Little Cooks in the Kitchen

I keep intending to write regular blog posts and well…life gets in the way. However in the last week, I’ve come to my blog and checked my own archives for information twice. Yes…I’ve checked my blog for information on my own life.  Seriously. My brain is still not back to normal. And that really makes me want to keep up to date so if I need to know something in a year or two, I can check back.

So…here’s what’s going on around here:

• Garrett has lost 2 teeth. His two middle bottom teeth. And the permanent ones have already broken the skin. He’s doing great in kindergarten. He loves school. He’s reading really well and is always a bundle of information. He doesn’t miss much. We’re working on helping him control his emotions. He tends to explode at the slightest thing. So we scream back at him calmly explain that he needs to calm down and then he screams louder everything is fine. Honestly, it is getting better. We’ve instituted the system they use at school that lets them know where they stand based off of what color is on their card and that seems to be working really well. He is wonderful everywhere but home and his teachers think he’s near perfect, so the worst consequence for him is that we’ll call his teachers and tell them what is going on. That is the only consequence that gets his attention. I guess he likes his teachers. Good thing I do too!
• Gracie is a mess. She is so ready for summer, she dresses herself every morning in shorts, sundresses or a bathing suit. Even when it’s snowing outside. She is afraid to go #2 on the potty so she won’t even try and just holds it when I try to make encourage her. She can however, change her own diapers. I know…don’t even get me started. She loves to sing and dance and she LOVES princeses. She wants to be a princess when she grows up. When she’s not wearing summer clothes, she’s wearing a princess dress.
• Griffin is going to be an athlete. He is always carrying around a football. He throws it. With a spiral. He also shoots it into the basketball goal and hits it with a bat if you toss it to him. He loves to watch football and basketball on tv. One day he left the toy dept. at Target to go watch football on the tvs. Seriously. He is a cutie. He looks alot like Garrett did, except he has blue eyes.

That’s such a brief, shortened update. I could go on and on, which I’m sure is no surprise to the 4 of you that still read this blog, but, it’s time to go pick up Garrett from school!

My husband, while a wonderful man, likes to laugh at people when they get hurt. I know. It’s terrible. However, after spending 8 years in his family, I think it might be genetic. I’ve seen grown men laugh at boys that have suffered an accident in a back yard game. Of course, we women in the family never even utter a chuckle.

Anyway, it stands to reason that the love of my life would love America’s Funniest Videos, or AFV as my kids call it. He has also passed on that love to my children. Instead of recording episodes of some cute educational cartoons on our vhs tape, we record AFV. And they want to watch it.

All.

The.

Time.

They usually watch it with Ricky every night and I haven’t sat down and watched it with them, so imagine my surprise when Gracie and Griffin started walking around saying something that sounded something like, “Ow, my wienie hurts.” Yes. You read that correctly. Wienie. When I asked Gracie where they’d heard that, she said, “AFV”.

Humf. Great. All my work, censoring their tv, and that slips by. Let’s just hope that one doesn’t slip out at an inopportune moment.

Eight years ago…I did this:

Besides the day I accepted Christ as my Saviour, February 9, 2002 was the most important day of my life. I walked down the aisle and made a promise to the man that God had set apart for me. I promised to love him, be faithful to him and be committed to being the wife he deserves and needs. I make mistakes every day, but those promises are never far from my thoughts.

We were watching a home video we took of our first trip after our honeymoon. We went to Glacier National Park in Montana. It was a great trip. The one thing we kept noticing was how happy we were. How much we smiled. Seriously, I was smiling so much, I got on my nerves! I was so excited about life. I had the best life in the entire world and it showed, on my face.

My smile, is not quite as evident on my face (because, let’s be honest. My face would hurt all the time if I smiled that much.) My joy, though, is still shining in my heart. I am so excited about my life.  I believe my husband is the most amazing man in the world and that God has blessed our marriage and our family immeasurably.

Ricky, you are exactly the man I knew you were on that day, 8 years ago. You are kind, loving, fun, consistent and exciting. You bring me sanity, so many days. You are ALWAYS on my side. You let me know I’m important and that you treasure me. We make a great team. (ok, so maybe we’re not very good at playing spades as a team, but we dominate in Sequence together.) You make me feel beautiful, although I know you have to notice the extra weight I need to lose. You do what you can to make things easier for me, whether it’s getting the kids ready for church on Sundays or doing baths and bedtime so I can clean up the kitchen. Nothing goes un-noticed. You are beyond what I could have expected and I love you more every day. I am so proud of you and so glad that I get to call you mine. I love you.

