Catching Up With Old Friends

Sorry for the lame title. I'm not very original these days.

Jennifer, one of my oldest and dearest friends, was in town last week, and I got to see her TWO times!

I've known Jenn since we were just dorky 6th graders at a little private school in small-town Texas. We went through our awkward junior high and dramatic high school years together, but we really became close friends during college, even though we never attended the same school.

We lived together when I got my first teaching job, and she was a bridesmaid in my wedding.

Jennifer always makes me laugh and is one of the few people who genuinely think I'm funny. She's always called me out when I'm being ridiculous and has the rare ability to encourage me when I'm down.

She lives in New York now, and our friendship has definitely taken a hit from the distance, but I still love this girl and was so thankful to spend some time with her this week.

We reunited with our friends Julie and Kari came over for lunch on Wednesday. Apparently I hadn't seen Julie in a LONG time because she walked into my house and had no idea who Landon was. I see Kari all the time, but I always love hanging out with her and her little kiddies.

Jenn with Kari's little boy, Micah

I can't tell who was having more fun, Jennifer or Landon

Jenn and Julie

Friends!

Me and Julie

Jenn, Kari, Julie, Me (photo courtesy of Kari's 5 year old)

Me and Kari with our munchkins (minus a sleeping Micah)

And then on Saturday night we met Jenn and her husband Daniel, Betsy, Betsy's sister-in-law, Julie, Andy, and Bethany at  Gloria's in the Bishop Arts District for some yummy El Salvadorian food, complete with heated political debate. :)

Me, Julie, Jennifer, Betsy, Betsy's sis-in-law

I think we're gonna have to go back to Gloria's when we can eat for real. This Whole30 thing really puts a hamper on what you can order out!


We ended up eating fajita meat, salad (no dressing), guacamole, and fried plantains. I have never wanted cheese, sour cream, tortillas, and chips so badly!

So Jenn and Daniel, I think you've been in New York long enough and will welcome you back to Texas with open arms.

Opening Day!

It's baseball season again, folks! Matt and I went to Opening Day two years ago, but we never really thought we'd get to go again because they changed to a lottery system where you sign up just for the opportunity to get Opening Day tickets.

But my sister is awesome.

She still has connections in the ticket office, so we were able to score some seats at the first game of the season at a totally normal price. Did you know that the average price of tickets for that game was $264 each?!? Yeah, that was the second highest in all of baseball this year.

Ours were a little cheaper than that. Like $246 cheaper. We took our own lunch and snacks (partially because we're cheap but mostly because of the Whole30 challenge), shared parking costs with my brother and sister, and ended up spending a whopping $48 on the entire day.

And it was a GREAT day.

I was a little nervous about taking Landon with us because he's not usually content to sit still for longer than, oh, five minutes. But he was awesome! Avery loves Ranger games, so she watched, cheered, and snacked her face off. Landon napped for most of the game and made friends with our neighbors the rest of the time.

So here's how we managed to take two kids under 3 to the most crowded day in baseball:

We left our house around 10:15 for the 1:05 game. It would've been earlier if, ahem, Nick and Allison had gotten there on time. We managed to avoid traffic on the way to the ballpark and drove through Whataburger for Nick and Allison to get food for the game. FYI: The smell in our car was torture for this Whataburger lover.

When we got to our normal parking lot, they'd jacked up the prices from $5 to $40! We knew that the Rangers lots were only $12 that day, so we decided to press our luck and find a different lot. We ended up at one of the Cowboys Stadium lots, which also had a charter shuttle. Score. We even got to stop and take a few pictures. It was SO gorgeous outside!

We got into the park around noon and found a table to eat lunch. Since it was still so early, we were able to take our time getting to our seats.

Our seats were pretty high up in the stands, but that also meant that we were covered in shade from the 3rd inning on. And that meant that Landon napped for most of the game.

It was a close, exciting game, but we won! After losing in the last two straight World Series, here's to hoping the third time's a charm. The boys look good, and I LOVE that Murphy is in the starting line up now.

I'm so glad it's April. Play ball!

Whole30 Challenge

Y'all. Things are about to get crazy around here.

Matt and I started the Whole30 challenge today, so our eating habits are getting a major makeover.

If you've never heard of the Whole30, it's a program that basically resets your body by letting it heal and recover from "all the inflammatory, gut-disrupting, calorie-dense but nutritionally sparse food groups for a full 30 days."

