Considering the Campbells

Feven Fosts for Friday

2012-02-17T04:07:00.000-08:00

What up people?! This is your buddy John and I’ve been tasked with Feven Fosts for Friday, so let’s see what I can come up with right now..

1. Jack is probably entering some terrible twos fun. He doing the testing where he sees how hard he can touch you before you get mad. He’ll first touch your face and then hit it a little bit harder and then just go all out and slam his hand into you. It’s not the best feeling in the world. He’s also been having a good time taking his hands and trying to pull my cheeks off… I literally mean pull my cheeks off.

2. We have free pop at work and I’m afraid I am addicted. It’s terrible, but you can’t say no to it. Well, now I’ve noticed they have Crystal Light Energy. Therefore, I’m trying to replace some of my daily pop with a little bit of that. That’s the real reason I drink it is to get a little caffeine, because I don’t like coffee. Gotta say New Orleans = Lots of Coffee for most people, but I actually drank less caffeine over the past week than when I’m working.

3. Friday is also Food Truck Friday at Rackspace, so I’m pretty excited about eating out of one of the many food trucks. They bring up 6 or so vendors from around town from BBQ, to Pakistani, to down home… It’s all fantastically delicious.

4. A few months ago .. actually probably about a year and a half ago… I read, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. It’s the mostly true story of Abraham Lincoln’s life, except that he’s also a vampire hunter… which is a little known fact about our greatest president. Anyway, the movie.. that’s right… the movie will be released in a few months.

I can’t wait!

5. We have no big plans for the weekend. However, that might not be true. Molly plans out our weekends and I just follow along. So, if we do have big plans with you and I forgot, please don’t be offended… we’ll be there under Molly’s direction of course.

Campbells Just Wanna Have Fun

2012-02-15T05:09:00.002-08:00

No time for a real post today...we are too busy soaking up our last morning on vacation by eating beignets, listening to street performers belt out some jazz, and showing Jack the big "barcos" on the Mississippi. Despite a night of high fever and toddler vomit, a double ear infection, and an inevitable trip to the Emergency Clinic, all three Campbells agree that our 5 day trip to New Orleans was a success. We return to San Antonio this afternoon, but first it's time to let Jack dance to some more saxophones and get covered in powdered sugar at Cafe du Monde one last time.

Ten on Tuesday

2012-02-14T05:45:00.001-08:00

The formatting on this may be messed up because I am trying to post from my phone. Be sure to visit Chelsea at Roots and Rings for more Ten on Tuesday Valentine's excitement.

1. How do you feel about Valentine’s Day? I don't feel too much about it. We never celebrated it all too much, we'd maybe go out to dinner and one year John got me a lovely necklace but it's not that important to us. This year, we won't celebrate it really at all.

2. Are you in love? More than I ever thought possible.

3. What is your favorite love song? The Luckiest, probably. It's our wedding song...John sang it to me one day in the car when we were dating and it's always been "our song" ever since.

4. Did your parents do anything for you on Valentine’s Day when you were a child? Little things like give us teddy bears with our names puffy painted on them...nothing huge but enough to make me feel loved.

5. What is your love language? Physical Touch...I'm a cuddler. (Click here if you want to take the quiz.)

6. How do you celebrate Valentine’s Day? Gifts? Dinner? See #1: we don't really celebrate it.

7. What is your favorite flower? Tulips
8. What is your favorite love story? (Book and/or movie.) I don't really know...I'm not a chick flick/chick lit kind of girl. Probably You've Got Mail because it's do darn cute
9. What is the most romantic thing someone has ever done for you? Or you have done for someone? On our 4 year wedding anniversary, I woke up and went to go get my morning coffee before I got ready for work. As I passed by the dining room table, I saw that it was covered--completely covered--by little pieces of paper. On each one, John had written a favorite memory of our relationship or something he loves about me. I was late to work that morning because I sat there reading each one of them.
10. How did you meet your spouse/significant other? We were both on the Speech/Debate team in college. I met him when I went to the first practice. He thought I was a beyotch...it was meant to be.

COCO: The Best Kept Secret in San Antonio

2012-02-12T17:45:00.000-08:00

Now this post really only applies to my San Antonio readers. But I'll talk about it anyway because it's not everyday that you find a place you just LOVE...and I LOVE COCO Chocolate Lounge and Bistro. I know, it's not at all like me to like anything with the word "Chocolate" in it. Kind of like how Liz Lemon gets bummed out by the word "lover" unless its between the words "meat" and "pizza." Yeah, I just made a Liz Lemon reference, what of it? As John so eloquently stated the other night after we finished watching New Girl and I told him I wanted to be cute like Zooey Deschanel, "Baby, I love you...but you're more of a Liz Lemon than a Jess. Just own it." So own it I will! And in true Liz Lemon style, I shall now tell you about all the foods I like to eat! Let me just wipe this stain off my TGS sweatshirt and we can begin our tour...

What: COCO Chocolate Lounge and Bistro
Where; 281/1604 - in the Best Buy shopping area
When: Open for Happy Hour, dinner, and at night for a boom boom hip-kid club. Needless to say, I'm not much of the hip-kid club type but so long as I have pomme frites in one hand and a dirty martini in the other, I'd probably be okay.
Why: Because it's delicious.

I discovered this little gem of a joint back in December when Raphaelle and I met there for Happy Hour. I had passed by it a few times but thought, "Chocolate? Sick. This girl doesn't want to sip on a cosmo while eating fudge. I'll stick to my gin martinis at Swig." I also thought, "Isn't that a club? I'm not a club kind of girl. I'm Liz Lemon, after all. I'm the girl saying, "He wanted to buy me a drink? I already have a drink,...do you think he'd buy me mozzarella sticks instead?" But I went with Raphaelle anyway and was so surprised at the menu and the drink options. First of all, the cocktail menu is admittedly filled with "froo froo" drinks that aren't really my bag. But as Rissa the server has told me on more than one occasion, "Honey, we can make you anything you want." After being turned down when I asked her to make my ten dollar bill into ten thousand ten dollar bills, I ordered a dirty gin martini. It came out just like I like it: old manish. That is to say, they nailed it. That and the fact that I can get a good quality martini for $5 during Happy Hour makes me a Happy Hour Happy Camper. And these aren't those dinky little drinks--$5 buys you a good-sized cocktail. And because buzzed driving is drunk driving, you should probably get a little something to nosh on while you're there so that you don't get behind the wheel feeling less than alert .(Have I told you how much I loathe anyone who drinks and drives? Because I do. DON'T DO IT!) Anyway, I've had lots of stuff on the menu during Happy Hour: goat cheese dip, calamari, crab cakes, fries, pizzas...there are so many things that are only $5 during the hours of 4pm-7pm and 9pm-10:30pm. Now I love me some queso and taquitos as much as the next girl, but it's nice to know that there are some alternatives to the typical San Antonio Mexican food Happy Hour. And alternatives there are...

Potatoes fried in duck fat and drizzled with truffle oil and sea salt, you guys. Need I say more? The only thing that would make these any better is if they came with a garlic aioli or something. Or maybe if they were just constantly sitting within 3 feet of my eating hand. What? You don't have a designated eating hand? Yeah, me neither.

Note: I didn't get paid or in any way compensated to write this post, I just really like COCO and am always surprised when San Antonio-ites haven't heard of it. It's a secret little gem and I think more people should know about it! That and I'm now obsessed with it and I never want it to close down so I guess I should probably make sure they get as many customers as possible. But seriously, go try it and you'll be a believer too!

Feven Fosts

2012-02-09T20:32:00.001-08:00

1. Megan’s mom is in town for the weekend. I’ve never met her before. Isn’t that weird? I’ve known Megan for years, she’s one of the very best friends I’ve ever had, and yet I’d never met her mom until last night. Craziness.

2. It’s Rodeo time in San Antonio. Giddy Up, Y’all!

3. I’m trying a high magnesium diet because my body still isn’t absorbing magnesium, even through the supplements. I feel great so I’m not too worried but it’s still a bit shocking when I get my blood results back that say my magnesium is still so low. Let’s just say that if I never have to eat pumpkin seeds or spinach again, it will be too soon.

4. I bought an Olay Pro X a few weeks ago, it’s one of those face-scrubber thingies. I bought it because I would often go to sleep without washing my face and I knew that my cheapskate self dropping $30 on a face scrubber would guilt me into washing my face every night. It’s worked and I love that thing.

5. When are you all coming over for a patio party? It looks great! My mom, Johnny and my brother-in-law Austin all deserve quite the pat on the back. And me too…I helped too.

6. I’m running out of fosts to fost about. Have a great weekend!

Photo Purge

2012-02-09T04:00:00.000-08:00

Molly told me to blog. I asked her what I should talk about. She said I should do a photo purge.

So congratulations, here’s the last few pictures and videos on my iPhone.

This picture I saved the other day. It is near and dear to my heart and a good idea for you to consider when you’re wondering where to place commas.

That’s my desk at work.. I was moving desks. I moved my desk four times.. in four months. I’m getting really good at it.

This is video of snow in Omaha.

That’s from my parents back porch. We face timed with my parents and Jack saw Grandma throw a snowball at Grandpa. Shortly thereafter, he read his book… saw snow.. and then this happened..

I took this picture for Molly. It’s her favorite hotel, because there’s a parking garage underneath it. She’s obsessed with it.

I stumbled across this picture on the internet today. I laughed.

I had cake and ate it at work.. therefore, I took a picture of it and sent it to Molly.

Jack has problems identifying colors. Therefore, I bought these books when I saw them. We will make him know his colors. However, after purchasing these books, I think I figured out the issue. It’s not that he doesn’t know the colors… he hasn’t figured out how to answer “What color is this?” The color is always green. However, if you ask him, “Can you point to something purple?”, he will answer correctly.

Jack fell down on our new patio. A risk with some uneven rocks out there. Anyway, his first real ouchie… but he was very excited about getting a “cookie…. monster…. Band-Aid”. However, he fell twice more after that… I think he was doing it on purpose to get more Sesame Street Band-Aids.

I strong lights over the patio. It’s nice.

The end.

The Googs

2012-02-08T04:12:00.000-08:00

Every now and again, John and I like to look through our Google Anayltics and see what it is that brought people to this little blog of ours. You may recall this post or this post where we recapped what Google Anayltics told us about our blog: how long people tend to stay here, what blogs link to us, and what people search for in google that land them here. First of all, it appears that our most-read post of all time is the one where I painfully recapped every single detail of our grocery budget…so to my brother who said he fell asleep while reading that post: SUCK IT! Sorry, that was cruel. But FYI brother (and everyone else who has some insane desire to read about what we eat for dinner and how much we spent on it), I plan to do another post like that sometime in March. February doesn’t count since it’s a short month and we are traveling for part of it.

Anyway, on to what search terms brought people to Considering Campbell by way of the Google.

1. “Lou Ferrigno” searches still seem to be getting lots of attention to this corner of the internet. In case you’ve forgotten, Lou Ferrigno was the name of our parakeet that John let fly away….and the one that he killed after he replaced the one that flew away…and the one that he killed after that one too.

2. “Amanda Bynes Noteworthy Accomplishments in Her Life” Okay, I’m not sure why this one brought the searcher to Considering Campbell but whatever. To anyone searching for Amanda Bynes’ noteworthy accomplishments, I have three words for you: She’s The Man. Best movie ever. “I hate high school” and “I got a life time of knowledge” and “I’m a badass hunka dude!” COMIC GENIUS, people!

3. Lots of people found us by searching for some sort of derivative of the phrase “beautiful swan from ugly duckling”. Not quite sure why that brings you here…but hey, we’ll take it.

4. Someone found us by searching for “Cheese that don’t need refrigeration”. The answer to that is Laughing Cow cheese…but as this post notes, be careful where you store it.

5. “How Big Do Parakeets Get?” Umm…we wouldn’t know. Ours have never lasted long enough for us to find out.

6. “It’s Got Cache up the Ying Yang!” It always makes me insanely happy when people find our blog by searching for Seinfeld quotes.

7. “Tricked into Circumcision” Umm..what? Doesn’t this procedure generally happen with an infant? I mean, it’s not really being “tricked” into it…it just happens. Not like we told Jack he was going to get a puppy and then SURPRISE! We’re removing part of your man bits! Trick!

8. “Considering Campbell Liberty Tax Dancers” Okay, do you see this? People are not only searching for “Liberty Tax Dancers” but they are associating those dancers with this blog. Oh hell yes. PLEASE let me be known as the girl who has a Kristen Bell with a Sloth-style reaction to Tax Dancers!! Ellen, you got my digits girl, feel free to call me for an interview.

9. “Jack’s Favorite Food” It’s pickled ginger, thanks for asking!

10. “Alcohol Shower Curtain” Does this really exist? You’d think I would know since apparently my blog is a leading expert on all things shower curtain drunkiness.

11. Okay, I can’t even write this one out. It’s naughty. It’s REAL naughty. How did that filthy search land you here?!?!

12. “Girl Hermaphrodite with Balls” Listen, I may not look ultra-feminine…especially when I am sans makeup…but please rest assured that that search has no reason bringing you to our blog

13. “Molly Millions” Yep, I have millions of monies. MILLIONS.

14. “New Goldfish has a String Hanging Out Of Stomach” You may want to get your fish back to the store pronto…otherwise your fish may meet the same fate as our Lou Ferrigno, or our Lou Ferringo, or our Lou Ferrigno

15. “Where there’s a helpful smile in every aisle—Walmart” Ha! Walmart? Dare to dream!

16. “What do it mean when a parakeet fly away from you?” Seriously? It means it doesn’t want to be in freakin’ captivity. You needed google to tell you that?

17. “Unborn baby fetus pumpkin sucking thumb” Wait, what? And why did that bring you HERE?

So there ya go, 17 out of the 595 random google searches that brought people to our little family blog. Now I’m off to start writing about hermaphrodite ducks turning into swans and how to take good care of a parakeet. After all, you gotta give the people what they want!

Ten on Tuesday

2012-02-07T02:56:00.000-08:00

It’s that time of the week, the time where you read my answers to ten random questions. Head over to Chelsea to see more!

1. How do you feel about Groundhog’s Day? I don’t feel much of anything about it—we live in South Texas so 6 more weeks of winter really isn’t that bad of a prospect when winter is 50 degrees. I love the movie Groundhog’s Day though.
2. What color are your fingernails right now? (Bonus points if you include a picture.) “Prince Charming” with yellow dots on my ring fingers. I did this at Chelsea’s “Cheer Up” weekend and I’m fairly obsessed with it now. This is a picture of when I did it at Chelsea’s. It looks similar but my yellow nail pen isn’t as bold as hers was…mine is more of a gold versus a bright yellow. I wish I had her pens instead of mine—hers are much better quality. But you get the idea:

3. Do you like riddles? Is this a riddle?
4. When you were 10, how old did you think “old” was? At your current age, how old do you think “old” is? I certainly thought 30 was old when I was 10. Now I think maybe 80 is old. 60 certainly isn’t…and 70 is just a bit older than 60 so I don’t even really think that’s very old. So I’ll go with late 70s or 80s.
5. Do you wish on stars? No. Maybe I should. Maybe if I did, my law school loans would suddenly get paid off.
6. Do you recycle? Yeah. Not as well as I should but better than I used to. Baby steps.
7. On a scale from 1-10, how good of a cook are you? Probably a 7. My dad is a stone cold 10 though. Maybe even a 12. I feel like I’m a good cook but then when I have my dad’s food, I’m like “Did I get my last meal out of a Chef Boyardee can??”
8. Do you color your hair? Professionally or at home? Nope. I colored my hair in college a few times but it was just too expensive and there’s no need for it. I don’t mind my hair color and I haven’t had any gray hairs yet so I’ll just save my money until I start getting some gray hair and then I’ll think about coloring it. Maybe not though…sometimes gray hair is beautiful so if I have that kind of grays, I’ll probably just rock it.
9. One a scale from 1-10, how do you rate your manners? Depends on who I’m with. I can be a 9.5 at work dinners and stuff but with my family, I’m at a 5…I sit indian style at the table, put my elbows on the table, the whole bad manners gamut.

10. Who are the last 5 people you have texted? Chelsea, Lauren, Lyndsey, Meghan (my sister), and Bridget (my sister)

Monday’s Things

2012-02-06T04:16:00.001-08:00

-We spent the weekend hanging out with my sweet pal, Jess, who flew in from Nebraska for a weekend of R&R&F (rest, relaxation, and fun). I’ll recap the trip later in the week but I was too busy hanging out with her, doing my February grocery shopping, and pretending to be interested in the Super Bowl (when all I really cared about was the food) to blog for real. Sorry.

-John had to wipe my phone this weekend. Something was wrong with it and it stopped letting me take pictures, send or receive texts, or pretty much do anything besides make a phone call. I lost all my pictures/texts/notes/etc. So if I know you in real life, please text me with your digits because chances are I don’t have them anymore.

-I have been sitting here for 5 minutes trying to think of more things to say. I got nothing.

Have a good week!!

The Winner! (And a Few Fosts)

2012-02-03T03:23:00.000-08:00

1. Thanks to Random.org, we have a winner of the book giveaway! I entered numbers one through thirty-one (the number of entries) into the website and it came back with number 20.

Congratulations, Tina! I really think you’re going to LOVE these books. And I mean it you guys, Susan Middleton Elya has done wonders for my boy’s Spanish vocabulary. If you want your kid to pick up on even a few Spanish words, buy and read some of her books to your kid every night. Our favorites around here are Spanish is Fun (the original, Otra Vez, and At The Circus) and Rubia and the three Osos. You can buy them from Amazon or directly from her website (where I’m told the now out of print books are half off). Remember, if you order them from her website, she autographs every one she ships!

2. One of these days, I may write another “how I save money on groceries” post. People seem interested in reading another one…not sure why. They make my eyes glaze over and it’s my life!

3. Megan and I have our dear friend Jess flying in today for a girl’s weekend/law school mini reunion. It’s going to be a weekend filled to the brim with eating, laughter, chick flicks, and shopping. I cannot wait to wrap my arms around my little Yogi Jess…even if she does hate hugs. What is it with all these girlfriends of mine hating hugs? Am I doing something wrong here that people hate my hugs? Is it because I pat you gingerly on the back and stick my butt way out away from you? Is that not standard operating hug procedure?

4. I can’t find K-cups I like. I love the HEB Houston Blend coffee (thanks for getting me hooked, Les!) and I have just been using the “make your own k-cup” thing to brew a cup of it every morning…but does anyone know of a coconut-y k-cup I can have in case of a “I don’t feel like adding 30 seconds to my morning routine by filling up this fake k-cup thing”?

5. I need suggestions on cheap flatirons. I’m not willing to spend more than $50 on it because I have pretty straight hair as it is. I only want one to straighten out the little flip that happens on the right side of my hair and to use it for flatiron curls like Lauren from Texas taught me to do. I did the curls on her chi and it was beautiful magic. I’m not getting the same results on my lukewarm 8 year old revlon straightener. Any suggestions?

6. I bought some stuff for Jack’s Big Boy Room this week. I have no intention of taking him out of his nursery any time soon but I’m excited about what I bought! The plan is to keep the current nursery as is (swapping out blues for yellows if a girl) once we a) decide to have another baby and b) get to about the 6 month mark of pregnancy. Then we will move Jack into the guest room and make it into a pirate-themed little boy’s room, complete with a twin bed. That should be a shock for him: going from a baby blue nursery and crib to a navy-colored room with skulls & crossbones on the wall and a giant twin bed. Whatever, we still have a year or so before that happens…maybe longer! Anyway, I got a ship’s bell, a ship steering wheel, a rusty anchor, and a canoe paddle all for under $50! Yay!

7. Happy weekend!!

It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's...SALT GIRL!

2012-02-02T02:00:00.000-08:00

Alternate titles include: [The Problem With My Bean-Shaped Organ] [Another Rare Disorder? Time to Buy A Lottery Ticket!] [He’s My Kid and He’ll Wash Your Leg if He Wants To]

Remember how I told you that I had an appointment with my kidney doctor on Friday? Well, after two and a half hours of waiting with Jack in the waiting room (Jack was sick and couldn't be in daycare so he had to tag along with me), I finally saw the doctor at about 5:15 PM...on a Friday night--trust me, I was SUPER excited to get out in that 5:30 traffic with an understandably impatient kid in the backseat. Jack was such a trooper all afternoon, only getting placed in Time Out one time for thinking it was going to fly under my radar when he opened the door to the office and made a break for the parking lot. Let me tell you, putting your kid in time out in a doctor's office waiting room is fun times. After we finally got back to the exam room, I finally decided that Jack had been a rockstar all afternoon and that most kids would go B---A-N-A-N-A-S being forced to sit in a waiting room chair for the better half of the afternoon. As a result of his awesome behavior, I decided to let him have free reign over my diaper bag while we were cooped up in the examination room. As the doctor sat and told me the news, he surely thought I was a terrible mother for letting my kid run around the exam room yelling "wunning! wunning! wunning! (running)" over and over while taking intermittent breaks to pull baby wipes out of the container and wipe down the walls, the floors, the examination table and--yes, even the doctor's khaki-covered legs. The point where I told Jack that I'd take him to get "helado" was when things turned south. Jack just kept screaming, "ICE CWEAM!!!!" over and over. Hey, the kid was entitled at this point.

Over the "We all scream for ice scream!"-style toddler calls, the doctor gave me my diagnosis that they've been working on since October when we first got the news that my electrolytes were all kinds of crazy: Gitelman Syndrome. A rare hereditary defect in the distal convoluted tuble of the kidney (yeah, I had to wiki that crap). Basically, it is characterized by magensium, potassium, sodium, and chloride all being passed through my tinkle (sorry, potty training talk) rather than being absorbed into the blood stream like all you people with your fancy kidneys . Not a bad diagnosis at all...and here's why:

1. Provided that I keep taking my horsepills of magnesium and potassium twice a day, my levels should be high enough (though they'll probably never be in the "normal") to keep me feeling good and to keep any kidney scarring from occurring which could ultimately result in heart problems.

2. Potassium and magnesium pills only cost $5/month each. At least these aren't super expensive medications!

3. I feel GREAT when I'm on these medicines. Before I figured this out, I was sick all the time. My random bouts of nausea/vomiting ruined many a week. I remember holding back puke during my first Glamazon weekend while staring at a delicious plate of breakfast potatoes out at a restaurant one morning. I was sick the majority of the Britton/Jess trip in August. I forgot to take my magnesium a few days in a row and was laid up on the couch sick almost all of Christmas Eve. I'm excited about remembering to take these supplements every day and feel good from here on out.

4. I CAN PUT AS MUCH SALT ON ANYTHING I WANT! If you know anything about me, you know that I: 1) blow my nose with the frequency and fervor of a cocaine addict, and 2) salt the heck out of anything and everything I eat. It's sick, really. You don't even want to see the way I work that salt shaker when I have a margarita in front of me. It's just gross. But what can I say? I'm a salty chick. Well since it doesn't get absorbed by my body and I just pee it all out, my notoriously low blood pressure will stay low and my nephrologist says that I can put "pounds of salt" on my food and it'll never affect me. Oh heck yes. It's like a super power...and I promise to use it for good and not evil. Trust me, this little gift will not be lost on me. I'll take advantage of my sweet new power....or salty new power, whatever.

5. Gitelman Syndrome shouldn't affect baby making. And I'm told that my potassium and magnesium supplements are completely safe to take while pregnant. So John and I can now resume the, "Should we? Shouldn't we?" talks. Not sure when we'll start trying for #2 but it sure is nice to know that if we decide we're ready, we have the green light.

6. If I get stuck on a desert island, I can drink the ocean water and it will keep me alive. Sucks to be the rest of you who will be all like, "The salt! I'm so thirsty!" while I drink a giant gulp with a refreshing, "Mmmm! SALTY!!!"

7. I get to add yet another “rare disorder” to my laundry list of things wrong with me. I’m a rare gem, you guys. First my weird eye thing, then this? You’re lucky you even know me…I’m just so rare!

All in all, I’m a happy camper! When the doctor told me, “I have a diagnosis for you…” I was shaking in my boots. Just a 3 hour appointment and one blood draw later, I got to leave his office knowing that I had the green light on both baby making and salt shaking and that my broken bean organ shouldn’t cause me any serious problems in the future (aside from maybe requiring CPR after choking on my horse pills). And if any of you know anything about Gitelman Syndrome and want to tell me it’s not all sunshine and rainbows, just keep it to yourself. Me and my sodium intake are happy right where we are.

A Backyard Evolution or.. How to do a flagstone patio.. and some other stuff…

2012-02-01T04:00:00.000-08:00

When we moved into our house, I had my eye on the backyard. Molly has told me in the past that she gets to take care of the interior and I can have the backyard. Now, she’s not as excited about some of my proposals as others… for example, I’m not allowed to put in a fire pit. I guess that’s probably good though, because there’s nowhere that far away from our house… so I don’t want to start the house on fire.

Anyway, about a year ago, we began the evolution of the backyard. It began with planters.

