Just What We Needed

We had a great Saturday of rest and fun around the house. We took the kids on a long wagon ride around the neighborhood, which they liked. But they LOVED when Brandon took them up the "hill" (small slope) of our yard and back down in the wagon. Buckled in, of course! It was a little chilly, but still felt good to just be outside. So, we used our firepit while Brandon grilled out for dinner. You can't have a firepit without s'mores!

I wasn't willing to give up two perfectly good metal hangers, so we just did two marshmallows on one hanger.

Brandon likes to set them on fire, but I think it just chars them and doesn't make them squishy enough for me. If it wasn't so hot, I would eat it right off of the hanger.

We didn't have graham crackers, so we just used saltines-which were really good. A good twist of sweet and salty. See the char? This one was Brandon's.

While we played with fire, we just zipped the kids in the trampoline. Every few minutes, Kate would demand a bite, and I think she was showing me her bite in this picture. They love being outside, and we are going to be so glad when it gets warmer and we can wear ourselves out.

See the marshmallow smeared on her face? I think she is a fan of s'mores. I wish we didn't all smell like bonfire now!

And here is my static-haired boy. He had a blast, and he screamed when we came back in. He got one more marshmallow and forgot all about why he was crying.

Then, Kate wanted to be a princess while we cleaned up the kitchen after dinner.

After all of the fun we had today, Kate wrapped it up with a little dancing in the kitchen with her daddy. I feel like I should tell you they were dancing to Kanye West... maybe not getting the Parents of the Year award, but she had so much fun. Brandon will probably LOVE this picture of the clenched-fist-jog-slowly-in-place dance move. :) Hope your weekend was restful and fun.

Mmmmm

We had homemade chocolate croissants a few weeks ago at Bible study, and I have been dying for them ever since! I found a recipe and decided to try and make them. These are the ingredients- butter, butter, butter, milk, flour, oil, eggs, sugar (in the canister), yeast and water.

Make a ball of dough, set it out to rise. And rise, and rise!

Roll it out into a huge rectangle, and place a big rectangle of butter in the middle. At the very beginning, you shape softened butter into the rectangle and chill on a cookie sheet.

You fold up the dough around it and pinch the edges tight. You roll that out and then fold it into thirds, chill, roll, fold, chill, etc.

Finally, you have a smaller rectangle and wrap it and chill it for 8 hours. I just let it chill and rise overnight, and it busted through the foil!


You split the final dough into 4 equal parts, roll it out to flat circles, cut into 6 wedges.

You roll the wedges wide side towards small point and bend into crescent shape.



If you want to add a special twist, you put chocolate in the wide end before you roll it up.

Let them rise once again, and then bake. Luckily they only bake for 8 minutes, because once you smell it, you won't be able to wait!



They are a huge bite of buttery goodness! Especially great when they are warm. This recipe makes 2 dozen, so I made 1 dozen regular and 1 dozen chocolate filled. Brandon doesn't care for the chocolate ones, so we have some of each. I highly recommend this recipe, if you have time to let bread rise and rise and rise!

Who could resist a bite into chocolate filled buttery croissant?!

The full recipe is here, it is from Southern Living.

Don't Judge

That is not Kate in the pink furry-hooded jacket, that is my sweet boy! Poor Blake didn't have a jacket that would keep him from getting wet in the snow, so he had to wear one of Kate's old ones- don't judge. Brandon was not very excited to see Blake in a pink jacket! But- he agreed that it is not worth buying Blake a waterproof jacket when we get snow maybe twice a year here. I still hesitated to post pictures, for blackmail purposes, but they were just so cute playing in the snow!

Kate had a blast making snowballs and learning how to make snow angels. Derek and Stacy came over to play, which was nice because I don't enjoy the freezing, wet melting snow all over my clothes and boots!
Uncle D kept Blake from getting wet by a shoulder ride. He has one little girl who LOVES him. He even brings her puffy stickers, so she is hooked on him!

Sweet Blake, please don't hate me for the pink jacket. You screamed so loud to go outside, I had to do something so you could enjoy the snow. Forgive me for the evidence!

