All the little moments...

New Blog!!!!

2011-08-07T11:41:00.000-05:00

Hello Everyone!

Long time no see! I know, I haven't blogged in ages, sorry!!!!

This blog, All the Little Moments, kind of started to become a mess. I changed the name of it (which didn't, for some reason, change the name in a lot of places, so it had two names... kind of... see, I said it was a mess) and I kept taking breaks and then thinking that nobody read the blog anymore because of the breaks and so on and so forth. It was/is messy and I decided to start over with a new blog and since I'm not on facebook anymore I will be keeping my blog more updated for those interested!

Sooooo.... if there anybody still out there (again sorry!!!!) check out my NEW blog at http://alifelesscommon.blogspot.com/

I just finished setting it up! I have a few changes here and there that need to be done but I hope that you will check it out and follow me over there!

Love ya!

Easter Cake

2011-04-22T08:06:00.000-05:00

Last night I had a Pampered Chef party at my place and I decided to make a cake! Now, to be honest, I thought Easter was next Sunday not this Sunday for the longest time. Seriously. Kind of pathetic how long I thought this. Hence why I scheduled my party for last night because when I scheduled it I thought 'oh I don't want to do it the Thursday before Easter because people will be busy and nobody will come, so let's do it the 21st...' but the 21st (last night) was the Thursday before Easter and everybody was busy so hardly anybody came! Lol! Oh my brain... it's a work in progress! Oh, and also, this is why we're not going to have any of the super good Easter candy in our baskets because I got to the store too late to get any... bummer!

Anyway.

Ahem.

So, since it was so close to Easter I made an Easter cake (I even colored the inside to make it festive, there were blue, green, pink and yellow layers! But, you can't see it here of course =D ).

So ya'll have a great Easter this Sunday!!!

Easter Eggs

2011-04-22T07:52:00.000-05:00

On Wednesday night we colored Easter eggs!!! Gabriel was beyond excited. He loves to help me cook eggs normally and will just stand their holding the eggs until I need to put them in the pan or whatever recipe I'm making. So for him to get to color eggs was very special. Last year he was a little too young to enjoy coloring Easter eggs but this year he was literally jumping up and down (much to the dismay I'm sure of our downstairs neighbor) with excitement!

Very, very excited!

Even Eli was excited!

Oh how long can it really take to boil a big pot of eggs?

Then we got to start the whole process...

Yes, Gabriel wanted to make sure his milk was in the picture :) Every time I moved it out of the way he put it right back!

Eli hung out in his high chair and ate cheddar goldfish the whole time :)

Makin' eggs just makin' eggs...

And the finished project?

And all Eli wanted to do was eat the eggs which Gabriel thought extremely hilarious and kept trying to take them away from little Eli...

Now I can't wait to see their faces when they find their Easter baskets!

Otiki Otiki Aye

2011-04-12T08:08:00.000-05:00

Back when Josh and I lived in South Korea we used to make fun of their commercials a lot. Seriously, go you tube Korean commercials and you will probably understand why. This particular commercial drove Josh nuts, just because of the girl and the way she talked... and because I used to mimic her which made it so much more annoying :)

In the commercial the girl says something along the lines of 'otiki otiki aye' which when I asked a Korean what it meant they told me it's like saying 'oh no! what should I do?' But it's come a little joke that we say it to each other when the other is whining about something.

So. Yesterday Gabriel peed in his underwear twice in twenty minutes and the second time I was slightly annoyed because Eli was crying in his high chair and I was trying to clean up Gabriel while he wasn't really holding still. I sighed and said something along the lines of 'Gabriel you need to stop doing this, you pee in the potty, not in your underwear.' His response under his breathe? "Otiki otiki eye, otiki otiki eye...."

Finally get to run outside!

2011-04-05T12:00:00.001-05:00

Josh and I have been getting into running lately. Josh more so then I (he's going to run Grandma's Marathon! The WHOLE DANG THING!) but I still enjoy it. Problem is, running on the treadmill drives me nuts. I do it, but it drives me insane. I would much prefer to run outside. Now that the weather is finally getting slightly warmer here in Minnesota running outside is finally an option.

We got a single jogging stroller last year at a garage sale. It was only $20 and in pretty good shape. But now we needed a double, or another single as long as Josh and I went together. So i've been keeping an eye out on craigslist for strollers but finding nothing.

So the other day I was walking back from the post office and I decided to stop at a little store by our apartment building called Lots for Tots and I came across a very nice double jogging stroller. I was super excited about it! I got it for an amazing deal. Amazing.

Now we can finally run outside and get off the dreaded treadmill!!!

Can you tell which of my children hates getting their picture taken and which turns into a complete ham when the camera is pointed anywhere near his directions?

Yeah... it's pretty hard to tell who is who... ;P

Precious Moments

2011-04-05T10:33:00.000-05:00

I never get to hold Eli while he is sleeping anymore. It's sad. I absolutely love holding sleeping babies! Eli just needs to fall asleep on his own and wakes up when moved, except for the other day that is!

We came home from the store and Eli was asleep in his car seat and he actually stayed asleep while I carried him into the house so I decided to soak it all up and hold him for as long as he stayed asleep. I ended up having 15 minutes of blissful baby sleeping holding-ness with my beautiful little boy!

Eli the cheeky musician!

2011-04-05T08:00:00.001-05:00

What a mess!

2011-04-04T20:00:00.001-05:00

Eli's new favorite hobby?

Emptying the entire contents of my cupboards! What a mess!

Butterfly Cakes!!!

2011-04-04T13:35:00.000-05:00

This past week I got to make a cake for a very good friend of mines daughter who was turning two! We were invited to her party on Thursday night so I tried to start prepping for this cake on Monday night. This was my first fondant free cake too (at least, for decorating).

See, making things like butterflies can take awhile and I've never made them before and they take time to dry. So I wanted to give myself a little extra time just in case of any mishaps. And I am sooo glad I did!

My friend pretty much gave me free rein on how to decorate the cake, she just said as long as there were butterflies on it. So my mind started reeling on how to make butterflies and flowers and make a cake cute enough for a two year old.

I read up on how to make butterflies using royal icing and then flooding it with flooding icing. I made all these outlines for butterflies and filled them all, let them dry and then they all broke when I tried to take them off the paper. I then figured that I made them too thin, so I redid it and made them thicker. They all broke again. I kept joking to Josh that butterflies were going to be the end of me :) Now I didn't mind that I was learning what worked and didn't. What was making me nervous was that it took forever for these butterflies to dry in the first place so by the time I found out that they were not going to work it was the morning of the party. Yeah, I was freaking out a little bit.

So I sat there in the kitchen on Thursday morning trying to think of a place I could go buy fake butterflies to put on the cake (even though I so badly wanted them to be edible!) when I remember that I had some sugar paste (gum paste) in the fridge. I figured, what the hay, I'll try it! So I colored it a few different colors with petal dust and rolled it out and then cut out wings for the butterflies. Then while they were drying I painted little designs on them with edible paint. And you know what? THEY WORKED!!! And, they were so much cuter then the royal icing things that all the books and websites told me to do (and took far less time! Seriously, the royal icing ones were taking 24 hours to just dry).

Here is the finished cake! The birthday girl loved it and I happened to think they were pretty cute too :)

Chocolate Truffle Torte

2011-04-04T13:03:00.000-05:00

A little over a week ago I decided that I wanted to try something new with the cakes I make. I found this recipe for a chocolate truffle torte and I then topped it with chocolate ganache and a chocolate glaze.

This cake was the most unhealthy, expensive, rich, yummy cake I've ever made. Seriously. If you want to indulge, if you want something different and delicious then regular cake, make (or order from me!) this cake.

This is the top of the cake before I frosted it...

See, it's got a different, brownie type texture to it rather then normal fluffy cake.

I also decided to try my hand at making sugar craft flowers. I needed something for the top of the cake so I made three white roses.

Then I decided to add a little color, just around the edges to make them pop a little.

This cake was strictly experimental... new cake, new frosting, new glaze, new flowers... new everything!

Then I took the cake to my parents house to spread around the millions of calories floating around in the cake. Unfortunately, they do not have the best lighting for taking pictures...

Me and my cake :)

Gabriel and I pretending to take a bite out of the cake!

Yummmmmm!!!!

Stylin'

2011-03-24T12:37:00.000-05:00

We took Gabriel to get his hair cut the other day. I've always wanted to get Gabriel a mohawk, I thought it would look cool! Then I was informed when I got there after I explained what I wanted his hair cut to be that what I really had in mind was a fohawk, not a mohawk... I don't keep up with these types of things!

Anyway. Gabriel has never had his hair cut before in a salon. I've always done it myself. So he got to sit on my lap and have his own drape around him. He didn't like the trimmer. He doesn't like it when I do it either to be honest, he hates the feeling of it buzzing.

He didn't cry at all, he just hid in Mommy's arms the whole time and the hairdresser had to work around him.

Now, to be completely honest, I loved every minute of it. Gabriel never sits on my lap for that long anymore and he definitely doesn't hug me for that long. So I was soaking it all up :)

He did a lot better with the scissors.

And he was very excited to get the sucker in the end!

The hairdresser cut his hair a little too short unfortunately. So even with mousse, it never really stays in a fohawk, it just flattens. But while it lasts, it's oh soooo cute!

Eli's hair on the other hand will stay up all day long.

And this is the face Eli will give you if he sees you are taking a picture of him. He wrinkles his nose and shows you all his beautiful teeth:)

I love my boys!

Tiger!

2011-03-23T20:47:00.000-05:00

This is the newest member to our family...

Gabriel named him Tiger!

I've wanted to get Gabriel a fish for awhile because I thought he would love it, and he does, a lot! He loves it so much he talks to it all the time and is always telling it to move. Problem is, our fish is boring. I know Betta fish aren't the most exciting, but I've had some in the past and our is extra boring. It rarely moves.

On the first day Gabriel tried to pet it and he also tried to feed it jello... that didn't turn out so well. By day three the fish started to look a little... well, like he was on the verge of death. But a little change of water and he's doing better. Let's hope he stays with us for awhile... and that Gabriel stops feeding him human food :)

Art...

2011-03-23T20:03:00.000-05:00

What is art? Does art depend on the eye of the creator, the eye of the viewer? Does it depend on opinion? Sometimes I will see something on television, someone will claim something it as 'art' and I think it could be anything but the truth. But then again, I think my two year old scribbles is art.

When I went to my Discipleship Training School (DTS) in Switzerland about 5 years ago I had this teacher that spoke a lot about art. He said that art was anything that a person does deliberately. Therefore anything, painting, singing, dancing, murdering, sitting down, scrunching your nose, prostitution ect. could be art.

This made my friend Whitney and I very annoyed. Out of our school of (I think) 26 students Whitney and I were the drawers, painters, artsy people. There were dancers and musicians in the school too, but they didn't seem to get as annoyed as Whitney and I did. Actually, Whitney made much more of a stand against it then I did in class, but I was cheering her on :)

It took me awhile to wrap my head around it, but I really had no choice but to agree with him in the end, however much it pained me to do so. I didn't want what I enjoyed creating so much to be in the same category as murder, but alas it was. Art is art, deliberate human action.

Now, if you are anything like I was when I started my DTS 5 years ago, you will be fiery mad right now about my statement here. That's ok. I don't blame you. Sometimes I still get that way too. Especially when I see something that someone created that is absolutly beautiful, how can two things, say burping on que and the Mona Lisa, both be labeled as art? *Sigh.

I'm gonna go and create some art... and do the dishes ;)

tid bits...

2011-03-17T11:31:00.000-05:00

So you know how I said that I had a lot of things to share with you and I was going to do that all last week? Yeah, so my old computer died the day after I wrote that. My trusty ol' computer has been all over the world with me, helped me create, helped me reach people, helped save my sanity in Korea, helped write many things, held many pictures, helped me organized my life a little and kept precious pictures of my little babies... now it's dead. And all of my things that I just mentioned are all trapped inside.

Apparently I should be able to get all of my documents, pictures, music ect. off of my computer with something called a firewire and connecting my new computer with the old... errr something like that. So there is hope that I can still save everything, once I figure out what a firewire is of course...

So all those things I was going to share with you, well they all had pictures to go with them and since my pictures are trapped in my old computer blogging about said things just can't happen.

On to more interesting things...

My new computer... so beautiful! Ok, ok, I know, it's just a piece of machinery, but I can think it's pretty :)

That wasn't very interesting though...

I made a ton a baby food last night. It took all night because I waited waaaay too long.

That's not super interesting either...

Hmm...

So today, yeah, it's one of THOSE days. I think I was the only one who woke up in a good mood and my children have been trying to change that mood all day. Sadly, I think they are succeeding. Eli is crabby and moody because he is teething. Can't really blame the poor kid for that. He is not an easy teether. Last time it took him 3 weeks to pop through his two front teeth, let's hope and pray it doesn't take that long this time!

Gabriel on the other hand doesn't have much for an excuse for testing my sanity, he's just mad. He has whined about everything under the sun thus far today and decided to have a melt down half way through eating his cereal this morning because apparently he didn't like it anymore, even though he had no problem eating the first half of it. Then he spilt some food all over my couch while being naughty, then he got mad at me because he spilt it and even madder when I told him that he needed to clean it up. He got so mad that I think the whole apartment building heard our disagreement and it took him ten minutes and many disciplinary actions taken before he cleaned up his mess.

Josh has an interview on the southwest side of the cities today. He was/is super excited and nervous about it. Then on the way into work this morning the check engine light came on in our car... so here it to hoping that he makes it all the way down to his interview and back and nothing happens to him or our van.

As for me, I'm just trying to save this household from anymore emotional melt downs today... did I say yet that I'm looking forward to nap time? 'Cause I am, a lot.

Not that my day is super interesting to you either... but as I said, it is just one of those days.

Valentine project...

2011-03-08T19:47:00.000-06:00

Yes, Valentines Day was almost a month ago. I told you I was behind in blogging! Ok, so I wouldn't have even mentioned it but I had to show you our cute project that Gabriel and I made for Josh on Valentines Day.

On Valentines Day Gabriel and I made these chocolate cookies while Josh was at work. We wanted to spell out something fun and cute to welcome Josh home with. So we made hearts and letters and decided to decorate them with chocolate and strawberry frosting.

Gabriel put frosting on his heart shaped cookie...

He didn't just put it on, he loaded it on...

This was his beautiful heart when he was done decorating :D

Then he decided to do a pink heart. He was supposed to decorate it but instead he decided to go straight to the eating part...

This is one of those 'only a face (and shirt) a mother could love' moments...

The end project...

Opa's Cake

2011-03-08T18:29:00.000-06:00

I haven't blogged lately, life has been busy. But I have quite a few things to put up and I will get to that this week.

Last week was my dad's birthday. I decided at the last minute to make a cake for him and I've never thrown a fondant cake together so 'quickly'. See normally when I know I'm making a cake I start preparing days in advance, making fondant, coloring it, making figures, making modeling chocolate, figuring out pictures, designs ect. This time I made the fondant the night before his birthday and then on his birthday while he was at work I threw together the rest of it.

I've never used edible paint before so this was my first time. I've made do with other things to make it look like edible paint but I finally bought some of the actual stuff (I was pretty excited when it came in the mail). I had to mix it together and I ended up putting a bit too much liquid in it so it was a little thin but it still worked really well. I had also never used coconut pecan frosting before, much less have tried to get it work with fondant... but that's a whole other story... it's very soft frosting...

Since my dad is a true hunter/trapper/fishing type of guy I figured I would do something along those lines so I painted a white tail buck at sunset in some tall grass.

Gabriel and his Opa on Opa's birthday...

Happy Birthday Dad! (even though I'm kinda a week late putting this up :D)

Kiddy torture...

2011-02-26T05:53:00.000-06:00

Yesterday morning I woke up with an awful pain in my neck. I figured I must have slept wrong or something, or maybe my husband smacked me in the middle of the night while I was sleeping... either way, it hurt and I wasn't the brightest, happiest person to be around.

I decided that I needed to lay down with a heat wrap on my neck. Sounds easy enough, right? I mean, stick the wrap in the microwave for 2 minutes and lay down with it around your neck... right? Right. So that's what I did. Gabriel and Eli were playing very quietly on the floor in front of me and everything was great... for a whole 30 seconds.

As I was laying there with my eyes closed listening to the boys play I all the sudden feel little hands on my face. Eli had decided that I needed company and now that he can crawl up and stand against thing the couch is the perfect level to come play with me. I don't mean play with me as we were playing together, he was literally using me as his toy, and it was not so very fun.

First he decided that my nose needed to come off... it hurt. He tried really hard on this one for a very long time. Then he decided my mouth needed to be open, lips needed to come off and was very determined that his hand needed to be in there. Don't even get me started on my eyes and my hair.

Then Gabriel decided that since Eli was having fun playing with Mommy he needed too as well. So he crawls up really close to Eli and starts poking at everything on my face naming them as he goes. I opened my eyes at one point even with the danger that a little finger would insert itself in them to see one of the scenes from a movie or a commercial where the kids are trying to wake their parents supper early in the morning. You know those scenes, where you laugh a little bit because the parent looks non the happier at waking up at 5AM and the children are all ready to play?

Then Gabriel decided that he needed to use me as his own person couch and came to sit on me which would have been fine but he doesn't sit still. He moves, a lot. My neck pain was getting anything but better, if anything it was getting worse.

I lasted through kiddy torture for 5 minutes before my nose was burning and literally felt like someone had tried to rip it off. Wait, someone did try to rip it off, Little E that is. By the time I was ready to get up I had my hands over my face to protect myself and a almost 30lbs toddler sitting on my shoulders. I had to have a little laugh when I finally sat up to save myself, now I know what all the parents in the movies and commercials feel like.

Apparently...

2011-02-25T19:44:00.000-06:00

I guess 8 month olds make for a very comfy pillow...

Gabriel and Jesus

2011-02-09T13:30:00.001-06:00

Last night in bed Gabriel kept whining and didn't want us to leave the room because he was a little bit scared. See we have these pull up and down shades for the windows and twice the one in Gabriel's room has flown up, once at night and once during his nap time. He's been a little afraid of it ever since. So I'm with him in his bed and I explain to him that he doesn't need to be afraid because Jesus is always with him and if he's scared he just needs to talk to Jesus. It calmed him down and he fell asleep. He also slept through the night which is something that he has not been doing lately.

So today Gabriel, Eli and I were all playing in Gabe's bedroom and Gabriel starts talking about how 'Jesus in bed'. I explain that yes, Jesus was in the bed with him last night and explained how Jesus is always with us no matter where we are. Then I had him touch his heart and told him that Jesus is in his heart. He gives me a slightly confused look...

