Thanksgiving 2008

Thanksgiving this year was a very low-key celebration, but we had a good time and ate good food. We spent the day at my in-laws. They fried a turkey and made most of the side dishes, I brought a broccoli casserole and some other veggies as well as rolls and a pie. Keith's Grandpa has been in poor health for a long while now, but he came up for 30 minutes so he could see Garrett. (They live next door to Keith's parents so it wasn't far for them to go.) They said he's special to them because he's currently their only grandchild sharing their last name. And a boy at that. Garrett is basically it as far as the name lineage goes. Keith's dad has one brother who only had one daughter and Keith only has a sister, so Garrett will carry on this branch of the family name. Of course if I'm having another boy, then they will share in that responsibility.

Garrett is a very friendly kid for the most part, so he enjoyed having a captive audience in the way of Keith's grandparents. They hung on his every word and ooh'ed and aahh'ed at the appropriate moments as Garrett was showing off all his toys. At one point Keith's grandma looked at me and asked where he got the chatty gene because Keith was not a talkative child. (Is anyone surprised by that?) Apparently I haven't shown my true colors to most of Keith's family because they all acted surprised when I told them I was a pretty chatty kid. (Hence one of my nicknames being Gabby Abby.) My mom got a good kick out of that when I told her about it later.

(Garrett and one set of his great-grandparents)

After eating the yummy food (of which Garrett ate exactly one bite) we all watched Garrett work off that piece of turkey. Keith's parents have a pull-up bar in the doorway of one of their bedrooms. His mom has back problems and this helps her to be able to stretch out her back as well as do a little working out. Garrett was completely enthralled with it and would have spent the entire day doing pull ups if he had a willing participant to help him. This product has an infomercial that we've seen many times. So often, in fact, that Garrett has it basically memorized. One of the lines in the infomercial is "Wanna get ripped" which Garrett loves repeating. So he said this multiple times while "working out". I never got him saying it in its entirety on video, but here's an idea of what he was doing.

Later in the afternoon, Keith and I went to his sister's house to see her new baby. Michael Brayden was born a couple of weeks ago and Melanie didn't feel up to getting out of the house with her 3 kids, so they stayed home that day. The baby looks a lot like her other 2 kids.

After that visit we went back to Keith's parents to pick up Garrett and head on home. We live about an hour from them, so we wanted to get home before it got too late. On the way home, Garrett sang to us in order to keep himself awake. The whole time at Keith's parents I kept trying to get Garrett to sing his days of the week song, but he refused, instead he decided to sing it over and over in the car on the way home. I apologize for most of this being dark. I thought the camera would pick up a little light from outside, but it obviously didn't. Keith doesn't like having the interior lights on while he was driving so that's why I turned them off and on a few times.

Once we got home, we ate leftovers from lunch and then watched "The Incredibles" which was on TV.

We had a great day. The weather was perfect and the food was delicious. I hope everyone else had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Now it's time to start checking people off my Christmas list. I have bought exactly nothing for Keith, but I'm almost done with everyone else. I attempted to do a little "Black Friday" shopping yesterday morning, but our local Walmart was a joke. Nothing was labeled with their sale prices and more than half of the items that I was interested in buying weren't even there and I didn't see a place where they had been there earlier. It makes me wonder if they were even available at our Walmart. Oh the joys of attempting to find a great deal. It usually backfires on you.

I have to add that Target totally came through and gave me a $25 e-giftcard for their mistake with the mispricing of the carseat that I tried to buy from them a few weeks ago. So I've cancelled my Target boycott. Good thing, since I love that store.

Thanksgivings Past

As we get closer to Thanksgiving, I've been thinking of the ones that I've celebrated in the past. A drawback to having a dad in the ministry means that you ultimately live in a variety of places, which also means that you probably don't live close to family. So when you don't live close to family, you don't celebrate holidays with extended family.

Thank goodness my immediate family is pretty big. 5 kids, 2 parents. A 7 person Thanksgiving feast is still a pretty good party. We always enjoyed ourselves whether it was just the 7 of us or if we had additional family members visiting. For many years my uncle Jamie, my mom's youngest brother, would come to our house for the holidays and take part in our family traditions. I can also remember atleast a couple of Thanksgivings where 2 of my cousins came to spend the holiday with us because they were attending Wheaton College in the Chicago area and we were the closest relatives to them. Those were fun times as well. But the majority of our holidays were spent with just our family.

I think my fondest memory of Thanksgiving is simply that the menu rarely changed. Baked turkey, stuffing (somestimes homemade, sometimes StoveTop and to be honest I love both equally), broccoli casserole (the best EVER), canned cranberries (they had to be canned because they had to have the can shape to them, just another tradition), a variety of veggies, homemade rolls, and the creamiest mashed potatoes you will ever eat. ("These mashed potatoes are so creamy." Name that movie!)

One of my favorite Thanksgivings was a few years ago when Keith and I hosted both of our families in our house. It was our first time to fry a turkey and I also baked one (which was also a first). Everything turned out really good except I was heating up some black eyed peas, actually a ton of black eyed peas, and they weren't thoroughly heated until about halfway through our meal. But other than that, it all turned out well.

