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Father's Day at Powell Gardens

For Father's Day today, we took Jason out to breakfast and then to Powell Gardens, our local botanical garden.  They are having a dinosaur exhibit this year and the boys LOVE dinosaurs.

We spent a couple hours walking around, searching for the dinosaurs and enjoying the beautiful flowers and plants.

I love Clematis!

In the Island Garden, they have planters filled with water and water plants.  A couple of these planters had tadpoles in them!  We thought that was super cool!

It was a lot of fun searching for the dinosaurs. One of them had us stumped for quite a while!

Each set of dinosaurs had a display board that gave facts about the dinosaur.  They also had QR codes that you can scan with your code scanner on your smartphone which opens up a YouTube video showing more pictures and giving more information about the dinosaur.  VERY cool!  My boys were a little young for all of it.  We tried reading the display boards to them, but they were more interested in the bugs crawling on the ground!  Haha!

I would highly recommend Powell Gardens for your next family outing!

We all enjoyed our Father's Day!  I hope you all did, too!

Change of Plans...

Well, I didn't make it to the grocery store today.  Actually, I didn't even leave the house.  I wasn't feeling too well, so I just decided to stay home and finalize my grocery list so I can go tomorrow.  While I was working on my meal plan for the week and my grocery list, I read through my freezer-cooking cookbook that I borrowed from the library.  I decided that most of the recipes in it, though they look really yummy, do not fit into my plan of losing weight.  Most of them are not diet friendly.  I did find a few slow-cooker recipes that I will try and several recipes for grilling.  My new fancy-schmancy slow-cooker came today, so I'm really anxious to try it out next week!  I'll keep you posted on how it works!  :)

Current Goals

So, as I try to get this blog going again, I'm thinking of all of the things that are rattling around in this brain of mine.  My current goals for my life are:

• To have a fun summer with my boys before C starts kindergarten in the fall.  (Can't believe that's even possible!!!)
• To get my household organized.
• Try to keep my house a little more presentable.  (Ha!  I laugh because that's so tough for me.)
• To lose weight.
• To start exercising on a regular basis.
• To feed my family healthier meals.
• To save money where I can.
• To be "green".

In order to accomplish these goals, I have many, many ideas for little steps I can take along the way.  So, that's where I'm going to start here.

Today, Mom and I took the boys out to garage sales.  We had a pretty good day.  I found a few bargains.  The boys, as usual, spent way too much money on toys (some of which didn't even work, as usual).  I found a couple pieces of art for my walls (now I just have to figure out where to hang them!), and a few baskets to help me with my organization.  I also found a book, The One-Minute Organizer Plain & Simple by Donna Smallin, which I'm hoping will give me a few tips to help me reach my goals.

Tomorrow, we have to go to the grocery store.  I've been trying to do a little of the Extreme Couponing.  I'm definitely NOT extreme!  But, I'm thinking it's a good start for me to cut some of my household costs!  I've started a stockpile and we just bought a second refrigerator (LOVE Craigslist!).  I also checked out a book at the library called Don't Panic--Dinner's in the Freezer.  I'm hoping to get into a routine of cooking a bunch of meals in one day to freeze and reheat later on.  Especially since I don't like to use my oven much in the summer and with all of our outdoor activities, I find myself not wanting to cook a lot of the time.  So, now I need to start thinking about my meal plan and grocery list!

A Family is Born: An Amazing Experience!

