Happy Birthday, R!

Five years ago on his birthday, I made him a book. It was a book that listed all the reasons that I loved him. We still have it and look back at it from time to time with good memories (and him with not so good memories of the fro he had at the time).

Today is his birthday (he says 29 but he may be a few years off....) and I woke up thinking about all the reasons I've loved him in this last year. There's a ton of them and it makes me realize how lucky I am.

R, here are just a few of the things I love about you from this year.

-I love your new little (matching to mine) scar. ;)

-I love how you've made the choice to be more intentional about your walk with Jesus and to lead our family.

-I loved watching your concern for one of your best buddies and his sweet little girl. I love watching you interact with her, especially now that she'll actually smile at you. :)

-I absolutely loved how happy and carefree you were in Jamaica. It was definitely the best trip we've ever taken!

-I loved watching you try to get Baby H close to the tv for March Madness. Cant wait for you to take him to the Final Four next March while us girls have our shopping trip. :)

-I absolutely melt when you talk to our son. I love how you are the only one he kicks on command for and that you two already have a special relationship. You are going to be the best daddy.

I love you so much and I hope you have the best birthday. Something tells me it's going to be a big year for you!

Really Important Stuff

Let's talk about really important stuff......

...like baby clothes! :)

(I hope you don't take this post seriously....)

It occurred to us not so long ago that we had not bought any clothes for our little guy yet. He had a few cute outfits from my mom, sister and friends, but not too much. We decided since little guy is due in November, he may need a few pieces of clothing to get him through the cold winter. Time to get cracking on that.....

Have you ever shopped for baby boy clothes? I mean cute ones? It's NOTHING like shopping for baby girl clothes. They aren't all that easy to find. If you don't want giant logos, cartoon characters, not so catchy phrases, skulls & crossbones or zoo animals, your choices are pretty limited. (Did you know they put skulls and crossbones on baby clothes?!? I didn't!)

Not only do they not have much to choose from but they spread them out among the little girl clothes so while you're searching for them, you have to walk through all the pretty pink and polka dotted girl things.

And who knew baby jeans cost $27?!? (Don't worry mom- I found some for about 1/3 of that at the outlet.)

My friend asked me awhile back if I would want other people buying clothes for our little guy (her knowing full well that little guy would end up being an advertisement for big monkeys and footballs). And actually, I really do. Because I just cant bring myself to spend money on those monkeys and footballs but the poor little guy cant go nekid can he?

Even so, I was determined to find him a few things less loud.

One night I sat down and made a google doc registry of stuff for little guy that isn't sold at Target. I even ended up finding a few clothing things to put on it. Are you impressed?

Some things that caught my eye:

Baby Legs (in every boy color- if all else fails, little guy could live in these with dyed onesies)

Headphones Playsuit

Something his daddy would like

Something his mommy would like

Pretty much anything American Apparel like this 'b' onesie

Suspenders (I'm so serious! ha)

Cute hats

And even a little something with animals on it

And on that shopping trip R&I did? We bought some baby clothes. Even one with characters on it. Kind of.

(From Naartjie Kids)

PS- Just so you know- there are cute boy clothes, they just have to be hunted for. So far, I've had the best luck at 77 kids. When we were there in May, my mom got little guy some great stuff (like the fedora you've all admired, ha). Just last week, R&I found some more great deals. I've had a hard time finding their sales online but at the store, they have lots of great stuff on the sale racks and each time we've been there we've gotten a scratch off ticket for another percentage off. I vote they bring one to Jordan Creek!

Update:

I love blogging but wish if my blog offends you, you don't like me, or you disagree with me that you'd click on out of here. I'm really debating setting it to private. But that's a whole other post.

Anyway..... Yes! I love our little guy so much. I don't care what he wears (well I kind of do- if you buy him skulls & crossbones, hawkeye gear or anything about being a boob man, I am not putting it on him). But if it's something I'm spending my money on, I do care. If you are paying for it, shouldn't you like it? Yes, I know he is a baby. Guess what? He doesn't have preferences yet. When he's older I guess he may like shirts with basketballs, Disney characters and Hot Wheels (just to name a few) all over them and I'm sure some will make it to his closet. So is it really a big deal if I blog that I want cute clothes for him while I actually do get a say? Not everything I blog is serious- we don't take life that seriously around here. I apologize if I offend you. Like I often think around the 8th graders..... cant we all just get along? (And if you really cant get along with this blog, you can leave any old time you want.)

Okay, back to fun loving, happy blogging. ;)

Hey, Jesus!