Oh - and you’re hot!

Happy 8th Anniversary Ricky!

…And it allows us to snap photos like this:

And this:

And this:

Oh, and I can’t forget this one:

We’ve never had a camera that takes the picture so fast. I can’t believe how much easier it is to get a good shot!

Garrett lost his first tooth on Sunday, which should have been exciting for him, but I think it was a little, ahem, traumatic. He was eating a Honey Butter Ritz - his new favorite snack, and one of mine too since I got the box for 35¢ at Publix, but…this is not about my ability to find a good deal. Anyway, he was eating a Ritz and realized his tooth was not there and his mouth hurt. He came frantically running in our room, crying hysterically. I thought he looked like he was losing his marbles, but Ricky figured out what had happened. The tooth came out when he chomped down on his cracker. And…he swallowed it.

So, all that to say, if we do start a “Lost Tooth Collection”, we’ll be missing his first tooth. Unless…well…we’ll be missing his first tooth. Check out our snaggle-tooth.

Also complicating the situation, was that the um, Tooth Fairy, was snowed in and Mr. Tooth Fairy (Ricky will kill me for calling him that) completely threw his back out, thus leaving us both unable to get anything to go with the 2 dollar bills we had to give Garrett. Luckily, Aunt Jenny came to the Tooth Fairy’s rescue and dropped off a pack of Trident. Here is what Garrett got from the Tooth Fairy:

Maybe next time, we’ll be better prepared. And we’ll end up with the tooth.

It snowed on Friday. It snowed alot. We never get enough snow to play in, but this time. We did! We have had a BLAST this weekend. Friday night, Ricky got done with work early and came down (since he works upstairs :)) and he went out back and started a fire in the backyard to keep us a little warmer. We started working on packing down a path on our back hill. It wasn’t packed enough to use the sled, so we did the next best thing, we used storage container lids. We slid down the hill till dark and got up Saturday morning and got ready to go out. Some of our friends from our neighborhood came over and we had a great time. The hill was perfect for sled use, so in addition to the lids, we used the actual sled.

When we all got cold the kids started melting down, we went in and ate some soup and I made homemade chocolate chip cookies. Unfortunately, they had to go home for naps and we put Gracie and Griffin down for a nap. Then, Ricky and I did what any normal parents would do…went out back for more sledding without the little ones. We were trying to see who could go the farthest on the sled. Ricky beat me on the sled, but I totally had his number on the lids. Some of our other neighbor friends came over. We got the little ones up for a little more time outside and then came in and ate pizza. Garrett was so sleepy he almost fell asleep at the table.

This morning we got up, watched our church service through streaming live video, then went outside for a little more sledding. We sledded until there was more grass on the path than snow. So we transitioned to building a snow man. Ricky threw his back out while building the snowman, so after a very active weekend, he’s laid up in the bed.

For those of you that have been reading this blog for the last few years, I know, this blog entry is rusty on style, I’m just trying to get into the swing of writing again. I will include some pictures though!

And here is one of my favorites:

Ricky and I talk about legacy alot.  Ricky has always been very focused on leaving a good, Godly legacy for his children, probably something he is more aware of than many after losing his father over 20 years ago.  Last night, I saw, first hand, the impact of a legacy.

We went to visitation services for Gabe Brewer. Gabe was a 17 year old that was killed in a car accident. We knew Gabe because we used to go to his father, Chris’s church six years ago. Gabe is one of the few kids I remember, because honestly, after having 3 of my own, my memory is not what it used to be. I remember Gabe as an extremely sweet, friendly, outgoing little boy that loved basketball, especially UK basketball and was cute as a button. He loved God. He loved his family. He loved his church and he loved people. You know the type, well…maybe you do. They are few and far between these days. He was the type of kid that you meet and think, “I hope my kids are like him whenever I have kids.”

