Crockpots & kiddos

Lately I've been drawn to Crockpot cooking on my Wednesdays off.  I get dinner knocked out first thing in the morning so it's one less thing I have to worry about.  And who doesn't love the welcoming aroma of dinner as you walk through the door?

Pardon the not-so-fabulous pictures, but this post involves all pictures taken from my phone (other than the picture below which I borrowed!)

This week I cooked up some hearty, yet very healthy minestrone soup.  It was super tasty & left us with enough dinner for tonight.  I love leftovers!  I actually enjoyed the soup even more tonight since the flavors had more time to meld.  We served it with fresh bread & grated Parm over the top.  Yum!  Click here for the recipe.

Since we've had soooo much going on with the move, Mike encouraged me to hop in on a girl's trip to Siesta Key two weeks ago.  Despite all I could've gotten done at home, I am so glad I went!  It was awesome to get out with a bunch of fellow moms, let our hair down & just be goofy together.  Who doesn't love a weekend full of the beach, a sailboat trip, shopping outing, dinner, drinks & a sunset & dancing to live music?!

I never thought I'd be a mom who had a really hard time leaving her kids, but I sort of am that way.  As great as it is to get away & get a break, I miss them so much!  Although, I do know it's good for all parties involved when Mom is happy & relaxed because if Mommy ain't happy, ain't nobody happy!



And this past weekend it was Mike's turn to get away as he headed to Jacksonville to watch the Bears game.  He skipped town just as little Reesers was at her neediest, fussiest time.  I seriously could not put the girl down & God forbid I did, it was the end of the world.  I've discovered that I have quite the dramatic, sensitive girl on my hands.  We're in a world of trouble with this one, folks! ;o)

Cam got himself a hand-me-down toy box from my co-worker this week.  I spruced up the 18 year-old sucker with a little super glue since the stickers were peeling.

Yesterday we headed to see Hotel Transylvania.  I wasn't sure if Cam would be scared by the movie, but he ended up liking it.  There were a few scary parts where Dracula would make a bad face, but other than that, it was really age-appropriate.  I also considered Frankenweenie, but we decided he was too young for that one.

We had such a nice afternoon together.  Until we got home from the movies, that is.  Cam ended up having a fit on the driveway about a scarecrow we bought.  He wanted it inside, I wanted it outside.  I let him rant & rave right by the front door as I dropped bags off in the house.  Less than a minute later, I headed back outside only to discover that Cam was nowhere to be found.  At first I wasn't nervous since I figured he was hiding in the garage or by the bushes.  Panic quickly grew as the minutes ticked on & I still couldn't find him.  It was probably only a minute or two, but it seemed like forever.  Soon I began to run around the house, screaming his name until a neighbor boy let me know that he saw him go around the house.  That's when I really lost it.  My heart raced as I sprinted toward the pond in the back of our house.  Just before I reached the pond, I saw him run around the neighbor's house.  As I was about to hysterically cry, our neighbor who I've never met before, came around from the direction of Cam.  Here I am, meeting this woman for the first time, frantic & on the verge of hysterics, as she's telling me that Cam walked into her house!  WTF?!  After breathing an insane sigh of relief that Cam was okay, choking back tears, feeling angry at Cam at the same time, I met my neighbor.  Super sweet lady, by the way.  Anyway, after we got back to our house, Cam got a BIG FAT time out, I cried my eyes out & we had a nice, long chat about not wandering away from our house & walking into someone else's house.  I can tell you that I will not be leaving that kid alone for a second let alone less than a minute!

Well, this post has been a bit all over the place, but that's what's been going on over here in a nutshell.  Tomorrow is Friday, thank goodness!  Hope you're all having a great week!

New house - kitchen

Things have been crazy busy here with settling in to our new house, organizing & getting in to a new routine. Since the move, my drive has extended from 15 minutes to 40.  Not only are we 15 minutes farther from my work, but I'm now the driver & picker-upper of the kiddos.  But the extra space in the house has made it so worth it & I honestly don't even mind. Besides needing to unpack a few more boxes & hang more pictures/art work, we're pretty settled & comfortable in the new house so I'll gradually post pictures, room-by-room.  I'll start with one of my favorite places, the kitchen!

This is a view looking into the kitchen from the family room.

The doorway to the left leads to the living room, dining room, master bedroom, den & the front door.  The doorway to the right also leads to the dining room if you make a left or to the laundry room & garage.

Here's the view when you enter through the garage door.  The staircase leads to the bonus room & the doorway to the left of the TV leads to the guest bedroom/bathroom.  I love that our guests will have their privacy with the bathroom being within the room.

This is the view when you come through the front door.  The doorway at the bottom of the staircase leads to the kid's bedrooms & bathroom.  Reese will no longer have to sleep in the pack & play in our closet when guests come!!  Yay!

With one huge slider in the family room & another behind the kitchen table, there's a ton of natural light which I love.  The first thing I do in the morning is draw the blinds.

Today has been very gloomy & rainy so we're just hanging out & I've got turkey, white bean, pumpkin chili cooking away in the Crock Pot. 

And despite the seemingly endless Florida heat & humidity, Fall is still my favorite time of year!  Since I want to get into the spirit, I put some decorations out.  I grabbed a bag of gourds & mini pumpkins for about $6 total & the rest of the stuff, I reuse each year.

