"Cheese" and other cute stuff

SO, Mia has another new word. That word is "cheese". She just said it the other day - and sure enough, she wanted a piece of cheese. Yesterday, she had sort of had a fussy day. I think her canines are getting ready to come down and she said it..."cheese". BOY, did she MEAN cheese. She ended up consuming THREE whole string cheeses. The girl knows what she wants. Tonight at my mom's she had eaten a good dinner and was snacking on some of my rice when she said it again. She ended up eating several slices of chedder before we cut her off - in hopes of not being constipated later.

Tonight, I also had a sweet conversation with Keira at bedtime. I almost always forget it, so I told it to Travis and had to come record it in the blog. It is the only reason I'm still up right now.

Keira "Why are there bad people outside?"

Me "Well, some people choose to follow God and other people don't. They don't live in the goodness that God has."

K "Where is Jesus?"

Me "He's God's son and he's in heaven with him." (I didn't really get into the whole living in your hearts yet)

K "Where's heaven?"

Me "It's invisible but it exists." NOT a very clear answer.

K "Well, I want to go there because I love him!"

I thought that was awfully sweet. Then came the real reason. ;-)

K "Mom, where do all the balloons go?"

I forgot that probably a YEAR ago I told her when she let go of her balloon, it would go up to heaven where grandpa was. Apparantly, she wants to make sure her balloons will be waiting for her someday. I'm sure they will be. :-)

Catchin up on life's events

GOODNESS! It has been busy. I have a moment of quiet...everyone is napping except me so I'm taking a second to remember what we've been doing.

Last weekend - or I guess the weekend BEFORE last, my friends Josh and Meredith got married. You couldn't have asked for better weather or a prettier place. It was at a place called David Hill Winery just outside of Forest Grove - man...it was God's country. Travis was in the wedding party and Keira was the flower girl. That made for a busy weekend - and a lot of trips to Forest Grove. Travis spent the whole day Friday Sept 26th with Josh helping him set up. Keira and I met them out there for the rehearsal/dinner. It was a blast. My sister and brother-in-law were there too, because Nate was officiating the wedding. That made things all-the-more fun. :-)

We had the opportunity to spend the night in a hotel after the wedding. Nate and Teresa and Jenny and Bryan did, too and we had so much fun. We hung out in Nate and T's room until WAY past my bedtime ;-) drinking rum and cokes and eating greasy McDonalds. It almost felt like I was young again! We all had a concensus that as MUCH as we love our kiddo's dearly, we could have probably used even another night or two away - playing with our friends. There is something freeing about not having to check every which way to make sure some little person didn't wander off, do they need to eat, OH, please don't touch that, now they have to go potty. Did somebody poop? I LOVE being a mom and all that goes with it and looking at those precious little eyes and smiles makes it all worth it. Sometimes, though a little time away is just what you need to keep your lid from blowing off on those tough days.

With that said, the rest of the week was interesting. Monday, Travis and I started our new Sonoma Diet. We have a book and a cookbook and I had been researching it for about a month. A friend of ours at church lost most of her baby weight from it and I am resolved that I HAVE to do something. SO, I woke up completely freaked out about having to make breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day. I even got Travis up an hour earlier because I wanted to make sure he got breakfast before he had to leave for school. We did pretty well the first week. Travis lost a total of 6.5 lbs (YEA) and I lost 4...but I gained back two from the weekend. I'll explain in a minute. The food is really tasty, but the first 10 days are the hardest. You aren't supposed to have ANY sugar - not even fruit. This is to ween yourself from a lifetime of sugar cravings.

Anywhoo, it was pretty easy to stay strong the first few days, but as the week stretched on, I found myself feeling hungerier and less satisfied. On Saturday night, I went to my friend Katie's b-day party at El Tapitio, a Mexican restaurant close by. I was surrounded by GINORMOUS pina coloda's with WHIP CREAM on them! Margharita's, chips, and OH my such good smelling food engulfed all of my senses. I sat with my chin on my hand and grunted that I was a bit grumpy because I was on a diet. I did eat a chip or two, but it didn't really do anything for me. I wanted to cheat really bad, but good ol' Jenny was like "ABSOLUTELY NOT!!" Thank you, Jenny. My friends Kate and Betty urged me to get the tortilla soup, saying it was very tasty and would work with my diet. Thank God - at least I could eat something. Soup didn't sound that exciting but it did have avacodo in it and it was very easy on the pocketbook. NOW, what to drink. When I left for the party, Travis and the girls were at my neighbors house watching the Ducks game. My neighbor told me that a diet coke with a shot of Bacardi Silver was only 60 calories. Unfortunately, El Tapatio does not carry Bacardi Silver. "I'll just have a diet coke, please."

I did resolve to have one of Katie's special pomnegranete drinks in a fancy martini glass when we got back to see the adorable house she just purchased. Well, the drink was so good and went down SO incredibly easy that I decided to have another. She also made warm bree (sp??) cheese with toasted hazelnuts, apples, and bread. Are you trying to KILL me here?? I had a little bit. The night was fun - it felt good to let go a little bit (once again) and just hang out with girl friends. I did pay for it in the morning when I got on the scale and two of my treasured 4 lbs I had lost had found their way back. (sigh).

I am craving fall comfort food like mashed potatoes and gravy, and pumpkin spiced lattes! It is so hard to have resolve. But I DO not want to stay this weight. I am starting to excercise, too. Today turned out to be a nice day so the girls and I went to Portland Christian and I chased Keira around the track, twice. I also managed to do 20 sit ups on Trav's sit up bench and have my little hand weights I will be using in a few minutes. This weight is going to come off!!