No Soliciting

We moved into this house last April, and we quickly learned that people try to solicit just about anything at your front door. We have had countless young people who have said that they are trying to get off the street, so they are selling their mystery cleaning liquid, or they need you to pledge money to "earn points" towards their goal, etc. We constantly have men trying to sell us the paper, kids trying to raise money for their basketball teams, vacuum salesmen, etc. I am a sucker for all these things, but I am married to a "NO" man. It is good and bad, I would probably say yes to too many, and be taken advantage of, but I can always hear his voice in my head saying "ABSOLUTELY NOT." We had a bad experience last fall of a vacuum salesman staying past his welcome on a call night of Brandon's and it made me (and Brandon) very uncomfortable. Shortly after this, Brandon made a handmade sign for our front door that said "no soliciting." I wanted to rip it down because it was tacky and I felt so rude, but he said that he refused to take it down since I am here with 2 kids by myself so much. This weekend, I hosted a baby shower at my house, and I thought it may be rude to have the sign up, so I took it down and forgot about it. Until yesterday...
I was vacuuming in our bedroom when Kate came and told me that there was a man standing in the door. That will make your heart speed up a little. I turned off the vacuum and ran to the front door and sure enough, there was a man on our front porch. (I just wish Kate knew the difference in "in the door" and "at the door".) I opened it and kept both kids behind me and he said that he wanted to do some yardwork for me. This is not a huge surprise because Brandon had to leave 86 piles of leaves in the yard to pack into bags later. He told me he could do it "real cheap" and when I told him no, he rode away on his bike with the rake tied to the back. :( I really thought, for $20, that may be nice for Brandon to not have to worry about it on his day off. But the Brandon in my head told me that $20 needs to go towards bills!
A few hours later, both kids were napping and I was on the couch working on some sewing designs. Our doorbell doesn't ring, it just vibrates, so I looked at the reflection of the clock and saw another man standing there. I decided to ignore it until he started pounding on the front door. I went and opened it and he told me he didn't want to scare me, but that he needed some help. He and his wife live a few streets over and they had a baby 8 days ago. He said he had recently lost his job and that his power got shut off yesterday. He said he would do any yardwork I needed and clean all the branches off the roof, he just needed to earn $49 to get his power back on. It physically hurt me to tell him no, but I knew that there was a chance it was a made up story, and we don't have $49. I told him that I was sorry and that I would pray for him and his family. I shut the door and started crying. I pray that he made that $49 and his power got turned back on (if that was true). It just made me realize that I complain about so much that I want, I need, or that I wish I had- but I have 2 healthy kids in a warm house.
While it was a touching story, I am still putting our sign back up today. Brandon is right, I am too big of a sucker to handle these guys!
Another note- Kate decided Sunday that sleep is ok... so we have been napping and sleeping all night since then. I would love to know what goes through that head!

Lately

We started our morning off with beignets. Cut some biscuits in half, fry them in some Canola oil, then cover them with powdered sugar. Thanks to Katie Compton for showing us just how easy it is to have a yummy treat anytime!

We had some happy eaters too! Kate wore the powdered sugar all over her face, and Blake stuffed the whole thing in his mouth.

Everyone got haircuts today but me- but that is only because I am the hairdresser. This is Blake's finished boy haircut, compared to his earlier mullet. He looks stressed in this picture, but he actually enjoyed climbing all over the chair while I tried to cut his hair. I didn't plan on cutting Kate's hair, but once she watched me cut Brandon's and Blake's, she said it was her turn.

Brandon ended up getting the bug on Monday, so we had another few fun days at home! I wish I could give you a good report on Kate's sleeping, but it just seems to get worse. I think it started with waking up throwing up last week, and she was scared it would happen again. Then it just turned into a control issue. I finally talked to her pediatrician about it the other day because I don't want to shut her in her room if she is legitimately afraid. BUT, Dr. Peters said this is definitely a Terrible 2 fit. I put a safety knob cover on the inside of her door, but she figured out how to open it. Then, I thought about turning her knob inside out so I could control the lock and not worry about her locking herself in, but I got a tight pressure mounted baby gate so she can still see out if she is afraid, but she cannot run out of her room. This has made for some serious noise! Sweet Blake just sleeps right through it, but I keep wondering when he is going to get fed up with it. She has fallen asleep sitting up a few times when I go in to calm her down, and she even fell asleep during lunch at Mother's Day Out this week. At least we know she is human and still sleeps sometime.

We are trying to read, say our prayers, and get out of her room without looking back- but she is pretty smart. She has pulled every toy that could hold her weight and slid her changing table to the door to try and climb out. Last night, I heard her scream something about her pajamas while she was throwing a fit, and I got nervous. Sure enough, when I got to her room, she had all her lights on and was standing stark naked in her doorway. All this was after she had thrown every book out of her room. Can you say TEMPER!

Please pray that this battle of the wills will end soon, it is taking its toll on me!