While my worst memory is probably our first Thanksgiving in Texas. My mom decided that was a year to make homemade stuffing and she asked me to give her a hand in the kitchen. Somehow the uncooked stuffing was in its pan, sitting on top of the stove waiting to go in the oven and I turned on the wrong burner for something I was heating up. I ruined the stuffing because the burner I turned on was under the stuffing pan. My mom was NOT happy. I had to make a run to the grocery store for some StoveTop.

Until my parents moved to Indiana, Thanksgiving was always the holiday that Keith and I spent with my family. (The one in '04 being the exception.) We would drive down on Wednesday night or early Thursday and stay until Saturday or Sunday. It always worked out well because it was about a 5 hour drive so we were able to spend several days in a row since we were both off work. Garrett celebrated his first Thanksgiving at Nana and Pawpaw's house. While we ate, he tried out the Exersaucer that Grace loaned to us.

(Garrett's first Thanksgiving.)

(Garrett's second Thanksgiving. So he's not really eating here, but I promise this was taken on Thanksgiving day. That's Keith's dad's dog, Scooter.)

How sad is it that I don't have a picture of Garrett on any other subsequent Thanksgivings. I guess it's true what they say that the older they get the more the newness wears off. :) Hopefully that won't apply to baby #2.

This year will be the third Thanksgiving that I haven't spent with my family. Of course it's sad, but it's just life when you live 14 hours away. I know they will have an excellent day (minus my dad's broken ribs of course) my grandparents will be there along with my mom's brother, Jerry, and his family. Poor Brad and I will be the only missing members of the family. Brad, we should have gotten together and done something extremely fun this year so they would all be jealous.

A few of the things that I'm thankful for:

1. Keith
2. Garrett
3. Baby #2 (I really should come up with a nickname to use. Got any suggestions?)
4. My parents and siblings, nieces and nephews.
5. Keith's family
6. All 4 of my grandparents who have blessed me over the past almost 30 years and are still around to meet my children and bless them as well.
7. The rest of my extended family.
8. The fact that God has provided for us in abundance. I am so amazed at the things He does for us. We are so blessed.
9. My family's health. I know there are so many families that struggle with a chronically ill child or family member and we have been overall very blessed in this area. My dad's broken ribs will heal and he will go back to being a healthy, busy man.
10. My new job that I didn't really go looking for but it found me. It's nice to be able to make some additional money as well as work with some pretty cool people. (And get free homemade pies from church members for Thanksgiving!!)
11. Keith's job which has allowed me to be a stay at home mom for all these years. I know there is many a night when he doesn't get home until 10pm or later and in those moments he's hating his job with every fiber in his being, but he has learned a lot while working there, established a lot of contacts, made many friends, and is paid enough so that we don't have to worry too much about our finances. I think he would agree with me, with maybe the exception of when he's in Minnesota for a week.
12. Our house, which I may grumble about because it's on the small side, but it looks nice and is fairly easy to clean (when I'm in the mood) as well as having an affordable mortgage. That's probably the biggest asset.
13. Our vehicles that get us from point A to point B, one of which is completely paid for and the other is very close. One is Daddy's truck and the other is Momma's truck, according to Garrett. He much prefers to ride in Daddy's truck. (I don't really drive a truck either, it's an SUV.)

I hope you all will take the time to count your blessings over the next couple of days.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Weekend Wrap-Up

This weekend started the same as last weekend, the eating of frozen pizza (well, not frozen, obviously I heated it up in the oven first) and the watching of "Don't Forget the Lyrics". (The contestant on there was awesome! She was born without her right ear, though the inner workings are all there and intact, the outer ear is not. The surgery needed to fix it costs $100,000 so her goal was to win $100k. Which she did. When she correctly sang the missing lyrics and Wayne told her she was right, she cried, her boyfriend cried, her brother cried, I cried. Then Wayne gave her a pair of diamond earrings from himself and the show's producers so that after she had the surgery she would have her first pair of earrings to wear and show off her new ear. I thought that was so awesome. She ultimately won $200,000 before quitting. I was thrilled for her.)

On Saturday morning we headed out to eat breakfast at a fairly new "all you can eat breakfast buffet". It's actually a local barbecue place that recently started serving this buffet on the weekends. It. was. good. And cheap. For the 3 of us, all you can eat, including drinks, we paid less than $20. And they had eggs, 2 kinds of potatoes, 2 kinds of sausage, ham, bacon, biscuits and gravy, pancakes and syrup, fruit, cereal and juice. Keith said we're never going to IHOP or Denny's for a Saturday morning breakfast again. Unfortunately for me, I was only able to eat about half of my plate's contents because I get full so darn fast lately. But Keith finished off his plate and mine, so he didn't have to actually get a refill of food. We both love breakfast food, especially when nobody has to cook it. Because let's face it, I'm not going to attempt to fry bacon, the few times I've tried, our house stunk for a week. So let somebody else stink up their own place and we'll just come eat it and then be on our merry way.

