Weight Loss

Since I have obviously taken a hiatus from my weight loss posts, I thought I would pop in and mention it briefly. I have not given up on my attempts to lose weight, I am simply having a hard time getting back into the groove again. Yesterday, I stepped on the scales, while holding my breath and clinching every muscle in my body because I knew I wouldn't like what I saw. Shockingly, my weight is exactly where it was the last time I lost my final pound to put me at 20 pounds down. So I'm thankful to know I haven't totally ruined myself over the past 6 weeks or so.

I will admit that I have been "attempting" to watch what I eat every day. Little snacking, small portions, etc. Apparently that's been working ok. Now to just get back into my exercise routine and cut back more on my food. I'll let you know once that takes place.

My First Born

Garrett is

•almost 5 years old! How is that possible?!

•thoroughly excited about his upcoming birthday. When he asks how much longer, I always tell him that Daddy's birthday comes first, then his. He wants to argue this point every time. His birthday must come before Daddy's.

•busy cleaning for his birthday party. Ever since we cleaned house for Bible study last week, he walks around the house with a baby wipe, cleaning things and saying he's cleaning because his friends are coming over for his party. (It sounds like we never clean based on that, but we really do.)

•a non-stop talker. He always has a question, comment, statement, announcement, song, or taunt to share. I'm already praying for his kindergarten teacher to have patience, but be firm with him. There are moments when I just have to tell him that he cannot talk because I can't take it.

•itching for a constant play pal. Cooper is still too little and relatively inactive for him to be a good option as a play buddy. He usually ends up getting hurt when Garrett tries to really play with him. I've told Garrett that once Cooper is walking really well (which should totally be by the time he turns 10 at the rate we're going) then he should be able to play with him more. At least then he'll have another participant in the "run around screaming" game that Garrett loves to play all day every day.

•blessed with a great imagination. If left to his own devices in his bedroom (by force because otherwise, he wants to be around people all the time), he is always capable of coming up with some game involving lots of activity and people needing help. He thoroughly enjoys wearing all of his dress-up clothes, at once if possible. As you can see in his picture on the right of my blog, he has a Batman mask, Superman cape, and Buzz Lightyear gloves on. Sometimes he wears the entire Buzz outfit, sometimes just the gloves or wings, sometimes the Woody hat with bandana around his neck, carrying his toy machine gun, but rarely does a day go by where he doesn't dress up at some point.

•a very picky eater. At the moment, he's forcing himself to eat a few more bites of Chicken Spaghetti. (The only way he's eaten as much as he has of it is due to the "bribe" of an ice cream sandwich. I'm totally not above bribing my children when necessary. And thanks to the bribe, he's seemingly enjoyed eating this dinner. Mostly because I showed him how to twirl his fork to eat the noodles. It's better than when he gagged on a piece of raw broccoli the other day.)

•smart. Super smart. When he wants to be. I think he could probably tie his shoes and maybe be able to read some by this point if he cared. But he doesn't right now and I have no desire to push for something that he doesn't want to do.

•able to read some signs. Though I said above that he hasn't shown any desire to read yet, he can read lots of signs and has been able to for years. Since he was 2, at least. He knows the Walmart sign (even if we're not at Walmart and he just sees a semi-truck driving down the road with Walmart written on the side). He knows Stop, McDonald's, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell (which is weird because we truly do not eat at Taco Bell, but he knows that's what it says), Chick Fila, and probably some others. He can also read and write his name (just first name).

•a handful at times, but really does not like upsetting or disappointing people. If he knows someone is mad at him because he's not behaving, he always says "I love you" and if you don't instantly repeat it back to him, he asks if you're still mad at him.

•extremely good at remembering things. He can remember the most vague things from quite awhile ago. He also already knows his way around town and can point directions I should turn in order to get us where we need to go. He recognizes places we go to and never forgets them or why we were there in the first place. When we drive by a theater, he immediately points it out and says the most recent movie we've seen there (we have a lot of theaters in our area and have seen movies at 4 different ones in the past year). He knows where people live, even if we don't go to their house very often. It's crazy.

I would end this with a picture of my almost 5 year old, but I'm on my work computer, which is a MacBook (Steve, it's your old laptop!) and I have no pictures on this computer. My apologies!

Our Week in Review

This past week has been a relatively busy one, so my apologies for a lack of posting here.

