Thursday, April 24, 2008

And now for the moment you all have been waiting for!

Ladies and Gentlemen, it is 7:29AM. I awoke at 7:00AM with a start and a gasp. I was almost certain that Bentley had died of SIDS (which terrifies me and I would never joke about, I really really thought he had) because we had not heard a peep from him since 9:00PM the night before. NINE o' clock PM. Not one peep.

Maybe I was particularly tired. The last few days I have been so exhausted that I just shut his door, our door, turned on his fan and our fan (and the air conditioner!) and figured if he was mad enough he would have to cry loud enough for me to hear him; which he has every night but last night! It was the most amazing thing, I bet I haven't gotten that much sleep (went to bed at 11, that means I got near a full eight hours!) since before conception in December 2006.

Please, listen closely and I am confident you will hear me singing the hallelujah chorus. I am singing robustly and have been since 7.

And here is the kicker.....

Yesterday he was like the nap king. He took a nap from 9:30AM to 12:30PM and then again from 2:30 PM till 5:00PM. He has not slept that much in a 24 hour period a day in his life!

Not sure if it will last, but today, so far, is a very happy day.

Also, a big fat thank you to the dear S.J. for volunteering her husband to help with my blog! I am excited and can't wait for the new header (first I have to pick one), but I think with the new header I would like a new blog title and a new blog address too (what kind of an idiot puts their last name right on their blog title....me....not smart). I feel committed to writing more and better posts once the makeover happens because, let's face it, I haven't been posting because I didn't want you all to come back and see the atrocity that is my blog right now. So, any suggestions for a new title? Preferably one that looks cool when written in a cool font and has nothing to do with my name or location..... I'd love to hear it and I promise a captivating blog post in return.

The only thing I have thought of is MunYm.

Oh and also here are a few little other happy things from the recent past

* I went to the store all by myself yesterday to try on a swimming suit. I couldn't find a swimming suit BUT I did try on a bunch of clothes and I am happy to report that my size was a full 2 and potentially 3 sizes smaller than the capris I was wearing to the store. Again with the hallelujah chorus!

* I tried making bread again and it was delicious! I thought it was pretty good but it sealed the deal when Janssen (whose baking skills are extraordinary) raved about it! It was oatmeal bread. Doesn't that sound exotic? And hard? Nope, 'twas easy and delicious. I'll post a picture, don't worry. Well, IF you tell me what the new name and color scheme of my blog should be.

* The dogs have been behaving exceptionally well lately. Oh wait, unless you count the two dirty diapers that they got from Bentleys room and ripped to smithereens downstairs all over the house. Gr. BUT the good news is that I posted a post on craigslist that I wanted to buy a diaper champ (diaper pail) and I got three responses in as many minutes, one of them offering it to me for FREE!

* I calmly and collected stayed in my bed during the entirety of a somewhat intense thunderstorm the other night (seriously, normally I would have had the whole family in the closet!)

* I am making way on preparing our 72 hour kits. I bought all the food I thought we would need for three days and that alone fills like five backpacks, so we must downsize. Speaking of, do you have a 72 hour kit? What is in it? Am I really going to need things like a shovel and gloves or should I just do food water/ hygiene / medical ?

*I feel like I've been able to be a better mom lately to my kids. Could that possibly have something to do with that I have been getting more than three hours of sleep a night and not messing around on the computer except in the wee morning and late evening hours? Resounding yes.

* Blaine got 36 MPG city driving in the car. Which almost, but not quite, negates the $3.50 we are paying for gas.

*There is a very real possibility that we will be able to go on a cruise with a bunch of really great friends in January, and that would be awesome! Can I wait till January though, that is the question!

Life is going pretty good! I don't remember feeling that it was going particularly fantastic yesterday, but it is amazing how good one feels after a good nights sleep!