After breakfast we headed out to do a little more Christmas shopping. Keith bought 2 things for his dad and I bought something for my brother. As we were debating where to go next, Keith called his mom to let her know about the purchases he had made and she told him that they were getting ready to leave to come to our house! They don't have a cell phone (the madness) so it's a good thing he called when he did because who knows how long they could have sat at our house before we finally came back home.

We rushed home and immediately went into high gear to get the house clean. Why is that always the case? Of course my intentions were to clean the house when we got home, but instead we had to do it in a rush. But it got done (save for our bedroom and bathroom, I just closed the door and walked away. Sometimes it's easier like that.)

The reason for their visit was because we had offered them several pieces of furniture that we had in our guest room. Now that baby #2 is on the way, we had to start thinking about the room assignments and what furniture was needed and where. Basically all the furniture in our guest room was deemed unnecessary, so they brought up an enclosed cattle trailer (his dad has cows that he hauls to auction once or twice a year, thus the need for a cattle trailer) and hauled everything off. We got rid of a bed (very sad to see it go, but much too big for a kid's room), a dresser, a 19" TV from the 80's, a VCR, a small cabinet, a clock, and a bag of cassette tapes. Not sure where all of that will end up, but between Keith's parents and his sister, everything had a home, so we didn't question it, we were just glad to be rid of it.

And now the real fun begins. Painting and more moving of everything. But that's for another post.

On Saturday evening, Garrett and I finally decorated the tree. He was very possessive of the ornaments and was not happy when I would hang a few towards the top of the tree. He wanted to be the one to hang every ornament. After a nice little discussion, we were seeing eye to eye and my tree is now decorated! Garrett grouped all of his ornaments by things that were alike. Santas in one section, snowmen in another, etc. I am very happy with the tree skirt and new stockings which I bought last year after Christmas. I do have a 4th stocking and even considered hanging it, but we don't have another stocking holder, so baby's will have to wait until next year.

Garrett and I decorating the tree. I'll post more Christmas decor pictures another time.

On Sunday morning, we got up and ready to go to church. For some reason Keith decided to get out the train that I had bought to set-up under the Christmas tree as additional decoration. This was about 10 minutes before we needed to leave the house. Garrett of course went ecstatic over the train and refused to part with it, so we let him bring a couple of its cars with him to church. We also decided to bring him into the church service with us because we only have a few more months before he has to be with us in church, so we might as well start bringing him in occasionally so he can get an idea of how that works. He was pretty good for his first time. He loved the praise band, of course, but he refused to whisper whenever he needed to say something to me during the sermon. He also broke one of the new train cars while sitting there. I'm just glad he did scream in frustration. That might have been awkward since our pastor was preaching on being thankful.

After church, he wasn't too thrilled to be heading to his class. He thought he had gotten away from the nursery that morning. But he seemed to settle down fairly quickly. (Our church has three Sunday morning services, we go to the 8:30 service and then go to Sunday school after that. I know many of you probably do the opposite on Sunday mornings and I realized what I just said might be a little confusing.) Keith went to his SS class and I went to mine (I teach 5th grade girls). Afterwards we met up with some friends of ours. They're awesome and wanted to give us a train table that they were getting rid of. They know how much Garrett loves trains and that we don't currently have one (though we have been looking at some). Their kids had 2 and they were wanting to cull some things before Christmas. So we totally lucked out! Then we all went to eat lunch together which was lots of fun. They have a daughter who is 2 and a half months younger than Garrett and a son who's 5, so Garrett enjoys their kids immensely and Keith and I enjoy visiting with the couple.

We then headed to Walmart for a fun-filled time of grocery shopping. At this point in the day, I wasn't feeling too good. I gave Keith a couple of items to take care of while I quickly went through the grocery section getting what I knew we needed for this week. Thankfully I never got sick in the store. I'm not even sure what you would do if you had the need to throw-up in a public place with no trash cans. I ultimately decided on throwing up in my purse if I needed to. Yes, it would be totally disgusting, but I wouldn't want to completely gross out the other shoppers. And now you're probably grossed out too. Sorry! Maybe I should wear a sign that says "I'm Pregnant" out in public in case something like that happens. I think it would be easier to forgive a random pregnant woman for being sick than almost anybody else.

We came home and put away groceries while Garrett proceeded to play with the new Christmas tree train for the next 4 hours!! He only stopped for bathroom breaks and a snack, that's it. This is how hardcore, serious my son is about trains. Initially I tried to help him with setting everything up, but I think I just got in his way. I can't even imagine how much time will be devoted to his new toys after Christmas. Ultimately the train is a piece of crap. Parts of the track have broken and one of the train cars is completely unusable. I'm sure trains like this weren't really meant to be played with as much as Garrett has. He's not rough with them, he just enjoys setting up a variety of configurations with the tracks and then watching the train race around them. I'm not sure if it will actually end up under the tree, but he's enjoying it nonetheless.

Last night was spent doing laundry and additional cleaning. Our church's annual Thanksgiving dinner was going on as well, but I was a little concerned as to how that would work for me. I'm sure the food would have been delicious, but I didn't want to take the chance that I would start feeling badly in the midst of a packed Fellowship Hall full of wonderful church people eating yummy food. If there was the slightest possibility that I would ruin that for everyone, then I didn't want to take that chance. I'm sure I don't need to go any further after my grocery store discussion above.