That means that this month we'll be eating only meats, vegetables, fruit, nuts, and eggs. The good news is that there are SO many options within these categories that "getting bored" really shouldn't be an option.

The bad news is that sugar is out. Cheese is out. Bread is out. And obviously so are a lot of other "comfort foods." But really, if I see food as "comfort" there might be some other issues I need to deal with, haha.

So now our kitchen is stocked with sweet potatoes, spinach, carrots, eggs, blueberries, almonds, Larabars (for emergencies), tea, and lots of other natural foods. I'm still trying to stick to our $250 per month grocery budget, but I'm pretty sure we'll go over it while we stock up some essentials. Eh, at least I won't be able to make a quick trip through the drive thrus "just this once." Those quick trips deplete the checking account fast!

We have a pretty good support system to help keep us on track. First of all, I'm so glad Matt is totally on board (maybe even more than me!). If I had to cook separate meals, I'm pretty sure this would be a fast failure. My parents are also doing the challenge again (they've done it before and eat mostly paleo the rest of the time), and I think Aaron and Chelsea might be also based on the annoyed text message Aaron sent me after Chelsea saw the link I posted on Facebook. :)

I won't be doing a daily challenge update or anything (boring!), but I'll keep you posted as we try to make it through April with a completely new outlook on food. Should be fun interesting!

Landon: 10 Months

How is this precious little monkey 10 months old already?!?

Landon changed a LOT this month. He's starting to look more like a little boy than a baby, and if you can tell by the bruises on his forehead, he's starting to act like it, too!

•  He thinks he can walk. The only problem is...he can't really. He does a great job "walking" when we hold his hands, but when he scales the furniture, he gets way ahead of himself and just goes head first. Ouch. Just this week he finally started "real" crawling. He still prefers to army crawl because he's much faster at it, but he's climbing now too. We seriously can't keep him still anymore!

• He's still in a size 3 diaper and 12 month clothes. He's starting to wear some 18 month sizes, but they're pretty big on him. And he hates wearing anything on his feet. Shoes and socks come off as quickly as they go on. 

• Landon has not been sleeping well the past two weeks because he has about 3 top teeth coming in simultaneously. Fun times! 

• We've run out of homemade baby food, so he gets a lot of (cut up) table food and the occasional baby food jar. Oh, and Cheerios. Lots of Cheerios. We nurse about 4 times a day, pretty much just in the morning and before both naps and bedtime. 

• He's a friendly little guy! He smiles and waves at everybody and gets LOTS of attention everywhere we go. 

• Landon loves: being outside, dancing to music, pulling up on anything that's stationary, drinking from a straw, splashing his sister in the bathtub, pulling Nutmeg's tail, and going to the zoo.

It's hard to believe Landon will be a year old in two short months. We just love this little smiley sweetheart!

Pictorial Weekend Update

I'm just checking in with some pictures from the weekend. I wish I had a more substantial post for today, but 1) I have too much to do, 2) I don't have anything substantial to say, and 3) I just don't feel like thinking much beyond posting some pictures.

So here you go!

"Unusual Day" at school means that Avery gets to dress herself!

Kids Movie Night at church on Friday night

Camila's baby shower Saturday morning

Kendra with her mom and sister

Hostesses with the gorgeous mama! Debbie, Cindy, Mom, and me

Strolling through the Walk the Light art festival

Dinner at Matt's! This kid loves cheerios and cheese.

Avery makes goofy faces like this all the time! She's a total ham.

Grandaddy is totally entertaining

Zoo trip with Jacob, Candace, and Ricky!

Napless mornings make for a VERY sleepy Landon

Checking out the giraffes with Ricky

Landon wants in with the big kids

Cheetah!

Worn out. Although this was BEFORE Avery's major afternoon meltdowns. Good times.

Spontaneous dinner in the back yard. Who needs patio furniture?!? Okay, maybe it just makes us white trash. It was a gorgeous day though, so I don't even care.

I get to see Mary Poppins tonight with some of my favorite people. Dinner at Razzoo's and a musical at Bass Hall? Not a shabby Tuesday at all!

Friday Five

After yesterday's downer of a post, here are five fun things for this Friday!

1. Joann has minky fabric on sale for 50% off right now. And if that's not exciting enough, there's also a coupon for 25% off your entire purchase that can be used in conjunction with the sale. I got 5 yards of minky, two colors of thread, and one spool of ribbon for $35. Why yes, I do enjoy saving $50, thank you very much.