This is the only “before” picture I really have of this area of the yard. Couple of things to notice… the fence on the left is falling down, the planters are in pieces and there’s not much grass. There’s just a lot of dirt and weeds.

Anyway, we got the planters done:

That’s the garden toward the end of the summer. Notice the weeds and lack of grass in this area.

Up next was fixing the nasty fence:

Then, it was the retaining wall..

Before..

After…

Notice again… the lack of grass.. and the extra dirt I brought out when building the wall.

Now on to the beef of the post.. and if you found us from Google because Molly made me say “How to build a flag stone patio” in the title, this is what you’re looking for..

Anyway, this is the before:

The first thing I did was measure the yard to check the square footage of the place. Then we went to the Stone and Soil yard. (They’re a big thing around here in these parts.) The guy there helped me figure out how much of everything we needed. Basically, what you need for this is decomposed granite and your choice of flagstone.

Our flagstone was an ashy color with rose/pink areas. Very nice.

The first step is to put down a layer of decomposed granite. Depending on where you live, you’ll need a deeper layer of granite. It doesn’t freeze here, so we didn’t need it that thick. Basically 2-3 inches deep. If we had to go deeper, we would’ve dug some of the top layer of soil off.

Looks better already! We also used a stamper to go through and compact the granite for a solid foundation.

We put some metal edging at the end of the yard where the water flows. Otherwise, the rock and the granite would slowly wash away.

Then comes the fun part, beginning with the edges, start laying out the stone. Use a rubber mallet, extra decomposed granite, and a level for this first border area to get the stones to lay flat.

(Bad picture alert.)

From there, you start laying the stones out. Leveling them with the decomposed granite as you go. The trick here is to consider two things. The first one is how the stone sits next to the other stones. You want to make sure they’re even so as to not create a tripping hazard. The second consideration is the flow of the water. Make sure you angle any slope away from the house and in a direction away from the center of the patio. The last thing you want is a puddle of water next to your foundation and a puddle of water sitting in the middle of the patio.

Then just keep laying out the rock. Then force your wife to come lay out the rock.

She really liked me right about then. I think I heard her mutter, “Stupid backyard” a couple times.

The next step you can skip, but if your gas meter is getting old and you smell natural gas, then you call the gas company. They send out guys who then have to rip up the patio you just got done putting down.

Best part about that though is not only do we have a nice new patio, but our gas meter is shiny and new as well. (We had a leak in the meter and one underground. It was minor, but we probably wouldn’t have smelled it if we weren’t out there working in that area of the yard.)

Now that the patio is down, you then throw decomposed granite on top of the rocks and start sweeping. The goal here is to get it in between the rocks. Just sweep and sweep until all the cracks are filled in.

Decomposed granite is nice because it will eventually harden when it dries out. It’s not concrete hard, but it’ll hold the stones in place.

There you have it!! The final step that I will do (not done yet) is to spread some concrete powder on the cracks. Just make sure you get the concrete without pebbles. It’s just the dust and then you spray it with light water and that will help solidify the decomposed granite even further.

Now, the side-by-side:

And the best part is my parents got me a small metal fire pit with a screen on top. That will go in the front there of the patio and we’ll enjoy some backyard fires.

Ten on Tuesday

2012-01-31T04:00:00.000-08:00

For more 10 on Tuesday Action… check out the coolest blog in the world.

1. What’s your variety of apple?
Granny Smith--I like 'em as tart as can be.

2. Do you prefer Long-English or Field cucumbers?
I have no idea. I guess I've only had "regular" cucumbers...so whichever ones those are are my favorite...but how would I know? They are the only kind I've ever had. As an aside, I LOVE cucumber tea sandwiches. I need a little girl so I can throw a tea party.

3. Tomatoes – Delicious or disgusting?
So so delicious. I eat them diced with a bit of celery salt, pepper, and romano cheese. I can eat an entire bowl full...

4. What’s one fruit or vegetable that you can’t stand and why is that?
I'm not a big fan of apples or oranges. Though when I was pregnant, I'd eat like 3 granny smith apples every day. I remember telling John, "I could eat nothing but these for the rest of my life!!!" Weird. But yeah, apples and oranges are generally too sweet for me.

5. What’s your favourite way to prepare veggies? (Grilled, boiled, roasted, sautéed, etc.)
Leafy greens like spinach: sauteed, Squash type veggies (zucchini, eggplant): grilled, cauliflower/broccoli, root veggies: roasted

6. Sweet potato pie: Love it or hate it?
Never had it. Willing to bed I'd hate it. I'm not a sweet potato kind of girl/

7. What’s your favourite “style” of French fry? Wedges, shoelace, curly, crinkle-cut or other?
Wedges or anything else that's really potato-y, kind of mushy. I love my dad's french fries: they are crispy on the outside and soft on the inside...but not "crunchy". To give you an idea, I'm a big fan of Bill Miller fries...which if you've had them, you know they are limp and squishy. I realize that's not for everyone but Yum! What's the point of eating them if they are so crispy that they may as well be thick cut potato chips? John and I "swap" so I get all his squishy ones and he gets all my crunchy ones.

8. What’s your favourite fruit-pie filling?
Rhubarb or something else not terribly sweet

9. When you were a kid did your parents make you sit at the table until all your veggies were eaten off your plate?
No, I don't think so...I don't remember that

10. Do you drink veggie & fruit juice blends (such as V8, etc.) or make them yourself?
No...but I do like V8

A Monday List

2012-01-30T04:00:00.000-08:00

1. To say that our weekend was exhausting would be an understatement. As a result, you’re getting a list instead of an actual post… not that I think anyone really cares what I put on this website.

2. The patio is in… (Read about it here..)We’re all so tired we can’t even see straight.

3. If someone doesn’t give me tips on how to deal with Megan and my sisters who have become absolutely obsessed with Vampire Diaries, I may lost my mind. Seriously, I can only handle someone looking at my glass of red wine and saying, “Mmm… I bet Stephan would like that.” so many times.

4. Have you entered the giveaway for free children’s books yet? If not, please do.

5. Have I mentioned that patio install was exhausting?

6. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Feven Fosts for Friday

2012-01-26T18:42:00.001-08:00

1. John's post was slightly incoherent yesterday. He was exhausted and frustrated. All you need to know is that I have the worst luck EVER with phones. They always break/suddenly start moving like molasses/lose signal ALL the time/etc. We thought my luck would turn when I got the fancy shmancy iPhone 4s. Nope. No change. So now I have none of the pictures/videos I took in the past year or so. So that's fun.

2. The video I wanted you to see is this one:

Proof that those Spanish books are working magic on my little guy. So if you haven't entered the giveaway for the 4 Susan Middleton Elya English/Spanish kid's books, be sure to do so by CLCKING HERE!! I’ll announce the winner on next week’s Feven Fosts.

3. We are resuming our "Search for a Church" this weekend. After 2 years of attending the same church and feeling like we still don't know a soul, we've decided to look elsewhere for a church home. While we LOVE the sermons at our current church, we've had such a hard time meeting people. We joined a Bible Study there in hopes of meeting people but it didn't work, we still felt alone and nobody ever talked to us. We have tried to reach out to the pastors and join Small Groups but the only ones we can find are during the day--and since I'm not a Stay at Home parent, we are out of luck. It's in a great community where people have grown up together and their parents went to high school/college together--this is fantastic for the people who are from that community but as an outsider, it is so terribly hard to "break in" and meet people. We don't want Jack to see that church is about going in, sitting through the service, and then leaving without talking to a single person. Luckily, we've had a good couple years--but it's tough to think about what would have happened if my eyes hadn't stabilized, if Jack hadn't been healthy, etc...the idea of not having a church community to support us like our beloved T!LC in Nebraska did is hard. We need that, we need a church family. So we've decided to start looking for a church that has great sermons and where we feel like people care whether we are there. Please wish us luck--I'm starting to feel really empty. Oh, and it'd also be nice if we could find one with a nursery that won't make me come get Jack just because he's crying. I NEED to listen to the sermon. It won't kill him to cry for an hour because he misses us, I promise. I mean, I'm REALLY fun to be around--most people cry when I leave...he'll get over it like everyone else does.

4. I am obsessed with painting my nails. I painted them at Glamazon weekend with Chelsea's fancy polishes/pens and I loved having some color on my nails--it looked so feminine. I painted them gray on Wednesday night (elephant skin, if you will) and I love that color too. My nails feel so much stronger with polish on and I find that I don't pick at them. If you know me, you know I'm a picker--I can't help myself! If my cuticles are dry, I have this insatiable need to pick at them. Sick, huh?

5. John and I don't have a "free" weekend until APRIL. APRIL, PEOPLE! I need ONE weekend where we just relax. I may lose my mind by the time April rolls around.

6. Did I tell you about the toaster thing John bought me? It's a breakfast sandwich maker/toaster. I now cannot leave the house in the AM without making a breakfast sandwich. I am obsessed.

7. I see my kidney doctor today to see if my levels have increased over the past few months of horse-pill taking. Cross your fingers!!!

8. I got a call from the day care yesterday afternoon that Jack had a nearly 102 degree temperature. The kid can’t get healthy for longer than a day at a time! If he still has a fever in the morning, I’ll have to stay home with him since apparently it’s frowned upon to bring a fevered child to daycare.

Son of a gun…

2012-01-26T04:00:00.000-08:00

Molly woke up around 11:30 asking me to help fill up a blog post for today and mentioned she took a good video of Jack talking. Videos of Jack are always awesome, so I was excited to see it.

Unfortunately, her phone was running out of space and I was tasked with fixing it. I think my most recent run-in with Apply is making me question whether I’m truly done with this closed off experience. There’s no better user experience than Apple for some of the simpler items, but just trying to manage pictures… pictures that we took and we own mind you is one of the most maddening things in the world.

She was out of space, so I began backing up her pictures on my computer. I removed the Photo Stream (which is probably one of the worst launched features in Apply history. I can’t delete a photo?). Then I go back into the phone and see:

Ummm… What’s “Other”? And why is “Other” taking 9.7GB on Molly’s phone. I looked around on the internet and the only solution to eliminate “Other” is to restore the phone completely. Wow. Just wow. For all of the “amazingness” of Apple, it astounds me how restrictive and dumb it can be.

I’m in the process of restoring right now, but that cute video of Jack appears to be gone. GONE. However, the picture Molly took of her fingernails survived. What? Huh?

Then the restore apparently made it forget that it was associated with Molly’s phone number. I think I could punch something right now.

Anyway, a simple request to free up some room on her phone by moving some photos off the phone and onto my computer has now turned into a case of some lost pictures/videos, the phone forgetting it’s number, a complete restore from scratch, and a lost couple hours for something that should be quite easy.

So, in conclusion, I will leave you with a light hearted lesson on why the comma before the word “and” is quite important.

Next time you see me, I could be walking around with an Android… or my old Motorola StarTac.

Libros, Libros EVERYWHERE!

2012-01-25T04:00:00.000-08:00

Okay, maybe not everywhere but on Considering Campbell, at least.

When we decided that we wanted to teach Jack Spanish, we bought a few "Used Book Lots" on eBay--just a bunch of random Spanish children's books for $5 or something like that. I can't remember whether "Say Hola to Spanish!" was in one of those lots or whether it was a gift. Nevertheless, it quickly became Jack's favorite book. The English/Spanish rhyming was catchy and Jack picked up on it almost immediately ("A dog is a perro, a cat is a gato, you drink from a vaso and eat from a plato!"). It's adorable to hear him call bread "pan" and open wide when I ask him to show me his dientes. One of my favorite things about the book is that there is a little glossary in the back that translates all the Spanish words used throughout the story. After Jack demanded to read "Español!" every night (even though it sounded much more like "Pan-OL!"), we decided to go online and see if we could find more books written by the author. We were in luck. The next day I ordered Say Hola to Spanish Otra Vez, Rubia and the Three Osos and a few other gems. Although I loved them all, Rubia and the Three Osos was probably my favorite of the lot. I just loved the retelling of Goldilocks and the Three Bears with the Spanish words thrown in and rhyming in a way that Jack remembered them later.

When we were looking for Spanish books at the beginning of our "Let's teach our Gringo Spanish!" quest, none of Susan's books came up in our search. It was sheer dumb luck that we ended up with the first one on our bookshelf. Now that we've fallen in love with her fun and effective way of teaching kids (and let's face it, adults too) a robust number of Spanish vocabulary words, I want to shout her praises from the rooftops. I am convinced that the rest of you will fall in love with her style too. And here's a little secret I found out: if you order her books directly from her shop, she sends it to you with an autograph inside the front cover. Umm....yes please! A few of the books on her site are only English so if you’re looking for the English/Spanish versions, be sure to make the right choice!

But you want more than just a link to purchase an autographed copy of the best books around, you say? Well, you're in luck. Because Susan Middleton Elya, being the peach she is, asked her publishers to send me 4 of her books to give away to you lovely folks!

What: Four of Susan Middleton Elya's English/Spanish rhyming books (a $55.00 value!!):
1) Rubia and the Three Osos The Campbell Favorite!! Jack likes to "Drink sopa!!!" and pretend to drink from the bowl of soup that Goldilocks brings to Baby Bear as a peace offering
2) Say Hola to Spanish at the Circus We don't have this one but we have Say Hola to Spanish (Jack’s favorite) and Say Hola to Spanish, Otra Vez which are both great
3) Bebe Goes Shopping Yep, we've got this one too....and Jack loves to show off his sweet Español Skills as we read it and he tells us everything he sees on the "shelves" of the grocery store
4) Bebe Goes to the Beach Don't have this one but we probably should. Nothing makes Jack happier than "Agua!" so an entire book about it? Yeah, gonna need to get on that.

Rules: Just leave a comment below and tell me what your favorite childhood book was. I'll use random.org to draw a winner at 6:00 PM CST on Thursday, February 2 so be sure to enter before then! The winner will be posted on Friday, February 3. And just to be sure that this giveaway and Susan's books get even more attention, if you tweet about this giveaway, leave me a 2nd comment telling me so (and your twitter name so I can verify---because, ya know, I'm a lawyer...I need evidence) and you'll be entered for a 2nd chance to win.

Note: I wasn't paid to write this post and I don’t know Susan Middleton Elya or any of her publishers. And frankly, I'd have written it even without the freebies to give away to you guys. I truly think that more people should know about her books because there's nothing neater than hearing your not-even-two-year-old ask you for "queso" on his "huevo" in the morning. Her writing style is very child-friendly yet still really reinforces the Spanish/English education. Really, all we do is read him one or two of her books each day and he's already picking up on it like a rockstar. So if you or anyone you know has/is expecting kiddos soon, enter this giveaway. And if you don't win, be sure to head over to her website to order a few of her libros---because who doesn’t want a bilingual kid? College scholarships, here we come!

Hitting “Refresh”

2012-01-24T02:26:00.000-08:00

By now, you may or may not have already heard about my weekend. Perhaps you follow me on Twitter and read the 6,000 tweets I sent over the course of this past weekend with the "Glamazon" hashtag. Or perhaps you already read the recaps over on Chelsea or Lauren's blogs. Or perhaps you don't have any idea what I'm talking about. Well, you're in luck...because I'm here to serve.

As you may recall, my dear friend Chelsea has been going through a bit of a tough time recently. If you read her blog, you have heard her talk about her friend Lucy (Looooocy). Lucy was Chelsea's high school bestie turned chiropractic miracle worker. A few weeks before Christmas, Lucy got really sick and no one could figure out why. After weeks of testing, they determined it was an aggressive form of colon cancer. Just a few short weeks later, she was gone. To say that Chelsea is/was destroyed would be an understatement. One of the wonderful things about Chelsea is that she loves. Hard. She is one of those people that makes you feel like you're the only friend she's ever had--she makes you feel like you matter, like you have worth, like you special--you are loved. And she doesn't just "make you feel" that way, she truly believes it. She loves her friends with such fervor and kindness. If you're her friend, you know what I mean. So yes, it would be tough for anyone to lose a friend. But for Chelsea? It was like losing part of who she was when Lucy died.

The Glamazons thought about Chelsea all the time during her heartache. We felt helpless not knowing how to serve our friend, unsure how to make her feel better. We knew that time would really be the only thing to ease Chelsea's pain but that wasn't good enough. This was our friend, we needed to be there for her. So after a few days of planning with some of the greatest girls on this side of the Pecos, a scheme was hatched. We may not know how to make Chelsea feel better but what we did know was that we were all going to be there for her--loving her and talking her through whatever it was that she needed from us--even if only for 48 hours.

Now don't get me wrong...Chelsea didn't need us. She has a family that supports the heck out of her, the kind of husband they make movies about (good movies, not some crappy Lifetime flick), and friends in Houston that love her to pieces. No, this weekend was for us. We needed our friend to know that she was loved. We needed to see her smile return to her face. We needed her to know that she was special and that it was OKAY to laugh again, to have a good time, and to go 3 seconds without crying. And we needed her to remember what it felt like to breathe.

Lauren showed up on Chelsea's doorstep on Friday afternoon. They laughed and cried and talked until Kelly walked in the door a couple hours later to continue the weekend of surprises. A few hours later, Kelly "left for the night" and came to pick me up at the Houston airport. We returned to the house where I banged on the door until Chelsea opened it to see her short San Antonio pal standing on her doorstep with a smile and a bottle of Choco Vine. Seeing Chelsea's surprised face as she literally leaned up against the hallway wall with a "What is happening?" look on her face before pulling me in tight for a bear hug was one of my favorite moments in life. Kelly jumped out from behind the door and yelled, "Surprise! I'm baaack!" We sat on the couch drinking wine and talking until a knock on the front door rounded out the Glamazon surprises. Lyndsey had finished her drive from Austin just in time to put the Glamazon icing on the cake as we all settled in for a weekend of food, laughter, conversation, and love. So. Much. Love.

We stayed up late chatting until Lauren and I fell asleep on the bedroom floor. On Saturday morning, we headed to the grocery store for supplies. I went in my PJs. Because clearly, when you are with a group of women who look like these beauties, it's always a good idea to go out in public with them at your absolute worst.

We came home and ate breakfast casserole, drank coffee, and seriously sat on the couch doing nothing but laughing and talking until 4 pm. We may or may not have also eaten our weight in my signature bruschetta & butter-fried baguette.

It felt like maybe 2 hours had passed when I looked down at my phone and realized we'd literally just been talking the entire day away. We decided that we should do something “productive” with our time together so we decided a trip to Goodwill was in order. Now I didn't want to show these ladies up with my knock-out kind of beauty so I decided to do them all a favor and not get all dolled up for Goodwill. Lauren, Kelly and Lyndsey, however, got ready for a night on the town...for a thrifting excursion. Chelsea and I stood there in our jeans while Lyndsey pulled on a little black dress, Kelly applied wedding-day caliber makeup, and Lauren pulled her hair up into an updo.

At one point Chelsea said, "I thought we were just going to Goodwill...?" We all did, Chelsea, we all did (as an aside, even Chelsea in her dirty hair still looked like a hottie…showoff). We eventually got the girls to finalize their beauty regimen and we headed for a quick trip out. Yeah, they may have all looked hotter than I did...but I felt like my three-sizes-too-big sweater and jeans fit in much better at Goodwill than their hot little getups. So there's that, right? We headed back to the house where we had drinks, Lauren taught me a few of her hair secrets (listen, you don't spend an entire weekend with friends who look like these girls and not demand that they teach you something about looking like them), we painted our nails with Chelsea's nail pens, and watched Kelly cook us up a gourmet meal.

After dinner, we sat on the couch and talked some more....because there's always more to talk about with these ladies. This time it was me and Kelly who fell asleep early. First I'm always the one who dresses like a frump and then I'm always the one who falls asleep? I better get with the program here or my Glamazon invites are going to start "getting lost in the mail."

On Sunday morning, we woke up and said goodbye to Kelly as she headed home. We ate Lyndsey's pancakes (how did I live my entire life cooking pancakes in anything other than butter?) and lamented the fact that the weekend was coming to a close. At 11, Lauren and I hugged the heck out of Lyndsey and Chelsea before heading to the airport where Lauren dropped me off after a bit more hugging. As I sat in the airport terminal, I just kept thinking of the love I felt over the previous two days and I couldn't wipe the goofy smile off my face. There are things about these girls. Things that I can't quite put into words...but there are things. They just make you feel good. It's saying something when you can spend a weekend with a room full of girls who could seriously pass for Barbie's human equivalent and leave with more confidence than you had walking in. Most girls would spend the weekend picking at their flaws and thinking, "I wish I had her eyelashes" or "Why can't I be taller?" but instead, I left with all sorts of compliments and uplifting messages being spoken straight into me. I came into work yesterday morning and was subjected to the barrage of cut-downs and insults--I just kept thinking, "I wish I could hang out with my skinny, supermodel friends again so I could feel good about myself." That's not the kind of thought most people would have. But like I said, these girls are different. Spending the weekend with them is like slipping into the comfort of that extra large, extra soft sweater I sported to our Goodwill Saturday night excursion. It is like curling up with a good cup of coffee in front of a warm fire. It is just comfortable. It is recharging. It is GOOD. God intends us to have friends who lift us up and make us feel loved and worthy. This weekend may have been planned with Chelsea in mind, with lifting her up and making her feel loved and valued. In truth, I left feeling those same things. I left feeling beautiful, loved, valued, and special. What a great weekend to honor the memory of Lucy, a girl who epitomized all of those things.

The date approaches…

2012-01-23T04:00:00.000-08:00

This is John.

(By the way, do you ever get confused and think I write most of the posts.. and you’re reading it in my voice, but it’s actually Molly. And you don’t figure it out until you reach a line where it’s like, “..then I went to get a manicure.” and you think, John gets a manicure? Then you realize it’s actually Molly writing.. Just wondering.)

Anyway, the date is approaching where we’ll begin work on our backyard. We went on Saturday and ordered the flagstone and the decomposed granite. We also got additional dirt for the planter, because apparently my dog like to dig it out.

We spent Sunday afternoon cleaning up the area. I dug out part of the fence gate so it could open all the way for the delivery of the goods.

In truth, I’m quite nervous.

I want it to look like that. It’ll be in the garden part of the yard.

That patio will go in this part of the yard:

Remember, I recently built a retaining wall as well:

The flagstone I got is a sandy color with red in it to go along with the red in our brick on the house.

We also just got an orange tree and a dwarf apple tree for this area as well.

Finally, I want to light it with some strands of light hanging between the fence and the house. I haven’t fully decided on this, but I’m thinking about it.

Something like this:

We’ll see on that.

Feven Fosts

2012-01-20T03:10:00.000-08:00

1) First of all: No, I am not pregnant. I haven't even gotten the green light from my doctors to start trying. However, I am thinking about it ALL THE TIME. My biggest development is how I will do my hair in pregnancy. Yep, that's a consideration. I clearly think too much about the little things. I've always had short hair (well, not always, but mostly always) but I decided I am going to grow out my hair while I'm pregnant just because I can—something like this:

Oh, did I forget to tell you that I’m besties with Clar-T? Sorry about that!

My hair looks better—fuller and whatnot—when I'm with child so I may as well take advantage of it with long, flowy locks. Then I plan to chop it way short when I have the baby sometime in 2013. I mean VERY short:

Yeah, it’s another Katie Holmes haircut. What of it? If I keep cutting my hair like her, maybe one day I’ll magically morph into looking like her too!

I've always wanted to get a super short cut but I'm afraid I won't like it. But think about it: 1) I want to try short hair while I'm still young so that it doesn't look like I'm getting the old lady hair cut in my middle age, 2) it I don't like it, who cares? I won't be back at work for 2 months--I'll let it grow out, 3) Short hair will be nice with a wee tot. With Jack, I had my hair up every single day. Super short hair is basically the same as having it pulled back. I'm excited to chop off all my hair post-baby. Oh yeah, I'm also excited for the baby. Oh yeah, I am also excited to be pregnant. Fast forward please!

2) Speaking of doctors, I am getting so fed up with all of this lab work/testing stuff. I had to do a 24 hour pee collection again last weekend. I know, I know. It's a glamourous life I lead. Anyway, I tried to do it last month and my doctor never called in the order so they refused to give me the collection jug (yes, I know how gross that sounds). Of course, then the doctor's office never picked up the phone when I called so I had to wait a month to do it. Trying to find a day where you can stay home for 24 hours is hard around the holidays. Anyway, so I finally did it on Saturday and I went to drop it off at the lab on Monday morning. First of all, they wouldn't just let me drop it off. I had to sit and wait for all the people in front of me to give their blood for their bloodwork. Then when they finally called me up, they had to find my orders--which they couldn't locate. She almost didn't let me drop it off and I was a bit frustrated, "What am I going to do with a jug of pee in my trunk all day? You have to take it!" She finally took it and called me about an hour later, "What is your date of birth? Your doctor's office said it was 1-25-1956 but you didn't look that old." Seriously, doc? First your office doesn't call in the order and when they finally do they get my age off by nearly 3 decades? Come on!!! I will be so happy when all of this testing crap is OVER. I am done with collecting my own "specimen", I am done with being a human pincushion, and I am done with craptastic and unresponsive doctors offices.