The cleaning out of our guest room has evoked a cleaning, organizing Keith. So he spent a lot of the evening cleaning out his closet as well as mine (!) and coming up with more things we needed to get rid of. Then this morning my hero killed the mouse that has had me riled up for the past week. He found it alive on a glue board in the garage, so he said "It met it's fate with a size 13." I don't want to know any more than that and I'm sure you don't either. I'm just glad it is gone. Did I mention that it ate a huge hole in my rocking chair cushions?!! We moved our rocking chair into the garage when Garrett got to be mobile because I was worried about him pinching his fingers in it. So I took the cushions off of it and wrapped them in a couple of garbage bags and set them on top of a few items in the garage. Somehow they had fallen to the floor at some point over the past couple of years and then met their fate with this mouse. Thankfully cushions like that are relatively inexpensive (atleast they were 3 years ago), but I'm still infuriated at the audacity of that mouse. The rocking chair will be coming into the house as soon as the Christmas tree leaves, so I guess I need to start hunting down some new cushions.

I'll leave you with a prayer request. Please pray for my dad. He slipped and fell on a patch of ice this morning while on his way into work and he broke 2 ribs. I know he's in a lot of pain and would appreciate your prayers.

What Are You Watching?

I'm one of those people who has to have something to watch in the evening. I don't necessarily watch something every evening, but I need to know what's on so I can know what my options are in case I have nothing else to do.

Now I should probably clarify this, but I ALWAYS have something to do. There's always something to clean or laundry to fold but by 8 PM, I'm generally of a mind to do some sitting. So I'm either sitting and talking to my husband, which we try to do occasionally, especially when it feels like we haven't seen or talked to each other much lately. Or I'm watching something on TV. I thought I would share the shows that currently hold my interest of an evening, and then maybe you can let me know what shows you're watching in case I might prefer your shows to mine. One thing you should know, we don't have cable or satellite so my TV watching is limited to the main stations: NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, etc. That may seem archaic to some of you, but hey, I'm saving $50-$100 a month by just watching TV via the antenna, so I feel like I've accomplished something by that. Now, if our landline phone company would get on the ball and start offering us the packages that are available to everyone else, we would probably go ahead and get satellite. They currently have a package online (that we aren't eligible for) that includes home phone (with unlimited long-distance which we don't currently have), DSL internet, and satellite all for about $100. That would be nice. But such is life when you live in more of a rural-type setting.

OK, so I took off on a rabbit trail there. Sorry.

Back to my original intent of this post. TV shows.

On Mondays, we watch most of the comedies on CBS: Big Bang Theory (which is just meh to me) and How I Met Your Mother (which I love. Neil Patrick Harris aka Doogie Howser is hilarious, but the entire cast is solid). Now after HIMYM comes Two and a Half Men with Charlie Sheen, but there's also a show on the CW called "One Tree Hill" that we sometimes watch. Yes, I know that's a teeny bopper show, but for whatever reason we've been watching it since the first episode so I can't just give up on Lucas and Peyton now! But if it's an extremely stupid episode (like last Monday's), then we watch "Men". At 9:00, CSI: Miami comes on. Let me first say that I loathe David Caruso. He's a terrible actor and I can't stand the way the show always lets him have the last line before they start the opening music. He's extremely condescending in the show as well. Now, why do we watch it? Well, there's really nothing else on at that time and Keith likes it, while also despising Horatio right along with me.

Tuesdays are a definite hit or miss night with TV. However, I've recently started watching The Biggest Loser and I'm really liking that show. If you're watching it, I hope you hate Vicki as much as I do. I don't think she even cares about losing the weight, she just wants the quarter of a million dollars. And is a quarter of a million dollars all that much money any more? I mean, of course I would love to win an amount like that, but is it really enough to make it the prize money for a primetime "game/reality" show? I guess "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" has spoiled me to people winning more money when they win a show.

Wednesdays we are at church until 7:15 or 7:30, which means that I miss New Adventures of Old Christine with Julia Louis-Dreyfuss. That show really makes me laugh, but I haven't seen it in several weeks now. At 8:00, "Life" comes on. I started watching it last year and I really like it. It's a different type of cop show and the actor who plays the main character is interesting, so we've enjoyed watching it. At 9:00, CSI: New York comes on. I used to have a dislike for Gary Sinise because he played the kidnapper in the movie "Ransom", but I really like him in this show. I actually find him to be one of Hollywood's more versatile actors. He was also in "Forrest Gump" and played a completely different character there as well. I enjoy watching this CSI simply because I think he's really good at what he does.

Thursdays make me a little sad. Thursday nights used to be Must See TV. It was the night that the Cosby Show came on, then Seinfeld was on on Thursdays, Friends also aired all 10 seasons on Thursday nights. I feel that Thursdays ever since Friends just haven't been the same. However, I have recently fallen in love with The Office. It's not quite Friends material, but it's still really funny. Keith doesn't like it all that much because he finds Michael Scott (Steve Carrell) borderline absurd in this show, but I find him to be hysterical in many episodes. Then at 9:00 is a new show called Eleventh Hour. We've been watching it each week and Keith really likes it. I'm still on the fence, but since he watches The Office with me, then of course I return the favor with this one. It's definitely a different show. The premise is that this scientist works for the FBI and he investigates all these weird, science-related cases.

