbs. Let me correct that, I NEED to lose 40 lbs. I have become very unhappy with my appearance almost to the point where I'm ashamed to have physical contact with my husband. Don't get me wrong, I know that I'm not obese, but I'm not what I was when my husband and I started dating. And I understand that most of us aren't, plus to "help" my case I've had 2 kids. No matter what life has brought me over these years I am still not happy with how I look. My sister is getting married next June and I'm the MOH. I will be down 40 lbs by the wedding. So I'm reaching out to you ladies. I read several blogs where you are avid runners and dieters. I need advice, recommendations, how do I start my journey?

I was SOOO excited!

Last night I knew that it would be the night that I would get to sleep ALL night, or at least only have to get up once. I had done my research on tips to get babies to sleep all night. My baby is a week shy of 11 months. So here are some of things we did different last night:

• dressed baby in warmer pj's
• put a fan in baby's room
• added 2 tbsp of cereal to his 8 oz bottle

So did it work? Absolutely NOT! Not even close, we were still up every 3 hours for a bottle. What is a mother to do????!!!! Anyone have advice? I'm at a loss but I'm starting to lose my mind!

Another thing my baby won't do is hold his own bottle! He finally learned how to say dada about a month or so ago but now he refuses to say it!

So there it is.... I'm starting to come to the realization that I will never sleep through the night again.... what a sad thought....

weekend BBQ

We hosted a BBQ at our house this past weekend. Let me start out by saying that I've tried to plan a BBQ for over 2 months! Who knows why it took so long for things to work out but we were finally able to get everything together and we were ready for a good time! In preparation I stocked up on brats, burgers, buns, and a chicken!!!! Oh, and tiki torches! About 10 years ago I was at a bbq where the host had grilled a beer-butt chicken. I had long since forgotten about this meal until Taryn over at Colorado Desert posted about it a week or so ago. I figured this was a great time to give it a try but I changed it up just a little bit as I didn't have room on the grill for this plus the other meat.

Chicken

Chicken Rub (I used Grillmates -yummy!)

1/2 can of beer

Preheat oven to 400. Pull all the nastiness out of the inside of the chicken. Rub the chicken rub on the chicken (duh!). Dump out (or drink) 1/2 can of beer, cut off top of can, insert can of beer into chicken's butt! Place chicken in baking dish, make sure the chicken is standing up. After 30 minutes lower temp to 350 and then continue to bake for additional 1 1/2 hours. Here's our before picture but I was so excited about it that I forgot to take the AFTER picture!

Some pics from the bbq

the husbands - they opted to stay inside most of the evening and play The Price is Right on the Wii.

shots for the ladies! The weather wasn't exactly perfect for our shin-dig, we had thunder & lightening all night, spotty showers, and a million mosquitos.... bug spray & tiki torches did NOTHING to prevent getting eaten alive!

Jen

me!

Ms Jen and I sat outside by ourselves until 4am taking yummy shots (watermelon rum & lemonade), drinking beer, drinking cranberry vodka's, and chatting..... yup, you wouldn't think that we could keep from passing out drunk amuse ourselves for that long but it was so easy! Our husbands crashed out before midnight, old men!

furry human

My husband came to bed last night and this is what he found.....

ha ha! This dog LOVES to use a pillow and be under the covers!

a new day

well my last post wasn't so much on the positive side, but in my defense I was dealing with a lot of stress! Mid-July we got a new tenant for our rental house. After 3 weeks of being in the house she called me with some wild story for why she would no longer be able to come up with rent and was going to need to move out. I'm a nice person so if someone wants needs to break contract then I'll allow that, however you will not get any money back from me. No problem, tenant understood that. I even gave her a week free rent to get her stuff out (she's a single mom). She reassured me that she was giving the house a deep cleaning. So we put the house up for rent again and started receiving phone calls.... I felt confident that we should have been able to show the house, no problem, seeing as she'd only been in the house for 3 weeks and gave it a "deep cleaning". We walk into the house with prospective renters..... we're talking severe humiliation. The house was TRASHED! She had kittens in the house and was allowing them to shit poop and piss pee all over the house (carpet!!!!). She left her junk in the house, a freezer/fridge full of food, and she stole my washer & dryer!!!!! Needless to say we did not rent the house that day however they were kind enough to say call them when we got it cleaned up and they might still be interested. I'm sure they were just trying to make us feel better. So I haven't called the cops, I'm not sure what good it would do? I did some research on her and learned that she's a drug addict, makes me think she's probably got nothing so chasing after her may do us no good. I'm at a loss.... So yesterday I was at the house, it took me an HOUR to vacuum! This house only has about 750 sqft of carpet! Then I had a company come by and they worked amazing magic in that house and got EVERY stain out of the carpet! I only had to pay $100 for that, I was amazed & oh so thankful! Tonight we bought some paint so tomorrow I'll be working on getting the house re-painted. Hopefully we can get new tenants in by September.

