Just Pictures

Kitchen and Itchy Beebs

Our Kitchen Before

Our Kitchen After
We still want to get new counters and texture/paint.

A close-up of the cabinets. The camera takes away from the beauty, but you get the point.

My favorite place! The organized laundry room!

Avery loves to be outside. It makes all the stress and cost of moving worth it to watch her run around the yard. I can sit out on the porch for an hour and she roams the yard, picking up pecans and visiting the neighbor dogs through the fence.

And for the last week, we have been battling fever and rash.
We suspect roseola as diagnosed by Dr. Mandi.
The poor beebs was up all night Sat. & Sunday crying & scratching her head.
Wretched.
She's better today and the rash is gone.

The Brothers

Praise the Lord! I found my camera charger and it's juicing up as I type. Stay tuned for fun house pictures, including my completed cabinets! In the meantime, let's do a Nick and Jake update.

JAKE

He had an accident with a deer...

....that cut short the deer's life.

Otherwise, life is good and he occasionally poses for "cool guy" pictures to show off his new tattoo and short hair. I hope to see him wrestle in OKC in a few weeks in an official college match!

NICK

Duck posing with some bullets in Afghanistan.

Nick taking pictures of the terrain on a plane ride between bases.

Nick calls this wretched creature his friend.

His job...working on these tanks. He put the armor on this particular tank.

Get ready for an update on the other brother, little Sambo, next week. We're going for a visit this weekend!

New House Adventures

This is why a doggy-door is the dumbest creation ever.
Mr. Worm was in my laundry room after he crawled through the doggy door.
He was at least 8 inches long.

Kiki came to visit this weekend.

Giving Daddy a hand before church.

We've been practicing with a fork lately.

Crazy.

Climbing.

Beebs.

In other random news, my chiropractor is giving away a $30 Whole Foods gift card on her blog. Click here to enter! She just finished a 3 week cleanse and is celebrating her success. I will be starting this cleanse next Monday and I'm more than a little nervous about it. My body is so programmed to love crappy food that I might die in the first 3 days from Chick-fil-A withdrawal! Being healthy is the goal, but dude, Cindy lost 11 pounds so I'm pretty stoked at the idea of losing a few (or 30) pounds of my own.

Officially Moved

We are officially in our house! Thanks to Mom, Dad, David and Ruth for loading, unloading, cleaning, babysitting and installing all weekend. I still have a million projects and Avery insists on destroying every bit of neatness I create. That's life with a toddler, right? Because my time is precious in this season of life, I have posted move/renovation pictures to Facebook. Just click here to see them! I will leave you with a list.

10 Reasons Why I Love Our New House

1. The sweet window over my sink that looks into the backyard.
2. The garage and laundry room!
3. We have the cutest front porch you've ever seen.
4. A deep sink with a sprayer.
5. Hardwood floors! (A love/hate relationship really. I can't find the right rugs and Avery wakes sometimes when she hears the creaking floors. Boo.)
6. I can alter anything I want and I don't have to worry about apartment managers.
7. Our new stainless steel appliances.
8. My recycle bin gets picked up at the curb!
9. I don't have to walk a mile to get the mail.
10. Seeing Avery run around the yard.

Now, if I can just find a way to annihilate the fire ants and mosquitoes, avoid our neighbor and convince the City of Arlington to invest in dumpsters so I don't have to leave trash on the curb, life will be perfect!

I'm So Fashionable!

Which one of you, loyal blog readers, thinks I'm irresponsible? You're not alone. Many "experts" think I'm irresponsible too. They also said I am trendy and hedonistic. These experts were featured last week on this Today Show segment about homebirth.

Following quote from The Big Push for Midwives Campaign:

"During the segment ACOG reiterated its claim, which has been thoroughly debunked by a large and growing body of medical literature, that out-of-hospital delivery is unsafe. Describing women who choose to give birth in private homes and freestanding birth centers as “hedonistic” mothers who knowingly put the lives of their babies at risk for the sake of an “experience” they believe will be like a “spa treatment,” members of the group echoed last year’s position statement claiming that women who choose out-of-hospital deliveries base their decisions on what’s “fashionable” or “trendy.”


I'm wearing baggy shorts (cost about $7), an old maternity shirt and a hat at this very moment. I birthed a baby without painkillers. I can't afford spa treatments. My ankle wouldn't fit into a pair of skinny jeans.

I'm not irresponsible. It's irresponsible to make ludicrous blanket statements about families who chose to birth at home. I don't fit this model and neither do any of the women I know who have birthed at home. Do they really think we love our babies less than women who birth at a hospital? Do they really think I would risk my baby's life in pursuit of a fun experience?

If I wanted to be hedonistic, I would have asked for general anesthesia and had my baby cut out. That is the definition of hedonistic, to pursue pleasure and avoid pain as much as possible. I think that everyone at my birth would agree that pain was part of the program.

If I wanted to be fashionable or trendy, I would have scheduled an induction a week before my due date to make sure my favorite doctor could deliver my baby before his trip to Hawaii.