Where Have We Been?

Kate wants to show you her boo-boo on her chin. I picked her up from the nursery after Bible study, and she had a band-aid on her chin. When she finally let me pull it off (which took a while), there was a tiny dot of a scratch- drama queen!

Blake wants to spend EVERY WAKING MINUTE outside. If you even crack the door, he stands there begging, "side, side, side." I have started walking him out for every little thing I do outside, feed the dog, check the mail, etc. He doesn't care if it is freezing cold, he just is an outside boy. This day happened to be pretty warm, so the kids were able to play outside for a while.

Brandon and I raked while the kids napped, and when they woke up, they wanted to help. I am sure you can imaging how much "help" they were. Do you see Blake walking right through a pile of leaves?

Anyway, onto news around here... there is good news and bad news. The good news is that Kate put her pacifiers in an envelope to mail to the "paci fairy" so she can give them to a baby that needs it. She did ok with it, but we have had a few temper tantrums for it lately. I guess it didn't help that the night we took it away was also the night she got the stomach bug. That is the bad news! Kate came home from the nursery after Bible study on Wednesday and played all afternoon. She started telling me her tummy hurt, but how can you believe a 2 year old? So, we didn't do anything special for her tummy. We put her to bed, and she was so excited about giving her paci to the paci fairy, that she did pretty well, until 10 or so. She coughed and then cried and whined until Brandon went to check on her. Then he called my name to come help, which is never a good sign! We decided not to give her the pacifier because we didn't want her to know we still had them, she had done such a good job "mailing" them off. She did fine, she slept on me all night long on the couch.

She was pretty much over the bug the next day, just kind of weak. Brandon was on call Thursday night, and Kate was particularly difficult to put to bed. I was tired from no sleep the night before, but I also felt a little queasy... so I let her sleep with me. I just knew I was getting the bug, and then it hit! Wow does it hit adults harder than kids! I was up all night, and finally texted Brandon in the morning that he had to find someone to call in some Phenergan for me or I was going to die (he doesn't like to prescribe things for his own family). Somehow, he was able to come home in the morning instead of the afternoon after being on call, which was amazing. He picked up my medicine and some gatorade, and then I disappeared in my bed for the entire day. Literally, the entire day! I slept all day, and then all night last night. Kate was my little nurse. She refused to go play in the den, she wanted to lay with me. I told her if she could be still and quiet, she could stay. She stayed in my bed with me from 10 until 1:30, not moving and not talking! When we got up, she asked me, "can I talk now?" Isn't that sad? Anyway, I woke up this morning feeling much better. I washed clothes, sheets, scrubbed bathrooms, cloroxed everything I could see, etc. And then, Blake started throwing up tonight! It is like a domino effect, but Brandon has not had it yet. Please pray that he doesn't get it, because by the time it hits him, it will be when he needs to be working, and he can't really miss any work!

I was thinking how funny/gross it is to be a mom of kids with the stomach bug. First of all, I would NEVER have thought I could handle throw up on or around me, but when Kate was sick, she freaked out if you weren't holding her, so she actually laid on me with a towel in between us, and she threw up on the towel. Disgusting, I know! But, she was comforted and it was easier to clean up. Secondly, when I was sick, I realized that I was not even concerned about how long I was going to be sick, I was just praying that Blake wouldn't get it because I couldn't take care of him. Part of that prayer was answered, he did not get it that night, but he got it afterall (at least I can take care of him tonight). Thirdly, I was kind of thinking that I may want to catch another bug before bathing suit season comes along. There went a good five pounds I wanted to lose!

I hope you aren't too grossed out, and I sure hope you are not home sick with the bug! I hear it is flying around!

Cold Day Fun

On cold days, we tend to not get out much. And things get a little crazy! The kids climbed up onto the chair in Blake's room to play one day. Once I got the remote out of Kate's hands and the sound machine out of his, we were safe to play on the chair. Kate is really into "funny face time" these days. I think we have Uncle Derek to thank for that one!

The kids get a little whiny when there is nothing to do, and there are only so many cartoons we can watch, and I can't physically watch Shrek again! So, we got out the tunnel that my parents gave them for Christmas. It was A HIT! They just went back and forth over and over again, and it provided fun for a whole morning! It comes with a tent, but it looked like it may be more than I wanted in my living room, so we went with the tunnel alone (they will never know anyway). Please excuse Kate's hair in her face... we are fighting control battles with bows, jackets, etc. lately and it is just not worth it to argue about a bow at home!

We hope you are staying warm and having fun!