"Jesus in heart?" He asked.
"Yes Gabriel," I said, "Jesus is in your heart."
Gabriel's got his thinking look on, "Jesus heart. (which means 'ok, Jesus is in my heart') Gabriel got Jesus!"
"Yep babe! You got Jesus!"
Then Gabriel goes into his tent and pulls out the teddy bear that he has named after his Daddy. "Daddy got Jesus?"
"Yes, Daddy has Jesus too."
He pulls out the teddy bear he has named after me. "Mama got Jesus?"
"Yep! Mama has Jesus too!"
Then he disappears into his tent again and starts pulling out all his animals and with every one that came out he would go on that "Elephant got Jesus, an' panda got Jesus, an' sunflower got Jesus, an' Eli tiger got Jesus, an' Gabriel tiger got Jesus, an'...." All of his stuffed animals got Jesus apparently :)

Then later we are in the living room and Gabriel is underneath the desk and he's hitting the wall with a toy while trying to sing 'Jesus loves me' and after telling him not to hit the wall a couple of times (and him not listening) he comes out. "Mama, Jesus make owie."
Me: "What babe?"
Gabe: "Jesus make owie (on) wall."
I look under the desk to see a mark on the wall from him hitting his toy against it. "Babe, Jesus didn't make the owie on the wall, you made the owie on the wall from hitting your toy against it and Mama told you not to do that."
Gabriel looks at me for a moment, then squints his eyes for a second... "No. Jesus make owie."

He hasn't quite gotten yet that Jesus doesn't like lying :)

Canned Goods

2011-02-05T13:50:00.000-06:00

I hate canned food. Besides the fact that canned food is more unhealthy for you then frozen or fresh it also tastes different. It tastes like it's been sitting in a can, which to me is gross, it has a metal taste to it. I don't consciously think 'oh I need to avoid that aisle because everything is canned' when I go grocery shopping or 'I shouldn't eat that, it's in a can' it more just comes natural, I don't like it that much so I don't buy it.

I never really thought about how much I dislike canned items or if I was really any different then the average person until I had a Pampered Chef party back in October. The consultant wanted to demonstrate her can opener so she asked me if I had anything canned that she could open that I would use soon. When she asked I even thought 'sure, everyone has something canned they always use' because most people do. Then I opened my cupboard and the only thing I had canned was salmon and a can of baked beans I've had in there since July (I still have the same thing, just add peaches and for some reason Josh bought Cream of Celery soup and I don't know what to cook with that). I gave her a can of salmon to open and then I think I threw it because I wasn't in the mood for salmon dip before it went bad. That and opening up canned fish always grosses me out and after it sat in the fridge for a day or two I just couldn't stomach to eat it. Something about the juices and smell... gross. I try not to look or smell when I make salmon dip until everything has been added and it's done, otherwise I loose my appetite. Don't even get me started on tuna... Ok, you got me started (or at least I did)...

Josh has made tuna sandwiches a whole of 2-3 times in our marriage and every time he does I walk around holding my breath and gaging while I open up every window in our house. Then I stick my head out the window while the house airs out so I don't have to breath in the smell. So. Gross. In my opinion anyway. Then one time I was on a missions trip and the lady whose house we were staying knew that I didn't like tuna and she was very deteremined that I would like it. So, she made tuna pizza.... yeah, I ate it... I hated every minute of it and then told her it tasted great. Then I was so happy to leave before she could make it again!

Anyway.

I think maybe my dislike for canned foods came from how I was raised. My mom didn't buy stuff in cans that often and she had/has this big beautiful garden that she would freeze her veggies from for the whole year and they tasted, and still taste, amazing. I've had canned veggies a few times in my life and honestly I have a hard time putting them down. They are mushy and to me taste nothing like the actual thing.

What do you think? Do you buy canned? Do you like it better then fresh or frozen? Am I just weird that I think it tastes like metal ;) ?

One of the funniest moments in my marriage...

2011-01-30T14:14:00.000-06:00

One of the funniest moments in Josh and I's marriage was the summer after we first got married. We went out to visit my parents and Josh decided to take a ride on their horse named Charisma. Now, Charisma is an Arabian which are not the biggest horses, and Charisma is small even for her breed. Josh is tall. So already, you need to picture this small dainty horse with a big tall man sitting atop her... it's an awkward picture... and rather humorous.

First Josh tried to catch her. He wrapped his arms around her neck which she didn't like so she started to run around in circle... Josh never let go. So Charisma got to drag Josh around the pen for a minute or two until I mention that we could just give her feed to make her calm down and slip the halter on while she was eating. I could have mentioned this before he did his little tango with her around the pen, but it was so much funnier to wait until after.

We saddle her up and Josh, whom hasn't really ridden horses before, was determined to go out all on his own with her. Must be a manly moment thing, trying to prove that he could do it, didn't need advice, didn't need a girl to lead him around, he's a man, he's gotta prove it... errr something like that. So he gets on and directs her to start walking in my parents yard (which is huge by the way). They get about half way up this hill across the yard when Charisma starts to do a little dance. Now, me, standing by the pen where we had saddled the horse up could tell immediately that she was getting skittish, that she needed to be reined in a circle... to not have her jaw yanked on so hard by an oversized man whom was beginning to freak out... ahem, she just needed a gentle voice and a firm (but not THAT firm) hand.

Well Charisma freaked out. She spins around super fast and starts to take off towards the pen where I was standing. This means that I got the best view for the show. Upon Charisma taking off running Josh decided to let go of the reins and hold on to the saddle for dear life. Now, most people would hold on to the horn on the saddle... it's the most logical place. Not my husband, oh no. He grabs underneath the front of the saddle and leans back with all his might which causes the saddle to lift off the horse. So from my view, I have the freaked out horse running straight at me with an oversized man sitting on top with a look of sheer terror on his face holding the underneath part of a saddle which is causing it to ride up. Charisma runs right up to me and stops abruptly, and since Josh was leaning back as hard as he could he didn't have much balance, so when she stopped it caused him to launch forward onto her neck. Upon stopping I think Josh looked at me for a second like 'what the hell just happened? Am I actually alive?' then he jumped off the horse faster then I've ever seen anyone dismount before.

My husband hasn't ridden horse by himself since.

Now. You may think that I am cruel for laughing my head off when my newlywed hubby gets the poo scared out of him. You can think I'm cruel for laughing before the horse even stopped running. And you can think I'm cruel for still teasing him to this day about the look on his face and the funny position he hung on for dear life in. My mom, whom was standing next to me the entire time was laughing just as hard as I was. And my husband cheeks still turn slightly pink when this story comes up.

My latest fight...

2011-01-28T08:03:00.000-06:00

Eli and I are having a fight. It goes something like this...

Me: "Eli, you need to sleep through the night."
Eli: "No Mom, you don't understand, I can't!"
Me: "Yes you can. You sleep through the night about once a week. How can you go from sleeping through the night one night and then have to get up three times the next night?"
Eli: "Um, well, it's because I, I, um... it's because I go so long without eating the first night that I have to make up for it the next. Yeah, that's right. It takes my stomach awhile to catch up Mom!"
Me: "Eli, you're lying."
Eli: "No, no I'm not Mom. I need to eat at night. I'm hungry."
Me: "You're not hungry. If you can make it through the night one night a week then you should be able to make it the other six. You are consistently following this pattern of one good night, six bad nights."
Eli: "What's 'consistently' mean?"
Me: "That's besides the point. You need to sleep through the night."
Eli: "Nope, not gonna do it Mom!"
Me: "Yes you are!"
Eli: "But I can't go back to sleep without my tummy full of warm milk... and I kinda just like snuggling with you at midnight... and 3AM... and 5AM... and sometimes 1AM and 2AM too! Mommy, I love you."
Me: (this is where I get stuck, my baby just wants me!) "I love you too. Please? Please sleep?"
Eli: "No."

The end.

This is Eli. After fighting with him two hours one night he still wouldn't sleep so I finally gave in and nursed him back to sleep in bed.

Sigh. He's so cute... Probably why he's getting away with this!

Peach Patch

2011-01-27T21:21:00.000-06:00

Look! I have my very own cabbage patch doll!

I think I'll name him Cutie Pie Patch... or Peach Patch:)

Vienna's Cake

2011-01-26T14:50:00.000-06:00

This last weekend my niece Vienna turned the big one! I got to go down to her party in Brainerd on Saturday which was a ton of fun and Vienna seemed to be absolutely loving it! I also got to make her cake which was fun too!

My men...

2011-01-24T13:16:00.000-06:00

I love my men!!!

Baby Food

2011-01-10T10:58:00.000-06:00

Eli has started eating baby food and he loves it! I could tell he was very ready to eat big people food. He would sit on my lap while I was eating and follow every bite to my mouth, then he would slowly start opening his mouth every time I took a bite and was grabbing at all my food. He tried cereal with breast-milk for the first time when he was six and a half months old.

When Gabriel was eating baby food I made all of my own baby food for him. We lived in Korea at the time so I didn't really have a choice but it wasn't hard and I actually enjoyed it! Now that we live in the States again there are loads and loads of options for baby food in the store. Even with all the options out there I have decided to make some of my own baby food again.

I have this theory. I think that the reason that Gabriel loves his veggies so much is because I made my own baby food. See the stuff in the jars or plastic containers that you can buy in the store does not taste like the actual vegetables so when you try to transition from baby food to actual food the baby has to get used to a whole new flavor and re-develop their taste buds to suit to the actual vegetable. Follow me? So I'm making my own vegetables for Eli!

Making your own baby food is definitely not a hard thing to do and you have more options then they have in the store pre-made. This second time around for me I'm learning even more things! I discovered a newer and (I think) easier way to freeze the baby food. Most websites tell you to freeze the pureed food in ice trays or sell you expensive containers specially designed for baby food. Honestly, the easiest way I've found it to pour all the mixture into a baking sheet (or round pan), freeze it, take it out and let it sit for maybe 5-10 minutes and then cut it with a pizza cutter. Then you pull out the cubes of food and throw them in a ziploc bag that is labeled and there you go. That way you don't have to worry about having enough ice trays for the food, you can make a lot more at once, and you don't have to spend the time spooning the food into the little holes of the ice cube tray.

Also, I've discovered something else new this morning. I have lots and lots of baby food jars already from buying fruit for Eli (I actually get them for free from WIC since we're low income). I was going to throw them all out because I couldn't think of a use for them. Then I realized that, hey, I could use these to can the vegetables that I make for Eli for when I go out! That way I don't have to worry about making sure to have a freezer available for the frozen veggies if we were to go away for the weekend, it would be in the jars and I wouldn't have to worry about it! It would be just like it's store bought! Or you could just buy them in the jar and save the time... but you wouldn't save money if you bought it! I haven't tried it yet, so I don't know how well it's going to work but I'm excited to try it out.

I've been having fun (yes, I said fun!) making baby food for Eli and I'll keep learning more and more as time goes on!

Pink Juice

2011-01-10T09:00:00.001-06:00

Gabriel loves what he calls pink juice. Pink juice is very popular in our house. Pink juice is also known by most people as something called a green smoothie.

The first time I heard about a green smoothie was from my sister Kristy. It sounded rather gross when she told me about it first. Green smoothies are kefir, banana, frozen berries, spinach and a raw egg. Yeah, sounds kinda gross doesn't it? Well it's actually not, it's pretty good! I guess you are only supposed to use organic eggs, which I don't have so I just forgo the egg part and put the rest in. Gabriel LOVES them! See...

Yeah, it gets really messy at our home when we have 'pink juice'. Wipes and napkins are necessities. And I'm not sure why he calls it 'pink juice' because it's not pink at all, but hey, more veggies go into us and it makes Gabriel's day!

Rachel's Cake

2011-01-09T14:13:00.000-06:00

Yesterday we celebrated my sister-in-law Rachel's birthday! She asked me to make the cake for the celebration and her only request was no chocolate. So I did a strawberry themed cake. Inside was french vanilla cake and strawberry frosting and it was topped with fresh, cut up strawberries.

I was happy to do her cake and I wish I would have been able to do a bit more but I didn't have a ton of time this week so I had to do something a little more easy. But in the end it was simple and purty :)

Camping

2011-01-09T08:37:00.000-06:00

On Friday night Josh and Gabriel went camping. They moved Gabriel's little tent into the middle of his room and Mama made it as comfortable as possible for them and they went camping! It was so cute and Gabriel was so excited! They each had a thing of juice/water, a ton of books and flashlights. I tucked them in and said goodnight and let them have fun.

This is Gabriel getting ready...

I walked by the door a few times and heard talking so I stopped and listened to hear Josh reading books and Gabriel going 'lalalalala'. I guess when Josh was reading books Gabriel was trying to help and whenever he would stop Gabriel would insist that he would keep reading! Haha!

Gabriel was so excited that he didn't want to fall asleep and stayed up past ten! Josh said they had tons of fun and Gabriel was still walking around with flashlights the next morning.

Have you ever?

2011-01-08T19:55:00.000-06:00

Have you ever snuck into your children's room after they have fallen asleep just to take a picture of them? Even if it means that the flash might wake them up just to capture that precious moment?

I have!

Christmas Morning

2011-01-03T14:24:00.000-06:00

This year, or technically last year since it's now 2011, we were all very excited for Christmas. Since Gabriel was born we haven't really had our own Christmas with the Christmas tree and decorations and tradition. I think I may have explained it in an earlier post but just in case I thought I did and I really didn't, I will explain again.

So Gabriel's first Christmas, he was 4 months old, we lived in this teeny tiny little apartment and we weren't sure when we were going to have to move so we decided not to decorate, we also didn't have room to decorate. It was a super small place. Gabriel got one gift that year, it was a Jumperoo!

Second Christmas we were living at my parents and things are always crazy there around Christmas time and I think we opened up gifts a few evenings before Christmas.

This year the boys actually got to wake up on Christmas morning and open presents! Not that that is what Christmas is all about but it's a fun little part for the kids. Gabe was so excited to see gifts under the tree and I think Mommy and Daddy were even more excited to give the gifts away! Here are a few pictures of our morning...

See the workbench? Yeah, it came out of a dumpster. Not kidding. Gabriel loves it!

So excited to read the books he got!

Cheese!!!

Eli got bibs and sippy cups and chocolate in his stocking... chocolate he will have to get through Mommy milk:)

Merry Christmas!!!

Christmas Cake

2011-01-01T19:29:00.000-06:00

The days before Christmas I was very busy. I spent much of my time preparing for Christmas and it involved a lot of baking, packing and planning. And I made this...

And it took a lot of time to make. But, I had so much fun and though it didn't turn out exactly as planned I thought it turned out pretty good! My second fondant cake!

Gabriel where are you?

2010-12-17T06:37:00.000-06:00

The other day Gabriel quietly disappears to his room and after calling out his name "Gabriel where are you?" and hearing no response Josh goes to look for him and finds Gabriel like this...

Hiding!

Cheeky!

I wish I could hide my whole self behind a shovel!

Oma

2010-12-14T16:39:00.000-06:00

I think I have mentioned before, but in case you didn't know, my mom, Gabriel's Oma, is his favorite person in the whole world. I think he even likes her more then he likes me... sigh.

Gabriel walks around our apartment most days saluting with his hands saying 'yes sir Oma, yes sir Oma' over and over and over and... you get the idea. Yep, she taught him this. It's cute. He does it every day.

I had a band-aid on my finger because I had a blister and Gabriel asks me if I have an owie, I say yes, he says 'Mama cut chicken? Oma cut chicken.' See last time we were at my parents my mom told him that she cut her finger while cutting chicken, so since I had an owie, it must be the same as Oma's.

Every teddy bear that Gabriel goes to bed with is from his Oma. Two out of the now four blankets Gabriel insists on going to bed with are from his Oma.

Every time we get in the car, Gabriel asks if we're going to see Oma.

When Gabriel sees Oma he about knocks her down with a bear hug!

Gabriel loves his Oma! I think it's cute!

This is Gabriel and his Oma , yes he's naked like it seems he is in most picture... see you don't understand, my kid is messy. I have to take his clothes off to eat and at many other moments... it's rare to see him fully clothed in this house, especially now that's he's potty training. Anyway.

Bentleyville

2010-12-11T11:03:00.000-06:00

The other night we went to Bentleyville! The was Gabriel's second time going, though he doesn't remember last year, and it was Eli's first time going.

Gabriel was in pure heaven the entire time we were there. He loved the lights!

This would be him, trying to figure out how to eat his cookie with gloves on...

Mama had to let him take his glove off while he ate his cookie which then started a chain reaction of him continually taking off his glove, but we won't go there:)

This would be Eli, being extremely tired and just watching the lights from the stroller before he fell asleep for the remainder of the time.

The cutest and most fun part of the evening is when Gabriel saw the people dressed up as snowmen, penguins, and reindeer! The first time he saw a big snowman he ran up to it and gave it a huge hug! It was the cutest thing ever! From that point on he would walk slowly, looking at the lights until he saw one of his fluffy friends and then he would take off running for them and give them the biggest hug!

I had the hardest time getting a picture of him hugging them though.

He would be the black blob growing out the penguins side:)

This picture was when all these people were posing for a picture and Gabriel ran right into their picture to give the reindeer a hug! Haha!

We even got to roast marshmallows!

We had so much fun! We can't wait for another warm (well, there's not really such a thing as 'warm' in Minnesota in December, but maybe there will be another 20-30 degree night, hopefully) night to go again!

Bentleyville would happen to be the reason why Eli's name is not Bentley. I love the name Bentley for a boy, but Josh said the only thing he thought of was Bentleyville. Sigh... Oh well, maybe I'll still get it for a middle name if we have another boy someday!

Cute in Hats

2010-12-10T14:22:00.000-06:00

Eli decided to try out his fashion sense the other day...

Best Christmas Tree

2010-12-09T09:49:00.000-06:00

I'm pretty sure that we have the best Christmas tree on the block!

See...

I think it is at least !

Coincidence

2010-12-06T15:00:00.000-06:00

I bought this shirt at a garage sale this last summer. I thought it looked familiar when I bought it but I thought maybe one of my nephews had the same shirt.

Then when I unpacked Eli's 6-9 month clothes I found this onesie that I had bought at a garage sale about two and a half years ago when I was pregnant with Gabriel.

I thought it was an odd coincidence :)

My first fondant cake!

2010-12-06T07:44:00.000-06:00

If you haven't guessed already, I love to bake. To me it's fun, relaxing and a way that I can be creative. I've been known to throw things together to create something new and yummy and I have also been known to throw things together and create something not so delicious and yummy. Still, I love to bake. I love to bake so much that many times, I would bake things just to bake them and then find someone to give them too because I didn't really want to eat what I baked, I just wanted to bake it!

Two years ago Josh and I lived in an apartment that had free basic cable. I found this show called Amazing Wedding Cakes and I LOVED it! I think they only had one season and I watched every episode every time it was on, even if I had already watched it three times. I'm not kidding when I say I absolutely loved this show. Josh thought I was a little nuts but I couldn't get enough of it. It made me want to make cake. I mean, I've always wanted to make those nice fancy cakes that you see at weddings but this show made me really REALLY want to make cake.