Fridays, I mostly wait until 8:00 when Don't Forget the Lyrics comes on. I've already talked about that show in a previous post, but it really is a good show to watch.

Saturdays are very hit and miss. Sometimes they show reruns of the previous week's episode of the new Knight Rider. I don't even know when that show originally comes on during the week, but if they're showing it on Saturday night, then we watch it. Keith loved the original one, so he enjoys watching this one. But if you know him, then you know of his love of cars in general, and fast cars more specifically. So the car on there is right up his alley, plus all the cool stuff that it does, he gets a big kick out of it. 

And finally Sundays. As I've mentioned in a previous post, we typically watch Desperate Housewives and Brothers and Sisters. Sometimes we'll watch Extreme Home Makeover, depending on if we're in the mood. I kind of miss their early episodes where they actually went into people's houses and remodeled what they had rather than leveling the house and starting from scratch. It was interesting to see the things that they did to change things up in their houses. But I also understand why they build brand new ones.

So, after rereading this it appears that I'm a couch potato. I promise I'm not. There are very few shows on this list that are "Must see" for me, so obviously if we're not home, it doesn't bother me to miss it. We don't have a Tivo or DVR so if we miss it then we miss it. Occasionally I'll catch shows online, but that just depends on what show it is and how much I care about watching it.

What shows are you watching? I'm interested to see who all mentions Grey's because that seems to be a pretty popular show, but I've just never gotten around to watching an episode. And a post about TV shows would be completely useless if I didn't briefly mention my most favorite show which is Lost. The new season doesn't start until February, but that one is definitely Must See for me (and Keith). So I'm very excited for it to start back up this winter.

Random Friday

I think my Friday posts will just be random thoughts and ideas. By the end of the week, my brain is pretty fried. I'm sure once I've got this new job under my belt, I won't feel quite so frazzled, but in the mean time, here's some randomness.

• I still haven't decorated our tree (I haven't even "fluffed" it out) and it's been standing in my living room for a week. Somehow Garrett has managed to slide it a couple of feet to the left from where I originally had it standing.
• Part of the reason for the lack of decoration is because a mouse has gotten into our garage, so I'm hesistent to go in and out of the garage bringing in ornaments. I don't want to take any chances of that mouse getting inside the house. In fact, I've gone so far as to exit and enter our house via the back door, and then walk around to the garage and use our keypad to open the garage door. I hate mice with a passion! And I actually saw this one come in the garage, so that makes me freak out even more. Keith put out glueboards to catch it, but we apparently have a mutant on our hands because yesterday morning he found a glueboard covered in fur and a tail (!), but no mouse. Gross! That sucker better be gone soon if he knows what's good for him.
• I'm still feeling pretty good with my pregnancy. Not much morning sickness to speak of and some exhaustion, but that's about it. I apologize to anyone reading this who has experienced terrible morning sickness (Hi Grace!), but somehow I've lucked out in this department for both of my pregnancies. Since I only have a couple of weeks left of the first trimester, I'm in hopes that I can only feel better from here on out. Until I'm hugely pregnant, then I'll feel much, much worse. I'm just glad this baby is due in June and not August like Garrett. That summer was miserable.
• Because of how the first 9 weeks of this pregnancy have gone so far, I'm feeling more sure of my instincts that this baby is another boy. So far everything has been very similar to my first pregnancy.
• Keith and I looked through the baby name book last night and he vetoed a few more names. Finley, Linley, Graham. But he said he liked Leopold. I called his bluff and said I would be ok with Leo (I have an uncle named Leo, so it's not too big of a stretch) and he said no to Leo, so I pointed out that Leo would be the obvious nickname for Leopold, so he retracted that name. I know all these names probably sound a little "out there" and I have no plans of choosing an odd name, but I think some of them would grow on you. He did say he liked the name Natalie, but not as much as the other girl name that we've both liked for a while. I'm not going to share our current front runners for now, maybe once we find out what we're having. I did actually find a boy name that he liked equal to our favorite, so that name could change. Is it bad that I'm forgetting what that name was now? We may have found a new boy name and now I've forgotten it! I'm sure he'll remember, or I'll find it again...maybe.
• I still have a long ways to go before our guest room is ready for Garrett to move in. I really want him moved into it a couple of months before this baby is born. I don't want him to think that the new baby kicked him out of his old room. But I think he's going to love the new room so much, he shouldn't care. I'm doing a Disney movie theme, with posters from the movies "Cars", "Monsters Inc", "Toy Story", etc. I plan on framing the posters so they'll look a little nicer hanging on the walls. And this bedroom is bigger than his current room, so I think he'll enjoy spending more time in there playing. Some of his Christmas presents are specifically geared for his new room too. I've already picked out the paint color and have an idea for the bedding and curtain, it's just a matter of buying those things.
• Thanksgiving is next week! I'm really excited about the turkey and I cannot wait for the yummy rolls and potato casserole. The plus to being pregnant during the holidays is the fact that you can feel free to eat more than normal because you're "eating for 2". However, the negative to being pregnant (atleast for me) is that I get full much faster than normal. So I'll probably have to eat my food in multiple sittings. The crazy part is thinking ahead to next Thanksgiving when I'll have a 4 year old and a 5 month old. Bizarre!
• I'm sure I'll post again between now and next Thursday, but just in case I forget, I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving! We will be spending the day at Keith's parents' house and sharing the meal with them. I'm responsible for the vegetables and a dessert, but I think I'm also going to bring some rolls. His family doesn't really eat much bread (the shock and horror, I know!) so I'm not really sure if anybody will be taking care of the rolls. In my family, it's better to have too many rolls, than not enough. Of course that's probably why most of us have a weight problem.

