The Best Date Ever (that I can remember)

Do you see this monster? This is the name of the game, the prize winner, my current love interest and competing for #1.

Lucky for my husband he took me to this lovely establishment where he and the steak could be enjoyed together in the same wonderfilled evening.

Carlo & Johnny's

Sweet Jeff Ruby

Sweet, sweet smell of walking through a steak house parking lot

Don't tell my husband he could have just taken me to the parking lot and I would have been a happy pers.... never mind, once I got into the parking lot I was ravenous!!

He surprised me you see. We always forget about our anniversary until about a day before because of all the christmas hustle and bustle. This year was no different. I called the MIL Thursday morning and asked if she could babysit so my hubby could take me out for our anniversary.

I informed him that the children were taken care of, so all he had to do was take me out.

I got a little hint when he told me to pack their p.j's and then went and put on his nicest dress pants and a sweater over a button up shirt and tie!!!

Uh oh! I am pregnant, nothing fits right, especially dressy clothes that I would typically wear some sort of Lycra underneath!!!

My cute black maternity dress was a no-go circus tent type experience, it was going to be black pants and a sweater that just made me look like I eat too much steak :o)

He took me shopping for a new bra because I informed him that I needed one. I haven't bought one in like 5 years, you know how it is. I even went a step further since he was with me and bought a black one instead of my normal non color. I, of course, gave myself points for this. ;o)

We then drove, and drove, and drove, and turned around and drove some more and then we arrived at our destination.

We were seated and wished a Happy Anniversary :o) And the service was amazing. Craving meat is a new thing with this pregnancy and I informed Joe of this a while back. I ended up ordering a 14oz NY Strip (scoffing at the mention of a 20oz) and then proceeded to eat almost all of it!!! I have never eaten that much meat in my entire life!!! It was stupid good, and I was stupid sick afterwards :o)

The best part of the evening wasn't the steak, although the two probably go hand in hand, was that my love and I TALKED! We carried on full one-on-one, eye contact conversation the entire time we were there! And guess what... I still love him! I do still have stuff to say, it turns out I do still find him interesting, and it only made me long for having him all to myself for an entire week in Maui! 20 days people, 20 days!!!

Mia's First Sentence

As we were walking upstairs to change her diaper

"Poop Annie"

Its about as memorable as Annie's which was a very angry "Get Down!" when she wanted out of her high chair at a restaurant.

Life of Late

OK Backwards blog time, normally I would put all these pictures at the end but for some reason it wont let me, so Ill take it as I can get it. I feel like my blog posts have all been boring little facts just for my memories sake, so I apologize for that, but here is yet another one and then maybe I will spice it up a little for this new year.

This little girl got a new bike for Christmas and she learned to ride it (with training wheels of course) in no time on my parents tennis court. She looks like such a big kid and I am SUPER thankful for this semi finished basement that she can ride all she wants in the winter time! Today she and her daddy made a trip for some $1 paint brushes to go with her new paint and came back with bicycle accessories. A princess basket, bell and streamers! He doesn't spoil her at all...

I am 14 weeks today and I just don't think I am showing as much as I was at this time with the girls. I could be crazy but I just came up with this little pooch this weekend so I thought I would capture it. I thought it would be fun to try to capture the girls in some of my belly shots. Plus they add a cuteness level I could never get to :o)

OK so they say you will miss them when they are gone, but geeze its hard to make dinner with this extra appendage between my feet!!!

The girls and I traveled to Indiana with Mom, Dad and Nicholas for New Years weekend with the Hendrix fam. I LOVE that trip and look forward to it every year. Joe joined us on Sunday early morning after choosing to drive up after he got off work at 2am (silly boy). We spent new years eve at Aunt Reggies eating her AMAZING lasagna and I have to share this non recipe salad that one of her friends brought.

Rough cut

yellow, red, green, orange bell pepper

Red onion

Thinly sliced cucumber

throw in some baby carrots

and douse it all with Italian dressing

feta cheese is optional, I think fresh parmesan would be amazing also

I think it would have been better had it marinated for about an hour or so but it was still really good, a great alternative to lettuce if you ask me!