Then we moved to South Korea and I never made the cake. It was always in the back of my mind but I never had the chance really to make anything. Then the other day we were looking through Netflix and we found seasons of Cake Boss. Seriously, when we came across it I was way overly excited. Just ask Josh. We've been watching the episodes and it made me want to make cake even more! So yesterday, I made my first two tier fondant cake!

I learned a lot making the cake. Like fondant isn't as easy to make as I thought. I ended up putting too much powdered sugar in some of it so it was a little hard to work with. I also didn't intend my bottom layer to be so dark. I wanted a dark brown and I kept adding brown coloring and it didn't seem to get any darker so Josh put in a dab of black and it turned out to be too much. We also couldn't find edible food paint so I used icing coloring for the design on top. I had intended a more complicated design but the icing coloring wasn't working very well so I just did something simple. And I didn't have a white color to do the bottom half. Anyway, it was a good first cake, I'm excited to make more, I just need to find people to eat it after I make it :)

Christmas Pictures

2010-12-04T19:09:00.000-06:00

This morning we took Christmas pictures. We didn't have anyone to take pictures of us so we had to do it ourselves, which makes things much more difficult! I was pretty surprised how well our pictures had turned out. I had pretty much given up that we were going to have a family picture and I was hoping for just one good picture of the boys so we had something for our Christmas card this year. But with a little briber (yes, we bribed Gabriel with 'chocolate milk' so he would hold still and smile), a self timer on my camera and Mommy being so very clever to put Madagascar's 'I like to move it' video from you tube on her computer right behind the camera we actually got some descent pictures. Well as descent as you can get taking them by yourself! Check it out...

Say Cheese... Please?!?!

2010-12-02T13:00:00.000-06:00

Do you have any idea what it takes to get a good picture of Gabriel? No? Let me inform you. See Gabriel is not one of those kids that like to have their picture taken and will sit there patiently while you click away on your camera with an award winning smile on their face. Oh no. Gabriel doesn't like to have his picture taken. Actually, I don't even know if it's that because sometimes, rarely, he asks to have it taken. I think it's more Gabriel likes to make it difficult to take a good picture. Really, truly enjoys making it difficult.

Like in this picture, this is when I asked Gabriel to smile and look at me.

So he closes his eyes and half smiles.

This is when I told him he had to open his eyes.

He half lunges at me with a crazy face!

I took 30 pictures before I got this one.

30!

29 pictures of him being his cheeky self and one picture of him being a little angel :) We're going to have so much fun taking Christmas pictures... yep... or at least he will.

*By the way, in case you are wondering. Gabriel's bruise on his nose is from him spinning around in our living room, loosing his balance and crashing into our bookshelf. Poor guy!

My own little Hammy

2010-12-02T09:00:00.001-06:00

This is Gabriel.

Err... Wait.

Actually this is Gabriel.

But he acts like Hammy.

See the resemblance?

I do. In more ways then I can count!

Advent

2010-12-01T10:29:00.000-06:00

Today is the first day of December! Do you know what that means? It means that it's time for advent calendars!

When I was growing up my family always had advent calendars. My mom came from Germany when she was 5 years old and she had them when she was little so she wanted us to have them too. Advent calendars are more of a European thing then an American thing though. I don't recall many of my friends doing it when I was younger and I still know very few people that do it. Anyway. My mom had quite a few advent calendars and each of us children would get to pick one to hang up in our room and every day we would get to open up a flap and see what was behind it. It was always the most fun thing for me and I wanted to be able to share this experience with my children.

Problem is, America isn't very big on advent calendars. You don't find them all over the store like you do in Europe. So I went online. I was able to find some very cute ones at A Bit of Britain and Vermont Christmas Company. I ended up getting quite a few of them because I couldn't decide which ones were the cutest and I figured that my kids will use them for years to come like I did when I was little. This year though we're hanging them all up!

Gabriel had so much fun opening them up this morning! He wanted to open up more but I had to remind him that we only open up one a day!

I really wanted to get a 3D advent calendar that you can open, like with drawers and be able to put a piece of candy in them. But all the ones that I found that were cute were already sold out or extremely expensive. Next year I'll have to remember to start looking for one earlier before they are all gone! I also had a had time find more cute manger scene ones, so if you know a place where I can go for those let me know!

Do you do advent calendars? Did you do them when you were a child?

Happy First Day of December and Happy Adventing!

my conversation with Gabriel this morning

2010-12-01T09:46:00.000-06:00

So if you don't like topics that children talk about and the sheer openness of a two year old, then you might not like this post. But, I had the funniest moment with Gabriel this morning!

Gabriel at the breakfast table, face beat red holding his breath: *Grunt* "Mama, I *Grunt* poop on potty *Grunt*"
Me: "I'm pretty sure you are pooping in your diaper."
Gabriel: "No! *Grunt* I poop *Grunt* on potty!"
Me: "Well we can go poop on potty, let's go."
Gabriel: "Mama, *Grunt* I BIG poopy!"

Hahaha!

On another note. My five and a half month old seems to think that he can put his hand in his mouth the same time he is nursing... he doesn't seem to have figured it out that he can't nurse and eat his hand at the same time.

It's Christmas Time!

2010-11-30T15:16:00.000-06:00

On Sunday night we were able to decorate our Christmas tree! I for one was extremely excited about our tree this year because it was the boys' first tree! I know, hard to imagine that even though this is Gabriel's third Christmas and it's his first tree. See when Gabriel was first born we lived in a tiny apartment and had no room for anything! Our dining room, living room, and my office (I used to work from home) was all shoved into a tiny living room and there wasn't much space to even lay down. Scratch that, there wasn't room to lay down. We also weren't sure if we were going to have to move around Christmas time that year so decorating and having a Christmas tree didn't happen, much to my dismay. We did however make a Christmas tree out of paper and hung it on the wall so we could put Gabriel's present under something.

It was fun and we will probably do it again this year and let Gabriel decorate it and hang it up somewhere.

Gabriel's second Christmas we lived at my parents and yes they did have a tree but it wasn't ours. They let us help decorate it and all but, I mean, it wasn't ours... you know what I mean? I hope so.

Anyway, so this year it's our first Christmas tree as a family! I was bummed that we couldn't get a real one at first. Our apartment building won't allow real ones so we had to buy a fake one. I have never had a fake one before, my whole childhood we always had a real tree, so when Josh came home with a boxed tree I didn't really know what to expect. When he put it together my words were 'it's so ugly' and then Josh explained to me that you actually have to fan out all the branches and what not to make it look like a real tree... oh.

So after we fanned out all the branches and curved them upwards like the little pamphlet said it actually looked pretty good!

So on Sunday after supper we made hot chocolate and popcorn, put on some Christmas music and started to decorate our tree! Gabriel had so much fun! He loved putting the bulbs on and especially the angels, he LOVES angels!

We let Gabriel hang the ornaments wherever he wanted to which ended up with a very interesting tree in the end!

All, and I mean ALL the bulbs were cluttered in one little spot at the bottom of the tree along with the angels and snowflakes! It was about the cutest thing ever! He wasn't even hanging them on the tree anymore, he was hanging them on the string of lights because he was running out of room. I loved it!

Even Eli got in on the decorating, sort of :)

We had so much fun decorating!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Matching PJ's

2010-11-30T14:17:00.000-06:00

When I found out that I was going to have two boys one of my first thoughts was 'Yay, I get to dress them up in matching clothes and take cute pictures!' I didn't have matching clothes for the boys right away but finally, after 5 months I was able to put the boys in matching clothes! I would have had to wait much longer since these PJ's for Eli are 6-9 months, but he's a tall boy and has been in 6-9 month clothes since about 4.5 months.

The other night I put the PJ's on both boys and tried to get a cute picture. They were both very tired so they were not about to smile for me but I was able to at least get one where neither one of them were crying :)

Oh how I love those boys!

Missed Moments

2010-11-19T00:59:00.000-06:00

I had a dream once. I had a dream of exactly how child birth was going to go. I knew that it wasn't going to be easy, I knew that it was going to be painful and hard and long. When I was pregnant with Gabriel I did tons of research on what was the best thing for mother and baby during labor. I prepared myself the best way that I could. I knew that it was going to be tough but I wanted to do it without pain meds because it was healthier for me and my son. I knew that after I gave birth I would get to hold my son for the first time and I was so excited to nurse him right away and just see his face and hear his first cry. There was so much I was looking forward too even though I knew there was this really hard process to go through. I was going to meet my baby on the other side of labor and I was going to be the first one to hold him besides the doctor. My arms literally ached to hold my baby weeks and weeks before I was due.

Gabriel decided to grace up with his presence 5 days early. I woke up in the middle of the night with contractions and even though they weren't bad at all and I probably could have slept between them, I was so excited there was no way I was falling back asleep! I waited an hour to wake up my husband and while he tried to go back to sleep (I told him too) I kept picturing how the day was going to go. I was beyond nervous. I was scared of how bad things were going to hurt and how long it was going to take. But I was excited! I was going to get to hold my baby that day!

We left for the hospital early in the morning around 7-8AM. At the hospital we waited for my doctor to show up and I walked around trying to get things moving more. I was so excited and happy that I think if anybody saw me they would have ever guessed I was in labor. When my doctor finally showed up and check me I was pretty much half way there (4-5CM). She broke my water which I hadn't planned on but I decided to go with the flow.

Contractions came on hard and fast after that. I was having contractions every 2 minutes and they were painful. I was one of those unlucky people who had back labor. Back labor isn't very pleasant as anyone who has had it can tell you. It is worse then normal labor and pain radiates up and down your back and into your legs kind of thing. I was dealing with it and I kept thinking about my baby that I was going to get to hold soon. I was for sure that things were going fast but I soon found out that I wasn't going as fast as I had thought. I was moving 1 CM an hour and when I got to 9CM I stopped dilating.

I didn't expect things to start going down hill. I never guessed in a million years that I wouldn't be able to birth my first baby. But all the sudden my sons heart rate started going all over the place. I will never forget where I passed out only to come too and have 10 people in the room rushing around putting oxygen on my face, IV's in my arms and the alarm going off that was keeping track of my sons heart telling us that he was not ok. My doctor and nurse were trying to push me over to get my in a different position to get the pressure off of my sons head in hopes his heart rate would go back up. It worked, the alarm slowly became silent and everyone in the room sighed a huge sigh of relief. More contractions came and my sons heart rate never came back to normal. He was getting worse and worse and I had been at 9CM for 3 hours and contractions were right on top of each other for over 5 hours. He needed to come out and he was stuck and in distress.

I was rushed down to the surgery room and they wouldn't let my husband come in with my right away. The room was freezing cold and huge and white. It had a table in the middle of it waiting for me with all sorts of tools and monitors around it. I was still having contractions without pain meds and my husband wasn't there and I was petrified. This was the one thing that I had not even considered would happen to me, I was in no way prepared mentally. A nurse came and held my hand and got really close to my face while they stuck the needles in my back to numb me up. She kept whispering that it would be ok and I was doing a great job. Honestly part of me wanted to punch her and part of me wanted to never let go of her hand. I had to lay down and they strapped my arms out to the side Jesus style and finally my husband was allowed in. He got to sit next to my head and hold my strapped down hand. I had tears running down my face and was on the verge of freaking out. The c-section started and I found out about a whole bunch of things that I didn't know. I never knew that you can feel everything. You feel every tug and pull, them moving stuff around inside of you, you just don't feel the pain. It was disgusting. It was scary. I tried humming to distract myself but it didn't work very well.

Then my baby was born. In the last way I had ever imagined possible my little baby boy was born! I tried straining my neck to just get a glimpse of him but all I saw was a big blue sheet in front of my face. I heard him going into the hands of a few different nurses and them saying how cute he was but I never got to see. I laid there strapped down and waited and waited for them to bring me my son. They finally came over and showed him to me. My arms still ached to hold him but I could not. I got to see him for maybe in all 2 minutes if even that before they took him away for the next two hours. I told my husband to go with our son and I waited while they stitched me up and took me to the recovery room. I waited while they spent over an hour making sure all my vitals were good and then finally, finally I got to see my baby boy! I was so excited to just hold him but I couldn't sit up so they just laid him next to me and my aching arms still had to wait.

I spent 5 days in the hospital before we got to go home and had all sorts of things happen to me that I never even dreamed of. I was excited to have my beautiful baby boy but part of me was left, I don't know what the right word is, maybe troubled, disappointed maybe. I had this dream of child birth, I was prepared for anything and everything to happen and to deal with it and the one thing that I never even considered is what happened to me. I never got to be the first one to hold my baby. I never got to see him take his first breathe or see his first cry. I never got to nurse him right away like I wanted to. I missed out on all those special little moments that everyone else had.

It took me awhile to deal with it honestly. There were many nights I held him and cried. I felt like I let him down in a way and had let myself down. I felt like such a failure. Thousands of women birth their babies every day and I couldn't do it. It was heart breaking for me, after all, a woman is made it have babies, to give birth, and I as a woman failed to do that. I got over things eventually, I knew and accepted that it was the best thing at the time considering the circumstances. I still missed what I never had but I accepted it. Tears were shed here and there but I had Gabriel and that is what mattered.

When I got pregnant with my second I was determined that things were not going to be the same. I did even more research and decided that if I needed pain meds I would take them. I thought maybe it would help me relax and get that baby out:) I had dreams again of being able to hold my baby when he would first come out, all the dreams came back that I had the first time and I was even more excited because it was not going to happen to me twice, I was sure of it!

Labor came. I was annoyed when we got to the hospital because they were making me go on the monitor right away and soon I was annoyed that they weren't letting me off of it. I kept asking the nurse to take it off because I wanted to walk around to help with the pain and I wanted to get in the bath. She kept saying that because I had a previous c-section that I needed to be on it for just a little bit and then they could take it off. So I waited and waited. The nurse kept coming in, checking the paper, scowl at it and walk away. I got an epidural, it honestly wasn't super great, I didn't like it personally but I can see why people do. I soon found out that my nurses scowl from looking at my sons heart beat on the paper was because he wasn't doing very good. He wasn't responding to my contractions like a normal baby would and they were doing a huge number on his heart every time I had one. The time had come for another c-section. My son needed to get out and it wasn't going to be the way I wanted it to be. Again.

I was more prepared the second time. I was nervous and scared because I remembered very well what it was like the first time. They took me down to the big, cold, white surgery room I hated so much and my husband had to leave me again for a little while. This time I had no sweet nurse to hold my hand, they all just looked at me with the scrub hands in the air waiting to slice me open. I got strapped down again and my husband was allowed in. Then they started their surgery and I started to freak out.

I know, I should have been prepared, but unless you have had a c-section you don't know what it feels like to have them pulling and tugging on the inside of you, to be cut open when you are wide awake. When I heard them say 'scalpel please... ok starting to cut... get something to wipe this blood up with...' I started to freak. I could hear them talking about what they were doing and tears were running down my face. I don't know how loud I called for Josh but I needed him. I told him he better start singing to me so I couldn't hear them. He sang 'twinkle twinkle little star' and 'you are my sunshine' over and over again because he couldn't think of anything else to sing and the pain meds guy above my head gave my husband a tissue to wipe my tears.

My baby was born and I knew I couldn't see him so I closed my eyes and tried picturing what they were doing with him and what he looked like. They finally came over and showed him to me. He was so beautiful! I felt the ache to hold him but couldn't do anything about it. I went to the recovery room and asked for my baby a good 50 times but they never brought him to me like they did with Gabriel. I asked and asked and they never came. I didn't see him until they brought me to my room and then I finally got to hold him 2-3 hours after he was born.

I don't regret having to do what I did to make sure my sons were ok. I do miss the fact that I never got to spend their first few hours of life with them and I miss that I didn't get to experience all the things normal mom's do. You know as a mom how you want to see your child's first everything? You want to see their first smile, their first roll over, their first step and their first taste of food? It's like that, except so much more of a stronger feeling, you want to see your child's first breathe, their first cry. You want to be the first one to hold them and the first one to kiss them. I think every mom wants that and some of us just don't get it because we had to make our own little sacrifices along the way. Sure, I still think about the moments I missed with my boys, and yes, sometimes the ache for what I missed is very strong and there are tears shed. I don't know if I would be normal if I didn't have those feelings. I missed something very special and I won't ever get to relive my two sons births and be able to have those moments. It is right of me to miss it.

I will keep trying normal deliveries with any future children that I have, I still have my dreams that I had 3 years ago when I was pregnant with Gabriel.

Sometimes when I talk to other Mom's about labor and they find out I had c-sections they immediately write me off. Like I don't know what labor is like. Like I chose some easy way out so I didn't have to go through pain. They act like they don't want to hear anything that I have to say but they will listen to anyone else in the room who had a child, as long as it was the natural way. I went through labor. A harder labor then a lot of women go through when I had Gabriel, I simply never got to push and have my son the natural way. It kind of hurts when women brush me off the way they do, when they turn their noses at me like I'm not as worthy as they are or I'm weak or something. Most will never know my story, and that's ok, they can think whatever they want about me. I know it. I did what was best for my kids. And even though I wasn't there for the first few hours of their lives, I will be there for the rest!

With Gabriel...

With Elizek...

Bakin'

2010-11-18T12:23:00.000-06:00

Sometimes as a Mother you are very proud of your children. Like when your son gives a little girl a hug that he has never met before because she is crying. Or when he helps cleaning up even without asking him. Or when he poops on the potty for the first time or when they roll over for the first time. When they are polite and when they give others their toys and share even though you can tell that they would rather play with the toy themselves. There are lots of times as a Mom that you are extremely proud of your children.

There are also times as a Mom that you are proud of yourself. Sadly these moments are fewer and far between then you being proud of your children. I think society makes us believe that we are never perfect enough as parents so even the smallest accomplishments we never feel proud of because in our mind we're thinking 'I still could have done a little bit more or did it a little bit better'. As a Mom I've learned that sometimes we just have to give ourselves a break and be proud of the little things we accomplish, even if other people think we are crazy for being proud of something so simple. Like being proud that you made it out of the door by 10AM with two kids. Or being proud that you did not go insane sitting on a kiddy stool all day long while your son sits on the toilet trying to learn to pee. You can be proud that you made it through the grocery store in one piece without any major meltdowns. You can be proud that you made it through labor without pain meds, or made it through labor at all for that matter even with pain meds. Heck, be proud that you carried a baby for nine months and didn't go insane while pregnant (even if maybe you did go insane, you came out on the other side OK) :)

I have been going to a Mom's Group every Tuesday for the last few weeks. This last Tuesday was our last session for the fall which I was rather sad about. I have come to know a lady there who has mentioned to me on a few occasions that she thinks it's awesome that I like to bake and cook with my kids. See in our household Gabriel, and even on occasion Eli, love to help in the kitchen. Eli likes to sit in his bumbo seat and watch the whole process and Gabriel loves loves LOVES to help and watch (and eat!).