3) Jack's doctor's office, on the other hand, is fantastic. I just absolutely adore it. Just adore it. I have never seen such fanatical customer-focused support like we get at Acorn Pediatrics. The doctor is fantastic, the office staff is friendly and responsive, and the nurses are kind. I love that place. They make up for all the other crappy doctors offices in my life.

4) Jack has started saying "Please" and "Thank You" which makes it really difficult to tell him "no" in any circumstance. "Mommy, cuddle pees?" at night when I am about to put him into his crib...yeah, like I'm going to tell him no. "Cookie pees?" I know I shouldn't give him a cookie every time he asks...but I want to reward good manners! And when he says "Tank youuuu!" It's so cute!!!

5) If you haven’t seen this video yet, you should probably watch it:

6) I’ve started wearing lipstick. I’ve never been a lipstick girl but I’ve tried to make the commitment to wear it every day now that I routinely look in the mirror at work and think, “You look half asleep!” I think some color in the ol’ kisser should help me look like less of a zombie. I’ve been using that L’Oreal infallable lip stain stuff and so far, I’m a pretty big fan. I like not having to keep reapplying it.

7) Hope you have a great weekend!!

A Mouse Tale.

2012-01-19T03:00:00.000-08:00

Remember when John told you about Jack’s first sentence being, “Where are you Mouse?” Remember when I later told you that we had somehow misplaced/lost Jack’s beloved mouse? I knew that allowing my kid to fall in love with a tiny “lovely” like a stuffed mouse could be dangerous…mostly because it would be more difficult to locate than a big old teddy bear or something of the like. But what can you do? When it’s love, it’s love. And Jack loved him some stuffed mouse.

We planned to go to Round Rock for an IKEA adventure that pretty much just consisted of buying $10 worth of those 99 cent mice and keeping the spares in a drawer so that we never again had to listen to the heartbreaking sound of Jack looking all over the house saying, “Where are you Mouse??” but we just couldn’t bring ourselves to spend an entire day driving to/from the IKEA an hour and a half away…especially because John knows me…and he knows that I can’t control myself inside of IKEA and that we would be leaving there with much more than just $10 worth of merchandise and a tummy full of meatballs and lingonberry sauce.

So we held out and decided to see if he’d just forget about the stinkin’ mouse…spoiler alert: He didn’t.

Enter: Miss Marlena. My pal, Marlena, and I were emailing last week when she disclosed that she and her husband are regular shoppers at the good old Houston IKEA. Of course, I had to chime in with the most rational sentence she’s probably ever read: “OH MY GOSH! I SWEAR I WILL PAY YOU IF YOU PICK UP SOME STUFFED MICE FOR MY SON THE NEXT TIME YOU ARE THERE AND SHIP THEM TO ME!!!!” Girlfriend overlooked the crazy and responded with, “We’ll go tomorrow! Jack shall have his mice!”

A few days later, we received the package in the mail…of 7 stuffed mice all clinging to a jar of lingonberry jam. Carl and Marlena had positioned the mice all over that jar, one of them with its hands taped to the jar in an attempt to “pry it open” while another mouse gave his mouse buddy a lift to get higher on the jar. Ah, yes, Marlena too has a bit of crazy in her…no wonder she didn’t bat an eye when I asked her to ship me a bunch of stuffed mice. And no wonder we get along so well.

Jack was so happy when I let him open the box. He began tearing the mice right off the jar and saying, “Mouse?! MOUSE?!” over and over. He spent the rest of the evening gathering the mice in his arms and kissing them over and over while telling them all, “I wuv you Mouse!”

Of course, I thought it was adorable. Apparently my little sister had some concerns though:

I would say that I don’t know where my sister gets her strangeness…but then again, I’m the one who paid someone in another city to ship me stuffed mice. But hey, so long as Jack’s happy, momma’s happy…until those mice try to kill me, of course.

Single Mom.

2012-01-18T03:28:00.000-08:00

Y’all, I’m tired. I mean it, I am really tired. John went out of town on Friday and returned late last night. Megan left for a business trip first thing Monday morning so for the past two days it’s just been me, Jack and his ear infection. And I gotta tell you: I’m tuckered out. I don’t know how single parents do it.

Believe it or not, this was my first time here alone with Jack overnight. Yep, he’s nearly two and this is the first time he and I were alone together. John, of course, is an old pro. During my busy travel time, I’m gone for a total of a week or more each month. Johnny’s got this whole single parent thing down pat (even if some people think I leave Jack home alone) so I figured, “If John can do it, so can I! I’m the mom after all!”

John went out of town for a visit with his parents. I told Jack that Daddy went on a plane to Omaha to see Grandma and Granddad Soup (Campbell = Soup). He kept saying, “Daddy? Plane. Soup!” throughout the time John was gone. It was pretty darn adorable. What was not adorable, however, was the fact that Jack’s double ear infection/RSV combo had him up at 5:30 on Saturday morning and 3:30 on Sunday. By the time the Tylenol kicked in, he’d been up screaming for such a long time that he and I were both wide awake. He slept until a decent hour (6:30) the past two mornings but I had to be up at 5:50 to get ready for work so I couldn’t take advantage of it.

John’s got his hands full when I’m out of town—so I’m completely okay with it when I walk in from a business trip to find the house a bit less than sparkling clean. I understand that John’s got to handle the dog, feeding himself and our child, taking care of work issues at night, and then some. So really, I’m okay with a messy house so long as my husband and kid are happy. Unfortunately, I can’t take that same approach…

A few months ago, John and I took the “Strengths” class at Rackspace where I learned that I was a Maximizer. I never really put much thought into it until recently. A maximizer is categorized with the outlook that “excellence is only acceptable measure of success; focused on making the good into great.” When I first read that I thought, “Who isn’t a maximizer? Who wants to settle for less than the best? And then I thought, “That doesn’t describe me all the time anyway---I know that I can’t always be perfect, I’m not a maximizer!” Well, this weekend showed me that I was...at least when it comes to things that really don’t matter all that much. Goodness forbid I fall asleep when Jack did. Sure, I only got 4 hours of sleep last night but the bathroom needs to be cleaned! And now that I notice it, there’s dust on that bookshelf—this whole room needs dusting!The dishes must be washed! The laundry needs to be folded! And if I don’t write a blog post for tomorrow, I will lose my motivation and will never blog again!!! Now granted, this kind of crazy rears its ugly head when John is around too…but I have him there to tell me, “Go to bed! I’ll do the dishes!” or “That can wait, lay down!” Without him to reign in the nutso, I couldn’t fall asleep at night without making sure that Jack was not only fed and cared for but that the house was clean and everything was put in its proper place. And obviously, now was the time to take a couple hours to make a big batch of soup for the following night—goodness forbid I stray from our menu. Yep, I’m a maximizer alright…a maximizer of craziness.

John, being the rockstar husband he is, knew how ~~dumb I was being~~ hard I was working while he was having some much-deserved R&R with his parents. So he sent me these lovely flowers at work yesterday:

So bright and cheerful! Nobody would ever know the owner of such perky flowers was an exhausted dingbat!

By the way, I planned to come on here and just write “John was out of town this weekend/week and I’m tired. No post for you!” But instead it evolved into a long post about nothing. What can I say, the maximizer in me couldn’t handle just a sentence or two. Thank goodness John is home now…and you’ll be happy to know he came home to a clean home…and a wife curled on the bed rocking back and forth repeating, “I will not wash the windows tonight, I will not wash the windows tonight.” Ah yes, it’s good to have him home.

Happy Birthday Mommy!

2012-01-18T02:40:00.000-08:00

I love you more than words. Happy Birthday!!!

Feven Fosts, a Response

2012-01-17T04:50:00.001-08:00

John is a sweet guy, I think anyone who has met him would agree. He is a fantastic husband and father and he is always striving to make those around him happy. One way he does that is by doing blog posts if I am too tired/lazy/brain dead to write them myself. And even though he’s a great husband, he may not be the best blogger the interwebs have ever seen. Now, granted, he’s a good blogger when he wants to write the post…but when it’s a “Baby, I’m tiiiiiired. Will you pleeeeease write the blog for tomorrow?” situation, we usually end up with the kind of post we saw on Friday. I love you baby, but I have a few thing to say about that little gem of a post.

Hello All.. John here doing a little Feven Fosts Faction. This is where you know it’s going to be…interesting.
1. Did you know that Molly and I are going to go to New Orleans in February. I won't be giving you the exact dates, because I don't want you to rob our home. You do realize that we have a roommate, right? I mean, I think she’s capable of setting the alarm at night and keeping intruders at bay. Anyway, we super excited about visiting. I'd like to see some Hurricane damage, because I'm a nerd. Maybe you should say, “I’m weather nerd.” So that it doesn’t sound like all nerds want to look at devastating property damage. I also plan to eat some of the fluffy donut things. In fact, I plan to eat a lot of them and get powdered sugar all over the place. We got a nice hotel with a separate room for Jack and we're going to do a lot of walking a sight-seeing. We got a suite where Jack is in the “sitting room” within the suite…we didn’t get a whole different room in a hotel for him. Have you been to New Orleans? Do you have any suggestions for us? We're staying close to the French District and we probably won't rent a car... though we haven't completed decided on that. It is the French Quarter and the Garden District…not the French District. We’ll be staying near the French Quarter.
2. 30 Rock came back on the air last night. Molly and I have become HUGE 30 Rock fans. We were big fans before, but we've been watching it quite a bit lately. However, we didn't watch the premier. And now I'm going out of town, so she's promised that she won't watch it without me. So you don’t want anyone to know we are going out of town in February so that nobody robs us but you don’t care about people knowing that I’m home alone with Jack? At least you didn’t mention that Megan was out of town too! However, I don't think I believe her. I bet she'll watch it and she'll laugh at all the crazy antics. I didn’t watch it, for the record.
3. More than one person has told Molly that they remind her of Liz Lemon. You mean that I remind them of Liz Lemon, not they remind me of her. At first, you take that as a compliment, because she's pretty funny. Then you start thinking about what a lose Liz is and all of a sudden, it becomes an insult. What is a “lose” and why is Liz one of them? I still tell her that... I say she reminds me of the good parts of Liz Lemon. What are the good parts of Liz Lemon? Would that be the part that can’t find a man or the part that eats so many Mexican cheetos that she get a positive pregnancy test reading? She's really just a Tina Fey replica. And she did go as Sarah Palin one year for Halloween. No, I didn’t. You wanted me to go as Sarah Palin but I refused. Yet you still tell people I went as her one year…it never happened, kid. And frankly, as happy as I am to think about my Democrat husband liking a Republican, it’s kind of freaking me out how much you want me to “be” Sarah Palin…even for just one night.
4. Jack got another ear infection. Poor kid. Doctor says he needs to stay ear infection free through his first birthday or we'll have to go see an ENT to discuss tubes. His first birthday? Didn’t that happen last year? Isn’t he nearly two years old? Needless to say, we'll need to have a sit down with him to discuss the necessity of him not getting sick. He's a trooper though and we didn't have any "coffee" incidents this time around... he just tugged at his ear a couple time and said, "Ear... hurt...." You spoke too soon. He screamed for hours 3 mornings straight…he woke up at 5:30 on Saturday and 3:30 on Sunday just inconsolable from the pain.
5. Speaking of Jack.. he's really starting to string words together and it's a lot of fun deciphering what he sees. He recently started saying, "why wuv youuuu"... he'll string please to some sentences. He'll tell stuff bye, "Bye Milk" (When we leave in the morning and his milk isn't all gone). Anyway, it's adorable and I'm pretty sure he's the smartest kid alive. Okay, hard to argue with that one.
Feven = Five. John = Funny. Love you, kid….even if you do write incoherent posts sometimes. xoxo

On The Sister Wife

2012-01-16T03:36:00.000-08:00

So apparently I have some new readers. I have received more than one, "Okay, now WHO is Megan?" tweets/emails/comments. So in an effort to clear it up for you newbies, Megan is my sister wife. No, not in a "John's one lucky SOB" way. In a "My best friend just moved here from Chicago and she's living with us for a little bit because a) who doesn't want a live-in bestie, b) she's awesome, c) she cooks glorious meals for us, d) she dogsits when we travel, e) she babysits my son for free, f) she too has law school loans up the wazoo so she's saving some benjis by living with us until I pop out Campbell #4 and her room becomes Jack's Big Boy Room." So yeah: Sister Wife = Law School Bestie Living In Our House. Across The Hall. Not Some Polygamous Marriage Thing.

So there ya go. Now you know Meggie. And one thing you should know about Megan: she may or may not have the best sense of humor of anyone I've ever met. Seriously. Girlfriend makes us feel like we're the funniest people in the world. So anyone who has to listen to John's lame jokes or read my crappy posts because Megan convinces us both that we are the next Tosh.0/Tina Fey can just get mad at the Megster for giving us these delusional thoughts of comedy grandeur. For example, last week I bought some new spoons/ladles/etc. for my "utensil holder" thing on my counter. Our kitchen is yellow & blue and they had all these bright yellow utensils on sale for $1 each. I decided to toss my mismatched ones since the yellow would look pretty on my counter. When I told Megan that I was bummed out that I couldn’t find a yellow ladle to match my new utensils, John chimed in, “Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll find one a little ladle on.”(get it, a little later? Ladle?) I don't know if I've ever seen Megan laugh so hard. And John keeps using the same joke over and over and Megan keeps having the "I'm laughing so hard I can't breathe" reaction. So yeah, it's her fault that we both think we're hilarious.

But that brings me back to the point: remember this post where I talk about Megan being a bit of a hoarder? Ya know the one where I made her sound like a bag lady with 12 cats in her Big Lots cart she pushes around town digging through town to various dumpsters for her "treasure hunts"? Yeah, it may have been a bit overboard. You see, Megan is actually the cleaner in the family (Yep, she's in the family now. Sister wives have a way of worming their way into your hearts). A few weeks ago, we came home from Happy Hour with Raphaelle to find the kitchen spotless. Megan had deep cleaned the entire kitchen. She often will randomly clean the floors. On Saturday, I came out of my room from a nap with Jack to find her dusting the living room. My little Cinderella is actually quite tidy. She just hates to see a good Reindeer Stocking Holder to go waste. Is that such a crime? And, in her defense, her room is actually quite nice…aside from that whole broken desk thing (Megan, don't fight me on that one. You know it's true.). But apparently my "Megan is a homeless bag lady!!!" post didn't go over as intended—my Dad emailed me the morning I posted that and essentially said I was a terrible person and Megan wouldn’t ever speak to me again once she read it. I immediately texted her to see if she was, in fact, angry about the post. She didn’t respond…nope, no response. Obviously, she was livid at me, screaming at me from across town, "YOU MADE ME SOUND LIKE A FREAKSHOW!!!" Truth be told, she was in a meeting so that’s why she didn’t respond to my text…not because she was mad at me (which she wasn’t—another reason why it’s nice to have her around…I’m told that most girls would give the old silent treatment if you tell all of the interwebs that she resembles the cat lady spotted at Walmart last week). But truth be told, I rely on her. If she's irked at me, I can't survive. So even though she wasn’t miffed about the post where I made her sound like a bag lady, I figure it’s a good idea to make a public apology for giving the impression to all 12 of my readers that my roommate may or may not be on the next episode of Hoarders. After all, I can’t go having her mad at me. Exhibit A:

Really, how am I supposed to know how to behave in a visible spanx situation without my bestie?

So, in an effort to make a public apology for making her sound like the freakshow she is not, I give you this: a listing of all my weirdness. Okay, all the weirdness I can come up with off the top of my head. Trust me, there’s plenty more weirdness where this came from.

1. I eat cocktail onions straight out of the jar. And then I have cocktail onion breath for the rest of the day. And I will refuse to chew gum because I don't want to "lose the taste" of the onion. No joke.

2. I once told the assistant at work that we couldn't get a W-8 to process a check for one of our vendors in Puerto Rico because "it's a different country, Leah. They don't have W-8s there." She then looked at me, the attorney, and informed me, "It's a US territory, Molly." And then I was the least-respected attorney in all the land.

3. In 6th grade, a kid in my class convinced everyone to call me "Stinky". This may be related to #1.

4. I wore the same yellow turtleneck every day in 7th grade. I would wear it under a button up one day, under a T-shirt the next, by itself the next day. It was terrible. This may also relate to why I was referred to as "Stinky"

5. See “my legs are pasty white and hairy” above

It’s funny how when you live your life, you always think “I’m such a weirdo!” and then when you sit down and try to write out all those weird quirks, nothing comes to you. Don’t worry about it though, I am sure Megan will be texting me right after she reads this post with plenty of reminders about some of my more interesting “Mollyisms.” Heck, I am sure all my siblings will be reminding me as well. I’ll take those texts all day long…ya know, so long as I get respond texts when I have a question about how to hide my spanx.

Feven Fosts for Friday

2012-01-13T05:00:00.000-08:00

Hello All.. John here doing a little Feven Fosts Faction.

1. Did you know that Molly and I are going to go to New Orleans in February. I won't be giving you the exact dates, because I don't want you to rob our home. Anyway, we super excited about visiting. I'd like to see some Hurricane damage, because I'm a nerd. I also plan to eat some of the fluffy donut things. In fact, I plan to eat a lot of them and get powdered sugar all over the place. We got a nice hotel with a separate room for Jack and we're going to do a lot of walking a sight-seeing. Have you been to New Orleans? Do you have any suggestions for us? We're staying close to the French District and we probably won't rent a car... though we haven't completed decided on that.

2. 30 Rock came back on the air last night. Molly and I have become HUGE 30 Rock fans. We were big fans before, but we've been watching it quite a bit lately. However, we didn't watch the premier. And now I'm going out of town, so she's promised that she won't watch it without me. However, I don't think I believe her. I bet she'll watch it and she'll laugh at all the crazy antics.

3. More than one person has told Molly that they remind her of Liz Lemon. At first, you take that as a compliment, because she's pretty funny. Then you start thinking about what a lose Liz is and all of a sudden, it becomes an insult. I still tell her that... I say she reminds me of the good parts of Liz Lemon. She's really just a Tina Fey replica. And she did go as Sarah Palin one year for Halloween.

4. Jack got another ear infection. Poor kid. Doctor says he needs to stay ear infection free through his first birthday or we'll have to go see an ENT to discuss tubes. Needless to say, we'll need to have a sit down with him to discuss the necessity of him not getting sick. He's a trooper though and we didn't have any "coffee" incidents this time around... he just tugged at his ear a couple time and said, "Ear... hurt...."

5. Speaking of Jack.. he's really starting to string words together and it's a lot of fun deciphering what he sees. He recently started saying, "why wuv youuuu"... he'll string please to some sentences. He'll tell stuff bye, "Bye Milk" (When we leave in the morning and his milk isn't all gone). Anyway, it's adorable and I'm pretty sure he's the smartest kid alive.

Feven = Five.

Hoarders: The Campbell Edition

2012-01-12T03:41:00.000-08:00

This post has been a long time coming. Megan has been making fun of me ever since she moved in about my crazy hoarding tendencies. Truth be told, I’m not a hoarder at all. Clutter drives me batty and I routinely piss John off by asking him to get rid of some of the random crap he has sitting around “for nostalgia’s sake.” I once almost threw out a box of old baseball cards because, “I’ve never even seen him open this box! Why do we need it sitting in our closet? They are like 20 years old, none of these guys even play baseball anymore!” Thank God I told my sister my plan to purge them and she saved my from making that mistake…and from John either killing or divorcing me. So no, I am most certainly not a hoarder. I am, however, a bit of a saver…so long as it saves me some money.

You all have seen how I save money on groceries through little tactics like using meat twice for different meals, etc. Well, I may “double up” on other things in my life too if it saves a coin or two. For example, a few months ago Megan walked out to the living room and I was organizing my “wrapping paper” tub—smoothing out all the tissue paper and folding the gift bags nicely and placing them in an orderly fashion back into the tub. When Megan realized that I save all bags/tissue paper and reuse them, she about had a fit. “Molly! You are an ATTORNEY! You can afford to buy $2 worth of tissue paper!” I, of course, told her that anyone who would buy brand new tissue paper was crazy. “Megan! I just smooth it out and people are none the wiser! And besides nobody actually buys tissue paper! Everyone reuses it!” She informed me that I was crazy and trashy and that she felt sorry for anyone who received a present from me. I briefly considered chucking my slightly-worn, sometimes-torn tissue paper/gift bag arsenal for something a bit more….new…until I realized that that would cost me money—and in the past 5+ years of marriage, John has sucked me into his frugal ways. Reused wrapping supplies it was!

The other day, I was unloading the dishwasher when I realized that there were straws in the silverware basket. I opened the drawer where we keep our straws thinking that we must be out if John or Megan thought it necessary to wash/reuse straws. Nope, the drawer had at least a bajillion more colorful straws staring back at me. I threw away the washed straws and thought nothing of it—I figured someone just accidentally put them in the dishwasher when loading the cup in which it was sitting. Then it happened again. And again. Every time I would unload the dishwasher, I’d come across more straws. I finally asked Megan what the heck she was washing straws for and she replied, “Why wouldn’t you?” Seriously? “Why would you? We have about a million of them in the drawer!” Megan replied that “it is a waste” to throw them away when they are easily washable. I promptly reminded her that a) that’s gross because straws are all narrow and whatnot and I bet they don’t get totally clean anyway and b) they cost like $2 for 600—and we have approximately $15 worth of straws in our kitchen drawer. I then told her, “I can’t believe you make fun of me for reusing gift bags and tissue paper when you reuse straws!”

But it doesn’t stop there. Megan gets legitimately angry if I throw anything out without first running it by her. You guys should see her bedroom. She took a rickety old bookshelf that we were going to put out by the curb because she couldn’t dare to cope with the fact that a quality (?) bookshelf would be going to waste…never mind the fact that her room is already super crowded due to the fact that she refused to part with her oversized desk…that she paid $20 for…even though it had 2 broken, crooked drawers (note: it had to have cost her more than $20 in moving fees to move that behemoth). Yep, so now her tiny room holds 2 nightstands, a dresser, a giant broken desk, a chair, and a on-its-last-leg bookshelf. Makes perfect sense. When we were planning to donate our too-small duvet (we bought the exact same one in a king size v. the queen that didn’t cover the whole mattress) but nope, now we have a matching bedspread with our neighbor across the hall. And let’s not even get started on the Christmas decorations I decided I didn’t need anymore. Oh, and those old plastic serving spoons/forks I decided to replace? Well, obviously Megan needs them!!! Never mind the fact that she lives with her best friend…who cooks all the time and has plenty of cooking utensils should Megan need them. Nah, she’ll just store these puppies in her bedroom. On her bookshelf. Next to the reindeer stocking hangers. Let’s just say that Megan’s room is like a used furniture store meets Christmas in freaking July. I’m sure there are a couple gently-used straws in there somewhere too.

But yeah, I’m weird for keeping tissue paper.

(belated) Holiday Greetings

2012-01-11T03:38:00.000-08:00

Since John wrote our “holiday letter” yesterday, I thought I’d share what our Christmas greetings actually looked like (except with handwritten notes instead of the computer script you see below).

Megan didn’t want to be left out though. And since she doesn’t yet have a family of her own, she decided to send out a special greeting from her…and her sister wife & family:

For Christmas, Megan gave us custom cute little return address labels. When she was sending out her Christmas cards, I noticed that she “borrowed” some of the return address labels…and added a little extra “creepy” factor in there:

And, of course, no Christmas card post would be complete without a hat tip to my baby sister, the queen of all Holiday cards. You may remember her Christmas card from last year:

This year she decided to expand her Christmas booze party to her “family” as well. You know, all her stuffed animal children.

Ah yes, the true spirit of Christmas!

Our Belated Christmas Letter

2012-01-10T04:00:00.000-08:00

This is John. Molly and I are not big into writing a Christmas letter, so I thought I would write one for the blog.

This year has been a bit full of ups and downs. January was quite the interesting one as we got less than stellar news on Molly’s eyes. The doctor said she could very well end up like Mr. Magoo, except female and not old. We spent the first part of the year going to a lot of doctors, we almost ended up going to California to have some crazy theoretical surgery done, and got very frustrated in the fact that doctors can’t talk to each other. We decided against the surgery when every doctor we talked to except one said we’d be crazy to do it. After the initial craziness, things got better because her eyes stabilized.

Jack entered the year, not even one year old and then he turned one in March. It’s been pretty amazing watching him grow. He’s been talking a lot about agua this year. We’ve also had a lot of discussions about boats, trucks, and cars. It’s very boy.

I got a new job at our company in March and then just got a new one again. We move around a lot in this company, but I absolutely love it. I’m doing some exciting work right now.

Well, I’ve written three paragraphs and now I realize why we don’t write Christmas letters. I’ve gotten through three paragraphs… and I don’t know what else to write about… and while we write about ourselves all the time on the blog dedicated to ourselves I’m having a tough time continuing this.

Let’s try something different…

Earlier this year, we discovered Molly’s eyes were from an alien known as Gartas. It’s made her eyes super and now she can see a million miles and read small lines in a book. It’s pretty crazy and crazily incredible.

