My Little Prince

I always call Calvin my little Prince so I think that the crown suits him perfectly! As you can see he is sitting! He has actually been doing this for about two months now. He has however just started scooching around on the floor...so we are getting there! I am blessed beyond measure with my two children! Our little Cal will be a boy before we know it and not just our precious little baby...so sad and yet so incredible.

Where do YOU shop?

Photo courtesy of http://outsidetheboxblog.files.wordpress.com

I am curious to see where you shop and what kind of stores you shop at? Before I used to shop everywhere to get the best deals. My usual night was Tuesday...I would hit Aldi's if I needed something I couldn't find on sale, then Kroger, Meijer, and then CVS and/or Walgreens on the way home if they had good sales. However, since the huge gas price jump I have toned it down a bit. I have been shopping at Walmart and Meijer predominantly. So where do you shop? Are you still able to swallow the prices of local stores or are you finding yourself buddying up to the box store concept? Let's find out what our callers have to say...

5 Years

Five years. Five years since I said I do…and what did I say I do to? To sticking by my best friend through whatever life throws at us: lies, financial hardship, infidelity, fights; To laughing with Nick every day: staying up all night talking, teasing one another about the silliest things, and doing imitations of Joey on friends eating a sub sandwich; to loving him: missing him like I am missing a limb when he is gone, being so fiercely loyal to him that no one can ever say anything bad, clinging to him when things get really tough as my comfort, and always giving him the benefit of the doubt; to falling more and more in love every day...seriously, I do. I look at him and think “how in the world was I lucky enough to get him?” And it really isn’t a lucky thing…it’s a being blessed with thing. God made us for one another, there has never been a doubt in my mind. When we started dating it was really weird because it was as though we had known one another for so long. We get one another on a very deep level. We both have our things that we have to beat out of the other: I am crazy and irrational and Nick constantly has to tell me to knock it off. Nick is quiet and pensive and I have to get my big cavewoman club out and beat him into talking to me about things. But in the end, as I look back on five years, I cannot believe that we have been married for that long. It really seems like just the other day I stood on the shore of Hawaii with my Nicholas and gave my heart and my life over to him…I gave him all of me, everything that I have. And I am so glad that I did. I would never take a second back. I relish that we have college memories, and dating memories, and being engaged memories. I am tickled that we have eloping memories, and first apartment memories. When I think of Nick things pop into my head instantly…the way he looked in the dorm waiting at the bottom of the winding staircase for me to meet him, the look in his eyes as he sat with me before I went it to surgery to have our little girl, the way he laughs at me when I rub my nose. I always worried when we were engaged that we might grow tired of one another and run out of things to talk about. And now I have no fear of that. I am looking forward to the next five years and the next fifty years. I am looking forward to growing old with my best friend: The best friend a woman could ask for.

Homemade Christmas Gifts

Its official, there is only 4 months until Christmas…put your panicked face on now. I like to make homemade Christmas gifts for everyone as a) it is cheaper than shopping, b) it doesn’t involve me trying to race around wondering if I bought enough or if Uncle Henry really needs a sock warmer for Christmas, and c) it teaches my Children that Christmas isn’t about how much stuff people buy you. And so I have been casually rifling through magazines and books, trying to find something fun and not overly complicated to make for everyone. Does anyone have any fabulous ideas they would like to share with me? Last year I made everyone a set of 10 note cards and while that sounds fun and fine, I made over 100 of those stupid cards, and everyone was just kind of half-heartedly saying “oh thanks”. I wanted gushing but for pete’ sake they were only note cards…they weren’t fashioned out of gold or anything. So now I am trying to figure out what the heck to make. Does anyone have any suggestions? Because if you want doilies I am going to have to learn that skill starting, well NOW.

Visions Dance through My Head

Its happening again. I am imagining myself in a small cozy shop. I am sensing that warm burst of air you feel as you step in from the crisp air that the outside holds. I am smelling that warm, aromatic scent of pine, cinnamon and crisp wrapping paper. I am hearing the bells in the background of music playing softly for me to enjoy. I am seeing the twinling lights, like small drops of dew reflecting the sun. That’s right: I am beginning to yearn for Christmas shopping again. This starts within me, every year without fail around August. I get bored with the pristine weather conditions and begin to yearn for snowfalls, Christmas shopping, and always being cozy with my family. Do you yearn for Christmas? Do you dream of the way the snow twinkles as it cascades gently down to the ground, while you leisurely stand in the window with a warm mug of cocoa, wasting your evening away just watching? Do you breathe in the hard, cold air and feel alive?

