Look Away, look away, look away

Really, I guess it should be "go away." I gave this command to my husband and myself on Friday night. We had babysitters lined up - Kora is still too young for an overnight babysitting job - and a local hotel reserved. We had gift cards for dinner and dvds to watch.

Man, I wish we could do that once a month. But since we haven't gotten away for even a night in almost three years (right before I found out I was pregnant with Ashlynn), don't worry that we'll go over board and be leaving our kids all the time. But next time I think it should be for the whole weekend. The bad thing is that we are so spoiled by our memory foam mattress at home that neither of us sleep as well away from the house.

Anyone know of a hotel chain that has memory foam mattresses in its rooms?

16 Years

Today is our sixteenth wedding anniversary. Why yes, we were very young when we got married.

Two years ago I announced I was pregnant on our anniversary.

Last year, I spent a week or two leading up to our anniversary posting old pictures of Kelly and I - some before we even met, like this one which Kelly says he'll never live down, as well as early pictures of us - prom, choir, engagement, and wedding pics. For "A trip down memory lane" parts 1-8, go here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here.

So what am I going to do this year to top all that???

Nothing. Nada. Zip, zilch, zero.

The last year, especially the last 6 months, has been an interesting time as we've both dealt with health issues, are getting a new business up and running (or crawling as the case may be), and of course dealing with family, from the 6 kiddos running around to my MIL & her bout with cancer. I just don't have a creative cell left in me right now. I feel sucked dry. And of course, this cast I'm lugging around makes me feel just so romantic. Maybe I can drown my uncreative sorrows in Dr. Pepper and coconut shrimp tonight.

Happy Anniversary. honey!

W.O.W.

A few years ago, I didn't even know what an MMORPG was. You don't either? Well, go here for the encyclopedia version, but it means "Massively multiplayer online role playing game." In other words, it is a game hosted on dozens (or hundreds) of servers that people all over the world can play over the internet at the same time.

A couple of years ago, my husband got into playing W.O.W. - World of Warcraft. I totally didn't understand the lure. I didn't understand the game, the concept, or why you would spend time doing it.

Before too long, my two older girls were watching Daddy play, and wanted to play too. So my husband set up a second account (that my girls use allowance money to help pay for) for them. He also set up strict rules: they can only play with him, they only play on weekends, and they are only allowed to chat with him and anyone he gives approval to. There are others, but those are the main ones. He has filters in place so they don't get exposed to inappropriate language. And since they play on a computer just a couple of feet away from my husband and their characters are playing together, my husband is with them every step of the way.

I was skeptical at first, but this has really proved to be something that the girls and Daddy do together that they both enjoy. (It has an added bonus of a great privilege that can be taken away as part of discipline.) The three of them have really bonded as they've taken characters and shaped them and battled adversaries together. Plus my husband has been showing them how to use technology responsibly.

Last fall, I was growing discouraged because my husband and I didn't seem to be spending as much time together as I wished. Some of that was due to a new baby who took up a lot of my time, some of it was due to Kelly's frequent illnesses and travel for work. I decided to look for something we could spend time doing together. But it had to be something around the house, of course.

I had a crazy idea that I fought for a couple of months. But finally I decided to step out of my comfort level... and ask Kelly if I could create a character on W.O.W. and play with him. Gulp. I didn't understand the game AT ALL. To me, it was a bunch of fantastic looking bizarre characters running around killing even more bizarre looking monsters. I didn't really want to "waste my time" on the computer either. I primarily use the computer as a tool - for communication, running a household, doing research, and for my blogging hobby. But I felt this was something I really needed to do for my husband.

So New Year's week, Kelly had taken a couple of days off, and we got started. We still don't play that often, usually once, maybe twice a week for a couple of hours. But I now have a level 16 human Mage and a Level 10 night elf Warrior. Don't worry, two months ago I didn't know what that meant either.

To my surprise I have enjoyed it. I don't think it is something I would enjoy playing by myself, but it is something Kelly and I do together. It showed him that I am interested in what he is interested in.