Our 4th of July holiday was a low-key one. We typically only do the big holidays in style, the rest of them are spent at home. Watching the boys destroy stuff and trying to keep our sanity. Garrett was particularly interested in fireworks this year. He watched some out of his window for awhile and then he and I sat on the back porch and watched more. We live out in the country (relatively out in the country) so everyone in our neighborhood was setting off their own fireworks which meant we had a pretty good firework display in our backyard.

The rest of the days leading up to this past Wednesday were spent in preparation for hosting our Bible Study group Wednesday night. Do the rest of you do this, or am I just neurotic? I spend days cleaning (not an in-depth, dust the baseboards and clean the windows, type of cleaning. Just dusting where I don't usually dust, wiping little fingerprints off of my doors, on top of the typical cleaning that's done before company comes over.) I also prepared most of the food ahead of time. On Monday, I made (my first) potato salad and we grilled a bunch of chicken. Tuesday I made a chocolate, chocolate chip pound cake and then we had to prepare for the Bible study itself. The host couple leads Bible study on their night (more on that in a bit). Plus each day was spent just cleaning up after my children's usual messes, fixing meals, and all my normal day-to-day stuff.

On Wednesday, I sliced up a bunch of tomatoes, shredded some lettuce, and set out some other stuff to go along with supper. We had grilled chicken sandwiches, potato salad, raw veggies with dip, and chips, plus cake for dessert.

Our study this summer has been on the book "Crazy Love" by Francis Chan. I've never read the book, though I've heard a lot about it. Somehow Keith and I lucked out and got chapter 5 for our week. If you've read the book, or even if you haven't, this is the chapter about how, if you're a "lukewarm" Christian, then you're really not a Christian in the first place. Talk about a shot between the eyes. It was totally fun to talk about how I didn't feel saved after reading that chapter.

"Crazy Love" deserves its own blog post and honestly, I'm not qualified to do one. But just know that it's totally convicting, so read it at your own risk.

The rest of my week was spent helping at our church's Upward Basketball and Cheerleading camp. I grew up playing basketball so it was fun watching these grade school kids learn different basketball techniques. I followed the 4th-6th graders during my time there. Which was fun, though I almost got punched by an unruly 5th grader. But, again, a story for another day.

This week looks to be a little less hectic, but still busy. Monday I'm making dinner for a family in our church who just had a baby. Plus I have to go grocery shopping because I could not do the first without doing the second, unless I serve them ham and cheese sandwiches. Friday is a church preschool playdate at a local bowling alley. This will be Garrett's first time to go "real" bowling.

Besides all the "real" bowling that takes place on the Wii.

I'm sure he'll think he's a pro before he even picks up a ball. I'm just hoping for no meltdowns due to the fact that he's a much better Wii bowler than he will inevitably be in real life.

Thankfully the days in between look to be uneventful. Though I have started back to my part time job at the church, so I'll be putting together the church bulletin and some other responsibilities during my downtime on those days.

During that time, I should probably refresh Garrett's alphabet memory. Tonight he thought an I was an L. Sounds like this summer break has caused a memory lapse. So between reteaching Garrett his letters and forcing Cooper to learn how to walk (the boy is downright lazy) and working on "work" stuff, I'm sure I'll have lots of free time.

Cooper's Eye Appointment

Cooper's eye appointment was yesterday morning. They took us back and put drops in his eyes to dilate them. Since he has brown eyes, he required 3 drops in each eye. I have no idea what other eye colors require, but I thought it was interesting that eye color even mattered. I've had my eyes dilated before and they never said anything about the color of my eyes.

Then we got to sit in the waiting room while the drops took effect. Cooper used to be pretty good about sitting in my lap and looking around in situations like this, but he's getting to the point where he just wants down. So it was fun trying to wrestle with him while also dealing with Garrett who was being particularly stubborn and unagreeable yesterday.

We finally were brought back to an exam room and the doctor came in to try and examine his eyes. Apparently some one year olds are cooperative and just look at the light that she shines at them so she's able to examine their eyes while they're doing so. However, Cooper has "a past" with her (as the doctor put it) and he wasn't too happy to even look at her after having her probe his tear duct 2 different times in the past few weeks. So the nurse came in and I held Cooper down, while the nurse held his eyes open (one at a time) and the doctor did her exam. It was quick and relatively painless.

The doctor said she sees no signs of excess watering in his eye so the second probing apparently worked! She said it's rare for a blockage to come back by this point, so we should be in the clear.

