Do you want to see what i'm working with here?

This past weekend we went to a BBQ and Kinsley had a lot of fun! She played on the playground, got her face painted, at a lot of food, and danced. Here is where I asked her to say "cheese" to get a picture with her Daddy. 

Then she discovered the Moonbounce. NORMAL toddlers were shying away from it because older kids were holding their own version of WWE in it. Kinsley? unfazed, ready to go...

"Bounce me down big kids, I LOVE IT!"

So you see, when you have a child with this much determination it's hard to stress things like safety, or rules. She laughs in the face of rules! She makes her own!

Gotta say I love my tough little girl though!

I know God is not a vengeful God...

But honestly this morning i wasn't so sure.

Last night I thought i hit a breaking point. At 9pm as i was cleaning the kitchen (that was a complete disaster) and contemplating vacuuming while crying my eyes out. I went to bed only to hear my alarm WAY too soon. Got out of bed and told Cowboy I didn't feel like facing the day... oh if only i knew.

I get going, get things together, get K ready. I take her passy away, again, explaining it's only for nite nites. It was tragic, but not as tragic as it was last night (OMG! she reduced me to tears). We loaded up and started to head off to out day when i realized the rear passenger side was WAY low and riding funny. Why? Because it the tire was completely flat. YEA!

We call Chris and roll back to our house. I start the process so it won't be as long and painful for Chris. Kinsley is going okay, for a pissed off toddler already in the terrible twos. Chris gets there, finishes up. Asks me to drive it for a minute to make sure it's all good, except my car won't start. Because i was letting K watch Elmo to keep her quite happy. He gives me a jump. We're good.

K is flipping out because she wants her baby doll. Not one of the 10 downstairs but the one that's upstairs in her bed. I'm on the computer getting my boss's phone number to update her and Sadie is barking at god-awful levels in the background. I yell for her to shut up. With Kinsley and baby doll in tow we're heading outside, until Sadie barks again and KINSLEY tells her to "SHUT UP", about 15 times. Yes I now get the Mom of the year award too!

After I drop her off and drive 30 MPH to Mr Tire I get my tire plugged and find out I had a BOLT, not a nail or a screw, A BOLT in my tire. Awesome. But, I made it to work only an hour and a half late. GO ME!

OMG I'm missing her whole life

In pictures! I really need to step it up.

But here's a description of some of the cuteness we have going on in our house.

Kinsley is obsessed with her baby dolls. And let me tell you she is a VERY good Mommy. She feeds them, rocks them, and burps them! The best, though, is watching her sing to them or read to them! Ever since Kinsley was a baby the one song that always soothed her soul was the ABCs. I'm serious, she could be in the back seat SCREAMING bloody murder and I would start singing the ABCs and she would smile! So what does she do? She sings them to her babies! It goes a little something like this:
A, B, C, D, _____ H, ___ LMOP, R, T, V lalalala... and then she starts over! So flipping cute!

She also LOVES to read to them. She'll place them sitting between her legs on the floor and grab one of her two favorite books ("Yucky Yucky" By Oscar the Grouch or a Big Bird good friend book) and turn the pages and say the words that she remembers me reading to her! She doesn't get it word for word but she really does get the general idea out. I can't get over how smart she is!

My favorite though, watching her bring her babies to her Daddy and asking him to help her feed them all. OMG, I just died of cuteness. THAT my friends is the epitome of a sexy man, A man who is willing to let go of some of his machoism and play babies with his daughter.

God i'm a lucky woman!

Break it down!

So here about how much i think it would take to make my house a livable, likable home.

1. Basement: $15,000 (that's IF we get lots of help from professional friends~)
2. Floors for main and top floor: $3000
3. Paint (for all previously mentioned areas) $200ish
4. Couch: $500 (I'm sooo a Craigslist deal shopper!)
5. Bathrooms: $500ish maybe $700 (depends on tile choice, I'm not good with figuring that out).

See we ONLY need like right under $20,000! That's NOTHING!

Honestly for under $5000 we could do a HUGE amount of work that would really make a difference and just save the basement for a rainy day when a relative that we don't know about that has money to die and leave it to us in the will(see we don't know any relatives that have extra money just laying around, so it would have be some long lost one that is only related to us and not the rest of our family, or maybe someone who is admiring us from afar and wants to help out... HA!). Yeah, long shot.

Man we're only like "this" close or $20,000 to a welcoming home... boo

what's going on?

I'm a really bad blogger is "what's going on". Do you ever feel like things are just not meeting up and that you're life is always crazy and the to-do list never even gets dented? That's what's going on in my head right now. The major things in life that would make me happy (for the moment) are:

1. Find a church that Chris wants to go to as much as I do. I've been looking into a local Catholic church that we'll hopefully try again soon. I've been in touch with a few people there because, I'm baptist and that's like WHOA different from Catholic.