Sunday we spent partying in Uncle Joe's shed, eating much good food, playing games, playing with kids (keeping them from killing each other and running over us with bikes and tractors). Monday Joe and I both had to work in the afternoon so we headed home around 11 and by 11:30 we were in park on 465 as we sat for an hour and a half waiting on an 18 car wreck to be cleaned up. We then proceeded past that only to jump onto 74 in 25-45mph traffic from indy to batesville! Ugh! It took us 6 hours to get home and when we arrived Joe had to jump back in the car and head to work at 5. Luckily I had gotten called off so I didn't need to worry! By the time we got home the girls ran off a bunch of energy. After Mia got her sea legs back, when I brought her in from the car she couldn't stand for about 15 seconds and then was all wobbly when she was walking across the kitchen :o) And of course I never got my camera out and therefore have zero pictures from the weekend. :o(

After spending 6 hours driving in snow Annie was very excited to come home and play in it. So as part of their blowing off steam we went outside and walked around making tiny little footprints in the snow and attempting snow angels. I made a mental note to buy myself some snow pants because those girls could have stayed out there for hours in their subzero getup!

Broken Computers and Old News

**I wrote this post a week ago, however our laptop has battery issues and turns off whenever it wants, which is often, and I acquired a virus on the desktop that my husband is in the process of fixing, hes wonderfully handy like that. So therefore its a little delayed in getting posted**


Mia is walking around the house begging for "ashy". She wants someone to play Ring Around the Rosie with her. I get seriously dizzy and nauseous when I play "ashy" but I get serious guilt complexes when I have to tell her no more than once or twice, so I play a couple of times and then convince her sister to play with her which normally ends up with Mia crying... its torture.

We celebrated christmas yesterday with my family. It was as fun as it usually is however a condensed version since the only night we were all free was a weeknight and we usually celebrate on a sunday all day!

Annie got a new baby doll dressed in riding clothes from my parents. She was so very excited and even received a change of clothes for her from Krissys family. She also received dress up shoes which she has been wanting and she got into bed with me this morning wearing the heels and carrying the baby who's name is "Cowboy Baby" (no there is no convincing her that it might be called Cowgirl) because she rides horses of course. She said "I'm so happy I opened a baby doll, I love my new baby doll". However tonight after trying to fall asleep for 30 min she was crying and I went to her room always ready for her creative complaint and tonight it was "I can't want to have a new baby doll for Jesus birthday, she is too hard she's hurting me!" I just told her we would lay her on the other side of her pillow and she could play with her during the day and snuggle with good old soft "Pink Baby" at bedtime :o)
The thing about "Cowboy" is that she has long hair, I openly admitted last night when the girls opened their dolls and immediately wanted their hair let down so they could play beauty shop with Elly's new hair-do kit that it was going to give me heart palpitations to watch their nice new shiny hair get frayed in a matter of minutes! However I stumbled across this little blessing tonight without ever even thinking about it. I tried it and it works!!!

Mia has been singing "up on the housetop" nonstop for the past 2 days. She walks up to me and declares at the top of her lungs "Ho Ho HO!" and expects me to sing the rest of the song so that she can sing ho, ho, ho again and pretend to snap when I say click, click, click :o)

Annie and I have conversations about having a "happy heart" quite often. Sometimes all I have to say is "Annie, have a happy heart" and Its my way of summarizing the frequent talks we have about doing everything without complaining and choosing joy in all circumstances, even when it may not be something she wants to do/hear. Before Christmas extravaganza even started I spoke with her about having a happy heart because she seems to struggle when she is around a crazy group of naturally selfish children.
However I thought it was an all time low when after nap (rarely a happy heart time of the day) she awoke to find that Elly and Porter had arrived and Grammy had baked a Birthday Cake for them to decorate complete with a manger scene cake topper! Port was handed Joseph, Elly got Mary and Annie got to put "My Jesus" on the cake. She was ecstatic as the video camera rolled until she was corrected by Elly saying in a confused tone and in the corrective eldest voice "He's not just your Jesus, he's every ones Jesus" to which they got bombarded with 3 mothers finding a teaching moment declaring all at once (very educational, I'm sure they were all ears) "that's right, Jesus was born for everyone" To which Annie responded with tears, flinging of her body and screaming "no, He's my Jesus!". Oh the fun parenting times. I guess I should probably break it to her that the moon is not just hers either.