Jack turned 1. It’s amazing how much he’s advanced over the past 12 months. It’s exciting because he’s become the youngest person to perform a quadruple bypass surgery on a mouse. Last night we all had a good laugh when he correctly solved a calculus equation without using his graphing calculator.

I recently was promoted to a Super Senior Vice President at Rackspace in charge of Toilet Cleaning. It’s very prestigious. It also came with a huge raise of about 3 Bajillion dollars. We donated most of the money to charities across the entire world. We’re really quite wonderful individuals.

Truman recently won a Dog Show competition. It was a pretty amazing experience to see him up there and the crowds cheering. It truly was wonderful.

Well, it’s been a great year for the Campbells. I hope it’s a good 2012.

Let’s Go to the Theater!

2012-01-09T03:43:00.000-08:00

When I was just a young lass of 10 or so, my dad brought me to New York along with my mom for one of his business trips. While we were there, we went to see Les Miserables on Broadway. I don’t actually remember much from the show except for leaning forward to put my head in my hands and my elbows on my knees in amazement. What I really remember is forcing my dad to buy me the two part soundtrack and blasting it pretty much every moment I was home for the next 2 years straight. I played the soundtrack so frequently that not only did I memorize every word to the three hour show, so did most of my siblings. As I sat in my room singing “Stars” at the top of my lungs while my sisters plotted my death, the magic of that show secretly snuck into the hearts of my siblings as well.

One of my first jobs was babysitting on Friday nights for meetings at the church down the street. Because I was only about 12, my older brother was my co-worker. We would get paid $2 per kid for 2 hours of babysitting while the parents met for various Friday night activities. We usually left with about $10-15 each, just enough to cover the drive-through Arby’s my brother would treat us to on the way home and some extra cash for the pop machine at school during the week. There was a 2 week stint where Willy and I were unavailable for our normal gig so we called the woman who set us up with the job to let her know that we’d be gone on vacation for 2 weeks so she needed to find a substitute. We came back 3 weeks later to learn that she never told anyone and they thought we’d just quit so they’d replaced us. And I officially lost my first job. What I remember most from that job (before we got fired and everything) was the “shows” Willy and I would put on. We would have about 15 kids, ranging in ages from 3 months to 10 years, and throughout the night, Willy and I would just break into songs. And, of course, the only songs we knew all the words to were the result of me blaring that Les Miserables CD at the top of my radio volume all day long. The kids would seriously sit on the floor as Willy and I would march around the room belting, “Dooo you hear the people siiiing? Singing the songs of angry meeeen!” It got to the point where certain of the “regular” kids would start asking for us to do the “concert” as soon as they walked through the door. I always wonder what those parents must have thought if any of them came to check on their kids the same way I check on Jack in the church nursery every 10 minutes. I can only imagine what I would think if I saw his babysitters marching in place while singing Broadway show tunes. I can tell you that, for one thing, I wouldn’t have thought that that gangly boy singing next to his sister would have grown up to have a hot wife and 2 kids (sorry Willy!).

Anyway, it’s been a long time since I’ve embraced my love of all things Les Mis. A few months ago, John and I were watching TV and we saw the ensemble from the show on some news program advertising that the musical would be traveling the country in 2012. Of course, I immediately told John that we needed to find out whether it would be coming to San Antonio. On Friday night, we went to the Broadway Across America presentation of Les Miserables in San Antonio. I went with my brother-in-law, two sisters, my sister wife, and my husband. Austin (other brother-in-law) watched Brady & Jack while John and I were real adults…at the theater! I got dressed up, smeared some lipstick on, and pretended that my Friday nights always involve things like the theater…and never ever involve changing diapers or falling asleep on the couch at 8 pm with a half full glass of red wine on the coffee table next to me. I was so excited about having an elegant night out. I even gave myself a pep talk to turn my phone off—even though I had left Jack for the night and may or may not be the most paranoid person on the face of the earth. As they announced, “Please turn off all cellular telephones” I got a pit in my stomach but pushed it away because this was the theater after all and I needed to be fancy. We were in fantastic seats thanks to my parents’ generosity in letting their kids have a nice night out and so I knew I needed to be high class like the people next to me. The curtain rose and I immediately started singing along in my head. Every single word came flowing back to me. I was excited that I was seeing the show again and that this time, I was with my handsome husband amongst the beautiful ones of San Antonio. I enjoyed the show for the next 30 minutes or so when all of a sudden, a strong blue glow appeared. I looked over at the woman next to me and saw that the fancy middle-aged lady in the beautiful dress next to me was enjoying the night alright….and was updating everyone about how much she enjoyed it on Facebook. Yep, Facebook. Lady friend spent the next 20 minutes updating her status, checking her newsfeed, and responding to messages. Keep in mind that this was a very dark theater, she couldn’t have possibly thought she was being discrete. Yet she carried on. Her husband left about 3 times to bring her more wine. At one point, he stepped on one of the empty plastic glasses and a giant CRACKLE CRACKLE CRAAACK! noise rang through the auditorium. I was in shock that this woman was sitting in some of the most expensive seats in the Majestic and was getting drunk and taking care of her social media business during the show. I tried to focus on the music and the storyline—during many of the songs, I would giggle thinking about Willy and I in front of those kids and how terribly strange we were. At intermission, I told my family all about how crazy it was that this woman was on Facebook the whole time. They all agreed that it would seem weird for anyone, but was especially strange considering how much money she paid to sit where she was. The show began again and, I kid you not, her husband began talking to her…at a regular, outdoor voice volume. They talked about everything from the costumes on stage (“I love her dress!”) to the actors (“I bet you a million dollars that every guy on stage is gay”) to their dinner (“The steak isn’t sitting right”). The ladies in front of them kept turning around and giving them looks, John and I kept doing the “Seriously?” head cock, I even heard someone say “Shhh!” but they continued drinking, talking, and tweeting. By the end of the show, I felt like the fanciest woman on earth---what with my ability to refrain from pulling out my iPhone when it was clearly socially acceptable to do so anyway. As the woman walked away with her husband, I thought of the little girl who saw Les Mis for the first time under the bright lights of the Big Apple. Oh if only that girl knew that one day, she’d be seated at the very same show next to the upper echelons of San Antonio elite.

Overall, it was a fantastic night. The show was so wonderful and I loved remembering how ridiculously obsessed I once was with the show (did I forget to mention that I would wear my Les Mis t-shirt no less than once a week throughout middle school?). I can’t wait to one day take my kids to see the show that I loved so much growing up. It’s just too bad I have to wait until they can truly appreciate it and can sit still and quiet for a full three hours. Then again, if the lady next to me on Friday was any example, Jack is probably ready for the theater right now.

Feven Fosts

2012-01-06T03:37:00.000-08:00

I know that you guys know my friend, Chelsea. If you can, please head over to her blog today and send her some love. She lost a very good friend of hers yesterday and I know her heart is just crushed. I cannot imagine what she is going through and I hope I never have to. But I do know that we can all let her know how many people are thinking of and loving her through her heartache.

1. Did I tell you I saw Raphaelle when she was in town for Christmas? No? Well that was dumb of me. Because I did. Just like in High School, she's way classier than I will ever be....but she still was nice to the "geek girl" and let me hang out with her and pretend like I was in with the cool kids. If you don't read her blog, you really should. She's snarky...so I automatically like her.

Jack and Olivier giving each other the look little boys give one another,

“Yo, you wanna practice some MMA moves later?”

2. When Raphaelle was here, we went to COCO Lounge. Okay, have any of you San Antonio-ites been here? Seriously, I went with her and was already back the next week for Happy Hour with my coworkers. And I tried to go again last night but it was closed for renovations—they are making some tweaks to their menu…which is already amazing and I can’t imagine it being any better. The Happy Hour menu is fantastic! And the food/drinks are all smashing. Get there if you haven't already--I always figured it was a bunch of fruity drinks since its "COCO Chocolate Lounge and Bistro". Nope, they make a mean dirty gin martini. And while they have plenty of froo-froo stuff too, they have a solid menu and plenty of old man drinks. Because if you know me at all, you know I like 3 things straight up old man: my dad, my kid's clothing, and my alcoholic beverages.

3. Jack has started saying "Wuv You." On a completely related note, I melt about 10 times a day now.

4. This and last week have just been the longest weeks ever. Last week, NOBODY was in the office. It was nice to have a low stress week but it was so hard to focus when I knew that everyone else was sleeping in and enjoying time with their family. This week, most everyone is back but it is still just hard to focus. Call it the first week back from break loonies? I cannot imagine how I'll be climbing the walls next week in my first 5-day work week. Sheesh!

5. Did you see the video of Jack with his mouse yesterday? It's his little lovey--he has a fit if he doesn't have his mouse and his agua at night time. Well, bad news, friends: the mouse is nowhere to be found. Last week during our "wash all of his stuff every.single.day" germophobe craziness, the mouse was misplaced. We can't find it anywhere and hearing Jack say, "Where are you, Mouse?" without being able to provide his little rodent pal is a bit much on the ol' heart strings. We are either going to have to make the 2 hour drive to Round Rock this weekend to pick up a few more of these $.99 little white mice from IKEA or I'll end up begging my Houston readers to help a sister (and a sweet little boy) out. Had I known that he'd love that mouse so much, I'd have bought 12 when we bought the one a couple months ago. Dangit!

6. Do any of you guys read Bower Power? If not, please just head over and read her post yesterday. She’s this adorably cute and thin girl who went and posted a picture of herself, belly hanging out (and pushed out to the max while wearing super tight jeans) all for the sake of a good laugh. That woman should be cheered by all womankind.

7. We’ve knocked a few things off our home to-do list recently. Notably, we now have a frame wall and a sprinkler system. Oh, we also got a new duvet cover. So now we only have one thing left on our to do list: clean up the backyard/extend the patio. Yay for progress! Add to the list the fact that John needs to finish painting the side of the house that his dad started. Believe it or not, it’s been rainy nearly every weekend since Bob left so the possibility of John doing it has been slim to none. So there ya go: PROGRESS on our home list. Only two more things: 1) Paint House, 2) Patio extension.

8. Oh, but I’ve started planning Jack’s Big Boy room. It’s still like a year away but I’m so excited to do it when he’s ready to move up to a big boy bed (we are not in ANY hurry to get him out of his baby jail…er…I mean, his crib).

9. Happy Epiphany!!!

A Den of Germs

2012-01-05T04:00:00.000-08:00

We all knew it when Jack signed up for daycare that it would mean some more sickness. He spent his entire life up to that point with his nanny and rarely interacting with other kids. He’d see his cousin as a baby…

And while Brady didn’t enjoy the visits, Jack did.

Well, now that Jack is at daycare, he’s learning a lot… he said his first sentence the other day… “Where are you mouse?”

Well, Jack has been dealing with quite a few colds in his daycare time. In fact, the first week of daycare he got a runny nose. Ever since then we’ve had a few ear infections… In fact, the doctor says he shouldn’t get another one or we’ll have to go check with an ENT to make sure things are all kosher up there.

Then last week, there was a sign on the door of his classroom saying RSV had infected one of the kids and we all needed to take precautions. Molly and I, naturally, freaked out and began tactics to prevent him from getting it. We washed his clothes every day… stripping him the moment he walked in the house. We took his blankets home each night to clean. We washed his hands like crazy.

Then… he got RSV.

Then… I got RSV.

Then… Molly got RSV.

Then… Megan got RSV.

Figures. They say RSV isn’t that bad for adults and doesn’t last long. So it isn’t too bad.. but there’s a lot of sore throats and a lot of runny noses around here.

Jack is feeling better and we’re all on the mend. We’re all just waiting for the next cold coming our way in the next couple of weeks. It’s good for him though in the end as it builds up his immunity and he’s such an awesome little guy… he has to be REALLY sick for him to act like he’s not feeling well (we all remember the coffee incident).

Here’s to a healthy 2012… healthier than the first 4 days.

Christmas Photo Purge

2012-01-04T03:10:00.000-08:00

We took a decent number of photos over the holiday season. Except, of course, on the actual Christmas day. I know, I know, it makes perfect sense to take 10 pictures on the ACTUAL day and about 500 leading up to it. Whatever.

Rackspace Christmas. Jack did way better this year…mostly because in the picture where he’s looking at Santa, he’s actually looking at the giant slide behind Santa that I promised him he’d go down if he didn’t cry on Santa’s lap. Good listening...please keep that same character trait when you are 16 and I tell you not to get into the car with that crazy Seth down the street because his parents don’t chaperone his parties and for all I know he’s got Zima in the glovebox.

Then there was the Winter Wonderland at Cabela’s with Brady, Browyn and Austin

Then we had Christmas with Megan before she went home to Iowa for the Holidays.

Clearly, she was thrilled to be celebrating with the Campbells

Bridget was in town from Virginia. She and her bestie (AKA my husband) had some quality time together. What? Your sister doesn’t pretend to smooch your husband? Hmm…sounds like you’re not as comfortable in your marriage/sisterness as I am.

First she steals my husband…

Then she takes me Meggies…

Megan found her way to John’s heart: through an authentic Moscow Mule copper cup!

And all the fixin’s for a fine Mexican Mule, of course.

She also found her way to my heart: through cocktail onions

And to Jack’s: old man clothes!

Then came the part of the holidays where Jack discovers that opening presents with your teeth is really the only way to get traction

And finally, of course, was the photosession where Jack decided to ham it up. Big time. Yes, Baby Gap, he’s available for bookings.

Merry Christmas, everyone! We hope that the celebration of Christ’s wonderful birth brought you as much joy and happiness as it brought the two of us and our little family!!

Ten on Tuesday

2012-01-03T03:22:00.000-08:00

1. What did you get for Christmas? A wok, a jewelry box, a garden stone made by Jack & my mom, a gift card to my favorite restaurant, cocktail onions, a personalized tree skirt (we've always just used scrap fabric), and some other fun things I can't think of off the top of my head
2. Have you taken down your Christmas decorations? Yep, we thought we were spending NYE at my parents' lake house so we took them down the day after Christmas. We ended up staying in town which means we could have waited to take them down until New Years Day like we usually do. Oh well, it's nice to have everything back in order.
3. What did you do for New Years Eve? See yesterday's post
4. Do you like accents? Yes. Except Megan's British accent. It's really bad.
5. What kind of television do you have? A Westinghouse 47 inch that we scored from Target at midnight on black friday for under $300
6. Did you make any changes at the beginning of 2012? Nope.
7. What’s the last book you read and do you recommend it? It's been a long time since I've read a book. Probably Heaven is For Real. And yes, I'd recommend it.
8. Do you stay current on celebrity gossip? Not at all
9. Do you know the words to Bohemian Rhapsody? Gangstas Paradise? Fresh Prince of Bel-Air? Yes to the last two.
10. What is your favorite education television show? Probably Sesame Street because my kid sometimes will watch it for 10 minutes before he gets bored. That's 10 minutes longer than anything else...except "boat fails". Yeah, my kid likes YouTube videos of board crashing. All boy, that one.

Kicking 2012 Off Right. That or Just Kicking 2012.

2012-01-02T06:13:00.001-08:00

As always, the McCartney clan got together for New Year’s Eve this year…or rather, last year. Growing up, my parents never felt like shelling out big bucks for a NYE sitter for their 5 kids. As a result, our NYE was born: we eat a ton of food (it used to be a new course every hour but it’s kind of turned into “stuff yourself as much as possible at the beginning of the night and then graze the rest of the night”), play board games, watch movies/sports, throw confetti and do those confetti poppers at midnight while drinking champagne. It’s nice and laid back—just the kind of NYE I like. And now that we have our own kid, we too don’t have to worry about a babysitter. I’ve only spent one NYE away from this tradition. Even on the years where I was in Nebraska and would miss Christmas or the other holidays with my parents, I’d always make it back for NYE. The one year I didn’t get home was really fun…I hung out with my dear friend Allison and a few other pals all night at one of those “fancy” bowling alleys, we drank a bit more than I planned to and exchanged friendship bracelets at midnight. Good NYE. But I still like my lame-o Apples to Apples nights.

This year, we had an extra guest: Miss Meggie. I am sure she just loved spending NYE with her friend’s family. Big city Chicago girl spends her first NYE as a Texan with her friend’s parents. Whatever. We had fun….even though since Bridget was already back in Virginia, we missed out on one of the most important parts of NYE: watching Bridget spend nearly ALL day cutting up newspapers for confetti throwing at midnight.

But Megan did get to experience some true McCartney NYE moments. Things she learned:

1) If Austin (my brother-in-law) decides to do something sickening (like sport a creepstache) for NYE, John WILL follow suit.

2) If my mom sees that the boys have creepstaches, she WILL insist that all the girls go into her bedroom and draw on fake mustaches of our own. Naturally.

3) When the McCartneys say we are going to “eat a bunch of crap and drink some good NYE drinks”, our “crap” is antipasto (grilled eggplant, brussell sprouts, olives, caviar, shrimp cocktail, lobster) and our “NYE drinks” is wine and champagne. We may not be able to afford babysitters but we like to kick the year off pretending like we live like the other half. Or the 1%.

3) My mom will scream at the top of her lungs each and every time her card is chosen in Apples to Apples.

4) If I fall asleep at 9 pm, DO NOT TOUCH ME! DO NOT SING IN MY EAR! DO NOT TRY AND WAKE ME UP! I get angry, you guys. It happens every year: I will fall asleep, people will try and wake me, I will say things I don’t mean…and I may also make violent threats. I’m sorry, Megan, I don’t really want to hit you with an anvil. But really, you should have stopped tapping my head when I screamed at you to let me effing sleep for the 4th time. Oh, and when Meghan and John gave you a “pep talk” wherein they described the rules of NYE and how you should never wake a sleeping Molly, you should have listened. But yeah, sorry about the whole “I will gut you like a fish” comment.

5) Just because my mom is a a darn good artist, it doesn’t mean that she’s very good at pictionary. Apparently the timer freaks her out. That right there? That’s a bear. A bear, you guys.

6) In the event I DO make it to midnight, I will be very sleepy and still slightly angry at my “friend” for making me stay awake. Any pictures she takes will be very unflattering and I will look half asleep and I will refuse to post them on the blog. Oh, I will also rock the socks off of charades.

All in all, it was a very good NYE (though I have to say that it’s really not the same without Bridget throwing confetti all over the place and continuing to grab it from the floor and re-throw it all over the place…and without her continuous dancing at midnight). But all in all, not a bad way to kick off 2012.And I guess it’s not a bad thing that I stayed up all night for it this year…what with it being the end of the world in 2012 and all. May as well enjoy my last NYE, right? Hope you enjoyed yours, Megan! I am sure McCartney NYE trumped your fancy Chicago NYEs of the past.

Feven Fosts for Friday

2011-12-30T05:00:00.000-08:00

Hard to believe it's Friday, but as the great Rebecca Black once say, yesterday was Thursday, so today is Friday... Anyway, this is John and these are Feven Fosts.

1. Pretty crazy to think that tomorrow is the last day of 2011. 2012 just sounds like it's in the future, like it's for future people with cool future gadgets. Do we have cool enough gadgets right now to be 2012? Not sure... 2011 was a crazy year for the Campbells. Jack turned 1 and began walking, talking, and now says "wa - yooooo" (love you). We invited Megan into our home. We thought Molly would be blind by now and she's not, so that's good. I moved into a new job at work. It's all been a crazy time, but I gotta say that I love my life.

2. I just spent a ridiculously long time reading about this thing called "Up". It's a wristband you wear that gives you constant feedback on your fitness life. It also tells you how you slept last night. Anyway, I don't think I want one... but I spent a long time looking at it knowing I didn't want one. .. end pointless second fost..

3. I can't decide if this week is a good one to take vacation on or if it is a bad one. I have never taken vacation over this time, because there's so little going on at work that it's almost a vacation to be there (yesterday's day was a complete exception). However, I've been able to leave a bit early almost every day. On the other hand, wouldn't it be nice to take four days off of ETO and get a total of 10 days? And nothing is happening a work, so it's not like you come back to craziness. Can't decide...

4. Seriously.. did you watch Jack's video? He slams himself into the crib while being ridiculous. It's gold people.

5. To spend our last evening of 2011, we plan to be gluttonous and eat pretty much everything in sight. Unless it is not edible, then we probably won't eat it.

Shhhh My Loved Ones Say

2011-12-29T04:25:00.000-08:00

By now, I assume you have all seen the these videos. If you haven’t, you should…they are kind of funny in how accurate they are.

I was talking to Megan (my sister wife/buddy old pal/roomie—keep up here people!) the other day when this conversation happened:

HER: “When is dinner?” ME: “Ten minutes or so.” HER: “Uggghhhh! TEN MINUTES?” ME: “Are you hungry?” HER: “No…I just want to get it over with.”

Then I was reminded of this charm: HER: I haven’t had real macaroni and cheese in forever…you know, like Kraft. ME: So pretty much the exact opposite of “real” macaroni and cheese?

I decided that I could make an entire video on the things that she says:

“He’s gorgeous!” “It was only [insert monetary amount here]!!!” “You need to [insert task here] immediately, if not sooner.” “Mmm…I want sushi!”

But Megan’s not the only one in my life who gives me material.

(while discussing Heaven) ME: I’m sad if we’re not married in Heaven. Russ was adamant that we aren’t married in Heaven, you know. (anyone from our former Bible Study group will get this reference) John: Eh, I think it will be okay. ME: So you’re okay with us not being married for eternity? John: Well, I’m sure we’d still get together like once a week!

John: If this light doesn’t turn green in the next five seconds, I am going to pull your hair out! ME: Mine? How did I get dragged into this? John: Because, I can’t pull out my own! I need to preserve it. And Jack doesn’t have enough. It’s all you, baby.

ME: Ok. I'll see you Thursday Mom: Fah Shah ME: Fo' Sho; Mom: Fa-wuh Sha-wuh ME: Ha ha. Close. Mom: Foo Shoo. You say it. ME: Fo Sho Mom: (very slowly and deliberately) Fooawww Shoooawww ME: like "snow" Fo' Sho' Mom: Fo Snow ME: No, don't say Snow. It rhymes with snow. Snow Show. Fo' sho' Mom: Fo Snow. Okay!! Got it! Love you hon. Bye!!

And don’t even get me started on the phone conversation I had with Bridget (little sister, come on people. KEEP UP!) on her first solo grocery shopping trip of her adult life…at the age of 24. It’s a wonder she didn’t starve before now. But trust me, that’s a post of its own. Just know that when a conversation starts with, “One DOLLAR for a box of pasta? I can’t afford that!?!?!” and ends with, “Well if I buy a twenty four pack of Sierra Nevada, it’s cheaper per bottle than if I only buy twelve”, it’s gotta be good.

The Christmas Post

2011-12-28T04:13:00.000-08:00

Is it any surprise that Jack was spoiled rotten for Christmas? And not by us, mind you. Last year, we bought Jack a train set that we got at TJ Maxx for $15. He was 10 months old—no 10 month old has use for a wooden train set. So we shoved it under his crib and waited to get it out when it was actually interesting to him. Then we forgot about it…until it came time to decide what to get him for Christmas. The unopened box beckoned me…and I rewrapped it and gave it to him for Christmas. Again. But before you start thinking I’m a terrible mom for getting him a leftover gift, just know that I got him a second present: a coloring book. With markers. Yep, this is what my big time fancy lawyer salary provides for ya, kid. Oh, and I also stuffed his stocking with some of the small toys he had scattered around our living room. You’re welcome, son. Santa loves you.

Luckily, our family and friends weren’t as stingy as we were. Jack is now the proud owner of a robot, a Rock & Roll Elmo, a Chuck the Talking Truck, a homemade skull/crossbones blanket, not one but two talking puzzles, a ride-on truck complete with a smaller truck and tool box and giant lego things (this toy is a behemoth), a safari truck with animals, tons of hip new clothes and a plethora of never-before-read books. Oh, and a wooden train.

John and I were also spoiled rotten. Aside from tons of presents (my favorite is probably the garden stone Jack made with my mom) that we adore, we got to spend a glorious long weekend with this kiddo that involved naps together and tons of playtime.

And it didn’t hurt that his identical cousin was also thrown in the mix:

I was too sick to think to take a picture of John’s matching red bowtie on Christmas day or of John & Jack’s matching grey cardigan/red tie combo on Christmas Eve. Just trust me when I say that it was adorable.

To top things off, my two sisters are in town so it was an almost complete McCartney family Christmas—only missing my brother…who is a lame-o and should really get his hiney back to Texas soon!

Anyway, Jack was so hyped up on Christmas that that night, he kept running around his room like a crazy man. If you can only watch one video, please watch the 2nd one…even if you don’t have sound…just picture him running around saying, “aghagharreahagha!”

Yeah, I’m a 27 year old woman wearing footie pajamas. What of it?

Yep, parents of the year, folks. Parents of the year.