Oh and as far as something that is stressing me out..... does anyone want to care for two very well behaved, sweet, kind, endearing, lovable little puppies for two weeks during July? Kenneling the dogs is going to cost us whatever $20 x 15 is (AT LEAST), and that's a lot. So wouldn't you rather pocket that money than see me throw it away to a total stranger? Also I was thinking if any of my Austin friends has like a younger sibling, or mother, or friend, that has two weeks free and would want to come visit you we could pay for their airfare in exchange for them taking care of the dogs while they are here. Or something. Not sure. Or I guess the easiest option would be to sell the dogs and save ourselves the money :).

Sorry for such a random posting. Thanks for listening and thanks in advance for your blog title suggestions.

Sunday, April 20, 2008

$5

Um, I will give five dollars to anyone who can make my blog design look cute and not like a digital scrapbook bomb went off and spewed all over my blog. Ew. Help!

P.S. I fixed the door and it looked kind of meh....and then the dogs got out and scratched the door again and now the paint is chipped at the bottom again and it is really a sore spot for me right now. The good news is that a new door at home depot is only about $85 so I can just replace it before we move; the bad news is that we can never move because we just got some tax statement thing in the mail that says our home value depreciated about seven grand this year, so yeah. I'll worry about the door later....

I'm only good at being young

Friday, April 18, 2008

Melts in your mouth

"Mommy Mommy! Look! I spelled M&M!"












What I love is that it really does spell M&M. She's a prodigy I tell ya.
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Thursday, April 17, 2008

You've got to be kidding me....

A friend posted about her childs sleeping schedule, so it got me a thinkin' about what a seven month olds sleep schedule has got to be.

Here is what I read, "the "average" six-month old sleeps ten and a half hours at night and takes naps totaling three and a half hours, for a total sleep time of fourteen hours per day"

My jaw hit the floor.

I think Bentley sleeps about five hours at night and maybe another two hours of naps.

It's starting to not be funny.

I think when Gwen was this age she slept about twenty hours a day or something.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Free ninety nine

There are so many advantages to cutting and coloring my own hair.

The first, obviously, is that it is free. Zero. Nada. Nothing. Well, unless you count the cost of the dye. Okay, so $5.99 for a cut and color, that's not so shabby. Some friends and I were discussing the cost of getting ones hair done professionally. I nearly choked on my chocolate chip cookie when I heard how much these women were paying. I guess I have to admit that they are extraordinarily good looking women, but still.....it seems criminal to me to pay $75-$200 for your hair every two months. Ralphie's argument is that you wear your hair everyday, and I see her point, but still....

Along with the "wearing your hair everyday" philosophy comes my next advantage to cutting and coloring my own hair. I can make my haircut match my outfit or mood, daily. If it looks a little uneven I just snip a little more off. If I am feeling a little crazy I just cut some more layers. It's fantastic. Until you run out of hair of course which I would argue that I currently have. Now I guess it is time to holster the scissors for a few months (years at the rate my hair grows) and wait until I have some new material to work with.

Now thirdly these beautiful women that pay lots of money to get their hair done are also the same ones that paint their own doors (flawlessly), make their own curtains, and do all of that crazy crafty homemaking stuff. So my new philosophy is that we can create a symbiotic relationship where with the money I save by doing my own hair I can afford to pay them to do any painting/decorating/creating project I may be in need of and with the money I pay them they can sustain their hair maintenance standards. It's a pretty awesome plan I think.

Anyway, my final point is that I would spend a lot of money to do my hair if there were someone to impress but luckily I somehow landed a fantastic spouse and incredible friends already, so there's really no need. Right?

Oh and if you see me walking around and my hair looks a little uneven please do let me know, I carry scissors in my purse for just such an occasion.

P.S. I have to start throwing more words like "symbiotic" into my blog because I did this little test thing and it said that my blog was a Junior High reading level. So, be prepared for some heavy hitter vocabulary words in upcoming posts.

Monday, April 7, 2008

Be it ever so humble...

My Mother-in-Law once shared with me that the secret to impressing guests with your house is to clean your front door. If your front door sparkles you don't have to do nearly as much work inside because your guest already thinks you are an immaculate housekeeper. I thought this was pretty good advice, and I have tried to follow it. It worked especially well in our house because our door is the most beautiful color of brown and really compliments the Texas limestone exterior. It is this really dark dark dark brown (some, Ralphie, would call it black- but I would call her wrong. It's dark dark dark beautiful brown). I have always been proud of our front door.
Cue the dogs. They got out (again) a couple of weeks ago. I have given up running around half-clad looking for them when they run away. I figure they will either come back or if they get lost they deserve whatever happened to them. So I saved myself the trouble of prancing around in my robe chasing the gruesome twosome. They did come back. They came back while I was doing something else that required my attention. So they scratched on the door. When I went to go get them there was a chip of paint off of my beautiful door. Dang dogs. Oh well. Brought them inside and didn't think much of it.

Well day turns to night and night turns to day and three days later that chip of paint is a full blown disaster. It kept chipping away and away. Since my Mother-in-Law was coming soon I figured I ought to repair the paint chip, because she said that thing about front doors, you know?

And now I would like to just send a shout out to all of my "you can do anything" friends. I can't. I shouldn't. Please quit inspiring me to attempt projects that are way beyond the scope of my ability. My friends (yes I mean you Ralphie, Meleah, Janssen, Jamie, Laurie, Stef, Kayla, anyone reading this) are really good at fixing things and making things beautiful. Homemakers in the very sense of the word. They are so good and make it look so easy that I find myself thinking that I could just about do anything. I love my friends and I want to impress them with my skills, so I try to do the things they do and it just does not work.

To give you a sense at how incapable I am; I spent a good twenty minutes staring at paint cans before I figured out that you had to ask the guy to add the color in for you. My mental conversation went something like....
"Hmmm, I would like my door to still be brown, let's see here.......okay they've got white......eggshell......neutral white...........pure white.........ultra white..........crest white strip white........heaven white..........hm I wonder where all the other colors are.......maybe they are behind all of these variations of white (commence the removing of the first layer of paint cans).......this is so weird, am I just like in the white section or something? This is Home Depot for crying out loud.....HOME DEPOT, you'd think they would have more than just dang white. I don't want a white door".

It took a long ol' while before I figured out they made your color right there for you. I mean I knew they did that for, like, picky people, I just wanted a dang can of paint. Anyway, my head nearly imploded when I saw all of my choices. I made a choice. Chocolate sparkle.

I don't know how to paint. Blaine does not know how to paint. I figured I would need to get the old paint off the door; but did anyone bother to tell me there was such a thing as paint stripper? No. Did I attack my door with a credit card and steak knife? Yes. Does it look like Edward Scissorhands locked himself out of my house? Yes.

This is what my door looked like after two days of "paint stripping" Kristi style. Nothing says welcome to our home like.....




Houston, we have a problem. Mother-in-Law is coming in 48 hours ( or at least she was when the door looked like this). It looks a little worse than just a small chip in the bottom of the door doesn't it?

I need to find a hobby or something I am really really good at before I let this whole "I ruined my front door and can't help but be embarrassed anytime anyone sees it" thing gets to my self esteem.

Help.

P.S. I knew you would want to see pictures of me doing this, but I couldn't take them. It was extra bad because I didn't like have a gas mask or whatever you are supposed to wear when ruining your front door, so I was wearing Gwen's Dora sunglasses (instead of safety goggles) and had a white handkerchief tied around my mouth and nose. It was really quite the most humiliating thing to be out there demolishing the doors. There goes the neighborhood. Why couldn't it have been my back door?

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Swipers First Snow Storm


I couldn't take it anymore, I am TOO homesick. So I packed up the kids and the dogs and we started driving to Utah today. We stopped in Farmington NM where there was a recent snow storm and I let the dogs and Bentley have their first experience with snow! They loved it!

Utah here we come!
















April Fools.