He does have a slight astigmatism in both eyes, which is normal for babies who've had a blocked tear duct, for whatever reason. And it's also normal for babies who have a parent with an astigmatism (me. And my mom. And my sister. And my MIL. And probably many other relatives in the family.) So it was bound to happen. She wants to check him yearly to be sure it doesn't get worse, which would mean glasses at an early age. But other than that, it was a good visit.

On an unrelated note, Cooper finally cut his 3rd tooth yesterday. The other bottom, front tooth. I was afraid the top tooth and the bottom tooth that he already has were going to grow in and he would look like a hillbilly with one tooth on bottom and one tooth on top. But thankfully crisis has been averted.

And on a very unrelated note, I will be going back to the job I was doing at my church when I was pregnant with Cooper. I actually start next week, so I'm excited about that. And a little nervous about juggling everything, but thankfully it's just 10 hours a week so hopefully I'll be able to find my rhythm quickly and everything will be smooth.

What we've been up to and other stuff you may not care about

Keith has been out of town on business (got home last night). So I've been on single mom duty.

Which didn't really consist of any major changes, other than trying to explain to Garrett where Daddy was when he asked for the hundredth time. Keith's work hours can keep him out until after the boys go to bed and out the door before they get up on some days, so it isn't totally unusual for them to go a day or two without seeing him, even when he's "home".

Yesterday I took them both to see a free movie at a local theater. This week they were showing "Monsters Inc" which we own and have seen many, many times, but it's always a fun experience to see something in the theater. And when it's free, well, that definitely makes it a good choice. (Of course we bought a small popcorn and coke to share, so it wasn't totally "free"...)

Tomorrow Cooper has yet another eye appointment. I'm in hopes this will be his last one for awhile. It looks like the second tear duct probing worked, so she'll just be doing an eye exam tomorrow, which includes dilating his eyes, hopefully that won't be weird for him.

Today I called and booked a local place for Garrett's birthday party. We've always done birthday parties at our house, but we're going to do his party someplace else this year. Garrett's school does gymnastics on Thursdays (when school is in session). Their teacher has a school bus that she has retrofitted with various gym equipment and that's where the kids have gymnastics. However, she also has an actual gym where she gives lessons too. We've been there a couple of different times, once for a birthday party and once for a playdate with church friends. So we're going to have his party there this year. I'm really excited about it. The price is awesome. Almost half of what most bounce house places in our area charge and in my opinion this is more fun. And she has an open topped bounce house in the gym too for the kids to jump in some.

The positives to doing his party this way are: the owner of this gym is very hands-on during birthday parties. She basically runs it, helping kids on equipment, stopping any bad behavior before it starts, moving kids from one activity to another, etc. (And by the way, the equipment is not "professional" gymnastics stuff that's really big and no way a child could play on it. There's low balance beams, a low set of rings, a mini-pommel horse, and everything is totally padded. A 2 year old could have plenty of fun in there. I'm sure Cooper would have a lot of fun there too, if I didn't have to worry about the older kids trampling him.) Another positive is that I won't have to worry about my house. While I'm sure we'll have some family swing by our house before or after the party, it won't be a houseful of people. I also won't have to cook for anyone. You just take cupcakes to the party and about halfway through the party time, she stops the kids for cake and present time. Can I just say that as far as Garrett is concerned, his birthday can not get here soon enough.

Cooper has mastered standing alone. Finally. I can stand him up in front of me and he just stands there and laughs. Then he sits himself down and raises his arms so I'll stand him up again. Repeat. Sometimes he gets distracted and will stand for awhile before he realizes that he forgot to laugh and sit down. I think we're on our way to seeing him taking his first steps soon.

I have a zit on my face. Why is that even allowed at age 31?

Our landscaper finally took the paperwork to our water company. I called them this morning to check and when I told her what I was needing to know she called me by name and said he had brought it in. She doesn't know me, so apparently we're the only ones they were waiting on inspection paperwork for.

But he still hasn't shown up to replace our dead plants.

Cah-razy

Today has been a whirwind of a day.

Before the rest of us woke up, Keith left to go pick up a tractor to work in our yard. We had dirt hauled in to smooth out the yard and then reseed grass and the fastest way to get the dirt where it needed to be was by tractor.