Post Christmas Haze

2011-12-27T04:16:00.001-08:00

Good Morning, friends! Welcome back to Considering Campbell. We’ve been on a bit of a hiatus here for the Holidays. Christmas was fantastic—Jack had a ball! I, unfortunately, have been sick the past two days and missed the best 2 eating days of the year (fondue on Christmas eve and fried turkey on Christmas day). Apparently it’s good to remember to take your meds when your electrolytes are so out of whack that your body cannot function without them lest it decide to be a pukey mess all day, all night.

Yeah, so I went two days without taking my magnesium pills (or was it three?) like a big old idiot. Not sure what happened…I just plum forgot. By the third day, I was a gross ball of nauseousness. Hey Molly: the reason why you have to take these supplements is because your stupid kidneys can’t keep enough of this crap in your body on its own—why don’t you go ahead and remember to take them? Yeah, I’m a bit peeved at myself. I remembered to take them on Christmas Eve after leaving church during “Silent Night” and sitting in the car by myself chanting, “Don’t puke, don’t puke!” But by then, I hadn’t eaten much for the previous 24 hours due to the whole nausea thing. So magnesium on an empty stomach made Christmas day a bit less than ideal. Sooo moral of the story: I will not forget to take these stupid pills ever again. ALSO MORAL: even when you feel like crap, you can still have one of the best days of your life. I had an absolute glorious time watching Jack open his presents—he was in pure heaven. I think these past two days have been the happiest I’ve ever seen him. Everything was so exciting to him! He woke up yesterday saying, “Santa?” No kid, Santa won’t come again until next year…but go check out what he brought you yesterday.

I’ll post some more on Jack’s delightful Christmas tomorrow. I didn’t draft any posts for this week what with the going to bed at 8 every night the past 3 nights. Hopefully today I’ll finally feel better (especially since I go back to work…blech) and I can get some good quality stuff on this here blog for tomorrow. Eh, who are we kidding? This is Considering Campbell….mediocre quality is all you’re ever gonna get.

From Coffee to Salsa to Acorn Pediatrics

2011-12-22T04:00:00.000-08:00

This is John.

The other night we discovered Jack LOVES coffee. In truth, he likes to drink stuff out a of a coffee cup. In truth, the coffee cup is just small plastic mug with a handle like a coffee cup. He drinks milk or water out of it and loves every sip. Routinely giving a ::gulp:: “ahhh” like out of some Folger’s commercial.

Well, on Saturday night, he was drinking his “coffee” and decided to spill it on the floor. He was told not to spill it and if he did, we were going to take it away. He likes to do it on purpose. Anyway, he spills it. I take it away. Then this happens.

That happened for about 30 minutes. Non-stop…this is toward the end of it, so hence the coughing. I’d cough too if I cried that hard about my coffee being taking away.

Then we asked him if he wanted some salsa. He loves salsa, so we thought this might settle him down without giving into his demands.

Well, shortly after we gave him salsa, but he didn’t eat it he started tugging at his ear. We figured out it was an ear ache and nothing is more frustrating than an ear ache on the weekend when the only choice is a doc in the box and possibly a long wait.

We recently switched our pediatrician to a place called Acorn Pediatrics. It’s a new practice run by Dr. Sarah Bourland and it was the best decision we have made in a long time. (The investment in Greek bonds didn’t turn out like I thought it would.)

Jack had been in to see her a week before for a rash. This was on a Friday and she said to Molly, “If it looks bad tomorrow, then call me and we’ll get him on a prescription.” It didn’t look any worse, but the fact she told us to call her on the weekend we thought was strange. Well, now we actually had an issue a doctor would need to help with, so Molly called the doctors office.

The voicemail was the doctor’s voice and it ended, “Leave me a message and I’ll return your call in 20 minutes or less.” 20 Minutes? On a weekend? We thought it was a mistake… then 10 minutes later our phone rang.

It was Dr. Bourland. Molly explained what was going on. She said Jack needed to see someone, that the doc in the box she worked at that weekend had a 3 hour wait, so “I’m going up to my office right now, so why don’t you meet me there and I’ll take a look at him?”

Ok. So the following things happened:

The week before she asked us to call HER on the weekend.
The next week we call her on a Saturday evening and its her voice on the answering machine saying she’ll return the call within 20 minutes.
She returned the call in 10 minutes.
She had us come to her office on a Saturday night to check up on him for an ear ache.

This was incredible. We liked our previous doctor, but this customer service was out of control. Something about doctors offices and their staff and they attitude they have with you. It’s seriously 1) The DMV, 2) Airline Employees 3) Doctor Office Staffs… so we just figured it was all like this. We were wrong.

Acorn Pediatrics and Dr. Bourland are out of this world awesome. She’s new, so she is working with a smaller patient base, but my goodness she has our kids in her care for as long as their kids… that’s a guarantee.

Give a Girl a Break

2011-12-21T03:37:00.000-08:00

Listen friends, it’s the week before Christmas and I just got back from a business trip. I’m tired, I have lots of holiday baking to do, and I have no blog material. So forgive me for being a little MIA on Monday and again today. I just don’t have much to talk about.

Just know that if you could smell my house right now, you’d probably gain about 15 pounds from the smell of chocolate and cinnamon alone. And I don’t even like baking. Imagine how crazy it’d be if I actually enjoyed doing this.

So thanks for the “hey, I miss your posts” messages (Nicola, you’re my favorite) but forgive me for giving you nothing on Monday and crap today.

I’ll make up for it tomorrow with tales of my crazy flight home.

Ten on Tuesday

2011-12-20T04:02:00.000-08:00

This is John. Molly is out of town hanging out in Dallas. You know when she goes out of town all she does is party and then she sticks me with the blogging.

1 What is your favorite online-only store?
Amazon because is amazoning. Get it? It’s a play on amazing and Amazon. It actually pains me to say that because Amazon is a direct competitor of Rackspace (my company). However, their store rocks. If you have to use their Cloud services, then you should use Rackspace. We get our diapers for Jack from Amazon… it’s the cheapest and they’re actually name brand.

2. Do you enjoy wrapping gifts?
I don’t mind it on the first one and then by the last one I want to take my head and slam it into the fireplace. That’s not true. Molly wrapped about a bajillion presents this year and I didn’t wrap one. It’s not that I wasn’t willing.. it just didn’t happen.

3. What is the temperature in your city today?
287.4 Degrees Kelvin

4. What time do you eat dinner?
We at dinner quite late tonight.. like 7pm. I know. You’re thinking how crazy we are to wait that long for dinner. It was crazy. Jack was delirious by the time I put him to bed … repeating every word he knows and pointing to items on the wall telling me what they were. Between it all he would ask for his “meh” which is his paci.

5. Will you be making New Years Resolutions?
Nope. Well, probably yes… but the answer just ends up being no.

6. How old is your oldest pair of shoes that you still wear?
That’s a strange question. I have absolutely no idea. I’m tired of talking about shoes.

7. Do you have any restaurant phone numbers saved in your phone?
No. Are you calling me fat?

8. What is your favorite and least favorite letter to write in cursive?
These questions really went downhill fast. They were all cool at the beginning and now we’re talking about cursive? When I sign my name, I cursive out the J, but I do it backwards… it is kind of my trademark. Otherwise, does anyone else think an uppercase Q is just wicked?!?

9. Do you know any good riddles?
What’s black and white and read all over? A NEWSPAPER! badabing.

10. How do you feel about snow?
Love to watch it snow. Love the anticipation of snow. Love standing outside when it’s snowing really hard and everything is super quiet and all the sounds are muffled. Love the day right after a big snow. Dislike all of the days after the day right after a big snow.

Feven Fosts for Friday

2011-12-16T04:27:00.001-08:00

This is John.

1. As a follow-up to yesterday’s post o Advent calendars: Molly failed to mention that Megan actually hates her advent calendar. Why? Because the dates are not listed in order. Like many good calendars, they’re all out of order and it makes it fun to hunt for it. However, it drives Megan CRAZY. She gets legitimately angry that the 1 is next to the 16 and that the 24 is sandwiched between 3 and 19.

2. Our nephew (Jack’s identical cousin) is in the hospital, so lots of prayers are appreciated. He’s got a bad case of pneumonia and has spent two nights there trying to get it all figured out. Poor little man. Please say some prayers for him and his family. Molly went to visit him at the hospital yesterday and he is being such a trooper but aside from being sick, imagine how tough it is to keep a 21 month old in a hospital crib—he’s hooked up to a ton of monitors and can’t really move around. Needless to say, he gets pretty frustrated about not being able to get down and run around and play.

Now this is Molly.

3. I had my little procedure done yesterday. I couldn’t eat for 48 hours prior to it. I felt like my body was probably going, “Oh hell, not this again.” It really wasn’t as terrible as I expected it to be…mostly because they gave me some rockstar anesthesia basically the moment I got into my hospital gown…so I have no recollection of anything—just a bit of a sore throat from the endoscopy they also did. All I know is that my guts are all okay and they found nothing troubling. So it looks like the only issue is a bit of a weak kidney…and we’re hoping all the horsepills I’m taking will fix that sooner rather than later so I can make Jack a big brother.

4. Jack saw Santa at Rackspace the other day. As you may recall, Jack was not a fan of the jolly guy last year. We saw a Santa a couple weeks ago up at a neighborhood event and it looked like his second experience with Santa would be a repeat. Jack has been reading books about Santa and always points out the decorations that involve St Nick…yet he was not a fan when he saw him “in real life”. The neighborhood Santa wasn’t a good Santa (just a dude with a fake beard and a crappy santa outfit) so we weren’t too disappointed when Jack freaked the heck out the moment we tried to get him close to his lap. We figured we’d hold off on pictures until we saw the “good” Santa at Rackspace. We were fully prepared for Jack to freak out with the Rack Santa but we were going to do it anyway…because we have to get a picture with him and Santa, right? While we were standing in line, I showed him the slide he got to go down after he saw Santa (what, your place of business doesn’t have a loopy slide for you to use to get from one floor to another? Clearly you don’t work at Rackspace). That must have done the trick because he was so excited to get on Santa’s lap…all so he could get off Santa’s lap and go down the slide.

Last Year

“My mommy hates me! She made me sit on this creeper’s lap and she dresses me like a little girl!”

This Year

I learned my lesson from last year and decided to dress my little boy like a boy…rather than in the sissy little romper I put him in last year (sorry Jack! It seemed like a good idea at the time).

“Okay, hurry up with the pictures guys. I need to get my cute little butt on that slide tout suite.”

5. That’s all I got. Happy weekend!!!

24 Days of Advent

2011-12-15T07:22:00.001-08:00

I’m big on advent calendars. Not sure if I’ve ever mentioned that before, but I am. I love the idea of homemade, unique advent calendars with little daily reminders of the gift that is about to come on December 25th.

We always had advent calendars growing up. I remember there was one that was little books, each day told a little bit of the Nutcracker story. We also had the chocolate ones and various other ones through the years. John and I have stuck with the plain jane chocolate advent calendars for the past 5 years. This year, however, everyone has their own advent calendar.

John

Old habits die hard. John is sticking with his beloved one-chocolate-a-day advent ritual. Megan has also has one—we couldn’t leave out our newest family member, now could we? She has been sharing her chocolate with Jack though—he’s got a rough little infection on his nose and as we clean it out every night and he screams in pain, Megan rushes over to retain her title as “fun and cool Aunt Megan” and shoves chocolate in his mouth in an effort to calm him down and ease his pain. Yesterday, Jack tried to get into Megan’s room while saying, “Chocla?” over and over. The kid is going to be disappointed come Christmas when there is no longer chocolate all over this casa.

Jack

As you know from the Pinterest Challenge, this year I decided to change it up a bit with a fun advent calendar for Jack.

He loves getting down a bag each day for the “peasants”. They are mostly filled with little cars, mini rubber duckies, or those punching balloon things. But each weekend day has a special treat—some of them include “driving the car” (his new favorite activity where he sits in the front seat of my car and says “Vroom vroom!” while pretending to drive for an hour or so), “making cookies with mommy”, “going to look at Christmas light”, “playing tag with Daddy” and some of his other favorite activities.

Molly

On the right side of the fireplace, there’s another advent calendar: Mine. This is the second year that I’ve participated in Astrid's annual Tea Swap. She assigns groups of 5 and we each send 5 bags of tea to everyone in our group. Eventually, you will have unique bags of tea—it’s neat because you can buy 5 boxes of tea rather than 25 and still get the neat “every day is different!” feel. Unfortunately, I only received tea from 2 other swappers this year—not sure if the other bags got lost in the mail or if Christmas season just snuck up on a few of the swappers. But that’s okay, I just added a few more bags of green tea and called it good. Here’s what my advent tea calendar/advent tea wreath looked like yesterday, halfway through my tea-a-day advent.

It was quite an easy calendar to make. I simply cut a donut shape out of an old cardboard diaper box, then hotglued silver wrapping paper to it, wrapping the edges around the back. Then I hotglued some ribbon onto clothespins and then the clothespins onto the ring. Add a ribbon for hanging, a few numbers onto some of the clothespins so I know what day I’m on, and 24 bags of tea. But, if you’re not up for making your own advent tea wreath (though I am sure if could hold other cute little items as well), Astrid has some super cute ones in her Etsy Shop (she has tons of other cute items too…but I’m talking calendars today).

Happy Advent to you! I hope you’re taking the time to enjoy a special treat every day to remind you of the magic of this holiday season and to keep you mindful that each day of Advent, we inch closer to the wonderful day of Christ’s birth. Man, I get giddy this time of year. Between the Christmas carols, daily presents, special bags of tea, and the spirit of the season, you can just call me Mrs. Bing Crosby.

So, I’m curious…anyone else out there kind of obsessed with advent calendars? Do you guys have one? Two? Three? Or are you a 4 calendar family like we are? I wonder if Truman feels left out…perhaps I should fashion a milkbone-a-day calendar for him next year?

Korean Beef Tacos

2011-12-14T04:51:00.001-08:00

I made these for dinner the other night and thought they were awesome. So now I share the recipe with you. Because I'm a giver.

Bulgogi (Korean Marinated Beef) Tacos

3 T. soy sauce

1 T. sesame oil

1 T. minced garlic

1 teaspoon sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

1 lb thinly sliced steak (I used strip steak)

Slice the beef into strips and place in a large ziploc bag. Mix all ingredients together and pour into bag. Let out the excess air and seal, being sure to coat all the meat with the marinade. I let mine marinate for about 24 hours but I am sure you could do a bit less.

Turn griddle (I used a grill pan) on very high heat and spray with nonstick spray. Grill until cooked through, about 10 minutes--flipping halfway through the cooking process.

Serve with warm tortillas (I preferred corn, John preferred flour), cilantro, and white rice (I used basmati). I also whipped up a little sauce to go on top...because I'm a saucy girl.

Sauce

4 T. soy sauce

1 T. sesame oil

1 T. rice vinegar

And a word of advice: don’t let your kid hold the package of tortillas. Even if you think he’s not yet capable of finding out how to open it, he will improvise. I looked over to see Jack chewing on something and kind of freaked out seeing as how the bag was unopened. And then I realized he’d used his chompers to tear through the bag and take 2 adorable bites out of half the stack of tortillas. So if you come to my house for dinner, hope you don’t mind that someone taste-tested the tortillas first.

Ten on Tuesday

2011-12-12T19:54:00.000-08:00

1. How do you eat your eggs? Over easy. I love the runniness and dipping my toast in the yolk. I was very sad when I was pregnant and couldn't eat runny eggs.
2. Do you volunteer? Not like I should. I will volunteer if someone else organizes it but I don't really go out of my way to volunteer. That is terrible of me, isn't it?
3. What’s your favorite brand of jeans? BDG from Urban Outfitters. I've tried lots of jeans: Joe's, Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic, etc. But BDGs are the best of all worlds: not $100 and they fit great.
4. What was your child’s first word? Or what was your first word? "Argh" when we asked him what a pirate said.
5. Can you french braid? Nope. I have NO hair skills.
6. Do you prefer wide rule, college rule, or blank paper? College ruled.
7. Is there a specific treat do you always make during the holidays? I make truffles every Christmas season to give to coworkers, etc. They are the most annoyingly time consuming thing in the world but they really are quite good.
8. Do you have a KitchenAid mixer? Do you want one? Yes. I didn't use it for about a year but now I'm in love with it. And it was a lifesaver when I was making Jack's baby food.
9. What kind of computer do you use? I honestly have no idea what kind of computer we have. It's a big old screen so I can see it...and it's a touchscreen which is kind of unnecessary but it's fun for Jack to play with the paint application.
10. Favorite Christmas movie? Elf. I know that is blasphemy to the It's a Wonderful LIfe crew but I feel like Elf is a movie you can watch over and over and not have your heart break. Some holiday movies are rough on the old soul.

The Bass Pro Shop

2011-12-12T04:00:00.000-08:00

On ~~Friday~~ Sunday, Molly went to do some routine shopping with Megan and Haley (a friend of ours). It wasn’t anything special, so Haley’s husband and I decided to run away with Jack and their daughter and spend some time at the Bass Pro Shop. I thought he would think the “agua” and the stuffed animals we’re pretty cool. Well, I was kind of right, but the reaction I got from Jack was not expected.

First, he loved the water, the waterfalls, and the fish. I think we could have stood there for a few hours just with those attractions.

Not going to lie though, he did want to to get in with the fish. He kept asking me to “uh-pin” (open) the glass.

Then we headed upstairs, where he had fun “duh-iving” (driving) a “duck” (truck), which was actually a 4x4.

That’s definitely an action shot. He was going about 35 MPH at that time.

Of course, after the water, I thought the coolest thing for him would be to see and touch some of the stuffed animals they have available there. If you’ve ever been to Cabela’s or Bass Pro Shop, you know they have everything from deer, to ducks, to crazy African game on display. I thought getting up close to these things would really excite Jack.

Instead they just freaked him out beyond belief.

Here were approaching a stuffed duck.

Here we’re approaching a stuffed turkey.

Here we’re approaching a stuffed lion.

By that time, we was getting brave enough to tell the lion “no”. Not sure to what, but I’m guessing for the lion not to scare him anymore.

So, that was our time at Bass Pro Shop. Wanting to see animals and then once within 10 feet, freaking out about them.

We ended it on a high note though.

We bought a $9000 vehicle for Jack to ride around town. He loves it.

Feven Fosts

2011-12-09T05:35:00.001-08:00

1. I feel like my business trips are something out of an Apple commercial. I have memorized a few of Jack's favorite books (Happy Hippo, Angry Duck; Goodnight Moon; But Not The Hippopotamus). On Tuesday night, I was in Atlanta for work and I FaceTimed John and Jack. We chatted a bit and then John took me (via phone) and Jack to the nursery where John held the phone so Jack and I could see each other. He held the book in the other hand and I recited the books while staring at my boy from hundreds of miles away. Really, Steve Jobs, thank you. Your innovations make my heart hurt a wee bit less when I am away.

2. I'm trying to be patient and grateful for good doctors who take care of me and are trying to get my electrolyte levels where they need to be. But I'm frustrated with the lack of communication between all my doctors. Why can't they all order labs at the same time so I only have to give blood once rather than a few times a week every time one of the doctors decides they want to see something else? Also, why can't I do ONE appointment and they can all share notes? Or hell, why can't they all work on the same days so I can knock out multiple appointments in one day rather than taking multiple afternoons off each week for all these appointments? My boss is going to lose her patience soon. And I am following suit.

3. I went to a fun party last Saturday. A girly white elephant gift exchange with 35 or so other ladies. It was super fun. But nearly every woman I talked to who had kids either stayed at home with them or only worked part time or from home. Y'all, my heart aches for that. It makes me sad that I am so quick to throw my career path out the window for something I never wanted, being a stay at home mom was NEVER appealing to me. In fact, John and I even planned for him to be the Stay at Home parent. And yet now I ache for it. I need a resolution...this either needs to happen, needs to stop tugging at my heart every day, or I need to stop meeting women who have made it doable so I can stop being reminded of what I want but can't have.

4. I love my husband. I just think people should know that. Because I really REALLY do.

5. I had caviar at a wine tasting last weekend at World Market. I forgot how much I love that crap.

6. We have a super busy weekend planned. I kind of want to take a day off soon just to RELAX. Is that super lame?

7. I don’t know why the spacing on this post is all messed up.

Memories...

2011-12-08T06:00:00.000-08:00

Molly asked me to blog today and I even had a good topic to talk about, but I'll be honest with you... I'm dog tired and I would rather not write one more word. Therefore, I will cut and paste something from memory lane.

It's our first post on this blog ever! I kindly informed Molly after this was published that it was time to use capital letters. Aren't you glad I did that?

April 6, 2009
this is our first post. we don't have any idea what we are doing.

many of our friends have blogs that are oh so hip and with it. we wanted to be hip and with it too. granted, most of those friends have children so their blogs tend to have more of a...well, purpose...but our blog is all about us. we're kind of narcissitic....but since we love each other, it's really one of us talking about the other person and not us talking about ourselves at all. in fact, we're about the most humble people you'd ever meet. fair to say THE humblest...so humble we shouldn't even really dwell on how humble we are. just trust us, we're humble.

love,

the campbells

Joy to World!

2011-12-07T04:00:00.000-08:00

For the first time in my life, I put up lights on the house for Christmas. Last year we didn’t and then came to find out that we almost cost the culdesac their annual “Best Decorated Group” award. We were the only house that didn’t have up a single light. Listen, we had a wreath on the door and some nice stuff inside. That was it though. Luckily, they still won and luckily they don’t hate us too much.

Well, this time around we didn’t want to risk it on the behalf of our neighbors, so a couple weeks ago I began to line the house with lights.

Now, here’s a piece of advice for you… check the lights that they work before hanging them. We got two strands that only half worked. Therefore, I was kept busy checking every light bulb.

It reminded of a little scene:

Yes. That is one of the greatest movies ever made and yes it is the greatest Christmas movie ever created. I felt like Mr. Griswald.

Then, the lights were on the house, so I forced Molly, Megan, and Jack out on the front lawn for the great reveal. And just like my idol, I started the Campbell Family Tradition. We had a drum roll,we had an announcement of the family tradition, and we had me singing “Joy to the World” at the top of my lungs. That’s right… at the top of my lungs. It was fantastic. The best part is that after that troubleshooting, all the lights came on!

Simple lights. Nothing fancy. But at least we’re not “that” house this time around.

Ten on Tuesday

2011-12-06T04:05:00.000-08:00

For more Ten on Tuesday action, check out www.rootsandrings.com

1. What are 3 things that are on your Christmas wishlist?
To have my student loans paid off, to win the lottery, to have $100,000 sitting around to give to Aqua-Africa. Really though, I don't have much on my Christmas list. My in-laws sent me the one thing I REALLY wanted (a jewelry box) and I am so greedy that I already opened it and set it up in my bathroom. I love it!! So I'm a happy camper. Maybe to have the backyard all finished with the new patio laid? Yeah, that's on my list.

2. What’s your favorite Christmas song?
Oh Holy Night, We Three Kings (that last line about myrrh gets me every time) and I Celebrate the Day.

3. Do you have a favorite band or singer that sings it especially awesome?
Well I Celebrate the Day is by Reliant K and I think they are kind of the only ones who can sing that song. And they do it awesome.

4. Have you heard about the website goodreads?
I have not.

5. What are 3 books you want to read?
The Bible. I need to read it more. And I'd like someone to give me a very detailed synopsis of the Hunger Games without me having to read it.

6. Do you hunt deer?
No. I don't hunt anything. Except bargains.

7. Have you started Christmas shopping? Are you completely finished?
I am finished except for one person.

8. Did you shop on Black Friday? What was the best deal you got?
I did! See here:
http://www.consideringcampbell.com/2011/12/black-friday.html

9. What’s one holiday tradition your family has?
Fondue on Christmas eve.

10. How many blogs do you read? Do you subscribe/unsubscribe often or do you purge every once in a while?
I read Roots & Rings every single day and Lauren from Texas and Flabourg as they update.Oh, and Young House Love and Bower Power. I also have about 3 or 4 that I read when they post to Twitter or on FB.

Randomness

2011-12-05T04:32:00.001-08:00

1. I bought this stocking in red for Jack’s first Christmas last year:

When I pulled out the Christmas decorations this year, I decided that it was probably not a bad idea to buy 3 more stockings so that all the kids can have matching ones. If we don’t have 3 more kids, oh well…at least we’d have them for guests or something. And I really like the idea of all our children having matching stockings AND I love this one. Anyway, I went to the Land’s End website, where I saw the bad news: they don’t carry it anymore. Check out those reviews! Everyone loved it. So why did they stop carrying it now? Lamesauce. It’s my own fault…not sure why I thought a company would sell the same product year after year but man! I am so bummed out. LAND’S END! Please let me buy 3 more red ones. I promise I won’t tell anyone. Or I’ll tell the entire Social Media world, whatever you want. JUST LET ME GET SOME!

2. John and I did our monthly grocery shopping at a different HEB this month. Big mistake. HUGE! They didn’t carry half the products we buy, I didn’t know where anything was, and they put their breakfast sausage in one of those freezers that lay flat that you reach into…not the door freezers. So when I opened my 10 packages of pre-cooked sausage to make the kolaches this weekend, each package was covered in ice/freezer burn. Stupid.