His treat today was celery with peanut butter. I was trying to counter act the cookie dough he sneaked with something healthy:)

I've never thought that it was something to be proud of, it's just something that we do and enjoy doing together.

Today I was making cookies with Gabriel and I was thinking about all the extra effort it took to have Gabriel help. I mean really. Baking with kids takes a lot of patients. They want to help with absolutely everything and it creates a mess. A BIG mess at that. I could whip together dinners and baked goods in half the amount of time if I didn't have Gabriel helping me. If Gabriel didn't help me then I wouldn't have to plan on chopping up extra carrots and peppers and broccoli because he is going to eat half of it. I wouldn't have to pick out egg shells from cracking eggs in a bowl because I let him help. I wouldn't have flour all over my flour because he wanted to help dump it in the bowl. And clean up would be so much less work because there wouldn't be much to clean up. But I know that my kids love to help in the kitchen and it gives them immense joy so to me it's all worth it and in return gives me immense joy as well. So today I decided that I should be proud of myself for cooking and baking with my kids.

And the result?

It is oh so sweet!

Potty Training

2010-11-11T14:11:00.000-06:00

My computer finally isn't dead, we got a new computer cord for it so I was finally able to upload some pictures and update a few things. I have a few things to share with you but the most challenging and new thing around our home is potty training. Potty. Training. Is. Hard. Yep, very hard.

I was going to start potty training last week but then decided against it. I knew that Gabriel is showing all the signs of being ready, but I also knew that potty training was going to be challenging and didn't know if I was up for it quite yet. But two days ago we were sitting at the kitchen table and Gabriel all the sudden said 'potty' and so I sat him on the toilet and he peed! I was so excited! I thought maybe it wasn't going to be as hard as I assumed. The day went on and he peed on the potty 3 times that morning with 1 accident. AMAZING! And then, *sigh, nap time came and he woke up and changed his mind about peeing on the potty and went every single time in his underwear. I was a little bummed but I knew that kids had accidents so we kept at it for the evening and cleaned up a lot of accidents, never once peeing on the potty.

The next morning came along and I thought it was going to be a good day and he was drinking lots of liquids so I was excited about the potty training that day. He peed in his underwear about 20 times that morning (or so it seemed). I was reallllly wishing we had hard wood floors at that point! After nap time he was put in a diaper because I didn't want to clean up any more accidents for the day. Also during nap time he had taken off all his clothes, including diaper and peed all over his bed and then sat in it. He has gotten in trouble for this a few times already and I was rather mad when I discovered him laying in his pee when he knows fully well not to take off his diaper. Heck, I even remind him every time I put him to bed not to take off his diaper, but he did... again. I had made up my mind that we were going to wait to potty train because, well, just because. I was rather sick of cleaning up pee to be honest.

Then I was laying in bed last night and thought 'if I give up then these last two days were for nothing... we'll see how morning goes'. This morning came along and I put him in a diaper and waited until he peed. From that point on he was in underwear and I made him sit on the toilet every 30-45 minutes until he peed. No waiting 5 minutes then taking him off only to find him peeing his pants 2 minutes later, oh noooo, we were not going through that again. I was going to sit there until he peed. Thankfully he peed almost every time without having to sit there for forever and if he didn't we would take 10-15 minutes and then come back. The only accident of the morning was when he pooped. And now my bottom hurts from sitting on a kiddy size stool all morning long. Even Eli had his lunch with Mama on that stool. Anyway. It. Is. Hard.

We're not giving up quite yet. We are going to try this for a little bit longer. I really do believe he is ready but if we find that he's not then, well, I guess I'm learning a lot for next time. But, hopefully there wont be a next time, hopefully this is the time and we get through this. If you have any advice I all ears :)

Weird?

2010-10-23T22:04:00.000-05:00

So my computer is dead and it's not coming back to life anytime soon. There is actually nothing wrong with the computer itself but the cord seemed to have gotten sick and died. So in other words I have no way to charge my computer. So I'm writing this from our IPod and it's a little challenging so please excuse any typos.

So why am I writing may you ask? Well one to say I have not really abondoned blogging, it's just not super easy.

Secondly, my husband thinks I'm weird. I think I'm pretty normal for the most part but he doesn't. See I have this beautiful red kitchen aid mixer that will never leave my kitchen counter because I'm in love with it and I use it all the time. So today I went to the store and bought a coffee pot. While looking at the coffee pots available I decided I liked the red Mr. Coffee better then the black, just becUse it was pretty and different. The black was nice but I love a little color. So I made my purchase and went home. Upon arriving home and opening the box I immediatly knew that I didn't want the color I purchased. Why? Because both my mixer and coffee pot would have a permanent place on my counter and they were two different color reds! No matter how much I like color, I like things to match, fit together, and be organized so different color reds just screamed at me to fix the problem. So because my mom wanted the same coffee pot in red and I was supposed to get her one later that day I figured that now it worked perfect that I had the red one she wanted and I called Josh and told him to pick me up a black one.

Upon arriving home Josh was confused as to why I had two coffee makers. I explained my dilema and that the red one was for my mom and he came up with "you're weird".

"Why is that weird?" I asked.

"You like the red one better but you're not going to keep it because it doesn't match? Who matches appliances?"

"But it wouldn't look right! My kitchen would be lopsided. It would clash. It would be wrong. You just can't do two different reds on the same counter."
"Like I said, you are weird."

Am I weird?

Tid Bits

2010-10-17T16:51:00.000-05:00

1. The lady in the apartment downstairs gave us a little visit yesterday. She asked us to make our two year old stop running around because apparently it drives her crazy. She threatened that if he didn't stop that she would go to our landlord. Thing is that our landlord said when we moved in that 'families have priority' as in, if people complain about kids making too much noise he's not going to do much about it because you can't ask a kid to stop playing. So if she does go to the landlord it's not going to do much. Secondly, though I may feel bad that she is going crazy, I don't think I'm going to scar my child by yelling at him every time he runs, because lets face it, he doesn't know how to just walk, it's always running as is the case with any two year old so I would be yelling at him all day long.

2. Josh is still looking for a Mechanical Engineer job. It's very frustrating for him to apply to hundreds of places and never hear anything back. Mechanical Engineer jobs are still very scarce and people aren't too big on hiring a guy whose been out of school for almost 2 years already. We're hoping things turn around soon. Working at a computer doing claims is not my husbands ideal job, it doesn't challenge him or anything and he needs a challenge.

3. Gabriel has changed a lot within the past week. And I wouldn't exactly say it's for the good. He all the sudden wants to test me on absolutely everything! If I say no he immediately turns around and does what I told him not too and/or does something very similar to see if he can get away with that instead. He also all the sudden started hitting. Just walking up and hitting for no good reason. He also started throwing everything, just to throw it. I by no means let him get away with any of this, I feel like if I just let him get away with it then it's going to take longer to stop and that I'm giving the control of the situation over to him. So there are always consequences to being naughty and not listening but he doesn't seem to care too much at the moment. So I am learning how to deal with this whole new level of child rearing. Maybe this is what everybody calls the terrible two's....

4. Mr. Easy (aka Eli) is not being so easy lately. Though, I can't complain, he's still an angel. He's just been having some tummy issues lately and being a little more clingy. But I don't really mind the clinginess, before he just preferred to lay all by himself and would get mad if he was held too long, now I actually get to cuddle more and hold him almost as much as I want which is a nice change. Well, nice to a point, I like that I get to hold him but I don't like that I think it's because he's got tummy issues. It's a win/loose situation.

5. I've joined a Mom's Group on Tuesday morning which has turned out to be really fun. It's not like we go out and do things but we just get together and do a bible study type of deal but it gives me a chance to get out of the apartment and talk with someone else rather then my two year old.

6. Moms. Do you ever feel like you are loosing your talking capabilities because you talk kid/baby talk all do long? I sometimes feel like I don't know how to speak plain English anymore because I talk 2 year old talk all do long. I mean, what do you call a 'Boom' now days? Oh, what's that, it's just falling down/ getting hurt/ tripping on something? Would have never guessed! My vocabulary also consists of mankie, humpty humpty, baa baa sheep, shakka milk, and repeating 'hi!!!' over and over again. God help me if I ever need to sound intelligent again, I don't know if I would pass!

7. Eli is a big boy! Goodness me! He is one long baby! He's not chubby, he's just long. I even put him in some 6-12 clothes the other day and it wasn't even that big on him! He's already getting a little big for some of his 3-6 month clothes and he just turned 4 months!

That's all for now!

Autumn Woods

2010-10-11T15:57:00.000-05:00

Ere, in the northern gale,

The summer tresses of the trees are gone,

The woods of Autumn, in all around our vale,

Have put their glory on.

The mountains that infold,

In the their wide sweep, the colored landscape round,

Seen groups of giant kings, in purple and gold,

That guard the enchanted ground.

I roam the woods that crown

The uplands, where the mingled splendors glow,

Where the gay company of trees look down

On the green fields below.

My steps are not alone

In these bright walks; the sweet southwest, at play,

Flies, rusting, where the painted leaves are strown

Along the winding way.

And far in heaven, the while,

The sun, that sends that gale to wander here,

Pours out on the fair earth his quiet smile-

The sweetest of the year.

Autumn Woods -William Cullen Bryant

the challenge

2010-10-11T14:47:00.000-05:00

This picture just tells so many words...

Can you tell what is being said? Something along the lines of Mama: "Gabriel, you will sit here and get your picture taken" and Gabriel: "There is no way you could pay me to sit there Mama!" There is definitely a stare-down going on here. Eli is just like "Hmmm... what's this cool stuff?"

Gabriel: "Noooo! Mama Nooooo!!!" (I love how Eli is just oblivious and is like "this leaf is sooo cool!")

Gabriel: "She's killing me people!" (Eli: "That leaf isn't so cool anymore, Mom I'm bored").

Gabriel: "Is that chocolate milk I see!?!?!"

*Yes, I see now after pictures have been taken that my hair isn't exactly nice and/or flattering my face in any way. I look a little 'fuller' in the face along with looking like I have a boys haircut. The short hair look does that to me. But I really do have long thick blonde hair that can never make up it's mind if it wants to be straight or curly, I promise!

Gabe and Eli

2010-10-06T08:47:00.000-05:00

Eli: "Shhh!!! Gabriel, I think Mama is trying to take our picture!"

Gabriel: "Too late Eli, she discovered us!

Let's humor her and tell her she's doing a good job... 'YAY MAMA!!!'"

Gabriel: "Let me give you a kiss Eli!"

Eli: "No! I'll run away!"

Gabriel: "No you won't! I'm bigger, I'll get you! KISS!"

The End.

Goofy Gabe

2010-09-30T20:00:00.012-05:00

The other night Gabriel was just being a goof!

And he kept wanting his picture taken and he kept wanting to give kisses...

And he moved onto Daddy after he was done with Mommy. Can you tell Josh isn't so excited about this kiss?

It was a very wet kiss!

But wet kisses and all he is our little handsome man, goofy Gabriel!

Pilgrim's Bread

2010-09-30T14:22:00.000-05:00

Today I tried Pilgrim's Bread! It was the recipe that my cousin Leah gave me and it is so darn yummy! I think after having fresh baked bread for the last week or two it's going to be hard to ever go back to store bought bread but at least with this recipe and some of my others I will hopefully not have to buy any more bread (except for french toast bread!).

Something I have learned through out my few years of cooking and baking is that recipe's are just guide lines. You can always change them if you want to and it is always best to learn how to cook things from the masters. For instance, I could give you the recipe to my Apple Turnovers (and the next time I make them I will) but I change things here and there to make them perfect. Or you could get Josh's Brownie recipe but if you actually watch him make it he adds a little bit more of some things until it looks just right. So considering my cousin said she has been baking this bread for 7 years I would definitely consider her a master at it! So all the little substitutes and extra tid bits are from the master herself, hopefully they are as helpful to you as they were to me!

Pilgrim's Bread:
1/2 c. yellow cornmeal (you could use corn flour)
1/3 c. brown sugar (you can use maple syrup)
1 T salt
1 c. oatmeal (rolled oats)
2 c. boiling water
1/4 c. oil
4tsp. yeast
1/2 c. warm water
2 c. whole wheat flour
1/2 c. rye flour (you could use whole wheat flour (I did!))
white flour - 3 c.?

Mix cornmeal, brown sugar, salt and oatmeal in a large bowl.

Add boiling water. Now Leah said that the left over water from boiling potato's makes the bread taste really yummy. We're not big potato people so I didn't have any to use when I made my bread. But I plan on saving my potato water the next time I make potato's... whenever that is, I don't think it's on my meal plan... or maybe it is... Anyway. Stir in oil.

Cool until lukewarm (30min.)

Soften yeast in 1/2 c. warm water and use your super awesome bowl that you got at the 100 yen store in Japan (I love my bowls!) and stir into cooled cornmeal mixture.

Add whole wheat and rye flour. Mix.

Add enough white flour to make a moderately stiff dough.

Knead 6-8min. by hand or about 3 minutes in a kitchen aid mixer (which are glorious things!).

Shape into a ball, place in greased bowl turning once to grease surface.

Cover and let rise in warm place until double - approx. 60min. Two secret's on rising your dough if you don't have a window with direct sunlight. One way you can do it that I learned from my mother is to place a cooling rack over two burners on your stove and put you pans/bowl on the rack and cover with a towel. Turn burners on for 45 seconds and it should be warm enough to rise your dough. The second secret is from Leah, she said to preheat your oven for 2 min. and then shut it off and turn on the interior light (granted you have a light, I do but in all of our other places we didn't) and put the bread dough in to rise.

Punch down and divide into 2 balls, let rest 10min.

Shape into loaves and put in pans.

Let rise in warm place until double -approx. 30min. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes while you get to watch your two adorable children play!

And then the bread will be done and you will be in heaven!

You know you're a cloth diapering Mama...

2010-09-30T13:17:00.000-05:00

when your living room looks like this after you wash diapers...

"Seeeeee!!!!"

2010-09-24T22:29:00.000-05:00

So Gabriel and Eli played their first game together. It was the other night and Gabriel wanted to pretend to sleep on the couch/go "ni ni" with Eli next to him. So I laid them next to each other and got Gabriel's mankie, teddy, fishy and boomer, all of which he cannot sleep without and tucked the boys in. They were having a grand old time playing together. Gabriel was so excited that Eli was sleeping with him and kept giving him kisses and Eli was soaking it all in!

And then Gabriel realized that I had the camera pointed at them and lately when he sees a camera pointed at him he freaks out because he wants to see what the picture is and he starts yelling "see"...

See, you can tell it on his face, "see, see seeeee, See, SEE, SEEEEEE!!!!!" Eli on the other hand looks like he's saying "what the heck Mama?"

Then he totally left Eli in the dust to play ni ni all by himself while he went to see what picture Mommy was taking except Mommies whole point of taking the pictures now was standing behind the camera, not with his brother being extra cute on the couch playing their first game...

sigh... at least the played their first game together!!!

Delightful French Bread

2010-09-24T14:58:00.000-05:00

So I've been looking for bread recipes in some of Josh's old cookbooks that he picked up somewhere throughout his existence. I don't know where these cookbooks came from but he's had them since before we were married. While looking through them I came across the recipe for 'Delightful French Bread'... delightful? I was intrigued so I decided to try it except I didn't want purely white bread as the recipe called for so I used half wheat flour and half white flour (I hear it's a bad to substitute all wheat flour when the recipe calls for all white flour, things can potentially not work out so it's better to only substitute part of it).

Here's what you'll need:

2.5 Cups warm water
2 Tablespoons sugar
1 Tablespoon salt (yeah it's a little much for bread but it is spread out over two large loafs)
2 Tablespoons cooking oil
2 Packages dry yeast
6 Cups white flour (I used 3 cups white and 3 cups wheat flour)
1 Egg
Sesame OR Poppy seed

Pour warm water (105-115 degrees) into large mixing bowl and dissolve yeast in water...

Stir in sugar, salt, oil and half the flour...

Beat vigorously for 3 minutes. Stir in remaining flour and mix thoroughly...

Leave spoon in the heavy batter and allow to rest for 10 minutes. Stir down. Again allow to rest for 10 minutes and stir down again. Repeat this process until the dough has been stirred down 5 times. The texture of the dough will change quite a bit...

Turn dough onto floured surface. Knead dough enough to coat with flour so it can be handled (5 or 6 times). Divide dough in half. Roll each part into 9x12 inch rectangles. Roll up from long side like a jelly roll. Pinch seam to seal dough and arrange loaves on a large baking sheet that has been sprinkled with corn meal, allow room for loaves to expand as they rise.

Cover lightly and let rise at room temperature until nearly doubled (about 30 minutes). With a very sharp knife cut three gashes at an angle on top. Brush with slightly beaten egg and sprinkle with sesame or poppy seeds. I forgot to take a picture of this before I put it in the oven so I turned on our oven light and took a picture while it was baking...

Bake immediately for 25-30 minutes at 400 degrees. Remove from baking sheet and cool on racks.

And there you have it! Delightful French Bread! It actually was very very good! I will definitely be making this bread again! It's not exactly what I'm looking for but I still have yet to make the bread recipe that my cousin gave me. Either way, we have been eating this bread up like it was candy, so good!

a little piece of metal heaven

2010-09-23T14:48:00.000-05:00

Does anything in this picture look extra super duper fantastic?

Well to me there is! It's this!

A very shiny, very new Kitchen Aid Mixer!!!

LAAAAAAAA!!!! (do you hear the angels singing?)

I have wanted one of these F-O-R-E-V-E-R!!!!! And I mean like, seriously FOREVER! How did I end up with one of these metal pieces of heaven? Well I'll be happy to fill you in.

So, we have been trying to sell Josh's car for a long time, as in over a year, as in before we ever moved to Korea, it's been forever. So all the sudden, MIRACLE, it's sold! Now, this was not the first thing that came to mind when we found out the car sold. No, about a billion other things came to mind like clothes (which yes, I finally got!) and saving it for Christmas ect (which we did this too). But then I baked Granola Bread and I used my hand mixer to mix the dough like the recipe said and then this happened...

The dough grew up and up and up the mixer medal thingy's that spin around and before I knew it things started smelling like a burnt motor and yeah, we had to stop things. Then my loving husband said he'd clean it and took the whole thing apart and found mounds and mounds of dough all over the inside.

Then I said something along the lines like 'someday we'll have a Kitchen Aid Mixer and then you won't have to worry about it doing that' and then my husband said something I thought I wouldn't hear for another 7 years 'well, do you want to go get one?' I was SPEECHLESS! See, I have always joked that if I won a million dollars the very first thing I would buy would be a Kitchen Aid Mixer, in red to be exact. Now I don't have to win a million dollars to get one because now I ACTUALLY HAVE ONE!!!! YAY!!!!