When he was on his way home with the tractor, he called me to ask me to call Enterprise for him. He was needing to rent a truck for some work stuff this week and needed to pick it up today since they're closed on Sundays. So I called around and found a local Enterprise that had a truck that would work for him. (Keith does have a truck of his own, but it has 250k miles on it and just doesn't have it in her to do some things he needs to do. He said he was lucky to haul the tractor to our house this morning with his truck.)

As soon as he walked in the door, we loaded up and headed out to Enterprise to pick up the truck before they closed. We got there with 15 minutes to spare. Picked up the truck and then went to eat at Chili's.

Once we got home, Keith got to work immediately on the dirt in our yard. He had a lot to do and a limited time to do it in.

The dirt piles (plus 2 more that weren't in the picture.) You can kinda see some of our landscaping here.

While he worked outside, I attempted to entertain 2 boys who were very sad Daddy was outside and they couldn't join him. It was really hot here today. Plus, I won't allow Garrett to play outside when Keith is working on a tractor. I don't trust G not to run up to Keith without Keith seeing him and accidents happen really fast. I also attempted to tackle our Mt. Laundry. I'm not quite there, but I made a dent in it.

Early this evening, Keith said the boys could come out and he would give them rides on the tractor. Garrett got a solo run first (with Keith) and he did all the steering while Keith manned everything else. Garrett actually did a pretty good job of manuevering around the yard with little intervening by Keith.

After the boys were done riding around the yard, they had dinner and then we hung out in the living room. Anytime you're just sitting still not doing the tons of cleaning that needs to be done, you know that's going to come back and haunt you. After I had been relaxing on the couch for about an hour, watching the boys play, Keith walked in with a friend of his who had stopped by.

I'm always happy for people to stop by, it doesn't bother me. But what did bother me was that I hadn't taken the time to clean up after dinner. And when a 1 year old feeds himself dinner, he leaves a BIG mess behind. To say I was embarrassed would be an understatement. Not to mention the living room floor that was full of toys. As soon as Keith took him out to show him the rental truck (guys), I immediately busted out the vacuum cleaner and did the living room and kitchen floors. When the guys didn't come in during that time, I grabbed the mop and mopped the kitchen while I was at it. Then I put the boys in the tub and cleaned the bathroom while they splashed and played. So hopefully when they came back in later, Keith's friend forgot how messy the house was when he first walked in and instead will remember the freshly cleaned floors and a living room rug you can actually see rather than a carpet of toys.

You would think I would have learned my lesson because the almost exact same thing happened just yesterday! Keith calls me around 5 yesterday afternoon and says "John is going to be coming by to drop off some stuff for me to use with the tractor this weekend." He didn't even get the whole sentence out of his mouth when the doorbell rang. I hung up on Keith and answered the door to not only find John, but his wife and their son with him. I had bags of chips on the table from Garrett dragging them out at lunchtime. Our living room floor was covered in toys (again). The boys' PJs were on the couch (sometimes I dress C/G dresses himself in the living room in the mornings). There were multiple sippy cups on the floor. Cheerios were scattered everywhere. If I thought it looked bad this afternoon, I just had to recall what the house looked like yesterday. Yikes.

We ended up having a great visit and they are really good friends of ours, so I've definitely seen their house in similar shape. I just get flustered when people come over and my house isn't up to my standards.

Though it doesn't sound like it, I do attempt to clean every day. But for one reason or another, I hadn't done what needed doing yesterday or today. Now, I'm contemplating cleaning my house from top to bottom every morning just in case someones decides to stop by.

33 Years

June 25, 1977

Today is my parents' anniversary. They first met when they were 17 years old. Actually, scratch that, they first met when they were babies. I'm not sure of the exact details of that very first meeting over 50 years ago, but I know that my mom's parents started a church in the Indianapolis area and my dad's parents lived close to Indianapolis and I think the church my dad's parents went to, sent money to my mom's parents to help with their church. Anyway, at some point when they were both around 6 months old, my mom and her family had a meal with my dad and his family. I don't think there are any pictures around to verify this, just stories from both sets of grandparents.

But back to those 2 17 year olds. (They're only a month apart in age.) My mom's parents ended up going to Sao Paulo, Brazil as missionaries and lived there for about 30 years, coming home every few years for a break and to visit churches that helped them out financially. They were coming back to the States and making their way around the country to various churches, one of which was the church where my dad and his family went. I think the story goes that the boys in the youth group would check out the "Missionary Wall" at the church and look at the missionary's family picture to find cute girls. (Typical teenage boys.) My dad saw my mom's family picture and immediately staked his claim on her, telling the rest of the youth group she was his and they weren't allowed to talk to her.