So gals, if you are wishing you and your hubby could do more things together, look around and see if there is a way you can get involved in something he is already interested in. Even if you aren't initially all that enthusiastic, chances are you'll enjoy it more than you realize. You're also much more likely to get him involved than in something like ballroom dancing.

My (Exhausting) Weekend Project

When we bought this house I painted our master bedroom. Kelly loved it. It was a sponge painting treatment with two very different shades of green from the same family. With our brown carpet he said it reminded him of being in a forest.

After a while though, this forest feeling started grating on me. It felt dark, close, and busy. I hate clutter and my bedroom always felt cluttered and busy because of the paint combined with our floral comforter. Well I've been looking for two years for a new paint/bedding combo that would work, and this weekend I finally implemented it, much to my loving husband's chagrin.

Here's a few before shots.

Here's a close up of the paint treatment.

So I bought what I thought was a green color with a lot of blue in it. After priming the walls, I put one coat of this color. Oops! Too blue.
So I went back and got the next shade in the green palette for a second coat. Aah, much better! New bedding, new curtains, and next thing ya know, a new master bedroom.

Kelly still misses the forest and the flowers, but I feel like I can breathe when I go in our room now! Thank you, sweetie, for moving all that big heavy furniture so I could get rid of one of your favorite features of our house!

A Trip Down Memory Lane: An Addendum

My mother-in-law found a couple of pictures that I didn't have from our proms. Here's the junior prom again. I think my mom-in-law was going for some sort of refined gangster pose. :-)And here's the dress from my senior year. This one illustrates the skirt I was talking about. This was very "in" at the time!

Anniversary

On our tenth anniversary, Kelly surprised me by taking me to Ruth's Chris Steak House. Even though we had never paid that much for a meal before, it was soooo good! We loved it and decided then and there to come back on our 15th anniversary.

So for the past couple of months we have been talking about going back to Ruth's Chris. So that's what we did. If you've never been there, you are sure missing out! Kelly had made a reservation, so when we told them who we were, the hostess replied, "Oh, happy anniversary, Mr. and Mrs. smith. Right this way." She then scattered rose petals on our table.

The hostess came over and greeted us by name every time. We started of with an appetizer of calamari in a sweet and spicy Thai sauce. Yum! Then we had a salad, followed by the main dish. I had a petite sirloin, while Kelly had two smaller petite sirloins topped with shrimp. The shrimp were so large he shared a couple with me. I paired this with a really good Riesling. (Yes I know you aren't supposed to do a white wine with steak, but I'm not big on red wines and I love Riesling!) We topped it off with a chocolate chunk bread pudding. I didn't think I liked bread pudding, but this stuff was wonderful.

Not only was the food good, but the service was unparalleled and so completely spoiling. They even used a little metal scraper thing to clean off the white tablecloth between courses. Just save up before going - I refuse to publish how much dinner was, but we could've bought enough groceries to feed the whole family for a couple of weeks! Good thing we only go every five years...

We went with very full tummies across the highway to see The Dark Knight. The best movie either of us had seen in a while. I can see now why there is Oscar buzz for Heath Ledger. His character was disturbing, eerie, all those things. The only downside was the casting for "Rachel." Maggie Gyllenhaal was totally wrong. She was too bubbly and not nearly as sophisticated or complex as the part was supposed to be. But it was such a great movie, that it didn't matter too much.

Well, I doubt this topped last year's anniversary announcement, but we still had a great time.

Happy Anniversary, my love

15 years of marriage
14 different hairstyles (at least)
13 trips to the hospital
12 years of pregnancies and parenthood
11 employers
10 moves
9 major appliance purchases
8 vehicles
7 years of homeschooling
6 children
5 years in the Air Force
4 different cities
3 years of college
2 souls
1 flesh

A Trip Down Memory Lane, pt 7

Engagement and Wedding Shower Pictures

Back to BIG Hair. Here are our official engagement pics, taken in March of '93.
My hair was longer by this time, so I guess that meant it had to be poofier.