Somebody Pass the Coffee

I can barely keep my eyes open today. Garrett slept terribly last night. Not sure if it was because it was cold and he kept kicking off the covers, or if he was having nightmares. He kept crying and yelling in his sleep, but when I would go in to check on him, most of the time he was still asleep. I know I should look at this as him getting me prepared for a new baby in June, but I'll deal with that in June. I want my sleep now.

So if I can manage to stay awake long enough, I wanted to share with you a new CD that came out yesterday. (And all my family is rolling their eyes right about now.) As some of you know, I'm a big fan of the newest American Idol winner, David Cook. His first CD came out yesterday and can I just say that it's awesome! Yes, I'm biased, but I do think that the majority of you would agree with me if you were to give it a chance. He has an early 90's sound to his music, which I prefer, but of course I was in junior high and high school in the early 90's and I think that period of time in anyone's life is pretty much when your taste in music is formed. He's more of a rocker than a pop singer. However, you can understand the lyrics and it's not the shouty-type of music. There are several slower, ballad songs as well, which are equally awesome.

So can I recommend a couple of tracks if you decide to check him out? Of course I would personally suggest you listen to the whole thing because, in my opinion, there isn't a song on there that isn't good, but here's a few recommendations.

If you prefer a ballad you have to check out "Permanent", "I Did it For You", "Avalanche" (I can't find either of these anywhere on YouTube, but you could listen to a 30 second snippet on iTunes), and "Lie". (Most of these song titles are linked to the song on YouTube.)

If your tastes run more towards the up tempo, rocker songs then you should listen to "Bar Ba Sol", "A Daily AntheM", and "Declaration". My personal favorites are "Come Back to Me" and "Heroes". The person who put Come Back to Me on YouTube, set it to parts of the movie "The Notebook" and I must say that it fits this song. I had to include that because I know it will coerce my sisters to check it out because of our love of "The Notebook".

A couple of things for you to know about the album. David wrote all the songs but two (Bar Ba Sol and Light On). Permanent and A Daily AntheM were both written for and about his older brother who has brain cancer. A Daily AntheM is spelled that way intentionally because his brother's name is Adam. And while this is his first major record label album, this is not his first time recording an album, so he does have the experience needed to hopefully become successful. I personally equate him to Bryan Adams, but we'll have to watch his success over the next few years to see if that label suits him.

Let me know if you listen to any of these and what you think of them. There are more songs on the album that aren't here, but I tried to refrain myself, lest you all think I've gone off the deep end.

Such a Rip-off!

So as it turns out, the Britax carseat uber-awesome deal that I found on Sunday, was a complete and utter rip-off.

Apparently Target "mispriced" the item. And instead of it being on sale for $42.99 it should have been $279.99. Umm, who do you have typing in these prices, because those numbers aren't similar at all? And what makes this doubly frustrating for me was that I had ordered another item that was also on sale and THAT item was also mispriced. What exactly are the odds of that? 2 out of 3 items that I order are cancelled because somebody inputted an incorrect price.

To say that I'm frustrated with Target is an understatement and I can promise you that I'm one of many, many women in the same boat. The email that they finally sent stating the mistake was borderline rude. You know, as if I somehow made the pricing error myself.

And they have yet to offer any sort of compensation for their mistake. Now, I'm not someone who goes around demanding what people and companies are going to do for me when they've "done me wrong", but I do feel that in this case, some sort of discount or free shipping coupon would be warranted in appeasing their customers. For one reason, Target is currently losing money. The last quarter they saw a drop in their profits. For another reason, we're upon the Christmas shopping season. Do they really want to leave a bad taste in the mouths of an overwhelming number of Mommas who will be doing the majority of the Christmas shopping?

I will keep you posted on the outcome of this. I've already exchanged a couple of (very polite) emails with a Customer Service Rep over there. I'm curious to see what happens.

And now I'm stuck with a train that I randomly threw into my order just because. That's what I get for being an impulsive shopper. But maybe it will work under my tree and it will be worth some of this hassle.

The Weekend Wrap-Up

This weekend was a pretty busy one for us. I always consider the weekend to begin on Friday evenings, so I'm gonna start there.