Because of all of the pine trees, our subdivision is called Pine Glen.  When we were out on a walk Monday evening, Cam picked up a few pine cones that I'm also using to decorate. Nice & inexpensive!

Last night Mike got our new spice racks hung on the inside of our pantry door so cooking was a lot easier this morning!  I'm used to hunting through a cluttered, crowded cabinet full of spices, so this has made me very happy!

I'm so thankful to finally be in our new house & I don't know if I'll ever stop walking around in awe of it all!

 

Four years ago today, we met our first born & our lives have never been the same!

Cameron woke up on his fourth birthday in his new house!  We moved in on Saturday so we joked that we bought him a house for his birthday.

He headed to school with a box full of Munchkins to share with his teachers & friends.

He requested pancakes for dinner so I whipped up a batch from my favorite recipe.

It was Reese's first time trying the pumpkin pancakes & I think she enjoyed them just as much as we did!

Cameron was officially four at 6:54pm tonight.

He got his Mario cake as requested!

Made a great, big wish!

and dove into his presents!

He got his Mario, Luigi & Princess Peach race cars so we spent the rest of the evening on our hands & knees, racing around the house.

And his last present was Lightning Hawk!  Despite the insanely busy weekend, Cameron had an awesome birthday & we still managed to make him feel very special.

Happy 4th Birthday, Cameron Michael!  We love you more than you will ever know.  Thank you for warming my heart every day, teaching me to have more patience & to enjoy the little things in life that remind me not to take things too seriously!  Who knew someone so little could teach me so much?!

10 months!

Reese, you are TEN months old today! Double digits, baby girl!

We were just talking about how it feels like we just brought you home from the hospital, but here you are, getting bigger by the day!

So, what is my lil pumpkin pie up to these days, you might ask? LOTS! You're officially crawling as of about two weeks or so ago. You still do the army crawl a lot of the time, but more and more you're getting around on your hands and knees.

You are one active gal & get into everything very quickly.


You're everywhere!


You still adore our pets & all in all they adore you too, but sometimes they need to escape your sticky, little mitts. We're still teaching you how to pet rather than grab a fist full of hair.


You're still an amazing sleeper but rarely nap very well at daycare. You often come home absolutely wiped out. Your teachers always claim that they try & try to put you down but you just refuse to sleep. Maybe that's because the room is bright & loud as heck! When you're home you take two naps for a total of about 2-3 hours a day.


I have a feeling that you're going to be a teenager that we have to drag out of bed at noon. We put you to bed at 7:45pm the latest & you sleep till nearly 9am when we can let you. Grandma has been in town this week & you've slept in every day. Nice work, keep it up!!

You drink three eight ounce bottles of breast milk a day, eat solids three times a day & munch on finger foods here & there.


You chew on everything you can get your hands on..


and your two bottom teeth are finally coming in!! They broke through two days ago! Bye, bye gummy grin! Cameron had 6-7 teeth by this age so it's crazy to us that you barely even have two.

You wear size three diapers, size two shoes & twelve month clothes. You may look mostly bald to those who just glance in your direction, but your blond hair is coming in like crazy!

You recently learned to wave & say hello & goodbye to everyone and you're awesome at blowing kisses. So incredibly sweet! You're just now starting to have a bit of separation anxiety & definitely know who your prefer to be with. It makes me happy & sad at the same time when I have to drop you off at daycare.

Reese, you are an absolute goofball, sweetheart & firecracker rolled up into one sweet, kissable package! We get the feeling that we're going to have our hands full with your sassy self as the years go by, but we look forward to every second of it.

Happy TEN months, baby girl, we love you so much! Thank you for making us laugh everyday, we couldn't ever imagine our lives without you!

Recent happenings

We have had sooo much going on these days. So much. We actually closed on our house today!!! YAY!! It's been a long, stressful road but so worth it. We filed the paperwork for the house on Friday since Mike is out of town for the next few days on business, but it wasn't official until today. Our realtor was nice enough to give us keys to the house this weekend so we could get started on painting and boy did we paint. We worked all day Saturday & Sunday & got a lot done. Our big move is in less than two weeks & there's lots to do before then! I'll be crawling by the time we're settled since my body is so tired, but at least I'll have a fresh new house to crawl in!

We spent all of Labor Day weekend de-cluttering & cleaning. Thank goodness we had this dumpster to haul our immense pile of J-U-N-K away. How our house got so full of clutter, I have no idea. I love how a move means a fresh start with no clutter.

I don't have any pictures of the house to post just yet since I didn't want to make any announcements until the closing was final. We didn't get the clear until today at around 2pm so it's been crazy. Speaking of crazy & totally off the subject, my son is suddenly getting out of bed again and I'm about ready to pull my hair out. We literally have gone about three months with no shenanigans and out of the blue it's the same old crap again. He's gotten out of bed about six times tonight, it's almost ten at night & the sucker is still not sleeping. He's saying it's because he misses his daddy, but it's just an excuse to make me feel sorry for him. I fell for that two times ago, now Mean Mommy is out to play.

Good thing he's cute, sweet & that I love him to bits or he'd be in for it! Ha. Thank goodness my mom is here to help me! She'll be getting started on packing while I'm working tomorrow & on my day of Wednesday, it's back to the house to paint.

I'm so lucky to have such a great family! They've helped us so much already & busted their butts painting with us. They'll be helping again the next two weekends so we owe them big! I'll post lots of pictures soon!