I had several wedding showers. That spring my roommate and a friend of mine gave me a lingerie shower. I don't remember how this happened, but my mom AND future mother-in-law AND grandmother ended up coming to the shower hosted in a living area of our dorm building. Much as I love all three of those women, it was just a little embarrassing. I'm not sure which was redder, my face or some of the items given to me - especially one from MY MOTHER IN LAW!

Here are April, Lara, and I - the two very sweet hostesses, and one nervous bride-to-be, trying not to look as embarrassed as I really was.
My church gave me a traditional wedding shower that summer. Here are the aforementioned mother and mother-in-law. Fortunately blenders and dishes don't embarrass me.
Kelly's church gave us an old-fashioned "pounding." It was terrific. We got a quilt made by the ladies from the church who still met once a week to quilt on a frame that was suspended from the ceiling in one of the rooms at the church, as well as all sorts of handmade goodies and necessities for our kitchen.

Someone gave us this rolling pen as well. Since my cooking skills were negligible at this point, I believe I was making some comment like, "Oh, is this to keep you in line?" And Kelly was saying something like, "Keep that thing away from me!"
We had no official wedding coordinator. But my mom and I had everything under control. Here I am at the rehearsal handing out everyone's marching orders - er, I mean, handing out the order of events so that everything could run smoothly. yeah, that was it.
What a bunch of hooligans! Somehow I don't have a picture of the girls in the wedding. I think my mother-in-law was biased - her two sons were in the middle and her nephew is the red head beside Tony, my brother-in-law.
Always trust Tony to add a bit of fun to any circumstance!
My mom had to rehearse every part of the wedding - even crying!
The old-fashioned tradition of not having the bride go through the rehearsal allowed me to stand back in the aisle and direct traffic. That's why there is a red-head (Kelly's cousin Becky) beside him. I did NOT dye my hair right before the wedding.
As an aside, the little girl who is my flower girl? She is my cousin's daughter, and last year, we went to Abilene for her wedding! Talk about making you feel old!

Everyone was such a great sport at the rehearsal and we actually had a good time. Then we went to the little church Kelly's dad was pastoring for the rehearsal dinner. (This church wasn't big enough to hold the ceremony in, so we were married at Second Baptist in Odessa, where Kelly's family had been attending before FIL became a pastor. My parents' church was in the next town, and we wanted to be married in Odessa.) Kelly's mom and grandmother grilled up a ton of hamburgers and hotdogs, and it was a very fun, casual time. At least for us. My mom tells me she was pretty stressed out. I understand now - I'll probably be that way too in a few years when it is my turn to be the mother of the bride.

A Trip Down Memory Lane, pt 6

Pictures from our freshman year of college - the year we were engaged. We were married the summer between our freshman and sophomore years of college, when we were both 19.

This weekend I had driven up from the town were I was going to college, and Kelly's parents and brother had driven up from our hometown. There was some sort of to do that weekend, maybe homecoming, which is why Kelly was in his ROTC uniform here.
That evening he was in his normal civilian attire: wranglers, boots, a western shirt, and cowboy hat. And yes, in case you were wondering, I have on wranglers and ropers.
This is Kelly in his honor guard uniform.

A Trip Down Memory Lane, pt 5

Assorted pictures from high school.

Here we are after an awards ceremony right before graduation. I think it was National Honor Society. But, ya know memory is the first thing to go...
Kelly and I were in a pop singing ensemble. This shot is of Kelly and a couple other members of the group. My guess is that Kelly had just messed up on something. Probably choreography.
The group was matched up as couples. Can you guess who we were paired up with???

A Trip Down Memory Lane, pt 4

Today's pictures come from our senior prom. I must have been going for a more sophisticated look with a classic French twist hairstyle. So instead of a corsage, Kelly's mom ordered flowers attached to a hair comb that I could wear in my hair instead of my dress or wrist.