3. Gap changed the fit on their Always Skinny jeans. I don’t care what the chicks in the store say, they totally changed it. I used to wear the regular denim colored ones. Then I decided I needed a darker color for more “dressy” looks. So I went and got the EXACT same pair in a different color. And the size I normally wear (the size I was wearing at that very moment) didn’t fit right at all. So I went a size up. Still too tight. The legs are too loose while the waistband is super tight…no give whatsoever like my other pair. The waist is loosey goosey, doesn’t hold my postpartum tummy it and all and them WHAM! Hello super tight waistband! So I asked if they’d changed their fit: “Nope.” A few weeks later, my beloved jeans got a hole in the knee so I went back to Gap to buy a new pair. I figured that my bad luck with the dark color was just because dark washes fit differently sometimes. So I went to get my regular denim colored pair. I would have just walked right out with them except they didn’t have my size. No ankle length. I asked the lady and she said that they’d never made them in ankle length. Wait, what? How come I’ve been wearing them for the past year then? I tried on the regular length and lo and behold, they fit like crap too. So after many years, I’m no longer a gap jeans buyer. I am not sure WHO would want that kind of a fit but it’s not me. Who wants loose legs in skinny jeans with super tight waistband? Anyway, I went to Urban Outfitters yesterday and got some BDG skinny jeans instead. Cheaper and a much better fit…exactly the same as the way Gap jeans used to fit. I know, I know…according to the lady at Gap, they NEVER fit like that. Apparently I just sewed my own jeans and affixed an “ankle length” label to the back of them.

4. We are all done with Christmas shopping. I still have to do bread/truffles for the neighbors and a few other random people but I can’t do that for a couple weeks. As far as actual gifts, we are done. And it feels gooooood. It also feels expensive.

Crap. I just remembered someone we haven’t bought a gift for yet. There goes my feeling of satisfaction.

Feven Fosts for Friday

2011-12-02T04:00:00.000-08:00

1. We put out Christmas lights for the first time this year. Last year, we were the only house in the cul-de-sac that didn't put lights on our house. This not only made us look like scrooges, it also made us jeopordize our neighors' chances of winning "Best Group Lighting" for the eleventeenth year in a row. Luckily, they still won...even with our dark corner of the group. But this year we finally put up some white lights lining the house and a beautiful Bethlehem star. I love the idea of having the star out and then on Christmas day, turning off all lights except the star. On Epiphany (Jan 6, the day the Wise Men found Jesus), we turn off the star. Anyway, I scoured the interwebs to find the PERFECT star for our Bethlehem star. On Tuesday morning, I woke up and went to go look outside to admire our pretty lights...and noticed that the Bethlehem star wasn't brightly shining like it should be. In fact, the star was nowhere to be found. I ran into the bedroom and told John, "Baby! Someone STOLE our star!" He responded, "What? Who would do that?" " I don't know but it's gone! It's just GONE!" "Where's the Christmas spirit?" I toddled back into the entryway and looked out the window again. I may have to play the blind card here but there was the star...right there...in front of me. I went back into the bedroom and told John not to worry, that the Christmas spirit was intact...but apparently my sanity was not.

2. I bought edamame from Costco for lunches. $8 for 12 packets that you steam yourself...decent servings too...a whole plate of perfectly steamed edamame. By 10 am every day, I am angry that it's not time for me to go warm up my delicious snack. Edamame seems like an afternoon snack, not a morning nosh.

3. John and I have a sitter for Jack tonight (THANKS MEGGIE!) and we are going to have a real, grown up dinner at a restaurant. One without crayons or veggies being thrown across the table. And what's better than a grown up dinner? A grown up dinner with Chelsea and Stephen! Woo hoo! I am excited!

4. Next Friday, John and I are having our annual "fancy date night" that we do as a Christmas present to each other. We don't really give gifts, we just try to make a point to do a really nice night together close to the Holidays. Last year we went to Ounce and this year is The Lodge. I am so excited. Though I might cry when we leave the restaurant since the Lodge is closing on Dec 31. San Antonio is definitely losing the best restaurant in the city. I just regret that I never got rich enough to eat there on a regular basis before it closed its doors.

5. I have been listening to Christmas music so much lately! I have it going in my office all day long. I can't tell you how happy it makes me!!

6. My little sister is very obsessed with Christmas decor, music, etc. One time she saw a Christmas display in IKEA in November or so and started geeking out over it. There were these two girls nearby who saw her all but faint over the display and how excited she was about Christmas approaching. I thought Bridget was about to punch them in their jaws for making fun of her Christmas obsession. Don't mess with baby girl's love of navidad...she'll shank you.

7. I don't know if it's because I have been given the redlight on babymaking or what but I've been having lots of baby dreams lately. Last night, the dream was that I had just given birth to a daughter and John kept calling her Ava. I had to tell him that no, her name was Christine...it was always planned to be Christine so stop calling her Ava. Plus, we already have a niece with that name. She was beautiful and had tons of light brown hair. And she was crawling a few hours after she was born. I kept telling dream John, "I don't remember Jack crawling this early!" Oh, and when I left the hospital, I got into a fight with some guy at one of those "vend a snack" machines over chocolate-covered pretzels. Dream Molly is bonkers.

8. To the peeps who feel bad about the post on Wednesday, ain't no thing but a chicken wing! Low potassium and low magnesium is sooo not a big deal (okay, it is if you're my sister and have REALLLLLLY low levels). Think about how incredible and intricate our bodies are. It's pretty foreseeable that every once in a while, a few of those bodies will be a little wonky. There are just so many things that can go wrong in these amazing bodies of ours so this seems like a pretty darn small thing as far as I'm concerned. No need for pity on this girl. Unless pity means you'll send me money...in which case: OH WOE IS ME!!!! Honestly though, the only thing that bums me out is waiting on baby #2. BUT for those of you who laughed through that post, you get me...I was hoping to elicit a few chuckles.

9. You need to watch this video. No, seriously. You need to. My little Texan--already with a love of Tex-Mex.

10. We need some serious parenting advice here, folks. Please do away with all notions that new parents dont want your advice and let it flow for us here! We need help! Okay, so here's the deal: the littlest Campbell has never been a good sleeper. I think we've made that clear, no? He's always fussed in the middle of the night and it wasn't uncommon for him to wake up altogether a few times a week and cry for 10 minutes or so before falling back asleep. And don't even get me started on the sickening hour he thinks is acceptable for wake-up time. But lately, it's gotten so much worse. I told you a couple weeks ago that Jack seems to be having nightmares. He wakes up and just sounds scared. He cries for mommy over and over and so long as I am nearby, he is calm. But if I leave the room, he freaks the eff out. So now every single night, he wakes up. It's not always that terrified cry but it's always for mommy. We tried to let him cry it out but kiddo doesn't stop. He'll cry for 2 hours straight...which isn't helping ANYONE get sleep. So what do we do? We don't want to bring him into bed with us and start that bad habit but we also want to teach him that night time is sleepy time. PLEASE give us suggestions on what to do here. Cry it out for hours on end? Leave his door open so he doesn't feel so enclosed? Take shots before bed so we are out so cold that we don't even hear him cry? Seriously. You. Me. Advice. Now.

Black Friday

2011-12-01T04:00:00.000-08:00

Hey people. This is John. Molly wanted me to tell you about our Black Friday/Thanksgiving experience. Therefore, you’re getting this post for me. Anyway, the week before Thanksgiving I saw an ad in the Target “circular” for a big TV at a small price.

What this tv required was to:

Stand in line before the store open.
Go to Target early enough to get a good spot in line.
The store opened at Midnight, so to stand in line on Thanksgiving.
Risk being trampled in the mad rush to the TVs.

Therefore, since Molly thought there was a risk that I would die in some freak Black Friday craziness she said she was going. She wanted to be with me for one of two reasons, a) she felt I was safer with her muscles by me or b) she wanted to die with me and we’d clasp hands together as people ran over our lifeless bodies. Listen… I have no idea why Molly wanted to come, but in her mind it was necessary. Anyway, we arrived at 8pm. There were already quite a few people there, so it was iffy that we’d get the TV. However, I decided to take the chance.

I get in line at 8. Molly goes home to put Jack in bed and then comes back to stand with me. It’s about 8:30 by that time (I didn’t die in the time she wasn’t there…) and by the time 8:50 rolls around, there’s already “Why are we doing this?”

8:56PM: “This might be the dumbest thing we’ve ever done.”
9:02PM: “Could I be any more uncomfortable?”
9:04PM: “It’s getting cold.”
9:13PM: “Really? Another 3 hours?”

By this time, I tell Molly that she was never required to come and that it was her decision. Then I informed her that she could never use this in the future, “Well, remember that time I stood in line with you for four hours to get a TV?” as a way to get her way . When I told her that, she got a little smile on her face. It became clear this was her motive the whole time. She was using this experience to gain the upper hand in future requests and disagreements.

9:21PM:”Can I go sit in the car?”

By 9:30, I was getting tired myself (tryptophan or something), so I had Molly wait in the line so I could walk over and get a pop and use the restroom at the convenience store. The men’s bathroom was closed because as a store clerk stated, “Some dude got a little crazy with his pee in there.” So that was awesome.

10:03PM: “The battery on my iPhone better not run out.”

The clock ticked by. At 11, the crowd started getting restless. A girl shows up wearing some type of high-heel furry foot slipper hybrid shoe..I can’t even explain them, but they were like a furry hello kitty high heel boot. This is to show you the crazies were started to come out as the clock approached midnight.

At 11:30, I decided to go throw away my cup. I walked away from the line, threw the cup away, turned around and noticed my wife was gone. Actually, the whole line had moved and the store doors hadn’t even opened.

Me:What happened?
Molly: I don’t know.. all of a sudden people started moving and cutting.. and I was like “No… nah-uh… no way”, so I pushed through and got back to where we were. John, I’ve sat here for 3.5 hours… I’m not missing out on this TV.

There we go folks! It took 3.5 hours, but I got Molly in the game. For all the complaining and scheming to use this in the future to get her way, she saved our spot in line like a champion.

Though… surprise surprise… the crazy boot girl was ahead of us. She found her way to the front of the line by cheating in the pandemonium of the line move. Then the Target lady came out and was handing out TV vouchers. And they ran out with the person in front of us.

That’s right… the crazy boot girl cut in line and after four hours we were one person away from getting the TV. Then we noticed.. like a shining beacon on a foggy night…

The people in front of us were hoarding. They had TWO vouchers, but we quickly found out that they only wanted one TV. Then Molly went into sweet talking mode. They agreed that we’d follow them in and get their second voucher after they made sure they had their TV secured.

11:55PM: “I’m so nervous. We better get this TV John… I’m nervous.”

We go in the store… almost getting separated from our new “friends”… and we secure our TV. We didn’t do any other shopping. In fact, our receipt has "12:01am”.

As we approached the exit with our TV (!!!) they literally had to unlock the doors for us because we were the first people to leave the store with a purchase and as we walked out a small crowd that had gathered at the entrance began clapping.

They were clapping for us people. We were victorious. We had a TV and we were the first ones to exit. The world was right.

And while she won’t admit it… and while she’ll never do it again… I know Molly loved the experience.

1:14AM: “I can’t fall asleep. Too much adrenaline… I’m too excited.”

Gastroenterologist, Nephrologists, and Internists, OH MY!

2011-11-30T04:00:00.000-08:00

So it may not come as a shock to you that this body of mine ain't quite perfect. The beginning of this year brought bad news about my eyeballs and a scare that it may be something worse. Luckily, there was no brain tumor...just a little (okay, actually a giant) staphyloma that is threatening my little left eye into oblivion. My right eye, however, is holding its own and staying stable thus far.

The latter part of the year has brought its own bummer news about some other parts of this here temple (get it? Your body is a temple? Anyone? Bueller?). As you may have picked up from random mentions on this blog, I had been getting sick on a fairly regular basis for the past 4 or 5 months. I'd be feeling completely fine and them BAM! vomit city! Hanging out with friends who flew from Omaha/Springfield to visit me and the Megster and SLAM! norovirus symptoms! Prepping for a flight to Bermuda for work and WAM! sicky time! I saw my primary care nurse practitioner (and by "primary care" I mean that I called White Glove out to my house to run some blood work and check a sister out) and she said it was just stress. Whatever, I'm a working mom. I'm a lawyer. Stress isn't going away anytime soon. I needed a better answer. So Megan and John all but forced me to go see an internal medicine doctor for a more thorough workup. After a bunch of bloodwork and collecting my pee for a full 24 hour period (not even remotely disgusting...oh wait, that's a lie), we came up with some answers: my potassium and magnesium are really low. Doctor #1 (Internal Medicine Doc) thinks the puking/nausea/other grossness is related to my electrolytes being all sorts of wonky. She put me on a lifetime regimen of 5 giant horsepills a day. But to be sure that I don't have the same kidney disease that plagues my sister (who has to take like 64 horse pills a day...and that's not an exaggeration), I was sent to a Nephrologist. Nephrologist ordered more blood work...which came back with sad news: after 30 days of potassium & magnesium supplements, I'm still way low. BUT also good news: I haven't been sick in a month...and I really feel great. So that's gotta count for something, right? You know what it doesn't count for? Babymaking. Although something like wonky electrolytes isn’t life threatening or a big deal in the grand scheme of things, it does put a wrench in having a baby on my current timeline. Yep, I've been given the red light on becoming an oven anytime soon until we can be sure that my body is all ready for growing a human. To say that I am bummed is an understatement. I wasn't ready for Baby #1 and God isn't ready for me to do Baby #2 when I feel like I'm ready. God, oh you! You and your "perfect timing". I also was sent to a GI doc who ordered MORE blood work (Ladies and gents, come on up and see Molly, the human pincushion!) and...wait for it...a colonoscopy and endoscopy to ensure the sickness I was experiencing isn't related to any sort of nastyness growing on my intestines (but really, aren't intestines full of nastyness?).

So anyway, with 2011 being the year of doctors, it goes without saying that 1) we met our deductible on our insurance about 11 months ago, 2) we spent enough money on "specialist" copays to pay off an entire student loan (gulp), 3) I have spent more time in waiting rooms than a person really ever should.

And what's the point of all these appointments (aside from making me healthy, whatever) without using it for blog material? So without further ado, here are the highlights of my year of doctors:

1. Perhaps my least favorite thing has been my new role as "guinea pig" and "sideshow freak" for the residents doing rounds with my eye doctor(s). There was one doctor in particular who I called to say that I was busy at work, nothing really had changed in my vision so I wanted to cancel my appointment for the following day. The nurse told me that no, I couldn't cancel because Dr. Eye really needed to see me. So I went in expecting there to be some new test or something. As I waited in the little room with the giant eye examiner in front of me, I heard Dr. Eye saying, "Now this is the woman I was telling you about...it's amazing..." and walk in with a 25 or so year old gent who proceeded to look in my eyeballs and utter things like, "Remarkable!" over and over. Dr. Eye never even saw me...what was so "important" was that he wanted to be the cool doctor who let this resident see something new. No big deal. I don't have a career that requires me to be in the office anyway. Totally fine to waste my time. And to then charge me yet another $50 copay.

2. Waiting rooms suck. Seriously. If my appointment is at 9 am, WHY IN THE WORLD would you keep me waiting until 10:15 before you take me back to the examination room? You’ve only had like 2 appointments before mine. How did those two appointments get you running an hour behind? One doctor kept me waiting over an hour and a half. He kept talking to his receptionist about random things while I sat there refreshing Twitter every 10 seconds. At one point, I pinky promise, he came into my room and said, “Oops! Wrong room!” and then went into the room next to mine where I could hear him talking to his IT service desk about making his computer run faster. And I sat there watching my afternoon waste away.

3. As you may know, it's unwise to hide the whole "history of anorexia" thing from your doctors. Apparently starving yourself for a prolonged period of time can take a toll on your body (who knew!?!) so it's good to disclose that kind of silliness to your caregivers so that they can factor that into your treatment, etc. So anyway, this week when I was at the GI doctor, Ms. Nurse calls me back to get the vitals, weight, etc. This conversation happened:

Her: Okay, if I can get you to stand here for your weight.

Me: Well that's just mean. Weighing a girl right after Thanksgiving weekend?

Her: Oh, look! You're not heavy at all! I could only wish for that weight...I'd have to be anorexic for weeks to get down to that weight and you got there without even being anorexic!

Me: Ha ha...err....yeah...

Two minutes later.

Her: Okay, let's just get all the information from your paperwork into the computer. Sister with history of Bartter syndrome, father with history of cancer, you have a history of anore---

SUPER. AWKWARD. SILENCE.

Her: Well, okay! The doctor should be right with you!!!

Later I was given the bad news that I have to get a colonoscopy and, because I love me an awkward moment, this happened:

Her: Okay, Dr. Guts wants you to do a colonoscopy. So you need to fast the day before. Make sure you don’t eat for the full day before your procedure.

Me: No problem. I’m good at not eating.

Her: ::Deer in the headlights look::

Here’s to hoping that we can get this body of mine up and at em and in tip top shape soon! This little lady needs to make another baby, spend less time in waiting rooms, and start putting copay money toward student loans. But maybe I’ll hang onto those awkward eating disorder conversations. After all, I’ll need some blog material for NEDA week 2012, right?

Ten on Tuesday

2011-11-29T04:01:00.000-08:00

Brought to you from the bedside of one Molly Campbell, TEN ON TUESDAY (dictated by the one and only magnificent Megan, from Megan Mondays that are no more because Megan isn’t funny like Molly’s funny and also struggles to find good blogging material like recipes and grocery lists and pictures of my cute son – oh wait, I don’t have a cute son. Thanks, Molly, for reminding me. Oh, and in case you were wondering, it was 8:00 p.m. when I drafted these responses, so don’t think I’m a creeper who sits by the Campbells’ bedside into the wee hours watching them breathe in and out and snore sometimes………because I totally do not do that.)

1. Do you wear glasses, contacts, or are you one of those perfect eyed people?
I don’t wear glasses and I don’t wear contacts because neither one can fix my eyes, which are far from perfect peepers. In case you’ve forgotten, I might go blind in the next few years. But hey, thanks for rubbing that in.

2. What is the next item you are going to purchase?
Molly: “Um, the whole point of this is that you are supposed to dictate everything I say, remember?” Oops. Apparently I zoned out. Back to your regularly scheduled program:
Probably groceries. We need to go grocery shopping on Saturday. Remember, I’m a planner and buy groceries in monthly quantities at one time. It’s what I do. Don’t fight me on it or I’ll write another one of those boring, awful posts about a teaspoon of this and a tablespoon of that and what pork butt to buy.

3. Have you ever watched Judge Judy or any other real court show?
Yes. I’m a lawyer. Those things are a great glimpse into real life litigation strategies. That was a joke, by the way. And, as an aside, I was voted “Most Likely to be the Next Judge Judy” from my law school class. John insists it was only because I was married to the hot local TV personality at the time, but I know they could sense my flair for the dramatics, Judy-style.

4. How do you feel about fake nails?
I feel like they will ruin my real nails. I feel great about shellac nails, though. Could someone please pay for me to get shellac every two weeks? Thanks.

5. What is your favorite sport to watch?
Ummmm, seriously??? I guess…….basketball? No, probably baseball. No, basketball. I don’t know. Is cheerleading a sport? I like watching those cheerleading competitions on TV. Maybe I’m just jealous that I was never a cheerleader. Megan says it is a sport. But then, she was a cheerleader in high school because she was all cool like that. In another unrelated note, I know every word to the movie, “Bring It On.” I’m not proud. Well, I might be a little proud.

6. If you could create your own Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavor, what would it be and what would it be named?
It would be frozen champagne sorbet with no cream and no sugar, except for the fermented sugars. Do sugars ferment? No really, do they ferment? Stop typing and answer me! Do they ferment?
Fine. The ice cream flavor would be called, “my roommate is amazing and lovely and beautiful and fantastic.”

7. Do you have any scars?
Fo sho. I have a scar smack dab between my eyes from the time I fell into a screw sticking out of a wall when I was four years old. I blamed my mother for not keeping a better eye on me. Sorry, Mom. That was pretty much the meanest thing I could have ever done.

8. Does your pet’s name fit them? Is there a more appropriate name?
I don’t know, was Truman a destructive, ornery, infallible, inconsiderate jerk who used to steal delicious food like Hawaiian rolls off of people’s counters? If yes, then his name totally fits him.

9. What is your favorite television show theme song?
Lately I’ve had, “who’s that girl” from “New Girl” stuck in my head – “it’s Jess!” I don’t know if it’s my favorite, but it’s definitely in my head.

10. What was your favorite activity on the playground?
The swings. I loved the swings. I would swing all recess long. Swing, swing, swing. I still like to swing. I could still swing all day long. Get your mind out of the gutter, I don’t swing that way.

Monday, Monday

2011-11-28T06:07:00.001-08:00

This week, I plan to tell you all about our Black Friday experience, our “deck the house” escapades, and Jack’s first encounter with cotton candy.

But for now, I am tired and full. And I need to recharge a bit before hittin’ the ol’ livewriter. So I hope you’ll accept this apology (sorry dudes) and picture as a replacement for a real blog post.

Oh, and if anyone wants a Harrier Hound, I’m giving one away. I don’t care whether John wants to keep him…this dog is gonezo. He has managed to paw open the baby gate twice this weekend to eat stuff off the countertops. And I’m not talking “here’s a little extra turkey”, I am talking the GOOD stuff. Just ate an entire costco-sized package of Hawaiian rolls. And that wasn’t his first foray into the kitchen break-in world. This weekend was full of old school Truman antics. He was a good dog for about a year there. It was a nice year. That year is over.

Sorry, I shouldn’t blog when I’m angry.

Quick, back to the pictures of a happier time.

Give Thanks.

2011-11-24T02:01:00.000-08:00

1. For a husband who truly makes marriage an easy, fun, encouraging journey. And who is also really nice to look at.

2. For a son who makes me laugh on a daily basis, who is a great listener and a bad sleeper, who is healthy and smart, who loves me and is so enjoyable to learn new things with each and every day.

3. For parents who have taught me right from wrong and who have encouraged me to follow my dreams (no matter what they are or how they change), who have provided me with a great education to help me succeed, who have showed me what it means to be selfless and generous, and who have taught me to never, ever give up on the covenant of marriage.

4. For sisters who are truly my best friends, who make me laugh and thank my lucky stars that we grew up to be so close.

5. For a brother who I have a phone date with every week, who is kind and good and protective.

6. For nephews and nieces who are adorable and sweet and hilarious and make me so proud to be their aunt.

7. For one nephew in particular who makes my son laugh his ever-loving-head off every Sunday as they run around my parents’ house getting into trouble and playing together, slowly but surely becoming best friends.

8. For friends who stay in touch, come to visit, let us come and visit them, and who cheer me up and encourage me when I need it most. Or even when I don’t need it at all.

9. For one friend in particular who has become a part of our family and who has given so much of her time and energy to help John and I with our home, with our son, and who makes a mean tater tot casserole.

10. For jobs that help John and I pay off loans, put food on the table, and buy Jack lots of things with skulls & crossbones on them.

11. For caregivers that love and educate our son and keep him safe and happy while John and I are away from him.

12. A body that keeps me going each and every day and is strong and capable and forgiving of the fact that I didn't treat it very well for awhile there.

13. An eyeball that picks up the slack for its lazy sibling on the left side of my face.

14. For a home that keeps us safe, warm, and dry and makes me feel comfortable every night when I come home.

15. For so many other things that I miss because I take them for granted each day, but also for the moments when I take note of those things and give thanks for the happiness that even the little things bring to my life.

And really, truly, most of all for a God who gives me all of the above and more despite the fact that I don't spend the kind of time with him that I should, despite the fact that I am a sinner and so undeserving of his grace and blessings, who protects me and loves me and wants nothing more than for me to be happy and loved. And I am. Thank you.

A Boring Recipe Post

2011-11-23T05:38:00.001-08:00

It’s the day before Thanksgiving and I didn’t write a post…because last night felt like Friday…even though it wasn’t. At all. And I am about to head off to work and all I’ve got in the queue is my attempt at writing down a few of the recipes requested from the Thrifty Grocer Post a few weeks ago. So here ya go. Unless you want a recipe for carnitas, kolaches (or at least what Texans call kolaches…even though they are not at all the traditional kolache), or curry chicken, feel free to skip this post.

Oh, but in order to make it a true Campbell post…here’s a picture of my kid. We got our family pictures back last week. And I’m pretty sure I need to enter Jack in a “cutest toddler” contest so that I can pay his way through college. That or I’ll start charging my readers to peruse this here blog. Because when you write quality posts like, “Here are 3 recipes” EVERYONE wants to pay you. Oh wait…that’s not true at all.

Okay, here is the post where I give you the recipes that were requested from the Thrifty Grocer post. Not too many requests...which is good. Because I'm lazy and don't cook with recipes. This is my shot at looking back and trying to remember what I put in when I'm cooking.