(lalaaaaaaaaaa.... I'm pretty sure I hear angel's singing again!)

Isn't it beautiful? Sigh... I'm in kitchen/bakers heaven!!!

Granola Bread

2010-09-20T13:32:00.000-05:00

I am on a mission! I am on a mission to find a whole wheat bread recipe that I like and can make without a bread machine. I tried one this last weekend and it turned out pretty good but it's not exactly what I'm looking for. I'll bring you along on my escapade if you care to read about it! I have two more recipes that I want to try. One if a french bread, but it's with white flour, so we'll see how it goes using wheat flour. The other is a recipe is from my cousin Leah, which I am the most excited to try, but I don't have all the ingredients for it so I'll have to wait until after my next shopping trip to make it. Yes, I do only live 3 minutes from the grocery store but I hate shopping, especially grocery shopping so I avoid going at all costs, so I will wait until this weekend to get all my ingredients.

The bread I tried this past weekend is called Granola Bread. It is actually very yummy bread but it's more of a breakfast bread with butter and jam, not a sandwich bread. It's worth a try if you are looking for a new bread. Plus, if you make this and go to buy your orange marmalade at Super One you get this really awesome cute jar to hopefully use for canning in the future...

Alright so it's not the only reason to make the bread, it truly is yummy!

Granola Bread
2 Tablespoons Butter
1/2 Cup Orange Marmalade
1/4 Cup Molasses

1 Cup Granola
2 Cups Whole Wheat Flour
1/2 Cup Wheat Germ
2 Teaspoons Salt
2 Packages active dry yeast

4 Cups all -purpose flour

Put 2 cups water and first 3 ingredients in pan over low heat until very warm. Stir in next 5 ingredients and 1 cup flour. Pour heated mix over the remaining flour mixture. Beat at medium speed, scraping side of bowl occasionally for 3 minutes (Note: DO NOT USE A HAND MIXER!!! I Repeat, DO NOT USE A HAND MIXER, I will explain in a later post). Turn out on floured board and knead (the recipe didn't say for how long, I did 7 minutes). Flatten to rectangle (FYI rather hard to flatten to a rectangle but if you make it big enough you don't have to roll it out like it says later, you can just cut it in half). Let dough rise in a warm place free from draft for 1 hour 15 min until double in size. Punch down and divide in 2 loaves by rolling dough from short end of rectangle. Seal ends and put in loaf pans. Let rise another 1 hour 30 minutes. Bake at 375 degrees for 40 minutes.

It's like a whole wheat bread with a bit more flavor and when you get a piece of the orange marmalade peal it's a little zing of sweetness. Tastes great toasted with butter (and if you like jam, but I'm not a jam type of girl, I just like butter on my toast).

Golden Birthday

2010-09-16T11:49:00.000-05:00

At the very last minute we decided to have a little party for Gabriel's second (and golden) birthday. Our original plans were to head up to Gooseberry Falls and go hiking and let Gabriel throw rocks in the lake, which he loves the outdoors and throwing things so it would have been the perfect day for him. But in the end we had to change our plans and we invited some family and celebrated another way.

First we let Gabriel open up some gifts when he first woke up. We didn't want him to open up all of them so we hid some for later.

Then we got everybody and headed to the zoo! It was a beautiful day out and perfect for walking around. We also dressed Gabriel in about the cutest outfit ever, seriously, I think about 20 random strangers commented about what he was wearing while we walked around the zoo.

Gabriel loved all the animals, he kept making animal noises whenever we saw them. This particular lion kept looking at the children like one yummy snack. I for one was very thankful that there was the glass to separate the lion from ~~her prey~~ the kids.

We couldn't resist getting a few pictures of Gabriel in his adorable train outfit...

And then we actually found a train at the zoo and Gabriel got to take a ride with his Daddy and his cousin Rowan.

And we saw the seals...

Eventually we got a little tired of walking around and once the words 'presents' and 'cake' were mentioned Gabriel wanted to go home anyway:)

*We had cake in between these two pictures, hence Gabriel being naked.

Gabriel ended up having a wonderful birthday party and everybody had tons of fun! Happy Golden Birthday Gabriel!

last day of one

2010-09-16T10:31:00.000-05:00

The day before Gabriel turned two I was freaking out. I was not ready for my little boy to turn two, he was still my little baby, he was my one year old who seemed like he just had his first birthday. All day I was freaking out about it. I think I gave Gabriel a few dozen extra hugs because I felt like I was saying goodbye to my baby and having to accept toddlerhood the next day. I know, it's really only a day difference and it's silly but if your a mother you probably understand how that one day can make all the difference in the world.

After we tucked Gabriel in bed that night I went and hugged my husband for a long long time. I went on and on about how that was our last night to tuck in our one year old, we would never be able to tuck in one year old Gabriel ever again and we just lost our baby. Yes, I was being dramatic. Yes, I am ok with that. And yes, my husband thought I was silly, he even told me that, he's more logical then I am like that.

Later as we were laying in bed and my husband was trying to fall asleep and I was still going on about losing my baby I decided I needed to capture the last moment my baby was going to be one. So I got up, grabbed my camera and snuck into Gabriel's room. I stood over his crib and knowing fully well that a flash might very well wake him up, I snapped my picture of my sleeping babe. Amazingly, he didn't even flinch, so I took another!

And then I went back to my hubby and made him open up his eyes (he was half asleep after all) and look at my picture and talk more about my overly dramatic emotions about my baby turning one.

Then he told me to be quiet.

I hit him with a pillow.

He sighed.

And then... then I kept talking.

Then he fell asleep and then I took a picture of him too. After all, it was the last night he was going to be a father to a one year old Gabriel.

Colorful Bums

2010-09-14T18:31:00.000-05:00

My babies have colorful bums!!! Plain and simple their butts are colorful! Why? Because I clothe diaper of course! And now they are more colorful then ever before because today I got Gabriel's next size in the mail and since gDiapers just came out with their new line of colors I was able to order the new gPants instead of their old ones! So now I have the new and old colors and my babies bums are more colorful then ever! And yes, I am excited about it!

So from left to right, top to bottom we have galactic blue, vanilla bean, good vibe strip, gooseberry purple, goodnight blue, grubby knees grey, midnight black, great orange, guppy green, goo goo blue, go fish blue, and got chocolate brown! I also have grateful red (below) but currently it's on Gabriel's bum so it's not in my picture above...

Thank heaven for colorful bums, they make your life a little brighter, literally!

Mystery Solved!

2010-09-10T14:59:00.000-05:00

This morning when I got up to get Gabriel, Eli was still asleep in our bed where I had been laying next to him, so I left him there until he woke up. I got Gabriel and we ate breakfast and played a little bit, all the while Eli slept peacefully away in our bed.

I ended up having to clean a little bit in our kitchen and Gabriel went and played in his room. I check in on Eli a few times and every time he was fast asleep and his pacifier was up by his hand where it had ended up at some point during the night. That was, until the last time I checked in on him. I peaked around the door and saw that he was still asleep, I smiled and turned to walk back to my cleaning duties and then I stopped, something was different. I walked in and noticed that Eli's pacifier was no longer by his hand but was now in his mouth! I was very puzzled. I didn't put it in and Gabriel had been playing in his room all morning, but then, Eli is too little to find the pacifier and put it in his own mouth so how did it get there. I figured it was no big deal how it got there and decided to go back to the kitchen and clean but in the back of my mind I kept wondering how in the world that the pacifier ended up in Eli's mouth.

Then Eli got up and I changed him and fed him. He played on the floor a little bit and was tired in no time. I put Eli in his swing to take a nap and then went and got a drink of water. While I'm drinking my glass of H2O Eli's pacifier falls but he was practically asleep so I was just going to leave it alone. Then all the sudden Gabriel walks by. He looks at Eli, proceeds to stop the swing, digs on both sides of Eli until he finds the pacifier, shoves it in Eli's mouth (literally shoves it in, there is nothing gentle about it) then pushes the swing so it will start up again and walks away! Apparently if there is not a pacifier in Eli's mouth then something isn't right in Gabriel's mind and he's going to help Eli out. So my theory is that Gabriel snuck into our room when he was supposed to be playing in his room, crawled on the bed and gave Eli his pacifier (well, probably more like shoved in his mouth, I'm sure Eli didn't have much choice in this matter) and then went back to playing... either that or I have a genius of a 3 month old who can already find his pacifier and put it in his own mouth, but I'm guessing the latter is highly unlikely!

a simple letter

2010-09-01T15:35:00.000-05:00

To All My Children, Present and Future,

I will never be able to give you all the things that you want. I wish and pray that I could, but I can't. You may have to fight for your dreams and work for the things you want. You may have to go without at times in your life. You might have to work harder then everybody else, you might have to fight and fight hard. I wish I could give you all the wonderful things in life on a platter, but I can't.

I can say, that I will fight with you for your dreams and guide you with God's help on your journey. I will work along side you for the things you want. I will go without more so then you so that you don't have too. I will not regret it. I will not envy other mothers who have things that I don't because I will have you, my children, and you make my life brighter then any gem or stone ever could.

I can love you, I can be your friend and counselor, I can fight hard and work hard for you, I can comfort you, hold you, kiss away you hurts and I can be your Mother. I pray everyday that God will bless you and guide you, that He will show you His ways and His heart. I pray that things will be easy for you and that you will be able to follow your dreams. I know that storms will come, I don't want them too, but they will. We all go through tough times and though I pray you don't have to, I know that God will be with you through everything he puts in your path.

You can always come to me for help and I will fight for you, work with you, pray for you and be right along side with you. I will stand up for you, I will ask God for guidance in raising you, I will do everything in my power to keep you safe and happy and I will love you more and more each passing day, more then you could ever imagine.

I love you, each and every one of my children and I will continue loving you every moment that I breathe!

Love,
Mama

$15

2010-08-23T22:50:00.000-05:00

This past Saturday I was able to escape the house all by myself for a couple of hours. I hadn't really planned on being gone long. The plan was to go to a used baby clothes sale at the DECC and then come home. Well, I did go to the sale but afterwards I got a tiny bit of 'me' time as well.

See back in May my family had a garage sale and from the money Josh and I made we put aside a small amount for clothes for me because I literally left most of my clothes in Korea when we left. Why did I do this? Well because when you only bring X amount of shirts to a place you end up wearing them over and over again and by the time we left they were all very worn and half didn't fit me anymore because I lost a little bit of weight, so therefore they got left behind. Also I just had a baby so any clothes that did fit me before don't really fit me now. I'm not over exaggerating, seriously, I have 5 shirts that I wear out in public, two of which I've had for years and years and one has holes in it that I always hope nobody notices. Any other shirts I wear around the house, mostly old maternity shirt, and hope that nobody knocks on my door and sees me (which someone did today and I was extremely embarrassed! lol!) :) Anyway, just trying to give you an idea as to why we put this money aside for me. So then my birthday came along and a little more money got added to our little pool for me.

Then came along my kids growing and my husband needed clothes for work and that whole pool disappeared. Well, almost! I had spent $20 of the pool on a pair of pants and a sweater for me and after I went to the sale at the DECC and got Gabriel some 3T clothes (which he will be in soon... SAD! My baby is getting big!) I ended up with $15 left. I also had a gift card for Caribou Coffee from my birthday. So first, I went to Caribou Coffee in Canal Park and got myself a small turtle mocha and a blueberry muffin... HEAVEN!

I was about to go home and my head was hurting from my pony tail because I wear it up in one every single day because the last time I got my hair cut (sorry mom) it ended up being really crooked... so therefore, wearing my hair down is just not an option:) Then a thought came to me 'Kayla, you have $15 left, go get your hair fixed! You've been walking around with this bad haircut for 5 months, it's time to get it fixed!' and so I did! Believe me, I was so flippin' excited to get my $15 hair cut! LOL! I know, I'm nuts and that's ok! My hair dresser took her time and made sure my hair was even and what I wanted and Great Clips isn't exactly known for that. I half expected my hair to still be crooked when I walked out, I was just hoping for not as crooked as before:) But I spent over an hour in that chair and enjoyed every minute of it! My hair dressers exact words were 'well, I figured you've been walking around with a bad hair cut for that long you deserve one that is perfect'. Now, my hair isn't anything special, I really just got a trim and some layers but whatever, I don't care, I'm still excited about it and now I can wear my hair down if I want too!

gDiapers

2010-08-16T14:12:00.000-05:00

Before Elizek was born I bought gDiapers for my kids. I tried them out on Gabriel and loved them! I took a break from cloth diapering after Elizek was born because I didn't need the extra work that cloth diapering involves, now I have started up again with both kids.

Now, of course cloth diapering is a little harder. It's not like you can just take the diapers and throw them in the trash after changing the kids. There is washing them after the change, then the extra laundry, the line drying liners and the actual diaper change itself takes a little longer. All in all it's still worth it. I like the fact that I'm saving money and there are a few hundred less diapers in the landfills. I still use disposables at night because Gabriel will get a rash if I don't and Eli still needs to be changed in the middle of the night and I don't want to have to wash diaper out when I'm half asleep but during the day I use cloth.

Things have been going well. I sometimes feel like a worker on an assembly line with poopy pants coming my way constantly but I felt like that with disposables too. I think I feel more that way now just because I try to change both of them at the same time so I can wash two dirty diapers at once instead at two different times.

I think my kids look adorable in cloth diapers. They are so stinkin' cute! I mean, you could put a plain ol' boring disposable on your babies bottom OR you could put on a cute cloth diaper :) Ok, so I'm a little bias but still, look at Eli in my favorite color...

So happy about cloth!

I have a few fun colors of gDiapers. Red ones, bright blue ones, brown, vanilla, dark blue ones, black and a light blue pattern one. I think their fun and worth all the extra effort!

A Fun Weekend

2010-08-05T16:10:00.001-05:00

This summer has gone by so fast! I can't believe there is only one month left! I am determined to make this last month fun. The first two months were great because Eli was born and we have been busy enjoying him but we haven't gotten out to do anything. We haven't gone to the beach or just to Lake Superior, we haven't gone to the zoo or been camping, none of the normal fun summer things. So since there is only one month left I am trying to plan each weekend so we get to have fun before the cold months of winter come along that take up too much of our year. So this last weekend we finally got out to do things!

On Friday night we went down to Bayfront for the Tall Ships Festival.

We left as soon as Josh got home from work so we could go see the ships. The ship tours only went until 5PM so we only got to see one of the ships but we got to walk around a little bit before it started to rain. You should see the rope on these ships. Like seriously, it's amazing! They have so much rope everywhere!

Check out this rope that Gabriel is sitting on, HUGE!

Gabriel was kind of crabby when we went down to the festival because he hadn't had a nap that day, so he probably won't be smiling in any of this pics but he still thought the ships were pretty cool:)

The bottom of this ship was extremely cramped. I seriously think it was made for short people. We were bent over at the waist trying to get through it which was a little difficult because I had Eli strapped to my chest and Josh had to hold Gabriel because he didn't like walking on the ship because it would move and he would loose his balance.

This is us outside of the ships...

We went back the next day because we wanted to see The Bounty. The Bounty is a ship that was featured in the film Muting on the Bounty and it was also in the second Pirates of the Caribbean, Dead Mans Chest.

Jack Sparrow, or a man in the costume really, was on the ship too! This guys costume was pretty darn amazing, if I didn't know better I would have though it was really Johnny Depp in character. I wish I would have got a picture of him but I have this thing about taking pictures of famous people or people in costumes. I feel bad for asking for their picture because I know that I am probably the millionth person to do so and I don't want to bother them like everybody else. I know that's what they are there for, to create the experience but I still don't feel comfortable asking for pictures. Anyway, we had to wait in line for awhile to get on the boat so we got some cotton candy! Gabriel who had never had it before turned out to be 100% kid and loved it! His face was blue, hands were blue, even his hair was blue when he was done!

When we got onto the ship Eli and I got to stand at the wheel, I thought it was pretty cool :)

The bottom the ship wasn't like the other one, we could actually stand up in it :)

On Sunday we decided to make the trip up to Chishlom for the county fair. This was Gabriel's first time at the fair and he loved it! He loved the petting barn the most I think. He kept picking up the hay the animals were laying on and trying to feed it to them. Even Eli got into the fun:)

We also let him go on the pony rides!

We also took him on a few rides which he thought was pretty fantastic!

At the end of the day we were all super hot and super tired so we got some ice cream before heading out. Gabe has never had his very own ice cream cone before and totally loved the every minute of it. He kept getting mad at me when I had to take it away for a minute to lick off all the run offs. Eventually I just let him make a mess because I had extra clothes in the car:)

It was a fun weekend and now we get to plan for this next weekend and do even more fun things!

Park Fun

2010-08-03T15:00:00.000-05:00

At our apartment building they have a playground outside for the residence to use, Gabriel loves it playing on it! First we have to take the elevator down so we load the kids up in the wagon. For Eli's safety, we always put them feet to feet in the wagon. Gabriel is very careful not to kick Eli but I don't want to take any chances.

Eli chilling in the wagon

Apparently my son thinks there is only one way to get up the slide and will not go any other way

A silly monkey with a monkey!

Daddy and Gabe

Gabriel will scoot his little butt onto this bar and just sit there and hold onto the bar in front of him. It FREAKS MAMA OUT!!! He gets a huge thrill out of it but I hate it when he does it!

My favorite picture!

a little shocked

2010-07-30T21:20:00.000-05:00

Josh is at his friends house playing games and both of my kids are sleeping. This is a very rare moment by myself, so what am I doing? I'm watching Primetime! Hahaha, I know I'm a nerd! This is not a show that I normally watch but they are doing one of those specials 'What Would You Do' and it caught my interest. In these shows they hire actors to pretend to be normal people in situations where people usually need help or to have someone stand up for them and the show wants to see what the average person who walks by would do.

On the show tonight they had their actors walk down the street and pretend to pass out and they set up their cameras to see if people would help. So their first actor was a young woman who was dressed in nice clothes. Within 6 seconds of her passing out someone was always there to help. The second actor they had was an older man dressing like a homeless person. Every time he passed out the average time it took someone to help him was 3 minutes! I was shocked but not as shocked as I was to see what happened next. Next they had their actor who was pretending to be homeless hold a beer can after passing out to see if people would help. I was beyond shocked when 88 people walked by and not one even considered helping! Some even made fun of him! Finally a woman came along who herself was homeless and she started asking other people walking by to please call 911 for the man... 26 more people walked by and ignored both of them, even with her asking for help, before finally a woman stopped and called 911! These are normal everyday people that just on walked by!

In what world do we live in where it's ok not to help someone who is clearly in trouble? I'm just baffled right now. I don't even know what to think! Sorry for my extremely random post... it just, I don't know, makes me mad... or shocked... or something... I'm a little speechless right now. Again I have to ask the question, in what world do we live in that it's ok not to help someone who is clearly in trouble?