I don't have a really good shot of the dress, but it hit right at my knees in front and was several inches longer in back. Very 90's.

A Trip Down Memory Lane, pt 3

I am having so much fun looking at these old pictures. And I cringe at my hair nearly every time. What was I thinking? How did I even get it to do that? Oh, and I have a correction from the last post. Kelly says he and the other football players were Tahitian drummers, not hula dancers. My apologies.

Anyway, today's pics are from prom our junior year (our school did a junior/senior prom). My grandmother made this dress in a size I will never see again in my lifetime.

A Trip Down Memory Lane, pt 2

I only have one senior picture of my husband. Not sure if he took any more, but this is the only one I ever saw, besides the tux shot in the year book.
For those of you who don't know, Kelly was born with his middle and ring fingers webbed together. He didn't have this surgically corrected until after Kora was born. So he could not wear a ring on his ring finger. He could only wear it on his pinkie - thus the pose. I promise he is not having delusions of grandeur. Actually he didn't wear it that much, because he had given it to ME.

Since that's the only senior pic I have, I thought I'd add some from junior high. Although, when my husband sees these, we may not make it to our 15th anniversary. :-) But I'm going to blame his mother, who not only took these pictures of a junior high musical production, but emailed them to me. I didn't even know Kelly at this point. If I had seen this in person, history might have been changed.

This number is called "The Long Tall Texan." I'm not sure what he had in his shoes, but the lifts and the hat just really make the costume, don't you think?

And this last one, well, frankly renders me speechless.

Yes, that's Kelly front and center along with several other members of the football team, dressed up in hula skirts and bikini tops, doing a hula dance. And yes, they all had, er, something, stuffed into the tops to make them, um, more anatomically correct looking.

Remember, honey, it's all your mom's fault.

A Trip Down Memory Lane, pt 1

A week from today Kelly and I will celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary. This boggles my mind just a little bit. I don't feel 15 years older than I was when Kelly and I got married.

A week or two ago I cleaned out the dreaded armoire. (I can't believe no one got that reference from this post. Does no one else read Jan Karon?) This is where I keep most of our family pictures. As I was organizing them, I got to looking at pictures of Kelly and I before we were married. And I have to admit, while I may not feel any different, we certainly look it!

So I thought for a week leading up to the big day, which we plan to celebrate by going to Ruth's Chris Steakhouse and The Dark Knight, I would post some of these pictures. I sure got a kick out of it, and I thought you would too.

Just one condition. No laughing at my hair. Remember this was the early 90's. OK, you can laugh, just don't go overboard, okay?

These were my senior pictures, taken just a couple of months after Kelly and I started seeing each other, in 1991.


My mother called this next one my mischievous picture. I have NO idea what she is talking about.

Odds 'n' Ends

Ashlynn is doing very well, except for a slight tummy problem. Actually, sometimes it is more than a slight problem, and it has changed our easy going, never cries baby into one who fusses so much more, and has trouble staying asleep at times, due to her poor tummy hurting. I'm giving her Mylecon with every feeding, but she still has problems. It also means I'm not getting as much sleep as I was (or Kelly either).

I LOVE having older kids! My two oldest especially have been so great - taking care of breakfast so I can sleep in a little, and pitching in around the house. I should have adopted a 12 year old when Kora was born!

The oldest 5 girls spent most of the weekend at Kelly's brother's house. My in-laws were down at their house to watch my niece's dance recital, and they wanted the girls to come up since Kelly and I weren't going to be able to. So we had about 24 hours of having only one child. It was really weird. And very quiet.

My in-laws brought the girls back after church yesterday afternoon. Then the men went to Sonic to get us hungry females some lunch - none of us had any desire to go out to eat on Mother's Day - and guess what happened? Remember this? Well, my FIL's card wasn't given away, but they did have to take it inside after it had been swiped on the outside and been approved. So my husband has declared he's done with this Sonic and won't go to it anymore. He also has a call into the manager as we have had no end of problems with this particular Sonic. And we've never had problems with other ones.