Supper on Friday typically consists of either a)leftovers, b)grilled cheese, or c)frozen pizza. This Friday it was C. And I threw some frozen Buffalo wings in the mix. Because I like to make things interesting. Keith has an extreme dislike for the "buffalo sauce", so I just used it for dipping my wings while he ate his plain, and Garrett mostly focused on the pizza. The boy can put away the slices, let me tell you. I dread seeing our grocery bill when he's a teenager.

After supper we settled down to watch some TV. Well, I settled down to watch TV, post-supper time is usually the Keith and Garrett wrestling hour. So they mixed it up on the living room floor while I tried to hear what was going on with "Smarter Than a Fifth Grader". It's not really my favorite gameshow, but some people's stupidity really makes me laugh, so I typically watch it for that reason. Towards the end of the show, we put Garrett to bed. Yes, after all the rough housing. He's used to it by now and it doesn't usually take him long to go to sleep. I guess it wears him out. I'm long past arguing about getting Garrett stirred up before bedtime. They both enjoy it, so that's the important part.

After "Fifth Grader" comes one of my personal favorite gameshow/variety shows, "Don't Forget the Lyrics". I love this show! First off, Wayne Brady is the host and I love him. He's funny and actually has a good singing voice. I love this show for many reasons. One of which is because I love a wide variety of music and this show involves people being able to sing songs from different genres and different years. I certainly don't know many of the songs on the show, but I still enjoy watching it. I think my dad would be a perfect contestant for the show. And he should pick me to be one of his lifelines. :) I know a good bit of country music, and he doesn't, and I know a lot of the "newer" songs. By "newer" I mean from the 80's till today. Whereas my dad knows older stuff, namely from the 70's, but he's one of those guys who just always knows random trivia, and that includes many songs as well. So I think he would do well on that show. As well as "Millionaire". Maybe someday I'll be able to convince him to try out.

Saturday morning we got up and headed to Huntsville. My brother, Brad, and his wife, Kristen, evacuated from Hurricane Ike back in September (?) and when they went home they forgot a couple of things here. So we had made plans to meet them in Huntsville, which is roughly halfway between us and them, and we took them their stuff and had lunch together. It was nice to see them again and we enjoyed the visit. Garrett was excited to the extreme to see them. He also thought he would see Nana and Pawpaw, for some reason, but I think he understood once we explained that they weren't there.

After lunch we headed back home, stopping at Gander Mountain for Keith to do a little shopping. He was actually doing some Christmas shopping, which I'm proud of him for. Atleast he's trying to get it done early. He didn't get anything, but he was able to do some price checking. And Garrett enjoyed literally pulling me around the store pointing out the mounted deer heads on the wall. When we got home, I agreed to get out our Christmas tree. Garrett had been very well behaved during the time spent in the car, so this was his reward. Our tree never actually made it up to the attic last year after Christmas, so it's been sitting in the storage bag in our garage for the past year. I pulled it out, put it together, and plugged all the lights in (it's a pre-lit tree, but there's still alot of plugs that need plugging in and it always takes me multiple attempts before everything is working.) So now we have a bare tree in our living room. In the next week or two, we'll get around to decorating it. Hopefully.

Sunday was church. Keith announced to our Sunday school class that we're pregnant with baby #2. I think he enjoyed getting to share the news. I'm the one who told when we were pregnant with Garrett. I teach a girls' SS class, so I wasn't in there to hear the reaction, but he said everybody was excited for us. After church, we went to Whataburger for lunch. I had a coupon for a free kid's hamburger, but Garrett insisted that he wanted chicken, so that's what he got. I could have used the coupon for myself, but for some ridiculous reason the fish sandwich sounded good to me. Yeah, I don't know why either. I ate about half of it, but then got full. It tasted pretty good for a fast food fish sandwich though. I think it was the tartar sauce.

Then we headed to Walmart to do our weekly grocery shopping. I normally avoid doing this on the weekends, but since I've started this new part time job, I wasn't sure if I would get a chance to go this week by myself. Garrett's at the point where he's hard to take shopping, so I didn't want to do it alone. Keith took him through the toy section (poor, poor man) while I bought groceries. He said Garrett had atleast one meltdown because Keith asked him to move out of someone's way and he refused, so Keith picked him up and physically moved him. He told Garrett to have patience (which is something we're working on with him right now. We have a song we sing and everything. If Garrett's in the mood, he'll sing the song and get over it. He was NOT in the mood at Walmart.) Keith said Garrett's response to the patience remark was "I don't wanna have patience!!!" Screamed at the top of his lungs. But in the midst of all that, Keith somehow managed to find a couple of things that he wanted me to get for Garrett for Christmas, so that helped out a lot because we've been having a hard time deciding what to get him this year.

After coming home and unloading groceries, we left again. Yes, I know that's a lot of coming and going on Sunday, but Dick's Sporting Goods was having a sale that Keith wanted to check out and compare prices to what he had found at Gander Mountain, so I agreed to come along, so long as we could also swing by Target. I bought several Christmas presents in Target, but Keith just managed to raise his blood pressure at Dick's. I won't even go into the entire story, but Keith did say on the way home that he needs to learn some patience too. I told him maybe he needs to start singing the song when he feels that way. That comment didn't go over too well.