Turns out I've used that title before..... And I use it A LOT when I'm talking to Jesus.

"Hey, Jesus!"

Doesn't it just sound good?

I'm not real (okay at all) formal with my prayers. I remember when it was my turn to stand at the pulpit through high school I would much rather stumble over words like 'Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz' doing scripture reading than have to say my own prayer in front of everyone.

I like to thank God for new shoes and ask Him for 'craftastic' blessings. God cares about the small (and seemingly unimportant) stuff, y'all.

So what about this prayer? Do you think he was out of line or just tuning into God's sense of humor? http://www.kcci.com/video/28666075/detail.html

I just have to wonder how many Christians after this guy watched Talladega Nights in their homes and didn't accuse Will Farrell of making a mockery out of prayer. Just something (seemingly unimportant) I was thinking about today...

Updated:

As I was thinking about the way people pray, it reminded me of this scenario that took place at our dinner table the other night......

H- "Maddox, do you want to pray before dinner?"

M (bows his head and closes his eyes)- "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America......." (he continues on with this until the very end putting the emphasis on a really loud GOD)

I'm thankful that he bowed his head and closed his eyes and felt confident enough to dish out the prayer. I'm also thankful his prayer wasn't like his breakfast one awhile back.....

H- "Dear God, thank you for this great day we have with Maddox. We pray that you give him good listening ears today. Thank you for this food. Amen."

M (still with his head bowed, eyes closed only he has his hands on his head shaking his head no)- "NO, God. Just thank you for this food!"

Gotta love that boy! :)

Papa Tractor and Papa Hollie

This is Mr. Maddox and Miss Mo with "Papa Tractor" at Papa Hollie's funeral today.

My dad's dad passed away last week.

May I suggest that the next time you have a funeral to go to, take a four year old. He was such a good boy during the service but he definitely provided some comic relief before and after. (He was very sad all day though and kept saying, "I miss Papa Hollie. Papa Hollie was a good grandpa.")

I also wish I had some of the other photos from the day that I could post on here. There were photos of us with Papa Hollie and some great ones from when we were all little. Todd was rocking the skinny jeans (long before they were 'in' and I'm not even sure they should be 'in' anyway). Amy had the sweetest hair (think big perm). And grandma used to make us all MC Hammer pants in the craziest of fabrics. We were all so cool.....

I'm thankful for this day we had to reflect on some good memories and to observe the littles learning to say goodbye.

Counsel

So yesterday's post left some things in the air. I fully intend to get back on here and talk about really important things (like baby clothes- ha) but I mentioned counseling and people apparently didn't know we saw a counselor.

We do! And it's great for us!

I know I've mentioned it on here before so I used that little search bar up there on the left to find it. It was in a Q&A post awhile back (and several other times)-

3. Q: You guys seem so happy. How do you do it?

A: Well thanks but I think it's one of those 'always greener on the other blog' type of things. It's true, R&I are happy, but only when we choose to be. When we choose a Christ focus and work hard at it, life is good. But we slip up. A lot. We're just like you. Scratch that. You are probably way better at it than us. Ha. We do have an awesome Christian counselor that we hang out with once a month (or six weeks or whenever we can get in). It's great for accountability. It encourages you to 'walk the talk' so to speak. I admit that sometimes we've spent our entire 50 minutes talking about basketball and asking about his kids so it may seem silly go have gone. But there are plenty of other times that I've shed tears, prayed for forgiveness, and learned a lot about life. And I recommend it.

In the post quoted above, I mentioned we were going every 4-6 weeks. We currently go every 2-3 months but will likely go more often once Baby H arrives and we have new life challenges to figure out together.

I've had a lot of friends ask about the counseling. And here are some of the most common things people want to know-

Is it hard? -The hardest thing about it for us was to make the decision to go. Just setting up the initial appointment was difficult. It felt like admitting we weren't good at it and needed help. It's hard to ask for help. It was also hard to know where to go. We tried one counselor (a woman) because where I was working would pay for so many sessions there a year. The particular person we saw at that practice was not a fit for us. It took quite awhile after that appointment to make another one. We ultimately chose a friend that is a counselor. This seems so odd because who wants to admit to someone they know that they need help but we found in our case it helped out a ton. We didn't have to explain a lot of the backstory because he already knew it. Having a friend as a counselor is both great and not so great. It's great because we get the cheapest price on his sliding fee scale. It's not so great when we don't have a whole lot of marriage stuff to talk about and the boys end up talking basketball for most of our session! :)

There are tough topics that the two of us aren't sure we're comfortable with telling our counselor about. We've always discussed these at home first and (with permission from the other) ultimately brought them up with the counselor. We've never surprised each other on the counseling couch with a topic the other didn't know was coming. I think this helps us out a lot in feeling safe going there.