Cheese!!!

2010-07-30T20:48:00.000-05:00

Gabriel has always been a stinker when it comes to taking pictures. He would never smile for me or even look at the camera! I have very few pictures of him looking at a camera and smiling.

Now something has changed. Someone flipped a magic switch in Gabriel and he finally likes having his picture taken! He gets really excited that he gets to say "Cheeeeeese"! I am overjoyed with this change cause now I get cute pictures like this...

Gabriel still has his stinker moments when it comes to picture taking, as in if he's not in the mood it ain't gonna happen but I guess I don't like having my picture taken when I'm not in the mood either:) I guess he gets that from his Mommy:)

Silly Gabe

2010-07-15T12:36:00.000-05:00

Gabriel has done a few rather humorous things lately. First, since we have moved out of my parents house, he seems to think that anything that is an older gentleman is his Opa. Things such as his Little People's Noah figure and in his little bible he first thought that John the Baptist was Opa and later he thought Jesus was Opa. I have to say, the funniest one was when we were watching Sesame Street today and he thought Oscar the Grouch was Opa! Sorry to disappoint you Gabe, but Opa is not green and not to mention he is not that hairy!

Then, if you have ever breast fed a baby you know about a little thing called breast pads. Well one time when I was feeding Elizek, Gabriel got ahold of my breast pad and ran out of reach where I couldn't get him. He then proceeded to lift up his shirt and try to put the pad on his 'boob'. He got a little frustrated because he couldn't understand why it wouldn't work!

As I mentioned in my last post, we moved to a new apartment. So things are everywhere! Well, as I was organizing the bathroom supplies Gabriel grabbed a pad and shows it to me and asks "Diaper? Diaper?" Hahaha!

life over the past month

2010-07-13T15:13:00.000-05:00

Going from one kid to two kids is hard. I expected things to be hard, no one ever said it was going to be easy. My life revolves around breast feeding, diaper changes, playing hide and seek, and making snacks and food for meal times. Though the change is harder then what I expected because a lot of things happened that I didn't prepare myself for.

Going from one to two kids is hard for anybody, and then you have the hormonal change that makes you extra sensitive and taking care of a newborn makes you extremely tired. Then there is also a little toddler who can't understand that Mommy just can't do somethings whenever he wants me to anymore. It's hard. Don't get me wrong, I love love love being a mother and having two kids is more of a blessing then I could have ever imagined.

The things that made the change even harder then what I expected was first of all I had a c-section. Now I knew that there was a chance that I would have one and I knew that things would be a lot harder if I did have one. First off, you can't move right away, literally you are stuck in bed not being able to feel anything and you need someone to bring you everything, even your baby when they are hungry. When you can move it hurts everything and things like getting in and out of bed feel like you worked out for an hour and someone is jabbing knifes in you the whole time. Also, you have a c-section you aren't supposed to lift anything more then ten pounds for six weeks, but when you have a toddler it's really hard to follow that rule. I did try to follow the rule for the first couple of weeks, it honestly did hurt to lift him or even things lighter then him. Now, I still try to follow the rule, but I can't all the time. I have no choice but to lift Gabriel and we also moved and I have to unpack boxes and what not so I lift them sometimes too.

Which brings me to my next thing, we had to move two weeks after Elizek was born. So the first week I was home from the hospital I tried to relax as much as I could but the second week I was rushing around my parents house trying to get our things together so we could move. Naps didn't happen, or if they did I felt so incredibly guilty over it because I knew I had so many other things to do. Then when we did move we get to our apartment the day we were moving everything in only to find out that we couldn't move in to the apartment we were supposed to get because they thought it had bed bugs, so we ended up moving all of our stuff into another apartment and then 5 days later when they found out that there really were no bugs we moved again into our original apartment. So I have been trying to unpack our boxes in between breast feeding and playing with Gabriel... so if you come over, don't be surprised to still find a lot of boxes:)

I also got Mastitis a week before we moved. Mastitis is an infection in your breast that you get from breast feeding and unfortunately it gives you flu like symptoms along with the pain in your breast. So I had a fever, was getting light headed, and was extremely tired (well, more then I already was) from it.

Then two days before we moved I found out that I had lymes disease. Lymes makes you overly tired, makes your joints and muscles hurt and as I found out, makes even your eyes hurt! Also, you can't always think clearly, or I should say, have the best memory. It was/is taking me forever to make decisions or remember what people actually said to me. So my doctor put me on meds for lymes, then had to change the meds 5 days later because more lab work came back and it turns out that the meds she put me on weren't going to work, so I had to start some new stuff. I think all I wanted to do a few days before we moved was cry because everything was happening all at once but I never had the time or the privacy (we were living at my parents still) to do that, so I just dealt with it the best I could.

The tiredness from the lymes, mastitis and having a newborn has been the hardest thing to deal with. I try to have energy to play with Gabriel and unpack my apartment but some days it simply doesn't happen. I also found out the other day that it is extremely difficult to wake up or are in such a deep sleep you can't hear anything. I about burst into tears the other morning when I woke up at 9am and realized that Gabriel had been sitting in his crib all morning waiting for me. Since then I set my alarm clock in hopes that it will wake me up in the morning and I've tried to avoid taking naps since I never know how long he is going to sleep and don't want to set my alarm for something way later then when he would actually get up... does that make sense? I hope so. Which would also be why I am writing this post (and probably why it's so long), Gabriel is napping and I am trying to keep myself awake but don't have the energy at the moment to unpack anything else. Anyway, I'm pretty good at pretending I'm not extremely tired when I go out in public or to other peoples homes, hopefully people still think I'm semi normal :)

Things have been hard, but it's all worth it because I love love LOVE my kids. I love having Eli and Gabriel around. They are such a joy! Even though it's a lot more work with two, they are such a joy and they also make it easier to deal with everything. I'm excited when the lymes will finally be gone and I'm not so overly tired. I mean, I'm sure I'll still be tired because I will still be getting up with Eli at night and what not, but it should be better then now. Gabriel did happen to freak me out today though when all the sudden he disappeared and he had literally been by my side two seconds before. He ended up being in our new walk-in closet hiding behind some of my dresses that were hanging up. I looked in every room before I got to that one and would have missed him completely except right when I was turning around to leave I spotted two little feet poking out from the bottom of a dress. When I pulled the dress back he had the biggest smile and started giggling historically! Little stinker:) He can be surprisingly quiet when he doesn't want to be found! Anyway, he was pretty darn proud of himself for hiding in such a good spot... and now I keep that closet door closed :)

Elizek Oliver

2010-07-13T11:00:00.000-05:00

Elizek Oliver Leveille has arrived!!!

Born June, 15, 2010 at 12:46PM

Weight 7 lbs 9oz. and 20 inches long!

Here is our sweet little boy!

Mama and Elizek

Daddy and Elizek

Gabriel so excited to meet his new little brother!

We are loving having Elizek around and Gabriel loves being an older brother! I know I'm a little late in my announcement on my blog but life has been extremely busy getting adjusted to two kids and we just moved as well, not to mention I've been sick pretty much since I've left the hospital. So I thought it appropriate that on his 4 week old b-day we would post pictures on here!

Garage Sale Shopping

2010-06-12T18:36:00.000-05:00

This morning I got to go garage sale-ing! I'm not one of those people that goes to garage sales every week hoping to score the best deals or find something unique and amazing that you would never find any other place. Not that I don't mind scoring rockin' deals or finding amazing things I would never find in a store, I just don't purposely go for those things. I'm not one of those competitive garage sale shoppers either. I hate going to a busy garage sale and women are grabbing everything in site and they try to get to clothes before you so they get the better thing... I think it's annoying! No, I go garage sale shopping for my babies!

See, I think most boys clothes that manufacturers make now days are mostly just plain ugly. Then, if you do happen to find something that you think is cute for a boy they ask outrageous amounts of money for it. Josh and I have never made a lot of money. We can't afford to get a ton of clothes for our children especially with the way that they price things now days. I mean, really, $10 (that's the cheap stuff, it can be a lot more!) for one t-shirt that I don't even think is cute? Seriously, it's ANNOYING! That and I'm not going to go buy one shirt in the store for $10 that I don't even like when I can go to a garage sale and get 6-7 shirts (that are perfectly good) that I may or may not like (usually I like them more then what's in the store at least) and pay the same price. I never go shopping in stores for my kids unless there is a sale and they really need something. I do buy socks for full price though, bugs me that 2 pair can be like $4 or more and the only ones that stay on children are from Old Navy, but whatever :) So, every summer I go garage sale shopping in hopes to get my children everything that they will need for the next year until I can go again!

This year is a little difficult for me. I'm nine months pregnant AND I have a toddler. Going shopping with a toddler is never easy, especially when there are people at every garage sale you go to who try and get your child to fall in love with a toy so that, they think, you have to buy it. Then when you leave the sale (and the toy they tried to force on your child) behind you feel like an awful parent because your baby is crying for a toy that some random person told them they could have! Oh dear! People should not try to push their stuff on me or my kid, if I want it, I will buy it, other wise they are just asking for a crying babe at their sale which isn't fun for anybody, especially me!

It's also difficult because since I'm due any day now, I'm not going to go garage sale shopping after I have the baby, so I had to get it all done before now... and boys clothes is never easy to find! I've only actually gone two days this year. Once to the Esko community sales and today at the Wrenshall community sales. I love it when towns have their community days. That means that I only have to go shopping for one day and everybody will have their sale on that day and I can hit five times as many sales as I would any other day! It's fantastic!

So today I got all of this and some toys and books not shown....

... for probably only $40 at most! It's a tiny bit of baby clothes, a couple of 2T things for now, but mostly 3T things which Gabriel will most likely be in come fall and be in for the next year, and maybe a couple of shirts in 4T. It's all mostly name brand too, which I never care about (don't really get the fuss over it) BUT my point is, IF (that's a big IF) I had boughten all of this brand new, I totally would have spent over $250 on it if not way more then that. I'm OK with saving a good $210plus on boys clothes. 100% OK with it to be completely honest... like BEYOND OK with it ;)

I got some clothes at the Esko sales too, so I'm thinking that I have enough in his next size. If not, well I guess I will have to drag myself into a store and pay a bummer load of money for whatever it is we may need at the time... I just won't be very happy about it :) Anyway, thank God for garage sales, Gabriel now has clothes for his next size and Mommy is happy about it!

Update!

2010-06-11T15:03:00.000-05:00

Well, since I haven't blogged in forever, I thought it was time for an update! So, what is new since I last blogged back in, what, January was it? Well, a lot!

I am due to give birth to our second son any day now! My actual due date is June 18th, so 7 days away! We are super excited for him to arrive. I have had a few issues with this pregnancy but I've made it to the end and I'm anxious for him to come! I am beyond nervous that I will have to have another c-section, it is all I think about when I think about labor. I have done a lot of research in hopes to prevent another c-section and I try to calm myself over the thought. It's just that the first one was definitely not my cup of tea and I would rather just never do it again. None the less, I cannot wait to meet our little man!
*Just a little FYI. I have major pregnancy brain and I think I make a ton of mistakes when I write things... so if a few things are misspelled here and there or something doesn't make the most amount of sense, I am truly sorry. I am hoping my brain decides to come back to me after I give birth!

Josh got a job back in March at United Healthcare in Duluth. It wasn't exactly what he wanted to get but he has been enjoying it and he is top of his team when it comes to things like production and things. He is the only one so far to have been 'promoted' on his team. I have to say 'promoted' like that because it's not like his job title changed or anything, it's a little hard to explain... it's like his limits are getting increased or something like that... he's tried explaining it to me and it doesn't make a ton of sense but none the less, I'm proud of him for his achievements! He is still looking for work else where, but we will have to see what comes up!

Gabriel is growing so much! He is learning more and more every day! He talks a lot! I can't always understand what he says to be honest, sometimes it just sounds like jibberish and other times I can kind of understand what he is talking about. He does have some issues with the word 'fork' though... it doesn't exactly sound like 'fork' if you know what I mean... ;)

This is him in his beloved rock pile after it rained one day...

We are still living at my parents which was not planned but we are moving out in two weeks and I am so excited! I can't wait to have my own place again and I can't wait to have more alone time with my husband! We are forever grateful to my parents for letting us stay here as long as we have. We really just had a heck of a time finding an apartment once Josh found a job that we could afford and was in a safe neighborhood.

I know many other things have changed since I have last blogged but it would take a great deal of time to mention them all and you would probably get bored with all the little things I have to say, so I will just have to stop here for today!

Oh, and we still don't have a name for our baby boy so if you have any suggestions that are different I would love to hear them!

I decided that it's OK...

2010-06-11T14:34:00.000-05:00

I haven't blogged in a really really long time. Like a reaaaaalllllllyyyyy looooooooong time... and I've decided something about that. I've decided that it's OK!

I used to think that I had to keep up on my blog all the time and if I didn't blog for a week or two then I was letting down any readers that I had or that it was just pointless. Then when I did want to blog and it had been forever I thought 'what's the point, it's been so long that people have probably forgotten that I have a blog at all'. But I've decided that it's OK not to blog all the time. I will just blog whenever I want. Now, that might mean I do three blogs in a day or one blog in three months, and it will just have to be OK because, well, that's just what I've decided :)

So if any of my readers are still out there from back in the day, I haven't disappeared or died, I'm still here, and will continue to be here for some time, so check back now and again, I might surprise you that I posted something!

a passion some people might not understand

2010-01-15T23:27:00.000-06:00

Lately I have had a few thoughts about a passion of mine. Adoption. People have said many things to me over the years when I express my passion, some good and some bad. The other day many of the things people have said to me were brought back to memory as I watched a special on TV about adoptive parents receiving a hard time from strangers or family members for adopting a child of a different color or from a different country. I was disgusted by what some people have said to these parents and then I realized that I have heard some of the same things just from expressing my own passion to adopt.

First let me say that I have seen a lot in this world. More then what some people twice my age have seen. Of course there are some who have seen much more and some who just don't care to see anything at all. I just want to say that from what I have to say, it's not just mumbo jumbo, it's from actual experience.

Ever since I can remember, I have loved to travel, loved to help people in need and loved children. To me, a mission trip that focused on children was the best thing in the world. It also raised a passion in me, from a very early age, to want to adopt. Of course I want children of my own, but I also wanted to adopt. Some people have said to me 'why adopt if you can have your own kids, you should save the children for the adults who actually can't have children'. Others have said to me or people I know when we mention that we would love to adopt from another country 'how dare you take a child from their own country' or 'how could you love a child of a different color as much as your own' or 'people will always look at you funny if you have a colored child, make sure to adopt one of your own color' or 'well, I just don't know if I could accept your adopted child as much as your biological ones'. When people say these things to me or people I know, it truly makes me angry.

I have been to many different places in this world and have met many different orphans. I have heard their stories and watched them cry. I have looked into the face of a child who has no hope. I have looked in the face of a child whom I knew would most likely be sold into slavery someday. Ones who have been abused, ones who are simply an item to be sold. And no, I am not ever exaggerating.

In Romania, for instance, there are a lot of families who cannot afford their children or family who simply do not want their children for the first few years of their lives so they drop them off at orphanages. I have seen children who have been purposely disabled by their parents so that when the child is old enough to beg from people on the streets, they will make more money for their parents because they can no longer walk. There were children whose legs had been broken by their own parents and purposely healed crooked so they could never walk again. Many of these children, after being disabled, are dropped off at the orphanage until they are ages 3-5, the age a child can begin to beg, then picked up and forced to work on the streets.
There are also so many orphans in Romania that the government cannot do anything for the children when they are let go from an orphanage. Once a child is 18 they are kicked out of the orphanage with no place to go, no food and no money. Orphanages are not a pretty place in most countries. I have seen rows of babies lined up laying in soiled beds because no one has changed their diapers for hours and they have begun to fall off. I have looked these children in the eyes who have been there their whole lives and I can't help but want to cry because they are cross eyed, because when they were a baby they had nothing to look at but white walls, no one ever played with them and their eyes never learned to focus properly.

It's sad. It breaks my heart. It's not just one country, it's many. I have been to orphanages in Morocco where it is a common custom to drop girls off when they are babies and come pick them up around the age of 5 so they can be sold to a richer family to be a servant. If you go to orphanages in Morocco, you will not see many girls over the age of 5 and this is the reason why. I met many young girls when I was there, all 2, 3, and 4. The particular orphanage we stayed at actually tried to make a family type of home for the children and couples would dedicate 18 plus years of their lives to come and live at this orphanage and be these children's parents. But these acting parents were in fear that every daughter they had would one day be taken away and be sold because some parents never gave over their full rights and could pick them up at any time. Imagine being these children's acting parents and raising them for 5 years, from when they were just a little baby and watch them grow and then one day having to let go, knowing what would happen to them, knowing they would be some families servant to do whatever they wished to, knowing you couldn't do a thing about it and it was just for their parents to make a few bucks.

I have seen children that live in cardboard houses or on the streets, that have aids, that are starving, that have holes in their shoes, that are sick and can get no help, children that steal or scavenge through garbage just to get by, children that just need someone, anyone, to just be with, to hug, to cry with, to have someone love them. I have looked into the eyes of countless children that I know will be kicked out onto the streets once they can no longer live in orphanages, looked in the eyes of children who know their parents only see them as a trading tool, parents that see them as a way to make a buck, children who have been beaten, abused in countless ways, children who literally have no hope and just need someone to love them.

I'm sure there are a few people who read this and could say to me 'well Kayla, there are children like that in America too and you should help the American children first'... yes, there are children like this in America, but really, a child in need is a child in need, does it really matter where they came from, how old they are, what color they are and who you are 'supposed' to help first. They are all in need, they all need someone to help them, to simply love them. I believe we should do everything in our power to help children in need, whether they live right down the street from you or live half way across the world. You say to me 'why overseas adoption?' and I will say 'why not?'

Still some will say 'well you should let the parents in those countries adopt those children, it's better for them to stay there, you need to adopt from your own country or state'. Truthfully, I would say to you that I also think it's better for parents from a child's home country to adopt them. I also do know that is not very likely to happen because most countries with high orphan rates are very poor countries and people cannot afford to adopt no matter how much they want to and I believe it is better for a child to be raised in a home where people love them and care for them (even if they are a different color or different country) then to live in an orphanage where they will be/could be mistreated, malnourished, and sold and/or kicked out of the only home they know with no hope at the young age of 18.

I don't expect everyone to understand why some of us chose to adopt, whether from our own country or some place else. I just hope that even if people don't agree, they treat the children and the adoptive parents with great amounts of respect. A lot of children have gone through more then you or I could ever imagine and someone judging them adds to an already heavy load and adoptive parents should be respected for taking a child in need into their home and loving them like their own.