2. Today's been fun, and my sister-in-law Chelsea is coming over this afternoon with baby Evie! The poor girl will probably be attacked by both of my children who just love her to pieces. Landon loves her so much he tries to eat her feet if we let him anywhere near her. Later tonight we're having kids movie night for the little kids (2s-2nd grade) at the church. We have 30 kids signed up for a fun night of 101 Dalmatians, complete with "pup"peroni pizza and Cruella cream dessert. Don't worry, there's some fruit to balance out all the junk. Have fun getting them to sleep tonight, parents (haha)!

3. Kendra's shower is tomorrow! I'm so excited to see all the fun things that baby Camila gets. I'm also excited to post some pictures of my first product that has a real live tag for my Etsy shop on it. Eek! I feel so official.

4. I finished The Hunger Games in two sittings. Yes, I was late to the figurative party, but I'm just glad I gave in. My heart was pounding from the minute the games started until I finished the last page. It was intense and thought-provoking. Good stuff. I'm so ready to start Catching Fire, but I'm going to see the movie on Sunday night, so I figure I'll just wait until then. Now I'm just trying to get Matt to finish it so I can finally talk about it with him, but he keeps falling asleep. How does that even happen?!?

5. One of my very favorite families in the entire world is coming in town and we get to hang out with them on Monday!! I'm so ready to spend some time with Candace, Ricky and Jacob. Love them!

Happy Friday, everybody!

My mind it is a churnin'

I usually keep my posts pretty light-hearted. The point of my blog is to share our family story with friends and family who don't get to interact with us every day, but it's also our way of looking back and preserving memories (especially since I stopped scrapbooking the minute I got my sewing machine). As an added bonus, I've gotten to know some pretty great people through blogging.

My posting has been pretty scarce the past couple of weeks.

One reason was spring break and how little "free time" I have when Matt's home. We're too busy hanging out together for me to hide behind a computer.

Another reason is that I have way too much on my mind. That seems a little counter intuitive I guess because it would make sense for me to brain dump using this medium. It's easier for me to express my thoughts in writing, but for some reason I can't bring myself to do it. At least not yet.

So without going into too many details, here's a list of what's taking up space in my brain:

• Politics. I don't feel like I really "fit" with either party. I'd call myself conservative in that I want government to have a minimal role in everyday life, but I hate the narrow-mindedness that goes along with most "Church Republicans." On the other hand, I absolutely cannot buy into the government dependency that the Democratic party tends to create. There's a lot of hate on that side of the political spectrum, too.
• The Church. I've grown up in church. I know all the stories. I'm a good girl who follows the rules. But I truly believe in the gospel of Christ's redemption. I've done enough soul searching and have come to my own conclusions, so my faith truly is my own and not just something that's been fed to me my whole life. I'm thankful for my parents who taught us to THINK and have modeled true servanthood and commitment to Christ. But now that I'm on "the other side" as a children's ministry director, I see a whole new side of the Church. There is so much ugliness in peoples' hearts, mine included. We're studying 1 Peter in our ladies' Bible study right now, and it's convicting me a lot, especially in how I relate to certain people that are, um, hard to love.
• Social Justice. How do I really get involved in helping the poor? What does it look like practically for our family? Where do we even start in building relationships with those who are hurting outside of our little bubble? I ran across this post last night which has helped, but I'm struggling with what it looks like for our family to really get our hands dirty, so to speak.We just started a study called Seeking Social Justice in our Sunday School class, so I'm really excited to keep processing all that God's throwing in my face.
• Raising kids. How do you raise kids to love Jesus with all of their hearts without brainwashing them? I want my kids to really know God and serve him by loving his people. How do you teach them the reality of the gospel without it being completely legalistic?
• Etsy. I'm a perfectionist. This whole idea to start an Etsy shop has made me completely obsessive. I want to either do it right or not at all, and I've already gotten started so I guess there's not much of an option! So I'm currently overwhelmed with pricing, shipping, packaging, product descriptions, product photos, and how in the world we can afford the initial start up costs. And what if the baby accessory market is just too saturated and I completely fail?
• Event planning. I'm currently planning 11 events. Kids event at church tomorrow. Baby shower Sunday. Kid's ministry to the Ranger game. Bachelorette party. Landon's birthday party. VBS. Avery's birthday party. Preteen camp. And THREE vacations this summer.

There's more to the story, but that's why I've been pretty silent recently. I'll be back soon with more frivolity and fun pictures of cute kids. Maybe a Friday Five tomorrow?