If I wanted to be irresponsible, I would have done exactly what my doctor said, taken my neighbor's advice to have a C-section to "avoid the mess" and never opened a book. I also would have watched a morning show segment about homebirth and believed every word of it.

These reports are biased and are produced with an agenda.

Fear is their tool and it works.

I'm going to say goodnight now. I have to Google the nearest clinic offering the flu vaccine. NBC Nightly News said it is vital if I want to survive this winter.

SLK - "Stupid Little Kitty"

Dear Loyal Blog Readers,

I haven't been around much in the last week, mostly because life has been boring. Nothing to report. But that all changed yesterday.

I was running errands yesterday when Avery fell asleep, so I parked in my favorite bowling alley parking lot near the house and pulled out my library book. I never, never, never wake Avery from a nap. Never. I was surprised to see a kitty lounging by the curb. An ugly, malnourished, still-needs-to-be-nursing kitty.

I called every rescue shelter I could find and none of them would take the cat. The "pound" told me they would euthanize it immediately. Why would I want to capture the cat, get clawed and drive it to them just to have it killed? I pondered bringing it home, but I'm a people-before -animals kind of girl and at least two of the people in my family don't want a kitty in the apartment. Besides, I think Stupid Little Kitty (my affectionate name for him/her) might be host to an army of flesh-eating fleas.

So, I did what anyone would do. I posted a heart wrenching tale on Craig's List in the pet section and had no less than 7 replies in 12 hours. Women wanting to take the kitty, send money to pay the vet bills and one chick who told me I should have taken it to the pound rather than leave it to starve or be run over. I arranged to meet a woman at the bowling alley to capture it this morning. I had fed and watered it so I assumed it would stay put.

I was wrong. This woman drove from Burleson to Arlington and almost cried when we arrived and the kitty was gone. I felt bad for the woman and promised her I would drive by on my way home later in the afternoon. I was mad at SLK for taking so much time out of my life and then running off when I found him/her a nice lady. That was 10AM.

At 3PM I drive by the bowling alley and guess who I see lounging by the curb. Yep. Stupid Little Kitty! I called the woman and she was on her way back to Arlington. SLK wasn't too excited about being captured and hid in a discarded piece of PVC pipe nearby. Barry was a tough guy and lifted one end to flush SLK out. I was on the waiting end and grabbed SLK, threw him in a box and shut the lid before he could claw me. He didn't even fight.

We brought him home for an hour or so before Burleson woman arrived and took him away to live with 5,765 more cats that I'm convinced she owns.

I'm done with creatures for awhile.

In other news, Avery loves spaghetti.

She also loves playing with things that can injure her.

And LOVES typing like Mama.

Oh, and don't forget the ducks.
Loves to feed the ducks.

Sweet Family Photos

Random Tidbits

Sweet Beebs has had a rough couple of weeks. She has been sick AND had molars erupt, making her a grumpy girl. But, she is feeling better and we had a photo shoot to show off her teeth.

She LOVES her picture of Sam.
She has her own collection of family photos to keep with her toys.

Uncle Nick and Natasha came to visit last weekend and she couldn't take her eyes off Nick, especially while he was getting his hair cut.

Avery has become quite the climber in her old age. Here she is scaling the rug I found for $40 at an estate sale! Our new house is all hardwood, so this will go in the living room. And yes, I am ashamed of all those Pampers boxes, I have been so lazy when it comes to diapers in the last 2 months. I simply don't want to wash cloth diapers at the moment. Confessions of a real stay-at-home mom.

I can't even tell you how much Avery loves her Daddy. It brings such joy to my heart to see her follow him around the house every Saturday and Sunday. He has been so good at letting her "help" with projects. Here she is caulking the living room. We have to paint our apartment back to white before me move out, which I think is ridiculous.

Speaking of Daddy-love, this was her face when he left the table to go to the bathroom at breakfast Saturday morning. This is her face every morning when he goes to work. We had family pictures done right before this and I can't wait to share them with you. Click here for a sneak peek!

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*We close on our new house in 8 days and actually move in at the end of September. I'm so excited and a little overwhelmed when I think about the logistics with a very active toddler, but we'll manage.

*Barry celebrated his 29th birthday Friday. We had some Japanese food, cookies and Avery gifted him a new razor.

*Amarillo for Labor Day!

That's all for now. My throat is scratchy and I'm on the edge of the sickness cliff. Off to bed.

Sam's Birthday

We celebrated Sam's birthday last weekend.
I forgot both my camera and his birthday card.
I'm beginning to think having a child really does affect your memory.

We had a good time with family, food and cake.
Happy Birthday Little Buddy!

Looking at Mama from the porch!

Hugs or kisses or something.

In a rare moment, Avery playing with a truck and Sam reading!

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My post is short and sweet because I'm tired.
My child has looked like this for the last 5 days.
A horrible, nasty, no-good, very bad cold.