How did the two of you decide to go? -We both went into our marriage talking about what we wanted it to look like but knowing we hadn't seen that modeled. We knew it wouldn't be real easy but we weren't expecting it to be as hard as it was. We knew what we were living and what we both wanted were not matching up. We both did the Love Dare devotional when that movie came out. (The movie is cheesy, but it's a great message and the book was just awesome for us.) We got near the end where the devotion for the day is about seeking counsel. We had been so disciplined at following through with the other pieces and it was working- we knew we needed to follow through with this one too.

If you don't go very often, how are you getting your money worth? - Our counselor is awesome about giving us homework. There are a lot of simple (and not so simple) things that we can do on our own at home that really help us out. He has taught us a lot of tools on how to communicate with each other and how to focus our together time. I'm a huge planner/calendar maker/to do list follower. R is not. One of the tools that helped us out a lot was a marriage calendar. There were some specific things we needed to focus on during that time and those things had to go on the calendar to ensure that we did them. It's easy to say we need to have more 'talk time.' It's hard for us to make it happen without intentional planning. Being intentional about things is huge for us.

What is a marriage meeting? -A meeting about our marriage! :) I don't think there are very many happily married couples that would say marriage is not work. At your work, how often do you have meetings? (For my teacher friends, you're thinking TOO OFTEN, aren't you?!)

If marriage is such hard work and working together involves meetings, doesn't it just make sense to have a meeting about the work you are doing? We weren't real intentional about it otherwise so the marriage meeting helps us focus. (We also have budget meetings, house project meetings, goal meetings, etc!)

When one (or both) of us feels like our marriage needs some attention, we'll call a marriage meeting. We grab a pad of paper and a pen and start making lists of things to be more intentional about.

When we started going to counseling, I didn't know of any friends that went. I thought people might think we were weird for going. The opposite is actually true. The more I've talked about it, the more I learn that lots of people go and lots of people that don't go wish they did. If you are considering it, I would definitely recommend it.

I currently have some friends that would love to go but cant get their spouse on board. Did you/do you know anyone else that faced that same struggle? What advice would you give them?

We Had an Anniversary!

Yesterday, R & I celebrated our anniversary. We both took the day off of work just to hang out.

We ended up heading to Minneapolis for the day. We did lunch at the Cadillac Ranch (we are more into doing lunch out instead of dinner- it's the same food at a cheaper price- it just makes sense in the summer). We did the Mall of America. R looked for shoes (we didn't find any) and we got a few baby clothes. (I know you'd expect me to have a lot of baby clothes by now. I don't. More on that later...)

We did an IKEA run and got everything IKEA we thought we wanted for Baby H's room. As it turns out, TODAY is the day they are switching everything out and now there is all new stuff. We missed it by just one day. Originally I had planned on IKEA this September (during Junk Bonanza) but with Baby H's history of travel, R decided not to let me head up there without him this fall. Sooo..... I'm trying really hard to stay away from the IKEA website. Please don't pin anything cute from their new stuff on Pinterest. :)

On the way home, we did the Medford Outlet. R always has to check out the Nike outlet (in his words, he's found some 'hidden gems' there in the past). We did the kid clothing ones. And Gap. Wait. We didn't do Gap. Can you believe it??? In the past, we've stopped at the Medford Outlet JUST for Gap and this time we didn't even make it in my favorite there. (And you know when I got home I had an email from the Gap Outlet in my junkmail about all the kid sales they were having yesterday!) ha.

Our big dinner out was Wendy's (R's choice). We didn't even have to get dressed up for it. :)

We played stupid car games (alphabet hunt, anyone?) and talked about life and marriage.

Our counselor has reminded us of how different/difficult our early marriage has been compared to others because of what we've been through. Even so, we are anticipating baby changing everything. We had a recent marriage meeting and talked about what marriage would be like after baby (I might have had to take back a laugh when R mentioned weekly dating).

I know I'm going to offend people by saying this, but we both (prayerfully) agree that baby will not come first in our life together. Our intention is for our priorities to be 1.) God 2.) Marriage 3.) Baby.

For those of you ahead of us, what are some things you did/do to ensure your marriage came/comes before baby? Was it/is it incredibly difficult for you to do?

Show Us Your Life

It's been a long time since I've posted along with a Kelly's Korner Show Us Your Life Post.