Going to the Chapel

Two weekends ago our good friend Matt got married and Nick was a groomsman. It was in the Chicago area so we ditched the kids with Grandma and Grandpa and off to the wedding we went. We got to our hotel that we booked through hotels.com and found that they had bumped us from a king non-smoking room to a smoking with two doubles. The morale of that story is to never, ever book with hotels.com. Apparently they can just downgrade you when you feel like it and you are stuck with it. Besides sleeping like June and Ward Cleaver we had a splendid time together at the wedding. The night before was the rehearsal and at the rehearsal they had the most ginormous desserts, seen here:

The next day it was off to get Matty married so to the church I went with my tux model of a husband (he really was ladies, now you're jealous! :))
After the wedding it was picture time, so I decided to take some of our friends...Nick's friends are pretty handsome, right?
This is all of us pals that spent time together for the wedding. We had such a good time and we laughed so hard! Sarah in the middle is one of my dearest friends. She's married to Nick's friend Greg and somehow the Lord just knew I needed her. Wow.

And here's a picture of Nick and I. We had such a good time together getting away from it all and really reconnecting. I love this man and a good wedding really makes me realize how lucky I am.

Schedule Recap

My new schedule is going splendidly. I have not gotten the laundry started every day at 4 am as originally hoped for but even not, I still have ample time to get it done, folded and put away throughout the rest of the day. I am an avid reader of simple mom’s blog and she says to just clean it up when it happens and you won’t have such a mess. I know this is so simple and yes I knew it before; I think I just needed someone to slap me upside the head and show that to me again. So I am trying to get that into my thick skull. I am a huge piler: I’ll make piles downstairs of what needs to go in what room upstairs. Then I will take everything up and just throw it in the room it belongs in…not a good idea. I have been trying to not make any new messes and also whittle down the messes that are still there from before. I think it is working fairly well. The weekend was coming last week though and I was anxious to see how I would do. The weekend is a big time for me to feel bad about not being with the kids 24/7 so I just put everything off to be with them. Then Sunday evening comes around and I am in tears that the house looks like a tornado hit it. But this weekend went well. I'm not going to say that we are better off but we definitely didn't have the massive piles of junk to pick up come Sunday evening. I think the new schedule is actually working!

The original/semi-new me

Photo courtesy of girltalk.com

Back from the weekend I decided to have a new outlook on life, or rather Nick kind of forced me to have a new outlook. I am going to go to bed at 10, not an option anymore. I am not going to be a slave shackled to the washing machine all weekend, and I am not going to worry so much. My primary problem lately has been that I have been so tired. Going to bed at 11:30 and getting up at 4ish is not a good idea for a busy mom. So 10 I will be in bed. I did it last night and amazed at how renewed I feel. My other complaint has been the house…it is just so dirty and messy. So no more to either one of those. I have a monthly cleaning calendar in place to make sure every part of the house is covered and is adequately cleaned. My third problem has been the laundry. I have been trying to cram doing a week’ worth of laundry into Saturday. My problem with that is that it hardly ever gets done: we are either running around somewhere or I am just too busy with the kids. What then happens is that I wake up Sunday to clothes in the living room where I was folding the night before. And I am really bad at all or nothing: I either do it all in one day which is what I want to do or I do nothing and the clean laundry will sit around the house all week rather than be ironed and put away. My mom when I was a kid had a system where she washed one person’s laundry a day. I have decided to try this technique. Unlike my mother I however will not have the rule that if you don’t bring your laundry to the washing machine it won’t be done…that’s just mean, kids forget things. I started this yesterday and I think I am going to like it. I had Nick bring his basket down the night before and the next morning when I woke up I sleepily shoved the first load of laundry in the wash. When I came home from work I got that drying, put the next (and last!) load in the wash and was done! I had all of his clothes folded for him by 6:00 and I was able to play with the kids while he went and put them away. Another one of our problems is that even when the laundry does get done and folded we just get too busy with the kids to put it away. Those of you with kids can attest to how they love to pull things out of the laundry baskets…who cares if its already folded? So that’s my plan of action…how are things in your neck of the woods?