Carnitas

For the meat:

2.5 - 3 lb hunk o pork (any kind of pork works...sometimes I buy Carnitas, sometimes I buy tip roast, sometimes I find "pork value pack" which probably contains pig eyeballs for alI know but heck, it's like 99 cents a pound)

1/2 cup water

1 tablespoon minced garlic (I just use the jarred stuff but if you have the energy to cut up a couple gloves of garlic, get it girl!)

1 tablespoon cumin

salt and pepper

Once cooked, shred with two forks. Add in lime juice to taste. I like it limey so I usually put in about 1/4 cup of lime juice (about a whole large lime or 2 smaller limes).

Note: I prefer to make these in my cast iron soup pot and let them cook for 3-4 hours on low heat. However, it's easier for me to do them when I am working in the crockpot. In that case, just cook on low for 6-8 hours.

For the sauce:

1 jar of reciato

1 large can of whole tomatillos, drained

1/2 teaspoon garlic salt

1 tablespoon lime juice (or more if you like it limey like I do)

Put in food processor (or the magic bullet blender) and process for a minute or so until smooth. Warm in microwave for a minute or two.

Wrap the carnitas in corn tortillas and serve with a spoonful of the tomatillo sauce, a squeeze of lime juice, and fresh cilantro and avacado if you've got it.

Kolaches (easiest thing ever)

Fully cooked breakfast sausage (we use banquet turkey sausage)

Rhodes white dinner rolls, thawed

Take a thawed roll and a frozen sausage and merge those two puppies together. Essentially, just flatten the roll and wrap it around the sausage--pinching the ends to seal. Set on a greased cookie sheet and let rise. I do up to 100 kolaches at a time (not fun, but worth it) and let them rise for about an hour. Then bake according to package directions on the rolls (I think it's 350 for 15 minutes). Like I said, doing 100 of them takes forever so I usually have to do about 5 rounds of baking but once they are done, SO worth it! Let them cool completely and then stick them in a freezer ziploc bag and stick in your freezer. Microwave for 30 seconds for one kolache and 1 minute for 2. You can also add cheese or jalapenos when you first wrap the kolache if you feel so inclined. Great quick breakfast on the go.

Curry Chicken

Newsflash: I'm not Indian. But I love me some Indian food. And since I don't have an Auntie who taught me how to make Indian food, I just wing it. And I like the way it tastes. But please don't tell me I make it wrong...because if this is wrong, my tastebuds don't want to be right.

1 package of chicken tenderloins (a package is a fridge to freezer pack from Costco)

1 can coconut milk (lite if you can get it)

1 tablespoon curry

1 teaspoon garlic

1 cup chicken broth

Cut chicken into small cubes and place in a deep skillet, let brown. Then add all ingredients except the milk. Once the chicken is cooked, add the milk and let it come to a boil. Let simmer for 15 minutes or so and add a wee bit of flour (about 1/2 teaspoon) and mix well to thicken the sauce a bit. Serve with basmati rice and naan (you can make the naan or you can buy it from the store). This isn't a TON of chicken for 3 adults but we make do in an effort to be cheap. Plus we fill up on naan and rice with all the sauce. If you guys are meat people, you may want to add another pound of chicken to the mix. The sauce will still be enough though. The recipe above makes a pretty saucy little dish.

The end.

Ten on Tuesday

2011-11-22T03:37:00.000-08:00

1. What are you doing for Thanksgiving this year? The same thing we do every year: go over to my parents’ house and have dinner with them. I make the turkey though---and for the record, it’s already brining. Yes, I realize that some people think more than 24 hours of brining is too long. Those people have never had my Thanksgiving turkey.
2. What are you most thankful for this year? It’s hard to choose one thing when I truly feel so freaking blessed. Yes, so blessed that I needed a “freaking” as a qualifier. I am thankful most, though, for a good, GOOD God who loves me even though I suck most of the time.
3. Do you have any traditions on Thanksgiving? The parade? Football? Long naps? Eat. A ton. I really like watching the parade but it’s not a dealbreaker if I don’t catch it.
4. Is it called stuffing or dressing? Is it in the bird or a separate dish? Stuffing and it’s a separate dish. I don’t want to get ecoli or something!
5. Do you cook? Yes. I make the turkey. I love doing the whole meal but let’s be honest: my dad’s better at that than I am. But I make a better turkey. Sorry dad, you’re a vegetarian…it’s okay that I am better at cooking meat than you are. At least you can say you taught me everything I know, right?
6. What is your favorite dish? Stuffing. That’s right…after all that turkey talk, I look forward to the stuffing the most. Oh! And brussell sprouts. Oh!!! and ACORN squash! Oh my gosh…I am going to gain 10 pounds this week.
7. What is your dessert preference? Red wine. Truth.
8. What is your favorite Thanksgiving memory? “I’m standing here, mashing the taters…” sorry folks, that one is for the McCartneys only.
9. Do you plan to shop on Black Friday? Ugh. No! Who would want to do that to themselves? Who would want to wait in a line for 4-6 hours and risk being trampled to death all in hopes of saving $300 on a television? Not me. Yet I am doing it anyway because I love my husband and he really wants that cheap 46” TV from Target.
10. What are you most dreading about Thanksgiving this year? See #9.

Rock Shock

2011-11-21T03:00:00.000-08:00

When he last left our heroes, they were headed off to the Rock and Mineral show. Oh, did I not make it clear that that is where Shayla was when this picture was taken? Hm, my bad. I just thought you’d come to that conclusion on your own. I mean, who DOESN’T spend their weekends at the rock show? It’s like a craft show…for rocks. And fossilized poop.

When Shayla and I were first planning our Houston weekend, she told me that Steven wanted to go to this Mineral Show the Saturday we would be in town. I had no idea what that meant but I knew that rocks would entice John’s inner geek right along with Steven’s so it was a go. We walked in not quite expecting what we would see…we saw lots of this:

And lots of this:

And what’s a rock show without a thanksgiving table…made entirely of rocks…geode muffins anyone?

Shayla and I have been friends since we were in the single digits…so is it any wonder that we both grew up and married men who are very similar? John and Steven had a good time talking about Mother Earth’s masterpieces. Steven made it known that he always wanted to be a geologist when he was little and John admitted his childhood disappointment at never receiving a rock tumbler from Santa. I thought John’s head was going to explode when Steven announced that he had a rock splitter at home. Rock splitter? “I’ll take one geode to cut open at home, please!” Here are the boys going through the buckets of rocks trying to find the lightest possible one—apparently the lighter the geode, the prettier the inside. Just one little piece of geology knowledge I gleaned from my weekend with minerals. It was pretty hilarious to watch these two try and weigh each rock in their hands in an effort to find a good one.

Shayla and I made the executive decision that we should have our “expensive” geode broken at the show by an expert while the boys could get a couple of the $8 geodes to take home and crack open. Even though Steve apparently had a rock splitter, we thought that the boys may want to have an expert cut the rock in half to be sure that it was a) even and b) not a dud. Jack thought that the geode breaking action was pretty exciting.

And this is the moment when Shayla exclaimed, “We have one of THOSE tools at home?”

The boys with their pretty geode halves. John’s has a little calcite in it…whatever the heck that is. Clearly, my childhood ambition was never to be a geologist.

John was looking everywhere for a piece of fulgurite. When we walked into the show, he made it clear that he wanted fulgurite and he would purchase it if he found it. Of course, Shayla and I weren’t the geology type so we needed an explanation. For you other nongeologist types, fulgurite is essentially fossilized lightning—it’s what’s leftover when lightning strikes sand. After seeing all these fancy shiny rocks, I couldn’t WAIT to see what fulgurite would look like—sand + lightning…this stuff had to be lovely, right? Wrong. Ladies and gentlemen, I present FULGURITE:

Now, I was excited about having a pretty little geode…those things are easy on the eyes…but a crummy little sand stick? Umm…yeah, that wasn’t doing anything for my inner interior decorator. I kept asking John as he inquired of all the vendors if they had his precious fossilized lightning, “But what would you do with you had a piece of fulgurite?” His response: “I’d have it!” Well, we have it. And it’s displayed awkwardly in our kitchen. Naturally.

The rock show excitement rubbed off on the Jackster. When we got back to Shayla’s house, Jack began his own little rock collection. We may have to get rocks in our backyard…the kid was entertained for a good 30 minutes walking around collecting the rocks and putting them on the bench.

And because the boys can't let a weekend pass together without breaking some things open, we took our “small geodes” out to the driveway for the boys to bust open. After all, Steven owns a rock splitter. And no, Shayla, it was not the same kind of splitter Dr. Geode up there was using.

Steve put on his safety glasses to be sure that no rock chips slipped in those lovely eyeballs of his. John put on some sunglasses…perhaps not QUITE as effective but whatever. Apparently John doesn’t care about keeping his eyes safe…apparently he thinks that we have enough eyes to spare between the two of us. Hmm…should someone tell him that that little lady he’s married to doesn’t have Grade A peepers?

Shayla held Jack and his so-far-perfect little eyes at a safe distance away from the rock carnage.

The result: a lovely lavender little geode and a pretty deep purple one.

Overall, it was a fantastic weekend….which should come as no surprise. Every weekend with those people is wonderful. Add rocks into the mix and it can only get better, no?

Shayla and Steven bought a huge, beautiful geode to display. It’s amazing. John and I settled for our 1/2 geode that the boys picked out and John’s fulgurite.. You know, so he could have it.

You’ll be happy to know that they are proudly displayed in our kitchen. And since I learned so much about minerals on my trip to the Rock Show, I’ll be happy to tell you all about the rocks when you come over. Or at least I’ll pour you a scotch on the rocks. Tomato, Tomahto.

Feven Fosts

2011-11-18T04:42:00.001-08:00

1. I got a few texts yesterday that my post made people cry. I swear I didn’t mean for it to be depressing—but I guess that when you’re a bummed out about missing your son’s first potty in the big boy toilet, it’s just hard to hide that kind of pain. (sarcasm intended) Seriously though, it wasn’t meant to be a depressing post, I was just writing to let those SAHMs out there know that they are important and that they have an envied job—and I hope they realize how lucky they are.

2. I am breaking out worse than the 12 year old girls lining up to see Twilight tonight.

3. So apparently the trick to successful potty training is to have no desire whatsoever for your kid to be potty trained? Jack is obsessed with the toilet. He’s been sitting on it for about a week, used it for the first time on Wednesday, and really made things happen last night. And he always tells us now if he’s got to go and he’ll tell us if he wants to use the potty. I will encourage it but I’m also not rushing to get him out of diapers. And it’s pure selfishness: we are going on a mini family vacation in February. The idea of having a 23 month old using an airplane toilet and interrupting our long walks every morning to find an outdoor potty? That just does not sound like fun. But I think it may be bad parenting to stop the whole potty training thing in order to have more convenience on my vacation, huh?

4. Jack has never been a good sleeper. But it’s been getting worse lately. The past few days, he wakes up in the middle of the night just bawling. Sometimes he’ll fall back asleep but more often, we have to go on there in and soothe him or he’ll be screaming for an hour. Could it be nightmares?

5. I have had 2 recipe requests from that boring Thrifty Grocer post: carnitas and kolaches. I’ll do that next week. Anyone want to see any other recipe from that post?

6. John is allegedly finishing our retaining wall this weekend. He started it 3 weeks ago by digging a trench and laying down 2 pavers. So yeah, we’ll see what kind of progress he makes.

7. Have a great weekend!!

At Home.

2011-11-17T07:21:00.000-08:00

I am working from home this morning. I spent the last two days in NYC/Jersey City for a seminar I was leading out of our New Jersey office. I left Tuesday AM and got back last night. I much prefer the short trips but I loathe flying so spending the majority of the previous 48 hours on planes or in airports is not my idea of a ragin' time.

I have a meeting offsite at 11 am this morning so it made more sense to just work from home this morning. I love that I will get to sit at my kitchen table in my slippers reviewing contracts and responding to emails rather than having to field calls and questions in the office. When I come back from a trip, I just need some alone time to get re-focused. Business travel sucks for that reason: you are out of the office, essentially working the whole time you're gone...yet you get back to the office and have a crapton to do because you've been, well, out of the office. I hate that.

You know what else I hate? Being away from Jack and Johnny. That was my biggest fear when I started traveling for work: missing a milestone while I was away. Jack was on the verge of crawling one time when I went off for a trip. I had this gut-wrenching feeling that he was going to start the moment the wheels lifted off San Antonio ground. Luckily, he waited until my return...but I know that I will miss things. Case in point: I missed Jack's first time using the big boy potty yesterday. I know, perhaps not the most glamorous of all accomplishments but it was still important. Jack's been showing interest in the "pott-ah!" ever since he saw a kid with Cars pull-ups at daycare (as an aside: Jack has never seen Cars. Yet he is absolutely obsessed with it. Same thing with when he first became obsessed with Elmo. How does that happen?). Apparently, when Jack saw the pull-ups, he kept exclaiming, "CARS!?!?" and the teacher told him that he couldn't have Cars pullups until he used the potty. And now it's all he talks about. So I begrudingly pulled out the potty seat I'd purchased a month or so ago because it was on sale for $4 (I had NO intention of using it anytime soon, I want the convenience of diapers as long as possible...there's something to be said of not interrupting a trip to the grocery store or a dinner at a restaurant with a 10 minute potty break). Jack has wanted to use the Pott-ah multiple times a day ever since. But he's never actually gone. He just sits there and says "Pott-ah!" over and over. Well, yesterday he finally made some things happen. And I missed it. Definitely not the end of the world but just another little reminder why sometimes it sucks to be a working mom...and why sometimes it sucks even more to be a working mom who travels. It's so funny though--if you'd have told me 10 years ago that someday I'd be going to NYC, Phoenix, Bermuda, Vegas, Chicago, etc. for work, I'd have been ecstatic. Yet now I dread these trips because I'm afraid I'll miss a little boy peeing on the big boy potty? My how the mighty have fallen.

This morning, I woke up and ran into get Jack the moment he started stirring. Even 2 days away feels like an eternity. In 2 days, he'd started saying more words that I'd never heard him say. He sat in his chair watching the Grand Rapids American Pie Lip Dub and singing, "Bye Bye! Bye Bye!" while I got ready for the day. I took him to daycare and headed back home to get started on the pile of work that had accumulated while I was out of the office. It was about 8 am and I saw all these moms out walking with their kids. Clearly, they were stay-at-home moms--nobody can be out at 8 am walking if they have a regular 8-5 gig. As I saw them, a little pang of jealousy shot through me. I wished that I was driving Jack to go have coffee with my mom or heading with him to the Bible Study I can no longer attend since it is in the middle of a Wednesday morning. Perhaps we could just be sitting at home reading stories. Instead, I was heading home to go work...some more. The same thing I'd been doing for the previous 48 hours. I'd go home and sit at my table to prep for a mediation, not to color a picture with my son. Who is this girl who is sad about that? THIS is what I've wanted to do my whole life, why am I now wishing to be pushing a stroller at 8 am?

I have friends who have made the Stay-At-Home mom career work. Most of them have complaints about money, exhaustion, lack of adult interaction, concerns that what they do doesn't "matter"--all completely legitimate frustrations that come hand-in-hand with choosing to stay home. Right now, there's no way that we could make that career path work for us--too much debt from the career path I've wanted for the previous 25 years of my life: law school/attorney. And frankly, by the time we can make it work, who knows if it will even be worth it. I'd like to be able to stay home with the kiddos while they are young. At this rate, we wouldn't be able to make it work until they are already in school for 8 hours a day...and that just seems kind of pointless. But for those of you who are making it work and are exhausted and tired and wish that you could just pack up and head to NYC for two days for nothing but adult interactions, know that there are plenty of us working moms who would love to switch jobs with you. Sure, our jobs fulfill us in many ways. Sure, we bring in an additional paycheck. Don't misunderstand me: I am so grateful for this job. I love that I have been able to get my dream job right out of law school. I love working for a woman who has shown me how to break right through the Old Boys Club of the legal profession. But there are some days that it just downright hurts to be missing the little things in my son's life. So for all you Stay-At-Home-Moms out there who may be having a rough day, just know this: You are important. You are making a difference in the job you do. You have so much value. And you'll never miss your kids' first tinkle in the Elmo toilet.

A Picture for You…

2011-11-16T04:00:00.000-08:00

So I meant to write a cool blog about a lot of cool stuff. However, Molly is out of town, stuff blew up at work, and now it’s 11:45pm and I want to go to bed.

Therefore, you get a picture instead.

Jack will appreciate that one when he’s older.

Ten on Tuesday

2011-11-15T03:47:00.000-08:00

When I was in high school and college, I was never really all that popular. Sure, I got along fine with everyone…I wasn’t necessarily an outcast, but I definitely didn’t get invited to the parties. Ever. No no, I take that back. I did get invited to a party one time. But every “My Parents Are Out Of Town!” party I’d ever seen on the movies was a crazy drunken sexfest. So I was pretty darn terrified to enter the party house. Imagine my surprise when we all walked in and people were just sitting on the pool patio drinking Zimas and talking about what they were going to wear to prom. Yeah, I also didn’t get invited to prom.

Wait…where was I going with this? Oh yeah. Popularity. Something I don’t have. But I think there’s something to be said about a girl who has popular friends, no? Between Lauren From Texas (who wrote this week’s ToT questions) and Chelsea, I don’t need to worry about having the right clothes or the slick moves…those ladies will still invite me to the party. And if they don’t, I’ll just blog about how mean they are.

Really though, ToT hosted by one of my favorite girls with questions written by another one of the best ladies I know? Can’t go wrong.

1. What are your pantry staples? Pasta, tomatillos, pasta sauce, rice, beans
2. What are your refrigerator staples? Milk, eggs, ketchup, hot sauce, frozen bread dough (okay, that’s a freezer staple, but whatever)
3. You already look like Heidi Klum (or your favorite supermodel). Now, what are the top three non-physical things you would change about yourself? 1) To show Jesus I heart him more than I currently show him. I don’t give him near the attention I should. I used to wake up an hour before work/school to read the Bible and have quiet time. Now I wake up and start getting ready right away so I can have a few precious minutes with Jack before heading off to work. Here the Baby J sent me this awesome other Baby J to hang out with all the time and I don’t even give Him the props He deserves for it because I’m too busy playing with the gifts He gave me? Now that seems off. 2)To be a better listener…I don’t remember things as well as I used to and I think that’s because I’ve become a worse listener. Isn’t that the pits? I should be becoming a better listener, not worse! 3) Be better at picking successful stocks.
4. What’s holding you back from your dream job? (If you already have your dream job, how did you get there?) Money. Isn’t it always money? Now, being a lawyer really was my dream job growing up. And I do like my job…probably more than most people like their jobs. But when I read all day on Twitter about these women who are fortunate enough to spend their entire day with their kiddos, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t jealous. I just feel like you get such a limited time with them before they are all, “Mom! I hate you so much! I can’t believe you won’t let me go to a party where they will be drinking Zima on the pool patio!!!” so I feel like I should take advantage of it while I can. Who knew that one day being a stay-at-home mom would be my dream job?
5. You have $500 to spend but it has to be on one item only. Go. A TV. John wants a new TV something fierce but we both know that any extra money right now needs to go to our student loans. So even though our big living room TV only turns on part of the time, we are holding off until it dies completely…and our loans are paid off. So pretty much we’ll never get a new TV. But if I had to spend it on one random item and it couldn’t go toward loans or the new sprinkler system we need, I’d say a TV.
6. What is something that you are embarrassed to admit you buy on a regular basis? Cottonelle wipes. There. I said it.
7. What’s in/on your bed every night? My husband, 4 pillows, a sheet, a duvet, and a quilt.
8. What is a non-necessity item that, no matter how expensive it gets or how tight your budget if, you will always find room for it? Tithing. Though I think that’s a necessity. We don’t always give to the church—we give wherever we feel like God can do good work. Lately, it’s been Aqua-Africa…a group that we REALLY believe in.
9. What is the weirdest sandwich you’ve ever made? I went through a phase in like 10th grade where I would make fried onion sandwiches. I’d basically grill up onions and then stick them in a sandwich and then fry the sandwich like a grilled cheese. Perhaps THAT’S why I was so unpopular!
10. Would you rather: Be banned from Pinterest forever, but gain a million captive Twitter followers; or, never get on Facebook again but gain five thousand blog readers? I’d have to go for the blog readers…isn’t that silly? I don’t even market or publicize my blog yet I want more readers? Oh yeah, and my blog also kind of sucks…but yeah, send those readers right on over! Yeah, I know…it makes no sense. But think about it: if I had 5,000 readers, I could get sponsors. And then I could get closer to doing my dream job!

A Blurry Friday

2011-11-14T03:34:00.000-08:00

If you read Friday’s blog post, you already know that John and I had a weekend away from home. Jack’s Friday was full of playtime and I was super excited about it. So I did what any good iPhone owner/mother would do, I took pictures. However, as you probably know, my eyes aren’t tip top. So what may look clear on my phone to me at the time (and “clear” is probably a relative term), become obviously blurry when uploaded onto the computer.

Oh well. I had a great day and because this is my blog, I get to put as many blurry pictures on here as I darn well please.

While John was in meetings in Austin, Jack and I hung out with my pal Ashley and her lovely kiddos Lilly and Ethan. Ethan is a good year and a half or so older than Jack…and he was SUCH a good playmate. He kept showing Jack all of his toys and was always quick to be sure that Jack was involved in everything he was doing. When he sat down for a snack, he kept telling me “Jack wants crackers!”. When I finally said that we had to go, he melted my little heart when he told me that he “didn’t want us to leave!!!” Too sweet.

We left Austin a bit later than we planned to after John’s meetings ran late and we made a stop to IKEA. I tell you what, I feel like we BREEZED through that store yet we somehow managed to spend like 2 hours there. What? How? We were there for 10 minutes! Anyway, I was already a bit perturbed that we wouldn’t be to Chelsea’s until almost 6. But I thought that if we really focused (and by “focused” I mean drove a couple miles above the speed limit and didn’t make any stops), we’d be able to get there a bit before it got dark. Ha! I forgot about that nasty little buggar called “Houston Traffic”. Countless times, we would be at a total standstill. On the highway. Just stopped. No idea why…I guess the rush hour commuters had just had enough driving for the evening so they decided to take a break. In the middle of the fast lane. So that was fun. At 7:30, we finally arrived. I was all ready for Chelsea to be annoyed that we were so late…clearly the drive had muddled up my brain and made me forget how awesome she was. Chelsea and Jansen greeted us at the door and we settled in for an evening of good food, great friends, and adorable little boys playing and sharing.

Jack was STOKED to have a bunch of new and different toys to play with. And Chelsea and Stephen have taught Jansen that part of the “Game” of his car is pushing it. So he thought it was just a ball to have Jack sit in the car while he pushed him around the living room. Needless to say, Jack thought it was pretty freaking awesome too.

“Hey Jansen, I found another car-like toy. Come push me on this one too!”

“Dude Jack, what’s the deal? Aren’t you going to push me?”

As you can see, John was awfully comfortable at Hurst Castle…just lounging back watching the kiddos.

John won Jansen over by playing with Jansen’s favorite toy in the world: Ducks!

Meanwhile, Chelsea taught Jansen some sign language.

And now comes the point of the evening where Jack decides to hug his new friend…but instead it looks like he’s trying out some new linebacker move. (As an aside, I just had to ask John, “Is a linebacker someone who tackles?”)

I have about a hundred pictures from hanging out that night but they are all so blurry. Quite disappointing, I must say. But it was just a great night. Jack normally goes to bed at 7 and he stayed up until 10 without so much as a whine. He was just so excited to play with all these new toys with his new buddy. We stayed as long as we could until the kiddos were ready to conk out. It was a bummer to have to leave so quickly after we’d arrived. John and I are already trying to find a way to hang out with them again. There’s something special in a friendship when your husbands get along so well…add to it two little boys who have a great time together and it’s pretty much a downright shame that we aren’t neighbors.

The only good thing about leaving Chelsea’s casa was the knowledge that we were headed over to a weekend at one of my favorite places: my dear friend Shayla’s house. We had SUCH a good time. A time that I fully intend to write about later this week. But for now, I have laundry to fold and sleep to get. Just know that our Houston weekend only got better…I mean, how could it not when something called the “Mineral Show” is involved?

Get pumped. Shayla certainly is.

Feven Fosts

2011-11-11T04:32:00.001-08:00

1. I went to Wildfish for a business dinner this past week. I’ve always wanted to get the Hong Kong sea bass there (my mom and sister rave about it) but the only times I’ve ever eaten there, I’ve been knocked up. And, as you may know, preggers can’t have sea bass. Anyway, since my uterus is currently vacant, I ordered it. Oh my gosh. It was so good I’ve dedicated Fost #1 to it. Sooooo good.

2. We have a most exciting weekend planned! I took the day off today and John and I are headed to Austin this morning. John’s got a few meetings at the Austin office and I will go hang out with my lovely pal Ashley and her two kiddos. I haven’t seen her in…gosh…a year? That’s pathetic. Then we will head out to Houston where we get to hang out with Chelsea and her lovely husband Stephen and, of course, Jansen. I am SO excited about this. And THEN we will spend the rest of the weekend with Shayla and Steve. A weekend filled with seeing some of my favorite people on earth…I wish this happened more often.