The first night that my mom's family was in town, my dad's mom sent my dad over to the pastor's home with dinner for everyone. My dad was introduced to my mom in the living room of the pastor's home. During that same meeting my dad invited my mom to attend a youth social (that he had set-up, solely for the purpose of having a place to invite my mom). My mom's parents said she could go, but her brother (who was a couple of years younger) would have to come with them. haha So the next evening, my dad picked up my mom and her brother and they went to play volleyball with the youth group.

I think there were a variety of activities "planned" that week in order for my dad to spend as much time with my mom as he could. Towards the end of the week, they were finally allowed to go places without a chaperone, though I think my dad and my uncle became pretty good friends that week too. My parents exchanged addresses and promised to write to each other.

As it turns out, my mom was also writing to another guy at the time. It seems like I remember at one point during her correspondance with both guys, the other guy sent a dumb letter and my dad sent a really sweet letter at the same time, so she dumped the other guy and focused exclusively on my dad. Good thing he's a good writer!

That fall, my mom was enrolled in a California high school for her senior year (all of her grandparents lived out there so she lived with them during this time). As it turns out, she ended up qualifying for early graduation in December (which no one at all understands, if you knew her school record from her years of schooling in Brazil, she maybe had 9 full years of school under her belt before reaching her senior year. But my mom is smart, so her lack of school years didn't really matter.) During all of this time, my parents were corresponding and had talked many times about getting married. My dad sent my mom a silver, heart-shaped locket as a graduation present (which, incidentally, I wore when I got married).

After my dad graduated from high school, both of my parents decided to go to college in Dallas. There was a small seminary there that my mom's dad was familiar with and he was living in Brazil at the time so he wanted her somewhere he could trust. My dad decided he would go there with her, though he had no intention of being a pastor or anything in the ministry. His plan was to be an accountant. He just pushed it to the back burner for the moment in order to spend time with my mom. At Christmas that year, my parents both went to California where my mom's parents were back in the States for a visit. My dad had bought an engagement ring and ended up proposing to my mom in a parking lot of a grocery store. My grandparents had given their permission for them to get married, but told them they wanted them to wait until they were done with school.

After a couple of months, my mom started writing to her parents begging them to let her go ahead and get married. (They were back in Brazil again by this time.) Finally, one day she got the letter saying she could go ahead and get married. My mom was so excited that she accidentally hit her head on a chair and busted her head open. lol She still has a scar on the bridge of her nose where it happened. (I don't think she needed any stitches...) The sad part about that was that her parents weren't going to be at her wedding. They had just been in the States and weren't going to be able to come back again for the wedding because it was too expensive.

My parents got married at a church in Kentucky where my mom's sister and brother-in-law lived. That brother-in-law gave her away and a pastor my parents knew, performed the ceremony.

As an aside, my mom had always wanted to marry a pastor. She said she used to pray that she would someday (she was crazy. I'm just sayin'.) When my parents got engaged, my dad had not surrendered to preach, so she just figured that was not in God's will for her to be a pastor's wife. 2 months after their engagement and 4 months before their wedding, my dad surrendered to preach. He had been feeling called for awhile, but he wasn't sure if he was pressuring himself because of what my mom had said before or because of some *family pressure but after praying about it for a long time, he realized it was God and not anyone else calling him to the pastorate.

*When my dad's parents had been married for 4 years and still didn't have any kids (they wanted them, God just hadn't given them any yet), a lady in their church told them they needed to have kids. His parents told her they wanted kids, it just hadn't happened yet. So she said she would pray for them to have kids. She told them later that God told her they would have a baby, it would be a boy, and he would be a preacher. My dad grew up hearing that story (though not necessarally feeling pressured by his parents, just the story) and that just compounded his mixed feelings over whether God was calling him, or an old family story was calling him.

After my dad finished his degree (and I was 1 year old, born to them 18 months after their wedding), my parents moved to Indiana where my dad pastored the church he grew up in. Incidentally, the living room where they first met as 17 year olds, was the living room where they raised 5 kids. And one of the women in the church was the woman who had told my grandparents their baby would be a boy and he would be a pastor. I don't think she expected he would one day be her pastor.

June 17, 2010