The rest of yesterday was spent doing some light cleaning and a few loads of laundry. Garrett went to bed early because we never got around to putting him down for a nap. So that meant I was able to watch "Desperate Housewives" in peace. Yes, I know I probably shouldn't be admitting that, but it's one of the few shows that I enjoy watching. I also watch "Brothers and Sisters" which comes on afterwards. The main appeal to that show is that it's about a family of 5 kids, and since I'm the oldest of 5 kids, there's a pull to watch and compare. Obviously they're very different from my family, but there are some similarities which make me laugh. And Keith always says after it's over "See, that's why you don't have a lot of kids. It never ends well." I've had plenty of responses for that, but I won't go into those here.

I hope your weekend was wonderful and exciting. Or atleast somewhat productive. I'm feeling good about my Christmas list. Now if I could just get this tree decorated.

Moms and Moms-to-be Check This Out!!

If you are a mom to a small child or expecting one, you must check out this link.  

For those of you who are familiar with car seats, then you've probably heard of the brand Britax.  These are generally one of the more expensive brands and rated to be one of the best brands.  However, they tend to be out of many families' price ranges.  From $150 on up.  Now, I'm all for safety and owning the best and safest car seat possible.  However, I'm also about being frugal wherever possible.  As such, we've only bought Graco car seats for Garrett because they're also safe and much less expensive.  However, if you click the above link, you will find a Britax convertible car seat on sale at Target's website for $42.99!!!  No, that's not a typo.  Regular price for this car seat is $280.  Trust me when I say that you can't even buy a cheaper brand for that little.  So go snatch it up while you can.  Another bonus is that it also comes with free shipping!  You seriously cannot do better than that.  I've already ordered one for baby #2 and also called up my sister to be sure she gets in on this deal.  

Now, I know I have at least one newly expectant first-time mom reading this, so let me give you a brief run down on car seats.  The one in the above link is known as a Convertible car seat.  These are the kind that can face toward the back of the vehicle (rear-facing) as well as face forward.  It would be a car seat that you could, in essence, use from the birth of your baby up until it turns 4 years old or weighs 65 pounds.  A lot of people use infant seats during the first year because they're easier, and that's what I plan on doing as well, but this car seat is still one you would eventually need once the baby out grows the first one.  

Anyway, I just had to share this terrific find for all you Mommas out there.  I hope it will help you save money on a nice car seat.  Let me know if you decide to order one!  

FYI

My first 'real' post on my new blog.

As you can see, I've transferred all my old blogs from MySpace. It was time to breakout into something different.

One of the first questions I've already been asked is where I came up with my blog name. As you know, my name is Lydia. Growing up one of my many nicknames (my family is big on nicknames, I'm not even sure how many I've had) was Lid the kid. I think that was the most prevelent of everything that I've been called. So when I found out that I was pregnant with baby #2, I decided that I wanted to start a new blog where I could journal my thoughts and feelings on this pregnancy as well as all the crazy and wonderful things that Garrett gets in to. My first thought was what to name the blog. I didn't really want to do anything with my kids' names, obviously the second child is yet-to-be-named and I didn't want anything solely named for Garrett. So Lid and the Kids just kinda came to me and there you have it.

Since my last blog from a couple of months ago we've been busy. Obviously a baby has been conceived and is currently in the development process. I've also taken on a parttime job working for our church. And Garrett has been full-steam ahead.

First things first, the pregnancy. I'm feeling decent right now. Occasional nausea and many, many afternoons of exhaustion, but overall, everything is good. My younger sister, Grace, is also pregnant. She's 9 weeks ahead of me and she has had terrible morning sickness. So all I hope for is that I don't go through what she has gone through. Of course I also hope and pray for a healthy baby as well. I would honestly love to have another boy, but we'll see once we have the gender ultrasound. I'm guessing that will be in February.

Garrett gets bigger and more "grown-up" all the time. He's loving Mother's Day Out (or preschool, whichever title you would prefer to give it). He talks about his teacher constantly, so I think that's a very good sign that she's doing a good job with him. He knows all of the ABC's, can count to ten (though he doesn't really recognize any numbers), and I've most recently discovered that he has also learned the days of the week. When his class had their Halloween party, his teacher led the students in their morning activities as the parents watched, and Garrett impressed me by being able to recite all of the days and even knew what day of the week that particular day was. He still doesn't know any of his colors. He calls everything yellow, except for yellow, that he calls blue. But I know he'll catch on eventually. He is completely potty trained with the exception of bedtime. Just this past week, he's been waking up from naps completely dry, so I've (hesitantly) been putting him down without wearing a pull-up and so far we've had no accidents!

I'm very excited about the upcoming holidays. I can practically taste the turkey and dressing. Yum! I've also started my Christmas shopping. I'm actually normally done by this point of the year, but I've been a slacker the last few months, so it's time to get my game face on and get everything purchased. I'm hoping to get my Christmas tree put up in the next week or so. It's a little early for it, but we're going to be out of town for Christmas this year, so I want some extra time to enjoy it.

It's hard to believe that we're already in mid-November. The countdown is on for 2009.