Well, I am trying to be domesticated and right now am getting ready to make a big batch of homemade tomato sauce to freeze from my abundance of tomatoes in my garden. I'm trying to be a better steward of my stuff and let things go to waste, as much. Plus, homegrown/homemade is always better, right? :-)

That is just a little bit of what happened this week, but I only have a little time.

I will post some pictures in a bit.

TTFN!

A new word!!

So my little Mia Miss says mainly two words that are somewhat comprehendible. She says various forms of DAAAAD, Daaaady, and "Ash" which sounds more like "Ass". That word is her version of "singing" Ring Around the Rosies. She sings "Ash" while she turns around in circles. It's pretty cute. Well, last night she picked up Keira's shoe and said, "Daddy....shoes" SO, now we have three official words. She has a bunch of "words" that is the adorable baby talk that I wish would never go away. So cute. Sometimes, I expect her to start speaking full sentences because I KNOW she understands me, even when she doesn't talk that much. Little stinker. ;-)

HUGE Spiders and Sick Kids

Wow, so the weather hasn't "turned" more than a week and my kids get sick. Mia had a super snotty nose last week and was a bit grumpy. Other than just the residual phlem she is coughing up, she seems a lot better. It takes a lot to get my little bruiser down.

Keira on the other hand, seems a bit more fragile. I went to Costco today, while the girls were napping and when I got home Keira was awake but did NOT look good. She just had that sick look in her eyes and all of her spunk was gone. I took her temp and it was 101.3. Not terrible, but not great, either. I just felt bad for her. She wanted to go outside and play in her swing SO bad that she tried convincing me she felt better. She even ran around with Mia a bunch and almost did have me convinced - other than she still felt warm to me.

I went outside to pick some veggies and when I came in she was laying on Trav's lap - obviously all of that running around had quickly worn her out. Poor little bug. The worst part is that she is the flower girl in our friends wedding this weekend so I am praying for a speedy recovery.

Okay - now speaking of not so little bugs, I mentioned I went outside to pick some veggies. I have been really hesitant to go out there because of all the HUGE spiders around this time of year. They all seem to make webs in between my tomato plants. I noticed today that they all seemed to be gone. The webs were partially still there, but no spiders. VERY cool. I picked and picked and got more confident as I carefully looked and saw that where there used to be spiders, there were no more. I finally got to the last bunch of tomatoes that are over by our yard. I was kneeling down picking through the tomatoes when I looked down and running across my SHIRT was a HUGE spider. I screamed at the top of my lungs, threw the tomatoes and started running back and forth across my yard. If anybody was watching, it must have been quite a scene. I was shaking my hair and my clothes and dancing around and I really just wanted to rip my shirt off JUST IN CASE it was still there and was going to crawl around inside. Fortunately, a little bit of sense came over me and I ran in the garage before I took my shirt off. I was totally re-inacting the scene from Tommy Boy, "BEES, BEES EVERYWHERE!! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!" I even knocked my glasses off in my frantic shaking and brushing to make sure that gi-nor-may spider was, in fact gone.

I go inside and Travis asks nonchalantly, "Did you scream?"

Why yes I did.

Oh, the things she says

Kids say funny things. They just do. The best part is when they are so darn innocent and they look at you in all seriousness and it either melts your heart or makes you dissolve in giggles - and a lot of times, both. I was chatting with someone after church today and a lady came up and sat down behind me. Turns out she was one of the workers in the toddler class today. She said, "I just have to tell you a funny story. The Sunday School leader was talking about Humpty Dumpty (is that in the Bible??) and about how he fell off the wall and they were so sad that they couldn't put him back together." I guess she was sitting by Keira and K said under her breath, "Why don't they just cook him?" LOL! She just couldn't understand why someone was SO upset about dropping an egg. I guess another kid heard her and said, "yeah, why don't they just fry him in butter sauce!" So much for the moral of the story. ;-) I like these options better.

He did it!!!

Travis did well on the D.A.T!!!! Of course he thinks he "could have done a little bit better". I'm like, "HEY, we got what we prayed for." He knows that. The score he got is one that he thinks would get him into an Arizona school for sure. It is also the average score for people getting into OHSU. Last night, his sister Meghan babysat the girls so we could go on a date. It was really nice to have a reason to celebrate. We just kept things simple and went to El Indio's, our favorite Mexican restaurant, for dinner and a couple of drinks. Then we went to Target because we needed a couple of things, stopped by the PO Box, and then McDonalds for ice cream and then home. How things have changed. :-) It was fun to just be able to carry on a conversation.

So now, we wait again, but there is such huge relief that this test he has been anticipating for the last three years is over. Thank you Lord!!!

Waiting and Praying...

So this is it. Travis is taking the DAT right now. He has actually been testing for about an hour. He left around 12:45 to do whatever it was he had to do before the test. I know he had to show two pieces of ID and I don't know what else. I was getting a bit edgy with my girls as the time approached 1:30. I really felt the need to have some alone time with God and just come before His Word and pray. I managed to get them both in bed right around then and then other distractions started hitting. I managed to fend them off and spent some awesome time with the Lord. He led me to this Scripture - 1 Peter 5:6-8a "Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. Be self-controlled and alert." That is just part of what I read but it is this verse that keeps coming to mind to pray over Travis.

Thank you God that whatever happens is in Your hands.