Wedding

2010-01-08T12:14:00.002-06:00

This past Saturday I shot my first ever wedding. I was rather nervous going into the day considering the only thing I have ever done photography wise has been graduation pictures and posing pictures to raise money in Switzerland. I wasn't supposed to do all the posing shots this time though. No, they had another, professional, photographer there for part of the day to shoot all the posing shots and the ceremony. I was there more in the background while the bride got ready and to catch all the activity going on behind the scenes.

The day didn't start out to my liking, I have to admit. When I woke up that morning it was -30 degrees. Brrrrrr....!!!!! My brother was kind enough to start my car at 7AM when he went to start his (he was going to work) so when I got to my car it wasn't like I was sitting on ice blocks. About 4-5 miles from my parents home my tire decides that it wants to go flat. For most people this creates a problem, for me, well it wasn't just a small problem, it was gigantic! One, I wasn't dressed for -30 degree weather, I was dressed in wedding clothes. Two, my parents live in the middle of nowhere, literally. There was not going to be any car driving by any time soon that could help. Three, I did not have a phone (not like it would have worked in the middle of nowhere, but it might have). And four, well, I've only changed a tire once and I could barely lift the thing onto the spokes, so I wasn't really going to try to change a tire that I knew I probably couldn't while freezing my bum off and frostbiting my fingers. Not to mention, I was going to be late for the brides hair appointment.

So what does a girl do in my situation? Well, you get you not-dressed-warm-enough bum out of the car and speed walk to the nearest house to use their phone meanwhile freezing your lungs, cheeks, ears, nose, eyes and any other part of your body that wasn't covered. I was worried of course. I mean, who knows whose house I'm going to knock on, it could be some creepy murder for all I knew! Also, if these people didn't answer their door there wasn't another house within a mile of where I was that I could walk to and ask for help.

Luckily, a rather large man in his 50's (and in his PJ's) answered the door and was very nice and let me use his phone. I called my parents where I woke up my Dad from his peaceful slumber. He agreed to come change my tire and I told him where I was at. Unfortunately, he was half asleep while I was talking to him so he took the wrong road to come and find me and headed towards Duluth before he realized that he was going too far and needed to turn around. By the time he arrived it was already 8 o'clock and that was when the brides hair appointment was supposed to start. My Dad was kind enough to just let me take his car to the wedding and he would drive my car home after he fixed the tire.

By the time I arrived at the hair appointment the bride was already done with her hair appointment. I felt extremely bad but she didn't seem to mind at all. I did get a few shots of her doing her nails and hanging out with her other bridesmaids while they got their hair done.

We headed to the church and the bride got ready.

Like I said, I wasn't really there to do the posed pictures but I did catch a few and some other random pictures.

Then there was the ceremony of course...

And then came the party!

The first dance...

During the Father-Daughter dance...

The groom and the mother of the bride...

One of the ring bearers and the flower girl (also brother and sister)...

Time to party!

I left around 10 o'clock at night when the dollar dance had started. It ended up being a fun day and I also learned a lot about taking pictures!

Congratulations Tim and Breanna!!!

two complete opposites

2010-01-04T13:53:00.000-06:00

As you know, I am pregnant again. Josh and I wanted our children close together and we were so excited to find out that we had a new edition coming to our family.

Coming into this pregnancy I had a lot of expectations. Since I had been pregnant once before, I felt like I kind of knew what to expect. Of course I knew that every pregnancy is a little different, but over all, I expected it to be somewhat similar. My oh my, was I surprised!

This pregnancy is nothing like my last. First, I expected to feel sick in the beginning. Never happened. With Gabriel I was sick all day long for 3 months! It wasn't an awful, hanging over the toilet kind of sick, just being nauseous all day and feeling like I should be over the toilet instead of miserably holding it in. I ended up loosing weight in that pregnancy in the beginning, though made up for it probably by the time I hit 20 weeks. This time, almost nothing. I rarely felt sick, and if I did it was easily curable by eating something. I did however start feeling sick around 12 weeks, which is when my sickness stopped with my last. But still, normally curable if I ate, the problem was I needed to eat something that sounded good and nothing sounded good... except pickles (Mmmm, yummy pickles!), and those don't fill you up. But now, as I'm past the 16 week mark I am feeling much better.

I also expected to show earlier with this one then with Gabriel. That is the rule of thumb, that you will show sooner the more children you have. Alas, did not happen. I waited and waited (cause I LOVE my belly bump) and now, finally by 16 weeks I have a little something! With Gabriel, I was already in maternity clothes by this point. I could make my pants work by unbuttoning them and using hair ties, but usually I just opted for maternity clothes since they were more comfortable. This time? I am still in all of my regular clothes. I can still button all of my pants and they are more then comfortable. The only thing that is different is I don't have to wear a belt (most of the time, some of my pants I still need one) and some of my shirts that were a little short to begin with, now show my belly if I bend the wrong way.

By this time with Gabriel, he was kicking up a storm in my belly. Even by 14 weeks I was feeling him all the time. I seriously felt him constantly, all day long. Even Josh could feel him almost any time he wanted too because he never stopped. He used to kick so hard he would make me jump, literally. This little bug? Didn't feel it until just after 14 weeks and it was this tiny little thump. Even now, if I feel the baby move, it's these soft, gentle little thumps, pretty much as gentle as pressing on your stomach and feeling your own heart beat. With Gabriel it was like WHAM! I'M HERE MOMMY! I DON'T WANT YOU TO FORGET IT!!! Of course, he is still kind of like that.... maybe that means this one is going to be gentle....

I expected to gain weight by now, hasn't happened yet (not going to complain about that one!).

There are some smells that I just cannot handle with this one like I could with Gabriel. Like fish for instance, blah! Or the taste of fish for that matter. Also, Oriental food smells make me sick... it's a good thing I don't live in Korea anymore!

Also, once I over my sickness with Gabriel at 12 weeks, I could pretty much eat anything except ranch from United Healthcare (hey, it's some funky stuff). This time? Oh gosh. Things can sounds so incredibly good, but the texture can make me gag. Or, the texture can be just fine until after I chew it a little bit and then it will make me gag... like pancakes for instance!

What is similar about my pregnancies... not much. My babies seem to not like me eating eggs while I'm pregnant, even though they sound so gosh darn yummy all of the time! And I'm tired all the time, naps are a necessity! Hmm... that's about it. I never knew that two pregnancies could be more different!

St. Nicks Day

2009-12-16T11:43:00.000-06:00

A little over a week ago was St. Nicks Day. It's a special holiday that my family has always celebrated where children put their shoes outside of their door with a letter in it to Santa and then Santa comes along, takes the letter, and leaves candy in the children's shoes. I always had a ton of fun when I was little celebrating St. Nicks Day and I wanted to share that fun with my children.

So the first thing that we had to do was write a letter to Santa.

And then we went downstairs to put the letter in Gabriel's shoe we found out that Santa Claus had already come! He even left candy in Mommy, Daddy and Uncle Christopher's shoes! Though, some how Oma and Opa never get candy in there shoes from Santa... I wonder why?!?!

Gabriel was kinda too cold to be too excited about the candy in his shoe.

He just grabbed his Santa tube of Reeses Pieces and wanted back inside.

Because I never got to put Gabriel's 'other Santa stuff' in his shoe that I had secretly worked out with Santa (wink), we came back inside and I gave him his Christmas ornament.

He was pretty excited about his Winnie the Pooh bulb!

Then we gave him a taste of his yummy Christmas candy!

And that was our St. Nick's evening! Gabriel has played with Santa Claus tube of yummys ever since!

hair cut

2009-12-16T10:09:00.000-06:00

Gabriel got a hair cut! If you look very closely in these two pictures you can see that Gabriel has a little bit of a mullet thing going on. His hair was actually over 3 inches in some parts!

Now it's like we have a whole new boy! I think he looks so different. His hair is only about an inch now.

How handsome is he? I just love my chubby cheek little boy!

At long last... again!

2009-12-15T18:50:00.000-06:00

At long last I have come back to blog again. I really have no excuse for not blogging, it's not like I didn't have things to blog about. Really it just came down to dreading getting pictures off of my mom's camera so I had pictures to show you (my camera died so I was using hers)... so really, I was kinda lazy. But I really have to try to justify not wanting to get the pictures off of my mom's camera.

See, my mom never ever downloads her pictures from her camera to her computer. I really do mean never! I think every time it has been done it has been one of her children doing it. Well when I went to check on how many pictures she had on her camera it was 915, apparently nobody had taken the pictures off since June. So, one, my computer won't even register a camera that has that many pictures on it because it's a rather old computer. Two, because my computer won't take that many pictures from a camera at one time (and I didn't really want all of them) I needed to first download them all to her computer. Three, then I needed to go through all 915 pictures to decide which ones I wanted and then burn a disk to get them to my computer so I could blog. So maybe you can understand why I was dreading getting the pictures off of my mothers camera, even if in the end it still came down to laziness.

Anyway. Things have been going pretty well for Josh and I. We are still living at my parents home. The job that we kind of moved back for (not the only reason we moved but a big one) ended up falling through, so we are still jobless. Josh did have an interview with another company and we are still waiting to hear back from them. Hopefully we will have something soon.

Gabriel is doing amazing! He is talking more and more everyday. It's so cute. It's not like he couldn't talk before, he really just never had interest in talking. We used to be able to get him to say words, even big words but he would just say them a few times and loose interest. We figured we wouldn't really push it on him and just let him go at his own pace. Now it seems that he things words are fun and useful now! He still doesn't say a lot, he's figured out pretty well how to get the things he needs and wants without words. Some of his words are:
Mama and Dada (of course!)
Moe moe - more
Ah Da - All done
Ba ba bum - bump (you know? when you make a fist and bump someone else's?)
No no no noooo - No
Na tach - No touch
Hop - Hot
Ni Ni - Nighty night (he doesn't say that one too often, he's usually to upset over the fact that he is going to bed)
Oma - his Oma of course!
and a few more I can't think of right now!

My pregnancy is going pretty well too. I am getting a little more sicker then I used to. It's still not bad though, I just really need to make sure to eat every few hours. The problem is nothing really sounds good and if it doesn't sound good I have a heck of a time getting it down. The foods I really do crave aren't in season, like strawberries, raspberries, cantaloupe, peaches, and plums and those are the only things that sound good half the time so sometimes I really feel like I'm at a loss when it comes to eating. I do have a picture of my belly at 12 weeks though!

I'm 14 weeks now and my belly has 'popped' a little bit since that picture. I think I plan on taking pictures soon, maybe around 16 weeks... we'll see, that is the plan but plans always change! I finally get to go to the doctor tomorrow! I'm so excited! I just want to hear the babies heart beat or if I'm lucky I might get an ultrasound, either way I can't wait!

No no no no nooooo

2009-12-02T19:28:00.000-06:00

Gabriel has been the funniest thing to watch lately. He walks around and points at all the things he's not supposed to touch and says 'no no no no no'.

My parents just got their Christmas tree up and the first time he saw the tree, he looked up at it for about a minute without moving and then looked at me and pointed to the tree saying 'no no no no no'. Then he was afraid of it for a few days:) Today though, my mom put the lights on the tree and the whole time Gabriel kept telling her 'no no no no' because he thought she wasn't supposed to touch the tree.

Now he's not afraid of it though, it's got too many pretty lights on it to be scary. So now, well, he walks over to the tree saying 'no no' all the way there, pauses for a second and then reaches out to touch it where of course Mama has to say something. Then once Mama has said her words his little hands whips back and looks and me and then says 'no no no' all the time he walks away. It is not the most commonly heard word around this house, all coming from Gabriel!

He also will randomly point to the oven/stove or a persons cup and say ' hotch' (hot) with his hand up and slowly back away:) Oh, and he finally learned how to give a bump but he does it with both hands instead of just one:) It's so cute to watch him learn!

Last of Korea...

2009-11-30T19:53:00.000-06:00

These will be my last pictures of Korea. Then we can finally get to life here in Minnesota. Some of the pictures are rather random but I still wanted to show them to you.

So, first our wonderful friends in Korea threw us and Chris (the man sitting on the step in the black coat) a going away party. We had a ton of fun that night BBQing and talking. We also surprised our friends that night and told them that we were expecting baby number 2 but they needed to keep it quiet until we got back to the USA.

One day, when I was sick and totally not feeling well, Gabriel took full advantage of my lack of awareness and got ahold of my kleenex box and proceeded to empty every last one of the onto my kitchen floor... stinker:) I caught him in the very end of his sneaky act!

This is Gabriel, just being cheeky!

We had our last full day in Seoul shortly before we left. It ended up not being very fun like we had planned, but our favorite part of the day was the beginning when we went to COEX mall, got Gabriel a Christmas present and found a TGI Fridays to eat at.

This is my husband with his first large alcoholic drink in 7 months... hence the crazy eyes....

Continuing our last day in Seoul, our little munchkin fell asleep on Josh's back in the wrap. I was rather surprised that considering the funky angle his head was at the entire time he actually slept for about an hour.

From COEX mall we had gone to Itaewon which ended up being a huge waste of time. We had seemed to have forgotten that Itaewon is a super crummy place for tourist and went and ended up walking down both sides of the street and were completely bored and frustrated. We did need a break after walking around Itaewon so we stopped at Baskin Robbins and got a cup of ice cream to share. We gave Gabriel his own spoon which he thought was pretty awesome and then kept stealing mine as well, doubling fister:)

Then from Itaewon we went to go see this palace. Only to have a super hard time finding it and then to find that it closed at 5PM instead of 7PM like we had read online, so we never got to go inside, this was all we saw of really any palace in Korea. Kinda sad since there are so many...

So that is the end of our pictures from Korea. Now I can put up Minnesota stuff and not feel guilty that there are a ton of pictures in my iPhoto begging to be put on my blog from Korea.

early morning

2009-11-28T14:55:00.000-06:00

This is what happens to your child when you need to get up at 6AM to catch the train to get to Seoul on time for Josh's dentist appointment.

Then we get to the train station a little early and have to wait for the train...

...and then Gabriel gets hungry because we had to leave right after he got up and starts digging in the backpack for his breakfast...

...but then of course we have to wait to feed him until we get on the train so Josh had to hold him and try to distract him long enough for the train to come...

aren't they just cute?

We had to go into Seoul four times for Josh to get all of his wisdom teeth pulled. The never put him to sleep for it so he was never really drugged but he needed to bite down on gauze for about 3 hours afterwards so he couldn't talk. That is why Gabriel and I had to go so I could tell the taxi's where to go and get our train tickets and what not. One time Josh got a different dentist then normal and the dentist was horrible. The dentist couldn't get his tooth out and it wasn't very numb even though they shot his mouth 4 times is novocain and Josh was in so much pain when we left. I felt so bad for him because he couldn't even take his pills until we got home so he had to sit in intense pain for over 2 hours and then more before the pills could kick in a little bit.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

2009-11-27T17:00:00.000-06:00

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Gabriel drew this great little picture with the help of Mommy and Daddy and had lots and lots of fun coloring with the markers. Josh said that when he was a kid he did a turkey with his hand print every year so we decided to do that is Gabriel as well. We even did one last year when he was just 3 months old!

I know I promised many posts this week and I kind of fell behind. Wednesday around the time when I was going to add another post with pictures I get a call from ANA, the airline we flew here on, where they proceed to tell me that even though it was theirs and the airports fault that we missed our flight and I had to spend hours arguing with them before they switched our flight, they will not be reimbursing me for any of my phone calls I made. The phone calls were the ones I made to them arguing with them about their mistake and sat on hold with them for over an hour and a half before they even picked up... yet their not going to reimburse me for them and it happens to be lots and lots of money. I was so mad and argued with woman on the phone for quite some time before my pregnancy hormones got the better of me and I turned into a blubbering mess while speaking to her. I'm sure she thought I was completely pathetic for crying on the phone but that is ok by me because I think she and their company are completely pathetic for not evening attempting to take care of the customers and forcing them/us pay hundreds of dollars for their mistake. Just saying... I'm kind of mad about that one. I'm thinking I'm gonna have to write a letter, it might not do much but at least I might feel better!

Anyway, so for the rest of the day on Wednesday I pretty much was seething with anger because of them and didn't really feel like blogging anymore. Thanksgiving day was fun though and we got to go to Josh's sisters and have Thanksgiving dinner with that side of the family. Gabriel had fun playing with his little cousin Rowan and thought he was helping him out by pulling off his socks and rubbing his hair:) It was a fun day.

So today, Black Friday, I came back to blog like I was supposed to a few days ago. I didn't do all the crazy shopping this morning, just a tiny bit online for maternity clothes, so I had a small amount of energy to write this blog. So, I just want to say... HAPPY THANKSGIVING and HAPPY BLACK FRIDAY shopping and I will see you tomorrow with another post with some pictures!

Colorful Korea! ... and my all time favorite picture!

2009-11-24T13:57:00.000-06:00

When we left Korea the colors were very beautiful! Fall had definitely come and Korea was awash of very beautiful vibrant colors.

Fall is my favorite time of year so I was very happy that it had made it's entrance in Korea before we had come back home especially considering that Minnesota's fall had already come and gone by the time we got here.

We took these pictures one morning on the way to the train station so that Josh could get another one of his wisdom teeth pulled. At the dentist we were going to they would never pull two teeth at a time so we had to go in four different times, all very early in the morning, to get his teeth pulled. I still have a couple more pictures to come about that. Anyway, that is when I captured this picture...

Gross as it may be it cracks me up every single time I look at it! I love Gabriel!

Bugs?

2009-11-24T13:27:00.000-06:00

Would anybody like some nice old beetlish/cockroach Korean soup for lunch?

Oh yummmmmm.... (cough, sneeze, gag) it's so delicious....

Holiday Hats!

2009-11-23T12:40:00.001-06:00

Yesterday during Gabriel nap time Josh and I snuck off into the woods and... well, actually we dug through some of our things in my parents house looking for some Christmas stuff. Some of which was and elf hat and a santa hat that Josh had boughten the very first Christmas we were married. When Gabriel did wake up from his nap time he found a few more Christmas decorations up and the hats. Oh how he loved the hats!

We had fun putting the hats on him and he had fun getting his picture taken!

Finally Updated!

2009-11-23T11:54:00.000-06:00

I have to say that I am beyond annoyed at computers and blog background websites at the moment. Nothing is really their fault, mostly I'm annoyed because you can spend literally hours looking for a background that is cute and never ever find one. I told you in the past I was looking for a cute Christmas one, but I found out that one does not exist or if it does it does not want me to find it. So after spending a very long time looking for a Christmas one I decided to go non-Christmas and that still took forever. Can't someone just make cute, simple, color coordinated backgrounds? *Sigh, oh well. I ended on my simple green one that literally took me all morning to find!