On a happier note, today was my kiddo's first day of kindergarten! He was so brave, I was so proud of him! I managed to keep it together today, though last night I bawled shed a few tears. Check out this big kid! He's pretty much 18!

oh, and this is what our weather looked like this morning, you can imagine how fun it was to walk into school with me, the baby, dad, and Logan all huddled up under the smallest umbrella EVER!

My little brother has his first day tomorrow of his senior year in high school. I've mentioned before (here) about his best friend getting diagnosed with cancer. He started his chemo treatment about a month ago and has already began losing his hair. Last week his dad shaved his head for him. Today I ended up shaving 3 boys' hair. They decided that to stand by their friend (is that the way to describe it?) they would also shave their heads. I wish I would have thought to take a before picture but of course I didn't. One of my worst habits is forgetting to take before pictures!!!!

look at all of this hair!

Saturday night we had a BBQ at our house, great time! I'll try and blog about that tomorrow, and also include a picture of my attempt at Taryn's beer-butt chicken!

trouble sleeping

The irritation is just boiling up inside of me and keeping me from sleeping!!!! This week was our county fair. Anyone with kids knows how excited they are to go ride rides! On Tuesday I checked with my ex-husband to see if he was going to take our son to the fair (Tuesday is his evening) and he told me no. When I went to drop the kiddo off the first thing out of his dad's mouth was "hurry up we're going to the fair!". Obviously the kid is ecstatic! Fast forward: Logan comes home, didn't go to the fair because his dad didn't want to go. WTH? Why bother even mentioning the fair to a 5-yr old and then decide you can't go because you don't want to??? What's up with that? Thursday evening kiddo heads to his dad's again, it's also his last Thurs to be with him since school starts next week. Still, no fair. This is my weekend with Logan and we have lots of fun plans. #1: heading to the fair Friday night (tonight). Logan is thrilled. We head out around 7 and didn't get home tonight until midnight, lots of fun was had! At one point in the evening we ran into his dad's girlfriend and her daughter. Exchanged hellos, I asked Logan if he wanted to do rides with K (the daughter) and he said no. So we move on. Not 5 minutes later along come his dad with the girlfriend, the daughter & the daughters friends. My husband and son are standing in line for a ride. Logan didn't even want to go talk to his dad. He just kept looking at them..... I think it was going through his head that that was "their" family. Maybe not exactly in those words. I imagine that Logan thought that his dad only visited with the girlfriend when Logan was there too, I don't think he had any clue that they all do things together when he isn't with them. Poor kid. It was such an awkward situation that my hubs had to persuade Logan to go and hug his dad....

About 3 hours later I get a text from his dad asking if he can have Logan some this weekend. Um, sorry but no you can't! This is MY weekend.... you had last weekend and 2 evenings this week, if there was something you wanted to do then you've had plenty of time to do it... sorry if you spent too much time worrying about what the gf wanted to do! Truthfully we do have a busy weekend planned, but I wasn't about to give up my weekend. I think what brought this all on was that my husband has started taking Logan golfing during the week and then every weekend that we have him they go golf. Logan is LOVING it! Then with this incident at the fair where Logan wanted to stay with Sage (my hubs) instead of go talk to his dad. I think his dad is finally getting a wake up call that hey, maybe he should have been a little more involved!!!! Too late now buddy, I think the wheels are starting to turn in this poor kids head and he's seeing things for how they are.

Ugh, sorry to be like this but I just had to vent and get it off my chest! Am I wrong? Those of you (if there are any of my readers) that have kids with a prior husband or bf? I don't think I'm being too harsh..... there's been so much shit in the past from this ass.... if it wasn't for getting an amazing child out of that relationship I would venture to say that he was my biggest mistake ever. Blah... sorry, I promise I'll be more cheerful tomorrow!

Thankful Thursday

okay I'll play along.....

a safe delivery with both kids (this pic is from mini#2)

these special moments with babies....it seems it's impossible to cuddle with them once they get over 6 months!

having family so close by that my kids can grow up with cousins as friends, I didn't have that growing up so I think this is amazing!

2 healthy and absolutely adorable boys!

the waiting game sucks

I know it's only been 6 days since I invited my husbands family, and 5 days since I invited my dad, but not a single person has responded!!!!! That is 8 separate emails and not one stinking answer... jeez, even if your answer is no just tell me so I'm not just sitting here wondering!!!! :(

Only good things happened

those are the perfect weekends aren't they? So Friday night the kids went to their designated locations and my hubs and I went on our date. We saw The Ugly Truth which was too funny! Then headed to dinner at the Outback, yum, one of our favorites! They have a new drink that was absolutely divine..... Huckleberry Sweet Tea, it's a Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka and Country Style Lemonade with a splash of huckleberry flavor...... absolutely my new favorite!

Saturday we woke up, cleaned up, and headed to Kansas City for the River Market

I don't know how it happened but I'm pretty sure that we picked the hottest day of the year to do this, maybe not so smart on my part. Here's my husband when we first got there, I reminded him that these pictures would be on my blog so he took the grumpy look off his face and replaced it with a smile! lol

I have been so excited to come to this market, it's something I've wanted to do for years. It was pretty much everything I imagined! There were many restaurants, a wine tasting, delicious seafood, fresh flowers, lots of veggies, fruits, clothes, jewelry, purses.... the list goes on!

There were these massive grills everywhere, people were cooking up huge turkey legs, brats, burgers, all you can think of.....

This photo may seem silly but I took it special for my hubs, not sure if I've ever said it but his name is Sage...

Here are just some random shots as we were walking around

Isn't this a huge load of corn????!!!!!

And what about the size of these pickles!

Baby boy did amazing during our adventure. It was 100 degrees outside and that was just the base heat, no humidity or heat index included in that.... it sure was feeling like 120 out!

There was also a museum for the Arabia Steamboat so we went in and enjoyed the air conditioning!

Just a couple of shops that were attached to the museum...

And finally we were heading back to the car...

We don't go into the city very often so I wanted to take advantage of being there and check out the sights. I didn't take many pictures as I was distracted by so many things. I'm a big time country girl so the city to me is just amazing. This to me is the true image of city, it's those hot dog stands on the corner!

Kansas City is The City of Fountains

If you google the city of fountains you'll come up with lots of beautiful pictures.... I sorta forgot to take pictures as we were being tourists, sorry!

Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend, mine was lovely! Now to face the dreaded Monday.... this is my last week with both kiddos at home, the big kid starts kindergarten on the 17th!

what's done is done

I've done it! I sent an e-vite to ALL of our family, in-laws, estranged parents, etc. I'm so excited but a little worried that I'm getting my hopes up and will be disappointed when no one comes! Please keep your fingers crossed for me that we will at least get some sort of turn out for this super special event (lil mans 1st bday!)!

I am super excited for this weekend. My hubs works 6 days a week, 10 hours a day, so needless to say we don't get much time together. Tonight we are having a date night! No kids, just the 2 of us. Dinner and a movie.... cannot wait! Then tomorrow we are heading to the River Market. I've wanted to go to the river market for years! I was reading online and saw that they have bags of fruit for $1!!!!! I feel that I'll go crazy there! I imagine the hubs will be heading to the casino for Saturday night which sucks cause I'll be alone, but I'm sorta feeling like watching a chick flick and eating some guacamole so I'll make the best out of it!

Hope everyone has a great weekend!!!! I know I plan on it!

family + distance = irritating!

So baby boy is nearing 1 year old. Yes yes I know, it's actually about 2 months away, however!, I got the idea of throwing a big shin-dig for him. Ok I'll admit it, I got the idea from Tori & Dean.... little Miss Stella had an amazing first birthday! Obviously the financial situations are different (only by a few mere pennies) so I won't go to quite the extent that Tori did but I thought it would be awesome to have a big party with friends and family. When I say family I mean extended family, including my estranged father.

in my mind this is what I imagine the family would look like, everyone accounted for and smiling!

In reality I know that a family gathering such as this would turn more into something like this -

minus the hair pulling, I'd like to think we'd be classier than that and stick to using our nails! lol

Not that our family doesn't love each other because we definitely do. My father has sorta been absent for the last 28 years, he has 3 grandchildren and 1 son in law that he has never met. One of my siblings is so damn childish and self-centered that she would bring up every past mistake that our father has ever made, and of course bring it up in the middle of the gathering. Then of course my husbands family all lives at least 9 hours away from us. His family is wonderful, mine might be the problem! lol

So onto my "dream" party. After the party is over I imagine the kids being passed out with little smiles on their faces, paper plates and decorations still scattered around the house, and me and my hubby sitting close together on our porch swing (attached to the porch of our new house in the country of course) watching a beautiful sunset.

Everyone has to dream right? LOL

Also, big news today.... I recently wrote a post concerning my mother and younger sister, see here for that info. Well little sis stopped by this afternoon to come play with the kids and vent about life things. Then out of the blue she asked me if I would be her maid-of-honor! Of course I said yes, I think it's an amazing honor! I mentioned the above mentioned blog (conversation) to her and she apologized repeatedly saying she never meant for me to feel that way.

So I'm super thrilled! And of course I need help from you ladies. I've never had this duty and since it's for my lil sis I definitely want to do a superb job! What do I need to do!!!!????