3. Jack got his school pictures back yesterday. We are going to buy a few because…well…it’s his first school picture. His hair is always strawberry blonde but when we go outside, it usually looks even redder (especially when the son hits it just right). Holy toledo, they must have had some bright lights on my boy because his hair looks RED!

Yeah, I put my son in a skull/crossbone shirt for his first picture day. What’s it to ya? We’re hardcore, y’all. Just accept it.

4. Thanks for all your nice comments on my post about our budget. I got so many tweets, texts, and comments about it. I, for one, thought the post was mind-numbingly boring…but I guess a few of you thought it was helpful. So that’s good. One person asked me to post our menu/shopping list with prices every month. I can’t say I will always remember/not be lazy enough to do that…but would anyone else be interested in that? Because seriously, that sounds like a snooze fest.

5. I called my brother on Wednesday morning and he picked up the phone and he said, “I am so glad you called me, Molly! I had just fallen asleep at my desk!” When I asked him why, he responded, “I just read the most boring post about some chick’s shopping list and menu for what her family eats in a month.”

Hardy. Har. Har. (and yeah, Willy, I know that you hate periods after every word. Deal. With. It.)

6. John and I have always wanted to name Son #2 Elijah. Okay, John has. I was never IN LOVE with it. Obviously, it’s an awesome name but it never felt like “ours”. When we decided on Jack, it was instant love. I wanted that name. But Elijah? I just can’t explain why it isn’t perfect for us. So we started talking about other boy names a couple weeks ago and I think we have decided on a different name…but I’m afraid to tell anyone like we have with our other potential kids’ names (Christine and Elizabeth, for the record) because it’s definitely not your traditional baby name.

7. Nope. I’m not pregnant. And we’re not trying. Just have the baby itch something fierce.

8. Over the past few months, we’ve been letting Jack eat “off the menu” at school. This was risky because most of the meals/snacks contain some sort of dairy (good little daycare, following the food pyramid). Anyway, we slowly have incorporated some real cheese/real dairy at home too (instead of his soy crap). Last weekend, we ripped the bandaid off completely. Some things we’ve learned: 1) Jack likes soy cheese better than regular cheese, 2) Organic whole milk is cheaper than soy milk (yay!), 3) Jack LOVES regular milk. When his doctor used to tell us, “Don’t give him more than 16 oz of milk per day” I used to ask, “Is 8 enough? Because even that is a struggle.” Now it’s a struggle to convince him that he does not need milk at every single meal or snacktime, 4) He’s not allergic anymore! Not even a rash or a spit up or anything! YAY!!!!!!

Hey Google… How Did People Get Here?

2011-11-10T04:00:00.000-08:00

One of my greatest loves in life is figuring out how people got to this blog. Okay, that’s a gigantic lie. However, it’s always interesting just to see the crazy stuff people search for and the craziness that it actually brings them to this location on the interwebs.

Let’s take a look…

Lou Ferigno

First of all, the multiple parakeets that I killed or had escape on me in that week period of my life continue to rack up some blog views. I still miss having Lou Ferigno 1, 2, and 3 in my life… but the mention of Lou Ferigno has brought 73 people to this blog in the last couple of months. RIP Lou.

Three Crispy Tacos

I’m not quite sure a) why searching for three crispy tacos would bring you here and b) why you would search for the phrase three crispy tacos. I do know one thing though… that would make an awesome band name. The Three Crispy Tacos.

Cankles Baby Shower

Wow. That just seems a bit mean. And once again… why here? When have we talked about cankles… let alone in relationship to a baby shower. I’d like to know what the plan for this baby shower was. Cankle theme? A Cankle Cake? Some type of game where you wrap toilet paper around ankles to see who can come up with the biggest cankle? Terrible people.

Cootie Catcher Baby Shower

I would rather not talk about this one.

Damn You George Costanza

I must say it’s a point of pride whenever someone come here by searching for a Seinfeld reference.

Job Title Underwear Vegetable

uhhh…. gross, I think…

Swaddle an Adult

Many moons ago, we discussed the craziness you can find on the internet like an instructional video of how to swaddle an adult. Well, ever since then, we’ve had a constant stream of people coming to the blog searching for that term or something similar. It always makes me a bit sad, because I have no idea how you’d effectively swaddle an adult, so I feel bad for misdirecting all of these peeps.

what does it mean when a parakeet flies away from you

I’ll tell you what it means. It means they don’t love you. Trust me, person searchign for this phrase.. I’ve been there. I understand what you’re going through. Your parakeet is gone though and he’s never coming back.

The Thrifty Grocer

2011-11-09T03:49:00.000-08:00

Remember a million years ago (or 2 months, whatever) when I told you that I'd post my grocery list, monthly meal menu and a few recipes to prove to you that I really do spend under $200 a month for groceries for 3 1/2 people (Jack still counts as a half)? Well, I'm FNALLY getting around to it. I know that most of you don't get a flying fiddle about what the Campbell family eats for dinner or how much I spend on pork, but for those of you who have asked me (and asked me and asked me) to post a breakdown of how we do it, this post is for you!

This month was a relatively normal month. When I travel, John usually eats pizza and Megan eats whatever she can find (she's not a pizza girl. Weird, right?). I didn't think it was accurate to do a post on a month where I was gone for over a week because that meant 1 week of no meal planning...which wouldn't give you a true look into how we save since most people can't just say, "Let's eat a totinos pizza every night for 1 week! Money SAVED!" John, of course, doesn't mind those weeks because he gets pizza and he doesn't have to deal with doing dishes on top of taking care of the house and Jack while I'm away. But like I said, October only brings me away for 2 nights so I was able to meal plan and spend for a whole month. So here ya go.

Our Menu For October

Here is the menu for October:

In case you can’t read that that small of handwriting, here’s the rundown of what we had planned for October:

Buffalo chicken strips & oven fries, ribs and coleslaw, scotch and sushi (John goes out to Scotch tasting with my dad once a month so Megan and I decided it’d be a good excuse for sushi takeout), Greek chicken and veggies, white chicken chili, chicken lo mein, burgers and truffle fries, stuffed pepper casserole, pot roast, frozen pizza/pot roast leftovers, PF Changs frozen meal, Megan cooks, Megan’s bday celebration so no meal planned because we were going to go out to dinner, Burgers and truffle fries, chicken lo mein, KFC (Meggie’s birthday), Chicken korma and naan, breakfast for dinner (eggs, waffles, hash browns), dirty rice and veggies, lemon garlic bread crumb pasta, oven fries and buffalo chicken strips, pasta and sausage, chicken fajitas, buffalo chicken tacos, breakfast tacos, Megan cooks, a couple nights without meals planned (which worked out because there were a couple days where things came up so I didn’t cook, I just shifted meals to those nights), steak (donated to me by my wonderful coworker) with brussel sprouts and those hasselback potatoes that are all over pinterest (YUM!), spaghetti and meatballs, carnitas, green pork enchiladas, lemon pepper pasta

We went over to stay with my parents for a few nights while Megan’s family was in town so the meals planned for those days got axed in favor of my dad’s awesome cooking. Since I work with mostly frozen stuff, I’ll just moved those meals to November. We travel quite a bit in November and between the travel and carrying a couple of October’s meals over, I spent $164 on groceries for November’s meals last weekend.

What I Bought

After making the menu, I write down the shopping list of everything that we need. I don’t just write “chicken” or “beef”. I write down EXACTLY what we need. 6 packages of chicken (a “package” is one of those 8 pack “Fridge to Freezer” things from Costco), 4 lbs ground beef, etc. Then I’ll usually count up how many meat items I have listed and if it’s “too many”, I try and re-work the menu. We are not people who require meat with every meal so that is super helpful for our budget. For instance, this month I had 3 additional meat meals (meatloaf, pasta & meat sauce and something else I can’t remember now). Once I counted up how many pounds of ground beef we needed, I had SIX. Six is WAY too rich for my blood. So I removed lots of those meat meals and replaced them with pasta meals. I also noticed a package of sausage in the freezer that we could use up and save money that way. My monthly goal is usually 1 package of pork, 1 Costco package of chicken (see picture below), and no more than 3 lbs of ground beef. Every other month, I allow for a package of Costco sausage too which is 3 packages of 8 sausages…and lasts at least a couple months in the freezer.

Meat is definitely the priciest of the items on our grocery list. Other than that, it’s pasta, bread dough, random spices & condiments, etc. So if I can get the meat to a minimum, I’m usually pretty confident that we’ll be fine budget-wise.

And since Chelsea demanded that I show actual pictures of what I buy (“You can’t tell me “pork”, there are too many “porks” in the meat aisle. Tell me EXACTLY what it says on the package”), here you go:

I am not loyal to the kind of pork/chicken/sausage I get. Whatever is cheapest. Sometimes chicken breast is cheaper than chicken tenderloins. Sometimes carnitas are cheaper than pork sirloin tip roast. I do, however, always buy 93/7 or leaner when it comes to ground beef.

The Budget Breakdown

The way we shop is the same every month: the weekend closest to the start of the month (so sometimes the 30/31^st of the month before) we go to HEB and Costco to load up.

So here’s what we bought at HEB:

1. HEB Frozen Broccoli jumbo bag ($3.50)

2. HEB Frozen Green Beans jumbo bag ($2.99)

3. HEB Frozen Fajita Vegetables (2 packages) ($3.46)

4. HEB Frozen Green Peas ($1.24)

5. 7 packages of Banquet Fully Cooked Turkey Breakfast Sausage ($6.86)

6. Michelina’s Lean Gourmet Frozen Meals (2) ($1.84)

7. 93/7 Ground Beef – 3 lbs ($10.74) 1.8

8. Tony’s Hamburger Pizza ($1.98)

9. Eye of Round Roast ($7.26)

10. Miniature Carrots ($2.58)

11. Rhodes White Frozen Dinner Rolls ($6.36)

12. 1 banana (Jack always insists on eating a banana while we shop) ($0.19)

13. 1 bag of Hill Country Fare cheddar cheese ($2.22)

14. Mission Low Carb Tortillas ($2.69)

15. HEB Fat Free Cheese Singles ($3.78)

16. HEB Spaghetti Sauce, 3 cans ($2.67)

17. La Costena Green Tomatillos, 2 cans ($4.58)

18. Dannon Light N’Fit Large Yogurt ($2.38)

19. HEB Fat Free Sour Cream ($1.00)

20. Kikkoman Panko Bread Crumbs ($1.52)

21. HEB Raisins ($2.84)

22. Hill Country Fare Yellow Mustard ($.82)

23. Oscar Meyer Bacon Bits – 2 bags ($3.96)

24. Fleschmanns Rapid Rise Yeast Packets, 2 strips ($1.96)

25. Goya Reciato, 2 jars ($4.24)

26. Polar Coconut Milk, 2 cans ($3.00)

27. HEB Dried Navy Beans ($0.99)

28. Israeli Cous Cous (from the self serve/hippy/bulk dry goods aisle) ($2.60)

29. HEB Dried Lentils ($0.67)

30. HEB Dried Cranberries ($1.79)

31. Progresso Garlic & Herb Bread Crumbs ($1.48)

32. Barilla Plus Spaghetti, 2 boxes ($4.18)

What we bought at Costco—I lost the receipt so you’ll have to deal with approximates:

1. Chicken (approx $16)

2. Potatoes (approx $7)

3. 3 dozen eggs (approx $6)

4. Costco “Naked Nuggets”: (approx $15)

GRAND TOTAL: Approx $145. Now keep in mind that I had to go back to the store periodically to get things like milk and cheese (for the Jackster) but overall, this is a good representation on where we start. With mostly all our food purchased for $145 at the beginning of the month, we are in VERY good shape to stay well below $200 even with periodic “I need more flour” or “why don’t we have any more shiraz?” trips to the grocery store.

And for even more mind-numbing breakdown of what we bought, here’s the deal on all of that: the frozen veggies double up for both lunches and dinners. John and I eat chicken (naked nuggets) & veggies or leftovers for lunches. We also buy a couple of the Michalena’s Lean Gourmet frozen meals to keep in the freezer at work for “emergency” lunches if we forget ours to prevent us from finding an excuse to go buy a lunch. The breakfast sausage is for kolaches. The frozen bread is for kolaches and random things like hamburger buns and garlic bread. Eye of Round was for pot roast. Cheese is for enchiladas and casseroles. Spaghetti and spaghetti sauce is for pancakes. Just kidding—wanted to see if you were still reading. The Raisins, Cranberries & yeast is for breakfast bread that I make in the bread machine for breakfast to go. Bacon bits are for breakfast tacos and to mix into Jack’s eggs in the morning. Coconut milk is for the Indian food on the menu. Beans are for soups. Cous Cous is for a side for our lunches or if I just need to whip up a quick side for our dinner some night. The breadcrumbs are for the breadcrumb pasta on the menu this month and for meatballs. The tomatillos and reciato are for enchiladas and a sauce for the carnitas. The yogurt is for John’s breakfast that he sometimes makes of cereal and yogurt. Sour cream, mustard, and other condiments are just for random things throughout the month.

Things I Didn’t Buy This Month

1. Corn Tortillas – we buy these at Costco every 2-3 months. They freeze like penguins (which is my way of saying they freeze really well. Perhaps not my best analogy). We thaw them as needed for enchiladas, carnitas, etc.

2. Sausage – I buy packages of sausage at Costco every 2-3 months and freeze them. They come in 3 packs of 6 sausages and we never go through the entire thing in one month.

3. Cereal – Costco again. When I buy cereal at Costco, it usually lasts a couple months. We aren’t super cereal people. We eat kolaches most mornings.

Recipes

I had this big plan to post recipes but seriously, this post has become a behemoth and although I know that a few of you have asked me to write about this, it’s going to be boring as all get out for the other readers who have now vowed to never come to this corner of the web ever again. So how about this, if you want a recipe, leave me a comment and let me know which one. Then I’ll be sure to only post recipes that I know people want. Deal, Lucille?

So there ya go, my tips of the trade for how to spend under $200 on groceries each month. 10 minutes of your life you’re never gonna get back…

Ten on Tuesday

2011-11-08T04:21:00.001-08:00

1. What’s your favorite television show for each day of the week? Each day of the week? I don't have time to watch TV each day of the week...except the one episode of King of Queens/Seinfeld (or)/30 Rock that I listen to while dozing off to dreamland. My favorite shows on TV right now are 30 Rock (COME BACK WITH NEW EPISODES, ALREADY!), The Office, and Modern Family. I also watched a couple episodes of New Girl and kind of like it. But I watch everything on Hulu/Netflix so I don't even know what days those shows actually air. Oh. And I also watch Desperate Housewives. YES, I know it's a terrible show but I have watched it since Episode 1...when it was actually halfway decent. It's bad. I get it. But I have come too far to give up now. Let's just say that I'm glad it's over this season though.
2. How many times do you wear your jeans before you watch them? Depends. Usually 2. But if I only wear them to run to the store and back or to my parents house for a couple hours (which happens frequently), I will stretch them for 4 or 5 wears. I mostly wear business clothes at work though and pajama pants when I'm home.
3. What is your favorite pasta shape? orchiette. LOVE THOSE LITTLE EARS!
4. Do you read newspapers? Not anymore. I used to love it. Maybe one day I'll get the paper but right now, it seems to be a dying luxury.
5. Do you sleep in socks? Nope.
6. Favorite genre of movies? 80s romance comedies. Also chick flicks. Except I hate most of them once I’m done watching them. I just want to watch them because “I want a comedy” and then…you know…they end up being about infidelity and tons of sex with random people.
7. How do you feel about wrestling? I don't feel much.
8. Should men pluck their eyebrows? Sometimes, yes. Not SHAPE them...but groom them.
9. Do you have dimples? Nope.
10. Do you like to camp? Nope. Something about peeing outside just doesn’t sound like an ideal vacation to me.

Mistaken Identity

2011-11-07T04:00:00.000-08:00

For those of you who don’t know, my parents just returned from a 3 week vacation abroad. They went on a cruise that started in Greece and ended in Turkey. On Wednesday night when I went to pick them up they were full of souvenirs and pictures and stories of their travels. Throughout the weekend, we kept hearing more stories about all of the fun things they did while they were gone. At one point, my mom told us about how, while in Egypt, there was a group of teenage boys who would not take their eyes off my father. My Dad felt slightly uncomfortable about it, but thought there wasn’t much he could do so he just tried to ignore it. Eventually, however, my mother had to pee. My dad stood at the bathroom door trying to ignore the stares from the teenage boys as long as he could. Eventually it was clear that they wanted to talk to him. All at once, the entire group of teenagers swarmed on my father… they kept pointing at their camera and pointing to Dad. Surmising that they wanted to take a picture of him, but slightly confused as to why, my Dad kindly obliged.

After a couple of camera shots, one of the boys looked up at my dad, pointed to him and simply said, “Adonis!!” While of course, after this happened, my Dad’s head grew about six sizes. My Mother upon hearing this story asked their tour guide why in the world some teenage Egyptian boys would think her husband, Baldy McBalderson, would possibly be confused for Adonis. The tour guide explained to her that these boys were likely from the country and had never seen someone with such pale skin and blue eyes before. According to the tour guide, it made perfect sense that they would think this whitey (my Dad) is like the white Adonis they’d seen in story books.

We all thought this was a very funny story. We laughed and laughed about how this case of mistaken identity could occur. I was just grateful nobody had mistaken my husband for Adonis… gracious knows I don’t need him making, “I’m Adonis.” comments like my father inevitably will over the next couple of months.

And then it happened…

On Friday night, John and I went out to dinner with his father for one last meal before Bob went back to Nebraska. Right before we left, one of the employees came up to John and said, “Hey, I know you! Aren’t you that personal trainer at the gym?” Perhaps not quite the same as mistaking him for Adonis, but I still couldn’t help but to bust up laughing. And before you start thinking I’m rude, you should know John was laughing just as hard as I was. He turned to the guy and said, “Me?!?” The man responded, “Yes! Aren’t you that personal trainer at Gold’s Gym?” John said, “umm.. No.. I’m not… but thanks!” And off we went, but not without John’s head growing a couple of sizes.

Apparently, the men in my life are prone to cases of mistaken identity. It’s only a matter of time before someone asks me if Jack is the Gerber Baby or if Truman is that dog from Marley and Me.

Oops

2011-11-04T07:29:00.000-07:00

Here's the post I told you to read:

http://www.jumpdavidjump.com/jump_david_jump/2011/11/last-weeks-post-plus-todays-courage.html

Feven Fosts

2011-11-04T06:08:00.000-07:00

Because one list is never enough! Here's your second one for the week.

1. I PROMISE...PINKY PROMISE that next week I will post the Grocery shopping post about what I bought, how much I spent, etc for October. The last thing I need to do is type out the recipes but I'm too lazy. It's going to take forever. I may just post it without the recipes and then you guys can ask me for any particular recipes you want (if any).

2. My mom and dad just got back from a 3 week vacation. THREE WEEKS. They were out of the country so it wasn't easy to get in touch with them. They came back last night and it's amazing how much they missed in just 3 weeks. 3 weeks in the life of a toddler is an eternity. Jack's become such a better talker in those 3 weeks...it's crazy. They left and he wasn't saying too much more than his core 10 or 15 words. Now he'll repeat just about anything (which was scary for me right after I let some choice words slip out after cutting the crap out of my leg on Wednesday night).

3. Megan's mom and brother are in town. Can you believe I've never met them? We've been pals for years now, we are roommates, we went to law school together, and yet I've never met her mama. Weird. I'm excited to meet them at some point this weekend!

4. We decided to vacate Campbell casa for the weekend so that Megan's fam can have full run of the house without having to worry about: a baby waking them up, sleeping on an air mattress in the living room because the Campbells are occupying 2 of the 3 bedrooms, listening to us get ready in the morning, etc. So we are staying at my parents' house. Jack is a little freaked out every time he wakes up in my little sister's old bedroom. But when he's awake, he is loving playing with all of her old toys. Two of his favorite words right now are "mouse" and "car". She has an old stuart little in a remote control car sitting on her bookshelf. His eyes lit up and he got so excited when he saw "MOUSE CAR!!!" Very cute.

5. Now that our house is all repainted (thanks Bob!) I'm getting super itchy to finish the backyard. As I told you a while ago, we need to put up a retaining wall and then lay a patio on the side of the yard. Then we plan to get a sprinkler system installed this month and finally lay down grass seed. Our weeds only look like grass from so far away. I am hoping John and I can convince someone to watch Jack for a few hours on a weekend and we can make some big things happen and get that stuff DONE! Wish our lights outside were brighter so we could do more at night. Oh well.

6. We got family pictures taken last weekend. I'm kind of in love with how they turned out. If you are in the Austin/San Antonio area and need a photographer, I'd highly recommend Jack Willome. She's got a wee tot Jack's age so she's awesome about getting him to look and smile at the camera. Plus, she just takes awesome pictures.

7. John went to High School with a guy who was diagnosed with a brain tumor about a year ago. You HAVE to read his post from earlier this week:

8. Have a FANTASTIC weekend, everyone!

Feven Fosts for .... Thursday?

2011-11-03T07:29:00.000-07:00

Yes I realize that I do the list thing on Friday but I'm tired so it's either another list on Thursday or no post all.

1. John's dad came into town from Nebraska this past weekend. We are having a good time with him and I'm very excited he came down. Aside from just being a really good guy to be around, Bob has spent the better half of the week repainting the outside of our house, working on a retaining wall, and staining our living room chairs. Best father-in-law ever!

2. Jack was diagnosed with strep throat on Monday. That meant no trick-or-treating at daycare. However, we still had to take the obligatory annual twin cousin picture. Brady had strep throat last week so we were willing to take the risk of having him around jack.

Jack/Elmo and Brady the Dinosaur

Jack and Aunt Browyn

3. Isn't it about time that 30 rock came back on the air with new episodes?

4. Thanks for the nice comments on my pinterest project yesterday. I love pinterest in case you hadn't noticed.

5. Last night I was over at my parents house and I was carrying the pack and play upstairs from the downstairs bedroom. I was in the house all by myself trying to handle the pack and play and jack at the same time. The house is far from baby proof so I had to be sure that I had an eye on Jack the entire time. At one point the pack and play hit one of the pictures that's going up the stairway and felt perfectly on the back of my leg. I now have a giant gash in the back my lake that is been throbbing for the last 12 hours. It's a little bit less than awesome.

6. I wrote this entire post by speaking into my iPhone. Siri then typed it out. I love you Siri.

7. Speaking of Siri, I could probably write an entire post on her funny responses to my inquiries of her.

8. Hope you don't mind another list tomorrow!

Pinterest Challenge!

2011-11-02T03:44:00.000-07:00

Last time Bower Power and Young House Love did the Pinterest Challenge, I’d never even heard of Pinterest. So the idea of being “inspired” to go out and make something I’d “pinned” seemed pretty silly to me. Well, y’all, that was BEFORE I fell in love with pinterest. You may have heard about my obsession with the little site right here. So when those lovely ladies (along with Ana White and Erin put out a call for this season’s Pinterest Challenge, I was all about it.

So here we go: my DIY advent calendar for the Pinterest Challenge.

The Pin-spiration

This little beauty came from Tumblr account. by way of pinterest.There wasn’t a tutorial so I did what any good girl would do: I improvised.

The Process

I decided it wouldn’t be too hard. All I would need was a board, some white and red paint, some clothespins, cute ribbon, number stencils and some sort of sack to hold the goodies.

I walked into home depot to get a board and realized when I turned down this aisle that I had no clue what I was looking for. I got a board that was long enough to hold both the clothespin and still have plenty of room for a number above it. It was a bit wider than your average 2x4. I think. What do I know? The only concept of a 2x4 that I have is that it would hurt if you got hit by one (“I’m gonna smack you with a 2x4!” What? Am I the only one who says that on a routine basis?)

I painted the board white and laid down all 24 clothespins, marking where I wanted them to go with a pencil.

Then I took the red paint and my stencil and sponge painted the numbers on above where my marks were.

Jack and I went outside and I painted all of the clothespins while he ate tortellini and laughed at me singing songs to him. Good times, good times.

I cut ribbon into clothespin-length strips and hot glued them onto the clothespins.

Then I glued the ribbon covered clothespins onto the board…

And voila!

The Finished Project

My DIY advent calendar. It’s not perfect but I really liked how it wasn’t completely perfect in the inspiration picture either. I LIKE that it looks homemade. I bought a bunch of mini brown lunch sacks and plan to hang them from each pin here in a month or so.

Avert your eyes from the toys all over my living room. It’s a toddler tornado. Deal. Just look at how perfect my new advent calendar fits on the backside of our fireplace.

It wouldn’t have killed me to take some pictures with better lighting but hey, I can only get so much done while Jack is napping…waiting for the “perfect lighting” isn’t one of them.

So, did any of you participate in the Pinterest Challenge or make anything interesting lately? Do share!