This week is 'how did you share with your husband/family you were pregnant?'

I know some people go all out for this but not us. He found out right along side me (though he really didn't believe it for awhile). I'm including the pages from our Jamaica scrap book that talk about it. (The Day 2 page is a little funky because when it prints the gap will be missing so the lines read across instead of down. And as I'm posting them I'm glad I haven't ordered the book yet because there are some typos. Glad I found that out here instead of when the book arrived!)

We waited until my mom's birthday to tell my family. As I talked about in Mo's birthday post, she was the first we told. Later that night, all of my family went out to eat for my mom's birthday. R&I gave her a card signed, "Happy Birthday! Love, R, H, Dakota, & Baby H." There was an ultrasound picture in the card as well. It either took her a little while to figure out what was going on or she was in shock because she looked confused for a little bit. Then her jaw dropped and she smiled really big as she was holding the picture. After awhile of this and everyone just staring at her, I realized I should probably get my camera out. A little late but....

My little sister was the first to figure out what she was holding in her hand. Then everyone got excited and poor Morgan (who had been doing such a great job of keeping that secret) was so upset because everyone was figuring out the secret and she didn't think they were supposed to know. She was confused... but not as confused as Maddox. When his mom showed him the picture he said, "OH yay! A PUPPY!!" As we left, he told us to make sure it was a tiny puppy. (He remained confused for quite sometime... he was just getting things figured out when we had our gender ultrasound during our shopping weekend in Minneapolis. The ultrasound tech said he needed to make sure it wasn't a squirrel and Maddox said, "OH NO, it's a squirrel?!?!" At some point he finally got things figured out and got excited about having a baby cousin. A BOY baby cousin!

DIY

I don't know if we are actually 'DIY' type of people or if we are just the 'too cheap to pay someone else to do it' type, but we end up doing a lot of our own little projects around here.

We're in the middle of a big little project right now.... oh you've heard me mention it a time or two? (If you're already bored, just click on outta here.)

R finished laying the flooring in there (a grey wood laminate) and put the trim up (painted deep aqua). We got the crib set up and the next big thing on my list was bedding.

You may have heard me mention the fabric issue before.... my intention was to find some fabrics that I loved to make a crib quilt, choose one of those fabrics for the skirt (and bumper) and put all that together with a nice, matching (store bought) sheet. I quickly ditched the bumper idea (that's a lot of work for something the baby isn't supposed to use anyway). And after searching for days (weeks, really) and not falling in love with any fabrics, I changed the main quilt color to white and realized there was no need to make a white crib skirt (right?). I got online with good intentions of finding a nice (CHEAP) white or grey crib skirt. I figured I could surely find something plain for $15. Then I saw this Dwell crib skirt. It wasn't exactly $15 but I couldn't get it out of my mind. I searched a few more days with no luck and kept coming back to the grey mini dots. I almost made an impulse buy but it was out of stock. I figured that was a good sign. Or was it a challenge? I searched a few other places. After finding it out of stock in online store after online store, there was finally a place that had it ready to ship. I made the fastest 'impulse' (or maybe just stupid?) buy I've made since college and it was on my doorstep two days later.

If you're taking notes, that's now the second baby purchase we've made- after the flooring. (I actually purchased a few little clothing things over the weekend and again yesterday so I've made a few more little purchases now too.... I'm slowly catching up to where you all expected me to be by now...)

I couldn't wait to get it up so when I came up to the trim down and a husband willing to set up the crib, we did it. (There's no mattress yet and we will eventually move the base up, this was just for looks people.)

And that's the way too long, 5 minutes of your life you'll never get back, story of how I gave up a DIY project. Now if I could just hand off this quilt project to my mom, I'll only have 372 more DIY projects to go!

Happy 6th Birthday, Morgan!

Dear Morgan,

I feel like I was JUST saying I couldn't believe you were already five and now you are SIX! How did that happen??!?!

You had another big year. A really big one with kindergarten under your belt now. I loved listening to your school stories and the picture you had your favorite substitute, Mr. Clark, send me of you in the locker. You goof!

You may be a goof, but you have the biggest heart of any silly goof I know. You were the first one in our family that we told we were going to be welcoming a new little one. We told you what a big secret it was and you kept it so safe (for a little while!). Your face lit up at the news and you nearly had tears in your eyes over it. It was the sweetest reaction anyone that we told gave us and I was so glad we told you first. You've been very curious about your new baby cousin. You've been checking in with me to make sure I've been taking good care of him. And you love on him all the time. ALSO, you were the first (other than me) to get to feel him kick! You were able to feel him kick on your birthday party day. It was so exciting! (Except for your uncle R who was just a tad jealous but got over it as soon as he was able to feel the kicks too!)