And a funny: last week we had flipped channels and came across the original Superman movie. Kora came in and watched a few minutes of it and declared:

"This movie looks so... back-then-ish."

Busy, girly, super fun weekend

We've had a busy, but good weekend.

Friday my two older girls had a slumber party (their first!) at one of the church member's houses. They had invited all the girls from church - that's right, ALL. That's around 20 girls. And that's only ones ages 8 and up. This family wanted to do something special for the daughters of another church member - their dad is serving in Iraq right now. So they had a "Super Fun Happy Glittery Pink Girly Party Sleepover" as they dubbed it. Well, my two girls sure had fun.

I had a doctor's appointment Friday afternoon, and afterward Kelly and I had planned a date night, so we traded babysitting with another couple from church. They watched our younger three girls Friday evening and soon we will return the favor. We had a great time. We got to eat good sea food, Kelly got ammo, we bought Kelly a couple of suits (a late Christmas present), and got new bluetooth headsets to go with our new razor cell phones. More on those in a minute.

Saturday, Kelly went to the range. He took one of the teenaged boys from church and I'm not sure who had more fun: Kelly or the boy. Kelly loves to go to the range and pass on his love of guns, and what teenaged boy wouldn't like to spend a Saturday morning that way??? While he was gone, I went to pick up the girls, who had had a total of about 5 hours sleep, and a week's worth of pizza, soda, sweets, and breakfast food. Evidently the teenagers cooked a feast for breakfast. Kora (aged 11) can now out eat Kelly most of the time. She informed me about breakfast. "I had a couple of biscuits with jelly, a couple of sausage patties, some bacon, 2-3 eggs, and that was just my first helping. I went back for more."

Me: "Did you leave any for the rest of them?"

K: "Oh, yeah, I was nearly at the back of the line."

All the boys from church were over at the pastor's house, and I was informed that they waaaaaay out ate the girls. I guess all the girls don't eat like Kora.

Oh, and this is what Kora looked like when I picked her up:

Evidently this is what you do at a sparkly girly pretty pink super fun sleepover. I forgot to take a picture of their fingernails, which sported 10 different shades of polish. I also didn't get a picture of Aubrey's hair, but she had two long braids that looked really cute as well.

When Kora took them out last night to take a shower, she looked like this:

Yesterday afternoon I hit a few stores to grab some sales going on. I also hit CVS today - this is a great CVS week this week. I have decided that the Ides of March (everyone does know the historical reference that is, correct?) is some sort of big sale weekend for some reason. Here's some of what we got this weekend:

* 2 Motorola Bluetooth headsets - $4.99 each plus tax (after rebate - I love Spoofee.com! That's where I saw this offer at Office Depot posted.)
* chicken breasts $1.69 per lb, 8 grapefruits for $1 at Sun Harvest (They had a huge 72 hour sale this weekend - I've never seen that place so full! Lots of good stuff on sale I didn't get!)
* chicken quarters for $0.43 per pound at HEB
* six boxes of Honey Bunches of Oats cereal for 8 cents a box and two gallons of Bordon's milk for $2.69 each at Walmart (I had 6 $2-off coupons for the cereal which costs $2.08 at WM. I receive the La Fiesta grocery store circular in the mail every week, and they had their Bordon's milk on sale. Wal mart price matched it, plus I had 2 $1 off coupons. The cereal I am saving for after the baby comes. The milk won't last that long.)
*Today at CVS I got all this:

for $2.98 out of pocket.

That's combining all of these on sale (except the Lansinoh, which I am just going to need soon) with $40 in CVS and manufacturer coupons, and $35 in ECBs. Plus I came out with at least as many ECBs as I did going in.

We will not be on spring break this week. We are taking a combined late spring break/ baby break/ summer break starting April 11. So my kids only have 4 more weeks of school, and one of those will be pretty much eaten up with standardized testing. If your family is on spring break this week, I hope it is a good one!