The Real Me

So it occurred to me the other day that Nick and I will be married five years come this August. I know, I know, big deal. But in relation to that I was realizing that I have had in-laws for five years and I don’t know if they really know the real me. The real me…who is the REAL me? I don’t know if I even know, it’s defined by so many things. But I know I am silly and sarcastic and have an opinion on everything and everybody. And I don’t know if they know that real me. I don’t know, maybe I should ask them but it is a funny thing to go and ask someone to their face if they know you or not when you have known that person for 8 years. That’s right…I have known these people for 8 years including Nicholas’ and my courtship. I love that we had a courtship…how romantic! And some things are there all the time and you just realize them all of a sudden as though they are new concepts. I realized just the other day that my brother in law, Marc-y and I have never been together for longer than a couple of hours at a time. And how do you get to know someone when you are never with them? I wish we lived in the same town because I think we would be really close…I could slap him upside the head and tell him to stop being crazy and he could glare at me when I am being weird. And come to think of it, the Bean and I have never lived in the same city either. If we did I imagine I would be calling her every five minutes to meet for Target runs and we would be ladies who lunch in big floppy hats. But alas we do not live together and reality sets in that we are all our own people and I cannot drag these people back to ________ (ha! You thought I was going to tell you where I live!) to live here in a little cottage next to mine…Sigh, why can’t we all just be Smurfs? But the point being that I wish I were closer to my in-laws. I wish I could call Marc-y on a weekly basis and tell him how much I love him and I am thinking of him and praying for him all of the jolly old day. I wish I could call Bean more and chat. But alas my self-conscience self sets in and I feel young and awkward. I wish I could express in words, somehow, in someway, how much my mother and father in law mean to me; That they are like parents to me, not just in laws and that I will be forever indebted to them for allowing me such a fabulous life with their son and for being the best grandparents I could have wished for for my children. I wish I could look them in the eye and say that but I can’t…I am shy and embarrassed and feel my opinion doesn’t matter…so I write. Maybe one will read it and call the next to tell them to read and then they will all have read it and it will be our little secret that they know, in a small way, the real Lindsay.

Happy Birthday Nicholas!

A super happy Birthday to the greatest husband ever, Nicholas! He turned 30 yesterday! He is the best thing that has ever happened to me...without him I wouldn't have these two gorgeous children and I wouldn't get to laugh every day of my life. He has filled my life with such joy. I am in awe of God for giving me him. So now Nick is in his 30's and I can't wait to see what they bring for him.

Here's Nicholas with his birthday cake...and yes there is a yoda under an umbrella.

Cute Boy Shoes

If you are like me you are finding it hard to find cute boy shoes for your son. My son does not need shoes with an inch thick sole, nor is he a cowboy, an old man, or a thug. I just need cute little boy shoes. So I FINALLY found some. They are at this website called Puddle Jumper Shoes. You can check them out and let me know what you think but I think they are just fab.

Let's get some laundry done

So I know that this is probably the stupidest thing that someone could spend weeks contemplating over, but I am thinking of switching up my laundry routine and I am just wondering how everyone else does laundry. I have always been a one day laundry type of gal. I don't want to feel enslaved to the laundry room so I always try to get it all done Saturday. It worked pretty well when it was just Nicholas and I but since the kiddos have come along, well, the process has kind of stretched out a bit. And when you have things to do on Saturdays that makes it even more difficult. I tried to get a head start and get all of my laundry done on Friday which resulted in clothing being strewn throughout the house as it never seemed to put itself away. I know some people do laundry every day and I like the idea of that in theory but I am wondering how it works...do you just do one random load a day? Do you do one person's laundry a day? And when do you fold and put it away...the same day or the next day when you are doing the other laundry? So I know I am now officially a freak but I am just dying to know how everyone else does this.

Birthday Celebrations

I love this little boy so much! He just fills my heart with joy!

This weekend was a weekend of family, fun, and love! We celebrated Nicholas' dads birthday as he is turning 60 this week. So we all went out to eat together and had a blast. Emma loves her Auntie Bean and Uncle Mark so much...and she was thrilled when she found out that they brought their Rocky dog. After dinner we went to the grotto where Uncle Mark proposed to Auntie Bean...there Emma prayed which was adorableNicholas held Calvin and for some reason always looks mad in pictures...I promise, he is the sweetest man in the world!
The next morning we got up and went to brunch...shhhh we skipped church to eat. I have never seen such a spread...stuffed mushrooms, waffles, roast beef, fried shrimp, cheesecake, biscotti. The diet was off this morning. Ha! After the world's largest meal we went to the park and took pictures of my adorable little bookie, pictured above, while Emma played. We missed Uncle Marcy so much! It was great to be with family and have the kids enjoy their family! How was your weekend!

What Are You Eating

So here is our menu for this upcoming week, I am really trying to stay on task with menu planning as it helps us to spend a lot less money than eating out all of the time. I just need to remember to get the meat out of the freezer in time! What are some yummy ideas of yours?

Monday night: taco night!

Tuesday: Nicholas' Birthday! Steak, potatoes, veggies and birthday cake!

Wednesday: leftover night

Thursday: tilapia with a salsa, rice and veggies

Friday: pizza! And I think it will be family sundae night too

Saturday: breakfast will be blueberry pancakes and for dinner, oh lets have chicken parmesan

Sunday: broccoli chicken noodle skillet