After not seeing Gabe for 6 years, I’ll be honest. I wondered if he was the same great kid that emanated the light of Jesus Christ in his smile. I wondered if he had gotten in with a bad crowd, or if he had rebelled or if he had just become mediocre in his faith and love of people as most teenagers do. When we drove up to the church where the visitation was, which is very large, with multiple parking lots, we noticed two large parking lots were full. I wondered what else was going on at the church (I mean it is a large church with many weekly activities) and I wondered if it was interfering with the visitation. I was not prepared for what was inside.

We got there about 45 minutes after visitation started and there were people as far as I could see. We stood in line for over 2 hours before getting to the front of the line.  All of those cars were there for the visitation. I quickly learned that not only was Gabe still the kind, friendly wonderful kid we had known, but that he had grown in his faith and impacted the world around him.

There are so many observations I could share with you, like how heartbreaking it is to see his sweet teenage girlfriend up by the casket, touch his hair and look like she is about to shut down. Or how Gabe’s mom couldn’t make it through the visitation and his dad, looked heartbroken and would occasionally go over to look at him, touch him and kiss him on the cheek.  Or how the majority of people that knew him the best looked like they thought they would wake up from a bad dream at any moment. I could tell you about all of the superman shirts that they wore in tribute to him or of the many teenager that were breaking down in tears. Broken

But. The thing that touched me most, was the legacy that this kid left. There were people there (non-family members) that traveled from many states away.  He was quite the basketball player from what I heard. He played hard but maintained his Godliness with his intensity. There was a basketball coach from a rival team that traveled over an hour (and probably stood in line for a few hours) to give his condolences. This kid was different. Opposing coaches noticed. If you’ve been around sports much, you know that you really have to be living your faith for it to show on the court. That is probably one of the hardest places for people to see Jesus in you.

It never makes sense when a child dies. It always hurts and it’s always confusing. I’ve always thought that one of the saddest things about a child dying, is that they don’t get to really “make their mark” on the world. What I realized last night, is that , you don’t have to be a “grown up” to leave a legacy.  You can leave a lasting legacy, no matter your age. You can impact the lives around you by being kind, having fun, working hard, loving God and loving people. That’s how Gabe did it.

Well…I knew this day would come. No, not the day I would begin to blog again, although, maybe this is that day.

I have come to the conclusion that I’m going to have to cut sugar from my diet.  After a few days of watching what I eat and what my appetite is doing, I have figured out that every time I eat sugar, I have cravings for food.  And when I say cravings, I mean, I would rip someone’s arm off for some chocolate or something else sweet. 

Now that you all feel safe around me, I just wanted to let you know.  I’m going to try to eliminate sugar from my diet, except for special occasions.  Oh, and I will continue to put a little in my coffee in the morning, because that doesn’t seem to bother me.  And honestly, even if it did, I have my limits.  If you know me IRL (in real life), and I seem a little cranky.  DO NOT OFFER ME A COOKIE.

Thank you.

Dear Griffin,

This year has flown by.  It seems like just yesterday that you were born.  You are such a sweetie and have been such a joy to us.  We knew you were going to fit in perfectly the first moment we saw you.  Your big brother Garrett and you have such a loving relationship.  You already have fun together.  Sometimes you keep each other from falling asleep because you are talking (well he’s talking, you’re babbling) and playing with each other.  You love him so much and he adores you.

You have had a very calm, laid-back personality, except when you don’t feel good.  You do like to do things your own way and in your own time.  For example, you refuse to drink from a cup, rather you prefer your bottle.  You also don’t crawl.  You scoot around on your bottom.

You love playing with balls and you’re very strong.  You have the prettiest blue eyes and dark blond, curly hair.  You like to make a face where you pucker your lips up and close your eyes.  It’s hysterical.  You like to play independently and with others.  You love going to preschool on Tuesdays, you almost jump out of my arms to go in the room.

You have been such a blessing to our family and I can not wait to see what God has planned for your future.  I am so glad that God made me your Mommy.

I love you!

Mommy

Yesterday I was walking by the computer and noticed that the Yahoo search engine was pulled up on the screen.  I always use google, so I stopped to see what the search was for. In the search box was “Potsto”.  I asked Garrett if he had been typing on the computer.  He said he had tried to find the Potato Song.  Garrett and Gracie LOVE the Potato Song

Uh…so the whole phonics thing really works.  He just happened to be a letter off (s instead of a).  So, we’ll be getting some child-friendly internet software soon…

In case you’re interested, The Potato Song: