Happy Belated Birthday

After some gentle prodding and a few nice reminders from me, my husband still has not written a birthday shoutout to his Mom for her birthday, which was last Thursday.  We didn't have power that day, so that's one reason why it never got done!  Also, her cards from us were a mere 5 days late because of the ice.  So, without further ado, Happy Birthday Jane!

Happy Birthday to my mother-in-law, Jane.  She is a wonderful cook, faithful blog follower, and great mom and Gram.  I've never seen anyone so excited to be a grandmother!  She sure did something right raising this guy:

Jane used to live in Virginia while we were in college so I only got to see her at Christmas, Thanksgiving, etc.  Jane and Nat now live back home in Alabama and have a house one block away from my parents.  It makes things SO easy and fun just to be about 20 seconds away from each house while we're back home.  No schlepping baby gear, bags, and baby food back and forth and packing up the car for each trip!  Their new house has a pool and I would be willing to bet that if I lived anywhere within 3 hours of them, John Michael and I would be camped out there ALL summer long!  I do so love lolling about in the sun.  I look so much better with a tan, anyway.  Happy Birthday Jane.  WE hope you had a wonderful day!  Thank you for always opening your heart and house to us and also my whole side of the family!

In other news, John Michael has a really bad cold and we ended up at the doctor's office today just to check up on his ears and lungs.  So far everything is clear so we'll just need a few days to ride out the nasty ole cold virus.  He has a really bad cough to go along with it.  I sure am hoping that he's better tomorrow. 

Since we don't have anything new or interesting going on I'm going to post some pictures of John Michael from a few weeks ago while he was "walking" in his little walker. He used to could only go backwards but now he can go forwards and angle his way through doorways to follow you around.  It's so cute and funny. 

JM found a way to "walk" into our bedroom and he tried so hard to pick up this whole laundry basket!

He knows how to go straight for the dog bowls and run into them so they clank together!

Verse O' the Day:

No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.

1 Corinthians 2:9

This and That

From this:

Sweet potato from the oven

 To This:

Frozen cubes of sweet potato

To This:

And................

From This:

EASY way to make peas, buy the steam-in-bag kind!

 To This:

I love my handy blender!

 To This:

I promise he loved the peas!

YUM!

Gymboree was fantastic and SO much fun!  I'm excited to try the music class on Wednesday.  I'm not excited about the price but we'll do it for about a month or so (at least) to get us through winter!  It was fun and we had a great time!

Verse O' the Day:

The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

2 Peter 3:9

Wii had a fun weekend!

We've had a really nice weekend.  It was nice having Jordan home a few days this past week due to the snow.  John Michael and I always like it when Daddy's home during the week!  It's something new and breaks up the week.

Look what I got fandangled into this weekend:

Wii now have a Wii!!  I have to admit that it's kind of fun.  We've been playing bowling and tennis together.  I'm getting beat at most of the games but it's fun!  It gets us off the couch and off our bums.  My arm hurts though!

We also decided to go ahead and buy Fireproof.  It's such a good movie.  I recommend anyone to go rent it!  We actually started watching it in Sunday School today so we'll be watching it twice but we don't mind because it's such a great story.  Kirk Cameron is a really good actor, I have to admit.  I could see why I've heard people say that this movie saved their marriage.  It just reminds you to be mindful of your spouse and their needs and feelings.  It's kind of like when Dr. Laura  (yeah, yeah she's sometimes radical and crazy) tells people to become their husband's girlfriend...not their wife, but their girlfriend.  You know, when you're somebody's girlfriend you put make-up on and fix your hair and you tell him how cute and precious he is, you sit by him on the couch, make googley eyes at him, hold his hand for no reason and you fix his favorite dinner that his mama used to make him growing up.  Personally, I think it's a great mentality to live by!  I don't want to get any feminist comments on here about how I shouldn't cater to my husband and let him be the leader of my house, because hey, I used to be one of you.  I'm just saying that I'm respectful of him and he, I.  And that's the end of my marriage advice!  I'm such an expert, being married 2 and a half years and all.

Anywho, look at these great ties that we got Jordan at Penney's for $3 a piece.  I'm not even kidding.  They were originally $38 each.  I think they're good looking and if he only wore some of them once then we got our money's worth.  I think they'll be nice for spring. (I got his permission to post his tie bargain!)

Also, I thought I would share another quick and easy recipe.  I made this one up while I was on Weight Watchers and I like it because it only has 3 ingredients and it's fairly fast to throw together.  You know how I like easy meals.  It's not the most sophistocated of meals, but it works for us!

"Fake" Chicken Parmesean

Makes 2 servings

2 Morning Star chicken veggie patties  (They taste like REAL breaded chicken to me, I don't taste the veggie)

Spaghetti noodles

Spaghetti sauce - about a cup

Parmasean cheese

Bake frozen "chicken" patties at 375 for about 16 minutes.  Boil noodles and heat sauce while patties are cooking in the oven.  Layer noodles, "chicken" patty and top with spahgetti sauce and a sprinkle of parmesean cheese.

All of your ingredients for one meal

This recipe is about 8 Weight Watcher points.  Not too shabby.  It would great paired with a salad and a piece of garlic bread!  I'll post more pictures tomorrow from our Sunday School Super bowl party.  We had a great time with our class!  Also, we are trying Gymboree this week. I figured it would be a good way to get us through winter and have some place fun to go indoors.  I know it will be fun if we can keep whatever kind of little cough at bay that popped up today for John Michael.

Verse O' the Day:

Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted.

Galatians 6:

Random Friday

Today is just some miscellaneous posting of pictures from the last day or so!  You'll have to bear with me because these are some really random pictures!

Our power went out yesterday and luckily it came back on last night before bed.  I was never so glad to have power!  We are really lucky to have power when so many do not.  I tried to think of fun little things for us to do all day yesterday, but once it got dark we got pretty bored.  Yay for the power men working so hard to get everyone's power on.  Our gas logs kept us at a lovely 75 degrees in the den all day.  I'm so glad we have them!

Dinnertime is so much fun!

I can't believe we didn't lose our dish signal!

A double egg yolk; is that rare?

What a sweet face

Bundled up!

How pitiful!

[caption id="attachment_491" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Daddy and JM"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_499" align="alignnone" width="225" caption="Mama and JM"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_495" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Look how thick!"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_496" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Sometimes you just have to play with bowls from the kitchen."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_498" align="alignnone" width="225" caption="JM loves to play with the phone!"][/caption]

Happy Friday, everyone!

Woof!

Verse O' the Day:

But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy.

Titus 3:4-5

Say What?

This is John Michael's new schedule and I don't like it one bit:

1) Go to sleep at around 9-something pm

2) Sleep until 9:00 am

3) Not go down for a nap until 11-something then sleep for 2 hours, bypassing lunch (we used to eat lunch around 12:15)

4) Get so sleepy around 5:00 pm and take such a long nap that we have to wake him up at around 6:15 pm to eat dinner

All of this = It is 9:45 pm and he is STILL not asleep.  I got so tired of nursing him that I just went ahead and put him in his crib to hang out until he fell asleep.

I'm not sure why he's so off like this.  He used to wake up around 8, so our whole day is like an hour and a half off.  No way is he taking a 5pm nap tomorrow.  It's just not gonna happen.

In other news, did you check out Kelly's most recent post about baby Harper?  I about passed out when I checked it and I saw her holding her  with only a nasal canula for oxygen!!!!  I was so excited to see that.  She has made such huge progress.  She is such a blessing.  God has been been all over this story of this little girl.  I'm still waiting for those "See ya later NICU, I'm headed home to my fabulous pink and brown nursery" pictures!

I checked out BooMama's blog the other day and came upon this link for a blog that I just had to check out.  I could have looked around this blog for hours.  It was fascinating.  I'm not sure why it was so neat, but once I started clicking around I could hardly pull myself away from it.  It's called Conversion Diary: Musings of a former atheist.  I just found it so interesting how this lady and her husband used to be, pro-choice, high-rise-living total yuppies and now....well, perhaps you should go check it out for yourself.  Neat stuff.

One last thing, Yes, I do have John Michael snow pictures and I will post them later.  Seeing as how my child just went to sleep at 9:45 I'm not so in the mood to upload pictures.  I will leave you with these precious pictures of him riding his little rock and ride pony that Daddy picked up at the lovely Wal-Mart Associate store.  He balanced on it just long enough for us to get these pictures!

What you talkin' bout?

 

Verse O' The Day:

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.

2 Corinthians 4:8-9