She hasn't seen her husband for two and a half months. He left in June for the Congo. Why would he go there? For a baby. She desperately wanted a baby. As a last resort, they decided that he would travel to an orphanage in the Congo. The easiest part was probably the adoption. Getting home was the hard part. He faced many brick walls along the way. But, brick walls are just there to weed out the people who don't want it bad enough. Meanwhile, she is at home, doing everything she can to get her family home. At least they have many friends to pray, help and support them along the way. With help, she gets the house and the baby's room all ready. Finally, the day comes when all of the paperwork is in order and he and the baby can come home. She gets them a flight. Their friends put signs in their yard and chalk drawings on their driveway. She gets all dressed up and goes to the airport along with a bunch of friends to be reunited with her husband and meet her new daughter. But, then they get the call that he and the baby are stuck in DC for the night. At least they are on American soil! But, she has been waiting for so long and now she has to go home alone one more night. Again the next morning, she and their friends head to the airport. The flight is on time. She stands at the window watching and waiting for her family to get off the plane. The minute she sees them, her arms go straight up in the air. She starts to wail! She's crying and running to the door of the gate. She stands there, waiting for him to walk through that door. The people who came through before him, asks her if she is the mom and tells her that she has a beautiful little girl coming. And here they come! As their friends cheer and cry, she runs to them and embraces them. They stand there, the three of them, in an embrace that seems to last forever. She then gets to hold her baby girl for the first time. The baby has such a good disposition. She isn't overwhelmed by it all. She's just looking around with wide eyes, taking it all in. While he goes around to hug every single person there, she sets the baby down to let her walk around and greet everyone. Then as he reaches down to pick up his suitcases, the emotion washes over him. He lays his head on his arms and sobs. She comes over and holds him. Then the baby sees him crying and for the first time since they arrived, she begins to cry. The new family embraces as they cry. Along with them, their friends are all crying, too. What a reunion! After all of the hugs and tears, the new family heads home. Mother and daughter walk out hand in hand as father follows in awe. As a friend who was there that day, I was amazed by the experience. The love in that terminal on that day was just unbelievable. He comes back home a hero for enduring what he did and bringing a beautiful baby girl to his wife. Years from now, that little girl will be able to say, "My mom and dad loved me so much that they risked everything (their future together and even dad's life) to give me a better life with them in America." And I'm so glad that I got to be a part of their union. It was an experience that I will never forget.

My baby turns 4!

I can't believe my baby turned 4 yesterday! How does time pass so quickly??? I waited so long to have him and now he's 4! I had wanted a baby years earlier, but the time wasn't right. We got married when Jason was still in college, so I waited. After he graduated, we moved and we both started new jobs, so I waited. Jason wasn't ready, so I waited. Finally, after we had been married for 8 years, we started trying to have a baby. That wasn't easy for us either though. Getting pregnant was never a problem for me. It was keeping the pregnancies that proved a challenge. I lost our first baby at 8 weeks. I got pregnant again as soon as the doctor said it was ok. We found out that I was carrying triplets! Crazy! I was not on fertility drugs. It was natural! But, the excitement didn't last long before I miscarried again. But then came C! With a little help from chemistry, I finally had my baby boy! What a happy day!!! Now, 4 years have passed and I have no idea where the time went? He's such a big boy! Not my little baby anymore. But, last night, as I was on my way to bed, I peeked in his room as I always do, and saw that he was awake and laying with his head at the foot of his bed. It was beginning to storm and he told me that he was afraid (which is very unusual because he's never afraid of storms). I asked him if he wanted Mommy to lay with him for a while and, of course, he did. So I crawled in bed with my baby and we both fell asleep. He may not be my little baby anymore, but he's still Mommy's boy! I love you, C!

Welcome to my Blog!

So, here's my blog! I don't really have much to say as of yet, but I'm sure I'll think of something soon! I am currently sitting here while my boys are "napping" and I'm looking around at my mess of a house that I really should be working on...but, I don't want to make noise and wake up the boys, right?! So, I'll just rest myself instead. It's no wonder my house is a mess as I have not been home too much lately! Busy, busy, busy! But, what do I ever get accomplished??? I remember before I had kids and I was working full-time outside of the house, wondering what in the world my mom did with her time. She didn't even have a j-o-b and she was always running and very busy, but I couldn't see that she was really getting anything done. Well, now I understand! Well, I know how it is, anyway. I still don't really understand it. Just like this house or the laundry...I can work and work and work and it might look nice for an hour and the laundry might be caught up for half a day, but then it's right back where I started. It's a vicious circle and it just makes me tired thinking about it! Maybe that's why I feel the need to rest right now! Ok, well, enough of that! For now, I'll just turn on my soap opera and veg out till the boys are up and I have to go, go, go again!