So, I know I told you a week ago that I was going to update my blog and if you checked back to see the new updates I'm sure you found that I haven't touched a thing until today. Sorry for my lack of productivity. I have quite a few things I have to show you. Mostly just some pictures so within the next few days (and this time I'm serious!) I should have a few more posts up with pictures of Gabriel, some last pictures from Korea, and life here in Minnesota. I will be following this particular post with another post full of some pictures I took of Gabriel last night! We had some fun with some Christmas hats :D

Alright. Now that I have changed my background far more often then should probably be allowed, I promise to stick with this one for awhile! Come back soon for pictures of Gabriel in his Christmas hats!

all the little moments...

2009-11-12T20:13:00.002-06:00

UPDATE: Does anyone know how to change the name for the other people that are following it so it says 'all the little moments' not 'life abroad' on their blogs or dashboard? I'm almost thinking it's on their end because I just changed the name of one of the blogs I was following for my blog list...but I don't know... any hinters?

ORIGINAL POST:
I finally changed the name of my blog! It took a long time, as in hours, trying to decide what re-name my blog and I finally came up with 'all the little moments'. I was actually set on a different one but nobody seemed to like it, it was 'the ever growing family', I still like it personally but I'm going to try this one for awhile. Don't get me wrong, I do like the new one, I was just the old one for quite a few weeks.

Because I spent the last like three hours asking multiple peoples opinions and trying to decide what to name this blog I'm probably not going to change anything else tonight. Maybe tomorrow I will put up a new picture of Gabe (since it's been awhile) and put up the title on top and heck, maybe I'll search again for a cute Christmas-like background even though last time I failed miserably after hours of searching. We will see. As for now I just have a new name! If you think of something that is fun or cute for a name for my blog I'm still open for suggestions!

P.S. here are some of the other suggestions from people if you are interested. Some of cute and some are funny!

1. Life a Board
2. Life as a Broad (LOL)
3. Precious Lights of Life
4. Baby Bears
5. One More Makes Four
6. Life With Babes
and some more that I can't remember

dreams

2009-11-11T16:03:00.002-06:00

Last night I had a dreadful nights sleep. If you are a parent, I'm sure that you know that if you dream of your children it's seems so very real. Well last night I kept dreaming that Gabriel was in bed with us and that he was going to fall off or we were going to wake him, squish him, and wondering why in the world he was in our bed in the first place. I hate having these dreams, I never get any sleep because I wake up every 2 minutes worrying about him. Last night it was extra awful though because usually I snap out of it, but last night it just kept going and going which resulted in absolutely no sleep.

I even asked Josh probably about 10 times if Gabriel was in bed with us or if he was ok or if he had Gabriel on his side. Well the crummy thing is that when my husband is half asleep all if his answers are simply 'yes', which did not help my dilemma because he was confirming that Gabriel was in bed when he never actually was. Ugh. So when I got up at 1:30AM to go to the bathroom and looked in Gabriel's crib and saw him fast asleep I literally thought 'well how in the world did you get there!' AND the dreams still never stopped! Wow, I'm special. I think that every woman that is a mom probably has had similar dreams but man oh man, they sure leave you sleepless and tired in the morning!

Surprise!

2009-11-10T08:58:00.002-06:00

Remember that post about a month ago when I told everybody we were coming home and at the very beginning of the post I said 'Guess what? And no I'm not pregnant...'? Well guess what? I was! I was just being sneaky!

That's right, I am pregnant with baby #2! I'm about 8 weeks along at the moment, a little over actually. I did a few different due date calculators and the one that is in the middle is June 18th so that's the one I'm going with.

We found out a little over a month ago when I was 3-4 weeks but we wanted to tell our family in person so we waited to share the news until we got back.

As for how I'm feeling, surprising well. With Gabriel I was sick all the time and this time I'm hardly sick at all. I've had my moments of course and when I'm hungry or wait to long to eat I can get more nauseous but nothing awful. I'm super thankful for feeling the way I do with this one. I'm surprised that the round ligament pain has already started a little bit, but nothing too bad. It usually comes around night time when I stretch the wrong way or too quickly.

We are all super excited for the new addition to our family!

Being Back

2009-11-09T08:58:00.003-06:00

So far we have been back in the USA for a little over a week. It seems like we have been back longer because of everything that has already happened and things we have done.

We have all had jet lag over the past week, it's really hard changing time by 15 hours when you have a 14 month old. Gabriel is doing rather well though, last night he slept mostly through the night. He woke up fussing a couple of times but I think it might have been because he was a little cold and I tried putting his blanket on top but he never keeps it on. I'm just thankful that as of now we are at least sleeping at the right time of day.

Gabriel is doing fabulously well with re-meeting family. I thought he would have many emotional breakdowns but I can't even recall one at the moment. It's like he slightly remembered them in his own little way and didn't go into crying fits when they held him like he did when Koreans would randomly hold him.

We are all completely enjoying seeing friends and family. We are staying at my parents house until we find our own apartment and we are very thankful to them. We saw Josh's family the day after we got back for Josh's mom's birthday celebration. I am currently in Brainerd where I am staying at my sisters and I have already visited my grandparents and my brother and sister-in-law and all of their adorable boys! Josh actually stayed at my grandparents this past weekend and went deer hunting with my dad, brother, and brother-in-law. He had shot one deer so far, it was apparently a good size fawn but I haven't seen it. He went back out hunting this morning to see if he could fill up his other tag (in non-deer hunting language that means shooting another deer). We had originally planned on leaving here last night but since he didn't get two over the weekend he is trying one more time this morning.

The other thing that we have been dealing with lately is culture shock. America is so different when it comes to so many things. Even Gabriel is experiencing a little bit, he has never seen so many white people before, and for that matter, old white people, hairy white people, and other baby white people. For the first couple of days he just kind of looked at people and stared. It was cute. I on the other hand forgot how funny some people look in America. Hehe! I know, I'm really mean, but America has some very funny looking people, though I kind of realized that the majority of funny looking people have loads and loads of facial hair... just sayin' is all, it's what I've noticed. On the other hand I'm sure some of them think I look funny too so it's all good. Maybe I'm just used to seeing Koreans and one, they can't grow facial hair, and two, their looks don't vary that much.

Other then the people themselves it's just weird to drive in a 'flat' land (Korea was ALL mountains), see different trees and see GRASS! Lots and lots of glorious grass! The fashion is also very different here and the attitude of the people if amazing different. It's interesting to say the least as we try to re-get used to everything in America.

There are also a lot of luxuries that we have now that we didn't have back in Korea. Like a toaster, a clothes dryer, a bathroom faucet that we can turn on when we want to, more then two dinner plates, hot water for more then one hour out of the day, a car, nice diapers, good food, I don't have to scoop my clean drinking water out of the filter anymore every time I wanted a drink, a soft bed, blankets that are big enough for two people, soft couches and carpet...the list can go on and on. It's like our own little heaven!

The Longest Day of My Life!

2009-11-02T04:03:00.003-06:00

It's 4AM here in Minnesota and Josh and I are up waiting for Gabriel to fall back asleep. Unfortunately we have been waiting for awhile and it's just not happening... but we're still hoping. This is the second time we've put him down since he got up at 1:30AM, the first time was very unsuccessful, the second time, well we will just have to see.

We made it back to Minnesota though! It was a long and awful couple of days of traveling. Josh and I got up at 7AM on Friday morning and got everything ready to head to the airport. We ended up leaving English Village at 9:30AM and took the two hour car ride to the airport. When we got to the airport we had a little problem. When we ordered Gabriel's ticket they decided to send us a paper one and they only ship to addresses in the U.S. so they had to ship it to my parents home and then my parents had to ship it to us, but we never received it. So, when we got to the airport we showed them the receipt that we had paid and his itinerary but they wouldn't accept it and made us pay for him again. The problem was, besides having to pay an extra $150 that we already paid, was that they couldn't get his ticket to print, so we waited around the airport with our many bags for 2 hours before they gave us a makeshift ticket and we could then check all of our bags. From there things seemed to go pretty well in Incheon, we made it through immigration and security without a problem and made it to our gate with an hour to spare.

We then hopped on our plane and headed to Tokyo. Now, I had been worried about the layover in Tokyo ever since we bought our tickets. It was only a 45 minute layover and we had to switch planes of course. Now 45 minutes is cutting it close but it is plenty of time to normally catch a flight... your just not going to be sipping coffee or go to the bathroom in between flights. Well in the air we find out that there are traffic delays at the airport in Tokyo and our plane was going to land 20 minutes late... oh crap. Ok, well, it's still possible, it give us 25 minutes to find our gate and get on the plane. Unfortunately because of the traffic delays they did not have a gate for us to get off on so they landed us in the middle of the airstrip and we had to take a 10 minute shuttle ride to the terminal... CRAP!!! I was so worried and was literally trying to push people aside so we could be the first people off the bus, 15 minutes left, not fun at all.

When we finally got to the terminal there was a lady waiting for us to take us to our gate. She kept yelling 'you need to run, you need to run NOW!'. Because we were outside of the terminal for a whole 10 minutes they made us go through security again, I was rather irritated to be honest! Now, the interesting thing was, when I put my bag in the scanner, it was closed, I made sure, when I was running down the terminal to get to the gate it somehow opened and all the contents of my bag started to fall out behind me. Luckily there was some very nice people who followed me picking up my stuff and we never actually lost anything.

We finally made it to our gate with 5 minutes to spare. 'Thank you God' was all that was going through my head. The door to the plane was still open and all we had to do was hop on and fly away... but they wouldn't let us. They said that we couldn't board because our bags from the previous flight hadn't been transferred fast enough and they said we couldn't fly without our bags. My thoughts? BS people! They lose bags all the time so it's not like people always fly with their bags! But we argued and told them we didn't care if our bags arrived a day late, we just wanted on the plane, but no, we weren't allowed and we missed our flight because they were being dumb.

From there everything continued to go down hill. We sat at the airport for 3 hours trying to get them to put us (and another guy who missed his flight with us, he was threatening to sue the airline) on another flight but they kept saying that they couldn't. They said that there was no other flights... BS again people! There are flights flying out from Toyko all the time AND they even found one that they were supposedly going to get us on but then all the sudden their supervisor said we couldn't and we were all going to have to wait until the next day and take the same flight at the same time. Oh I was so mad. There were flights leaving all the time the next day and they weren't willing to put us on any of them.

I was sick of sitting in the airport getting nowhere with the people so I took up their offer to put us in a hotel for the night. It then took them 45 minutes to get us a hotel voucher and in the mean time I made it clear we needed a crib and I wanted to be reimbursed for food. Well, they said that it wasn't up to them to provide those things so if we wanted a crib at the hotel we were going to have to pay for it and any food purchases (or phone calls) were going to be on us. I was livid.

We made it to the hotel to find out it was this crappy little thing with two twin beds in it and I ended up paying for the crib so we could get some sleep. I won't even tell you about the food, so nasty! Actually, I will tell you a little, imagine the nastiest, greasiest pizza possible and then place 4 thick, uncooked slabs of bacon on top of it... throwing up yet? I almost did.

I then spent the next two hours on the phone (1.5 hours of that being on hold, not joking) trying to get ANA to put us on a different flight the next day. Josh even found a flight through them that still had seats available that left at 10:45 the next morning. I kept telling them that this was the flight we wanted and they kept saying that it was impossible. I had to ask them why and they said 'oh, well you need to take the flight that you were scheduled for and that is the 5:30 flight' ... well people, if I needed to take the flight I was scheduled for then YOU SHOULD HAVE LET ME ON THE PLANE WHEN IT WAS THERE! They couldn't seem to get that through their heads and they told me they would see what they could do and call me back in the morning. They never called me back. So, I called them back and literally spent 2 hours on the phone arguing with them and they just going in circles. I even asked for a supervisor 3-4 times and they wouldn't put me through. They said that they called the airport many times and couldn't get us on the flight because of policies and crap.

Then began the longest day of our lives. Literally. I hung up the phone on the girl after she wouldn't put me through to the supervisor for the billionth time I asked (yes, I turned into one of those people, but I feel like I was totally justified) and we hopped on the bus to the airport. This was all without breakfast because the hotel didn't offer any breakfast so we weren't very happy because we were sleep deprived and now very hungry.

We get to the airport and I go to the ANA counter and it turns out that everybody knew about me =D (hehehe) They tried telling me 'oh, well you know the situation, we can't get you on a different flight'. So, I told them in pretty much these exact words 'We missed our flight, it was NOT OUR FAULT and you haven't done anything for us except put us in a crummy hotel and make us pay hundreds of dollars in phone bills arguing with YOUR company about YOUR mistake. You have 2 hours until this 10:45AM plane leaves... get me on it, MAKE IT HAPPEN'. They argued a little bit more and I said it all again and then they finally did it! We found out then why they didn't want to switch us, it was because they had to bump us up to business class when we had paid for economy. I think the words that went through my head weren't exactly pleasant... it's a good thing they didn't come out my mouth:) It might have been along the lines of 'Up yo...' maybe I shouldn't say that:)

So we made it on our flight, finally! The flight went pretty well, Gabriel didn't cry too much and he took 2 naps. We flew to Chicago where we had a little bit of trouble getting to our next flight because in Toyko they didn't give us boarding passes to our second flight so we had to go check in again and then the line for security was forever long. We ended up being the last people to board our flight there as well but we made it! We were even early arriving in Minneapolis!

It was the longest day of our lives, literally. We got up at 6AM in Toyko on Saturday morning, our plane left at 10:45AM and we landed in Minnesota at 11AM on Saturday Minnesota time. The day got even longer when we found out that time change happened that night so instead of a normal 24 hour day, ours was 39 hours. I think needless to say, I'm so glad that Saturday is over with!

I'll write more later about how things have been since we gotten back. Pretty far it's been ok, except it's now going on 5AM and I'm still up:) Actually baby boy is sleeping now, he fell asleep about 30 minutes ago... except I just heard him cry a little, anyway, I wanted to finish this blog. So, I am now going to bed for the second time tonight, or morning... whatever, something like that, I'm sleep deprived!

last day

2009-10-28T18:52:00.002-05:00

Today is our last full day in Korea! I have so much stuff to do! I'm kind of asking myself 'Kayla, why are you blogging when you have 10 billion things to get done?' but I haven't found a good enough answer yet except that I don't want to do 10 billion things and have a toddler chase me around the house unpacking what I pack and unfolding everything I fold and tearing apart everything I organize...

Nobody ever tells you how hard it can be to pack with a toddler chasing you around. It's actually really difficult. You place one thing in one pile and soon it's not there anymore and you have to search for it and put it back and so on. See it also doesn't help that I have to pack up almost all of his toys so he has nothing to play with except non-toy things and all the non-toy things happen to be everything that needs to be packed. He can also climb to any place where I have boxes full of things and that are organized and get his chubby little hands on them and demolish all of Mama's hard work. Also, every time you place something in a suitcase you cannot just leave it open, oh no. You must close the suitcase and zipper it up every single time you place an item in it because if you leave it open ALL of you stuff will be "neatly" unpacked all over your floor because a little monkey got into your suitcase. LOL! It's been a challenging morning and/or last couple of days but it's still fun.

Gabriel is not doing so well today though. Even though he is having loads of fun unpacking everything Mama packs, he is very sick. He was sick all day yesterday with a stomach issue and the worst diaper rash I have ever seen. My poor baby. He cried all day yesterday and every time he needed a diaper change (which was all the time) he would scream and scream because we needed to clean the rash:( I even cried with the poor little guy a few times because I felt so bad for him. You could just tell every time he pooped or peed or sat the wrong way he was in so much pain. Then last night we didn't get very much sleep because if he went to the bathroom in the middle of the night it resulted in screaming and having to have a diaper change which led to more screaming. Today he is feeling a lot better, not so much of the stomach issue anymore, just a little bit, but he still has a monster of a diaper rash. The hard thing is that I ran out of diaper rash cream and have had to result to making my own which usually isn't a problem but I've ran out of all the ingredients to make my usual one. So I experimented today and made a new one that has been working pretty well. I just hope that it goes away by tomorrow so we don't have to deal with it on the plane, Gabriel would have a hard time being in a plane without much sleep and a killer diaper rash.

I still need to finish packing, go weigh all the luggage, print out our e-tickets, go to the post office to mail a package, go to the pharmacy, figure out who is driving us to the airport tomorrow so we can talk to them about what time to meet us and change 500 more diapers! and make dinner... and make sure this whole family has baths tonight... and move our fridge to another apartment... and..... oh dear, I need to get moving... I'M COMING HOME TOMORROW!!!

meat...

2009-10-24T07:08:00.002-05:00

Did you know that meat isn't always that great for you? I learned something while in Korea, and it's all about meat!

Did you know that in many countries, like the US, the companies that raise lots of cows, chickens, pigs, really any kind of animal, put growth hormones into the animals feed to help them grow faster so they can produce more meat and therefore make more money? Did you know that when we eat that meat we are eating the same hormones? Gross huh.

Did you know that those hormones they feed the animals are extremely bad for you and that cancer can thrive off of those hormones? Did you know that they can make you gain a lot of weight? Think about it. Hormones make things grow. Like when a woman takes extra estrogen she can gain a lot more weight, it's the same thing.

I have a friend here whose family has a lot of cancer and whenever they find it out the doctors immediately tell them they need to stop eating meat because of all the hormones. These doctors are from New Zealand by the way, so it's not like some third world, witch doctor kind of thing. Just giving you an example.

Kind of makes you want to stop eating meat doesn't it? It does for me at least! More reason to buy organic!

Oh, by the way, there is also A TON of added hormones in milk too, in case you were wondering. Ewww!!!!

CHRISTMAS!!!

2009-10-22T23:09:00.002-05:00

It's time for CHRISTMAS!!! At least in my book it is!!! I love Christmas, it's the best holiday of the year! Christmas time also means time for a Christmasy background for my blog to light that holiday fire in our souls and get us rockin' around the Christmas tree... or something like that. Ahem. Anyway. So, I looked high and I looked low and all around for a cute Christmas background with little snowmen and cute snowflakes that sparkled just right and made your nose tickle with excitement for the upcoming cookies and hot cocoa... or something like that, but there was no such background to be found. So I found this one, which does have snow flakes on it, if you look really close, but no cute snowmen or jingle bells or angles or stars... I might have to keep looking for the prefect one. But in the mean time I hope that this one gets your nose tickling and toes tapping and hearts bubbling with the thought of beautiful snow, glorious Christmas music, yummy cookies, green, lushes Christmas trees and big fat turkeys dripping with gravy (or something like that *wink)!

Have a holly, jolly Christmas,
It's the best time of the year,
I don't know, if there'll be snow,
But have a cup of cheer.

Have a holly, jolly Christmas,
And when you walk down the street,
Say hello to friends you know,
And everyone you meet.

Oh, ho the mistletoe,
Hung where you can see,
Somebody waits for you,
Kiss her once for me.

Have a holly, jolly Christmas,
And in case you didn't hear,
Oh by golly
Have a holly, jolly,
Christmas this year