2. I REALLY REALLY like yesterday want a new couch. I'm so frustrated with our current situation! We have a great for the space L shaped sectional that is covered in material that is a dog hair magnet. I mean it's truly enough to make a grown woman cry. I can vacuum the couch for over an hour and it's still got dog hair EVERYWHERE! I hate it. I keep finding really great options on Craigslist (we need a micro-suede) but the hubs isn't comfortable with the $$ situation of shelling out money. Just this past week I found an AWESOME option in a town VERY close to ours and the price was BEYOND good... yeah it's gone now. no dice.

3. I REALLY want the upstairs painted. I want my bedroom painted, I want the kids bathroom painted, I want K's room painted and I want the hallway with all the trim and doors painted. Chris agrees, but it's still not getting done.

4. I NEED my kitchen repainted. I HATE the color. But, Cowboy is making me live with it, even though we painted it 5+ years ago, because I picked out that color. I'M SO SORRY! The color i picked out is a dud. I get it, it's been 5 years, i get painting it another color isn't going to add to our house value but it WILL make your wife happy!!!!

5. Our bathrooms suck. We need new vanities in all of them. Our master bath needs a new tile job. I hate them, cowboy hates them. we have no money.

6. THE FLOORING! OMG! We have laminate in 2/3 of the main floor. That's cool with me, except the idiots who installed it didn't know what they were doing and so there are gaps and even carpet still around! The tile in my kitchen is grooved in a way that TRAPS dirt. NORMAL people would get flooring that hides dirt, oh not the previous owners, no, they like to hold on to their dirt. It's great. I want it ALL gone and replaced with DARK laminate floors from the front door to the rear door!

7. The basement will swallow you whole if you think about it for too long. It's not finished. It needs to be. We NEED the room, especially with a new one on the way. I'm sad and so is Cowboy that it's still unfinished. It's depressing. I need to move on.

So you see 95% of my stress is the house and all that needs to be done. 95% of Cowboys stress is money and making sure we have enough for groceries and power, much less paint. That doesn't really mesh well. You NEED money to fix a house. Sometimes life just sucks.

So much going on!

So my toddler has really been testing me. She's acting just like any other almost two year old but it's been wearing me down. I mean she's seriously breaking me! lol. Between her and a cone head dog (thanks to vulva surgery) I need a Mommy vacation! BAD!

Today though, the heavens opened up and smiled upon me and gave me a toddler who didn't throw food at me! YEA! I swear if we would have been at home and not daycare, i might have thrown it back at her!

Chris and I are still mooning over the fact that we're 98% going to have a boy! (I refuse to be 100% until I see it again at the anatomy scan in a few weeks). Our little family will be complete. One Girl and one Boy!

We've been tossing around a few names but the front runner is Parker. Nothing else seems to measure up to it, but we aren't going to make it official until we give it a little bit more time, just in case!

I know this post is boring but i just wanted to keep you updated. I promise to take lots of pics this weekend so that you can get some real updates of our family!

I've just been tired, but BIG news!!!

I've been slack, I KNOW, it will get better I promise! But for now i've got some BIG news for you!!!

That's right! It's a boy! We were so surprised but SO excited! We would have been happy to have it either way but it's just awesome to have one of each! These were taken at 16 weeks and 4 days pregnant!~

It's always the little things

I'm still dealing with the guilt of not leaving Kinsley with my family for the week. I know they were looking forward to it. Maybe if i wasn't a pregnant hormonal mess it would have gone better. So every day I just try to suck out every little bit of joy I can with Kinsley so that I don't take it for granted.

Yesterday when we got home the rain had FINALLY let up for a bit, so I told K to grab her stroller and we were going to go for a walk as long as the rain would let us! When we got outside a few of our neighbors and her friends were already playing. She ran to them with excitement and giggles in her step. She ran through the puddles with her friends and her stroller giggling as she went. I talked to the other parents and watched as she shared her stroller (no small feat for her I can assure you!) and baby doll with her friends and in return got to play with their toys. She was content.

After about 45mins of playing it was time to go inside and work on some dinner, she didn't complain at all! We went inside, she climbed up into her chair and asked to eat. I brought her a cheese stick while I heated up leftovers for her. Then when I returned with her dinner and the cheese stick had been devoured I gave her the chicken pizza (recipe at the end of this post) and she was in love! Gobbled almost the whole thing! Made me so happy. We laughed and talked while she ate and clapped when she took a big girl bite. After she pronounced that she was "All Done" I offered her dessert, Fruit Snacks! Give my daughter gummy fruit snacks and she will be endeared to you for life! She giddily chomped them all done and climbed down.

I went to start putting together dinner for Chris and I (recipe at the end of the post) and Kinsley asked to go "up". She likes to sit on the counter while i'm busy in the kitchen and sometimes "help" me. So I sat her next to where I was working and talked her through the process and let her help with parts of it. She was so happy!

As I was finishing up the chicken roll ups Kinsley went up stairs and started yelling nite nite. I went up and started to get her ready for bed but found she was SOOO dirty from running through the puddles that we had to throw in a quick bath to our routine that night. She laughed and giggled her way through that and getting dressed. After we brushed her teeth and read her books it was time for our special time. The time I get to cuddle her and help her say her prayers.

After her "Amen" I rocked her and told her how much I loved her and she replied with her own professions of love. She started to talk to me about toddler things and asking about her Sasha. "where Sasha?" she would ask and I would tell her at Sasha's house. She would asked about Daddy, I would say he's coming home from work but he loves her very very much, so she would say "AMEN!". Lol. I laid her in bed, she reached for one more cuddle and then rolled over and shut her eyes and went to sleep.

My heart was and is so full of love for that sweet little girl, I don't know why God picked me to be blessed with her but I will thank him every day for doing so.



Chicken Ranch Pizza
1 refrigerated pizza dough
1 1/2 cups cooked chicken shredded
1/4 c Mayo
1/3 or so C of Ranch dressing
Hot sauce
lettuce shreds
Finely chopped tomato
2 c shredded cheese (i like Sharp cheddar)
8 or so sliced of cooked and crumbled bacon

Pre cook your pizza dough for 10 mins. Mix the Mayo and Ranch Dressing together and then spread over dough. Put a layer of cheese down.
Take your chicken and toss in hot sauce (I do this for the Cowboy, he likes the extra zip, you don't have to)
Layer the chicken on the pizza
Layer the rest of the cheese and sprinkle the bacon.

Cook until cheese is melted.

Now top with Lettuce and Tomato and drizzle with ranch dressing. BAM done and it's awesome!

*adapted from a Kraft Foods Recipe

Spicy Chicken Rollups

1 jar (24 oz.) spaghetti sauce

1 tsp.  Italian seasoning

1 tsp. crushed red pepper

3 cups  shredded cooked chicken

2 cups KRAFT Shredded Mozzarella Cheese, divided

1/2 cup  KRAFT Grated Parmesan Cheese

2 eggs, beaten

12   rinsed cooked lasagna noodles

Make It

HEAT oven to 375ºF.
MIX first 3 ingredients; combine 1/2 cup with chicken, 1 cup mozzarella, Parmesan and eggs. Spread 1/4 cup onto each noodle; roll up.
POUR 1/2 cup of the remaining sauce into 13x9-inch baking dish; top with lasagna rolls, seam-sides down. Cover with remaining sauce and mozzarella.
BAKE 25 min. or until heated through.

*A Kraft Foods Recipe

No pictures, just sweetness

So this past weekend the Cowboy and I were going to be tough parents and leave K with my parents for a week. Now when I say week I really mean we were going to leave her on Monday and meet to pick her up on Saturday. So REALLY it was only going to be 5 nights 6ish days. Not even a whole weekend in the mix! We would have had work and life distracting us all week.

So the whole time we're preparing ourselves for HER melt down at us leaving and how my parents would handle HER missing us, etc. But once the goodbye hugs started, SHE wasn't the one crying. Her parents were. ME!

The man and I got into the car and started to drive away. He was silent with a tear here and there. I was a big HUGE crying mess! I kept questioning our decision and he kept reminding me that this was MY decision, NOT his... that is, when he would talk to me. Finally after 10 whole minutes of feeling like my heart had been ripped out of my body I made him (without a lot of reluctance on his part) turn around to go and get her.

I felt TERRIBLE! Here, my parents, who live 7 hours away, had been planning for MONTHS to get to spend 5 nights and 6 days with their granddaughter and I couldn't let them because I couldn't stand the thought of her calling out for me and me not being there. Because I couldn't stand the thought of ending my day alone on the couch rather than walking her around the neighborhood with her stroller, again. Because I couldn't stand to see the sadness in my Man's eyes.

The whole way home (she was oblivious to everything that had happened) I felt torn, should we have just kept driving and gotten over it? Should we turn around and take her back? Am I loosing my mind? Am I a horrible person for doing this to my parents?

Well, we got home. Unpacked. Ate dinner. Then put the babe to bed. I got her ready, Cowboy was on book duty. Normally he'll read, lay her down and then she'll fuss for me to come up and rock her. I sat at the bottom of the stairs waiting. Waiting for her yell for her Momma, like I knew she would at my parents. I waited, and waited. Finally I tiptoed upstairs to see what was going on, My Northern Cowboy, the love of my life, the father of my child and soon to be children was holding his baby girl close and rocking her to sleep. She never called for me because she was in her Daddy's arms.

That moment brought new tears to my eyes and a calm to my heart that we did the right thing in bringing her home with us. Seeing that told me she needs to be with her Momma and Daddy just a little bit longer because it won't be long before she's itching to get away from us. That moment reminded me why I love that man and why I ALWAYS will.

Hurricane Irene

Do you know what a southern does in the North when a hurricane is coming through (it wasn't REALLY HERE yet, it was just blowing some good rain our way at this point)???

We strip our kids down to the diaper at our friends house warming parties and let them play!

It wasn't blowing yet and K always gets to play in the rain if it's not lighting so why not? Apparently I got "coolest mom" points from all of Chris's friends...

WHICH takes me on another tangent. Apparently they all think I'm some sort of fuddy duddy because they were shocked i was so "yeah lets strip her down and let her go" about it. I may not have fun like i used to and I may not have fun the same way as others but I'm a fun Mom!