Big Dreams

I dream big dreams like:

Being an amazing gift wrapper- which I am not. I LOVE to wrap presents, especially if they are in a nice box with square sides that are easy to do, then I get my creativity on with the bow making... until the bow flops and it ends up being a mediocre bow as far as bows go. I admitted to my husband that I am a gift wrapping novice and it saddens me as I hold up a combination of 2 gifts wrapped in identical adorable paper and tied nicely together with an almost cute bow, the design on the bottom package going horizontal, while the paper on the top package is wrapped vertical throwing the ENTIRE premium wrapped gift into a downward tailspin of disappointment. After consulting with my husband whether Santa wraps gifts or not (he didn't have the time, energy, desire, (?) to wrap ours when we were little and I never knew the difference) I ended up wrapping a certain gift in the same paper that I wrapped all the gifts under the tree in. I informed my husband that in years to come please remind me to wrap with a Santa specific paper.

Being an amazing mother who does fun activities with her children all day long- instead I see cute ideas and thing "i should do that" and then never do them because it seems too messy, or that Mia will ruin it, or I dont have the energy, etc. I have been feeling a little bit of cabin fever lately which is scary considering its only December! Anyway I had to meet my Dad at Sams yesterday to pick up some essentials and I decided that since we were out we would do some window shopping. I let Annie decide how many stores we would go to and how long we stayed in them. After coming home and having dinner all the while muttering, yelling, promising many threats and discipline scenarios that go on in a home with 2 toddlers I was putting Annie in bed and while going through her bedtime routine where she has to kiss my chin, mouth, nose, eyes, "ahh-bar-ows" forehead, ears and hair we were giggling a bunch and she threw her arms out and said while still giggling in a very soft voice "you are the best mommy ever" - yep, who needs fun activities?

Lately

Stupid tired on the way home from church. So I threw back a fully caffeinated 12 oz coke and headed off the the grocery store all. by. my. self! I was back home in under 45 min!

Haven't been to the grocery store in 2 weeks! I love when that is ok because we just finished off the milk yesterday and a dear friend gave me some fruit to last us until today when we could get to the store and those 2 items are my signal that its time to go stock up.

This morning however went something like this.
"Annie we don't have any milk, do you want just plain cereal and juice in your cup?"
"No...Ill have milk in my cereal"
"We don't have any milk for your cereal"
"Ill have it in my cup then"
"Ahhhhh! We don't have milk to put in a cup or in your bowl!"
"waaahhhhh, I don't want cereal then!" (after I have already poured it) "Ill have peanuts"
"You can't have peanuts how about some peanut butter crackers?"
"No ill have wheat thins"
Its sunday morning and we are supposed to leave in 45 min we just rolled out of bed and Daddy and Mia are still there, "you get wheat thins and last nights cup of juice for breakfast! You're welcome!"

Yesterday I worked and so I stole a few slow minutes of the day and snuck off to Triage to visit my good friend Allie. She is the one who did both of my girls deliveries and is on call for when this one decides to arrive as well. We grabbed the doppler and listened to the baby's heartbeat for a while, a fun perk when you work where I do :o) It was SO good to hear, especially because I have been feeling a ton better lately and so now there is nothing. at. all to make me feel pregnant, so its nice to have a fun little reminder that there is something growing in there :o)

I have 2 babies constantly growing out here as well. These two love to play dress up together!

Christmas Memories 2011 #3

Every time there is a lull in activity during the day Annie says "Lets make snow flakes!" She tried cutting some herself but she prefers to watch me cut and then unfold them for the unveiling and tape them to the window since tape is currently her obsession. Therefore I must say after 29 years of making snowflakes (ok maybe I didn't make them the first 6 years of my life) I have gotten pretty darn creative. These aint your basic snowflakes girls! Annie is always impressed so that is all I need, plus this Mama likes filling the hours and decorating the windows!