You play together so well with Maddox and the two of you have been practicing playing babies getting ready for Baby H. I'm excited to see the three of you together!

You are so sweet to Maddox. For your birthday, you wanted fish and told him he could pick one out (even though it was your big day). You are such a lover.

We love you so much, Mo. You always brighten our days! I hope you have a great year of being SIX! And hopefully it wont seem like another year has gone so fast by the time you turn seven (seven?! yikes!).

Love you bunches,

Uncle R & Aunt H (and one of your very best pals, Dakota, too!)

Craving: Chilled Strawberry Soup

It's been a long time since I've posted any recipes. Likely because it's been a long time since I've cooked anything new (and honestly, much of anything. period.).

But that doesn't mean food hasn't been on my mind. In fact, I'm thinking about food more than ever. It keeps me up at night. I literally have bad dreams about someone else getting the last nutty bar (funny, because I didn't even eat nutty bars before this spring rolled around).

Last night my bad dream was about chilled strawberry soup. I've been craving it for awhile and every time I've had a chance to choose a place to eat, I would try my hardest for Shoppes on Grand (for the soup of course). I never got to go.

In my dream, I finally did get to go but they had stopped making chilled strawberry soup. In a frenzy, I started searching for the perfect chilled strawberry soup recipe.

I realize this makes me sound more weird that I already am. I'm actually even weirder than this....

... because as it turns out, part of that dream wasn't actually a dream. When I woke up today, the 1993 Iowa State Fair Award Winning Chilled Strawberry Soup recipe was pulled up on my phone.

I wish I were making that up.

Thankfully, we had all of the ingredients on hand (well not the fat free version like the recipe- I'll include my version of the recipe in a little bit) and I was able to finally have chilled strawberry soup for lunch today.

It doesn't take much to make this hungry girl happy.

(Unless you're married to her and you sometimes drive 20+ miles to satisfy a food craving not available in this small town....)

You can check out the State Fair version of the strawberry soup here.

Following is my version. And it was tasty!

In blender mix until smooth:

2 1/2 cups frozen strawberries (thawed)

1 C skim milk

Pour mixture into large bowl and add/whisk well:

6 oz container vanilla yogurt

1/4 C pure maple syrup

splash of vanilla

Whisk in:

3 oz package strawberry gelatin

Top with whipped cream. Serve chilled.

(PS- when you're eating it at home, you don't have to use the dainty spoon like at the tea room. Go ahead and slurp it up. I wont tell.)

Happies

After getting up early on the 4th and having a very full (LONG) day, I thought once my head hit the pillow just before 11 pm that it would stay there for quite some time. I thought wrong.

So taking R's advice, I got up from tossing and turning in bed and that somehow turned into a blog post....

I love our friend, Amy R's, blog and how she always posts her three happies at the end of each one. Taking her lead......

My Three Happies:

1.) Dakota. He has been quite the trooper with all the craziness in his life lately. He even spent his first night home alone this weekend and (as far as we can tell) did a great job. He is the most loyal, loving pup and the only dog I've ever seen that truly has two 'masters.' You can see the pain on his face when R&I are both home but in different rooms- he doesn't know where he should go! :)

2.) Healthcare. I'm so thankful we have it and I'm amazed by all the techniques/procedures they can do to ensure our health. Some of you tweeted me about that Mercy mug on the 4th of July. Baby H was already up to his first antics and causing quite a stir (literally). Our Dr was concerned (which in turn, made us very concerned) but after a few med tricks, he's straightened out (literally) and all is well. I started and ended my long weekend with such different feelings about life and I'm so thankful. (Side note, please pray Baby H stays put for quite some time. According to yesterday's tests, he is now estimated to be 3 ounces heavier than the lightest baby ever born to have survived. I simply cannot imagine him arriving this soon or this tiny.)

3.) Hubby. This one goes without saying, but he was especially my happy this weekend. This guy loves me. And I love him. I feel so blessed to have him by my side in everything. If you're admitted and need someone to sneak you McDonald's french fries, I hope you have a guy like R by your side. And did you see his photography skills? He's good. (Okay, he's going to tell that story as me setting up the shot, switching him places, him pushing the button, me straightening, cropping, and editing until I got them how I wanted them.... but who else would let me hand them a camera and do all that back and forth?) ;) Yep. He definitely is my happy.

Hope you have lots of happies your way today!