A View From Our Life

Weekend Recap And a Thank You

2012-01-15T05:45:00.000-08:00

Guys,
Thank you so much for your comments on my last post (especially you, Cathi, YOU COMMENTED!!! :) We've tried a lot of those ideas already (using a timer, or an alarm clock, etc.) We're going to just keep experimenting and see what works. I do so cherish that alone time, so there will be SOME form of quiet time in his own room by himself. Even if it requires wailing and gnashing of teeth to get there. B isn't a compliant kid, but he isn't strong willed either, he's right in the middle. So we'll see! I'll try to remember to give a nap time up date in a few months to let y'all know what worked.

Friday morning, we drove to Corsicana, TX to visit friends of ours who recently moved out there for a new job. We know what it's like to move to a new city and to be away from friends and family. We just wanted to hang out and encourage them. We had a great time! Ate some pizza hut, watched the boys play, walked around downtown Corsicana (yes, there is a downtown :) and hung out. Here is Will and Brennan at a little park they had:

We came back Saturday after lunch, stopped at HEB for some groceries, ran home and I took off for a girls night with our life group at The Met. We went to Sam Moon, a sweeeeet jewelry/purse/shoe store in The Woodlands (Mom and Mom A, we're totally going to go there when you come visit). Then out to dinner and some window shopping at Market Street. It was a blessing to get in some girl time before la bebe arrives.

It's now bright and early Sunday morning and after church today, we have 45 tech art volunteers and families coming over to our place for lunch. Where are those 45 people going to sit? I have no idea. This shall be interesting. :) I have a house to clean, clothes to unpack, and chili to cook, so I guess that means I need to get off this thing. Just wanted to thank you all for your comments!

I need your advice!

2012-01-12T12:41:00.001-08:00

I kind of really hate it when people give out advice online. When it's not asked for. However, I'm asking!! So if you're a mom or dad, please respond! Here it is:

-What age did your child stop napping?
-How did you deal with the transition? (i.e. they stop napping yet are exhausted by 6pm)
-Did you continue to enforce "room time"?

Here's the scoop: Brennan will be 3 next month. I understand that 3 is an age a lot of kids stop napping. I also understand that each child is so different. Some kiddos (myself included) neeeed lots of sleep. I would come home from kindergarten and ask to take a nap (understand why having a newborn is hard for me? :) Some kiddos don't need much sleep at all. So there is no stead fast rule. I get that. I also understand that each parent has a different parenting style. Some of us are a little bit more laid back than others. Jon and I are figuring out our own parenting style and that's okay. Just wondering what your babies did, how you dealt with it, etc. And please word it in a kind way, if anyone's comment's sound as if "this is the only way to parent", I shall delete it. mmmkay? :) Thank you THANK YOU THANK YOU!

Love,
Two first time parents who are fighting the nap time fight.
XO

Nesting?

2012-01-07T06:45:00.000-08:00

Jon had all of last week off. It was so wonderful. We were both in the "get stuff done" mode and really feel like we accomplished a lot! Since moving from our house in Lansing, to an apartment, to a rental, to our new house, things got a little disorganized. To say the least. And it takes time to make a house your HOME, which I have to keep reminding myself. So having some time off together and possibly nesting for little babes arrival, it was a great time to ORGANIZE! And now I'm kind of addicted to organizing things. It feels so good to have a place for everything! And also, side note, I love the Container Store.

First off, we were putting all our shoes on the floor of the laundry room. Which created clutter, and meant you had to walk through shoes to get to the washing machine, it's not a large room. So my amazing hubby made a bench that I posted a while ago, and the plan was to put our shoes in the bottom of it. So I looked around and actually The Container Store had cheaper bins than other places. I wanted wicker, or something more solid than canvas bins because I knew they'd get dirty and kind of beat up with shoes inside. I bought some sweet wicker baskets, but unfortunately, when Jon made the bench, one of the cubby holes is about .25 of an inch less than 12 inches, so one of the baskets didn't fit. But we went back and ended up with this solution:

Here's the link to the baskets we bought. They are bendable enough to fit into the space and durable enough to hold our shoes.

We also have a fairly small pantry in our new house. I just pulled out all our bottles and bibs and such and realized we needed more storage space in the kitchen. We went to Walmart the day after Christmas to get new tires on our car and had a ball looking at post Christmas clearance deals. We found a great pantry system (not on sale, unfortunately) and decided to try it out. It worked great and freed up a lot of space in our pantry for bottles and baby supplies. I'm hoping to go back to Wally World and buy one for the second door. It mainly holds spices and cooking oils.

Last week, we also attempted to shop at Re:Store, but it was closed for the holidays. But we stumbled upon a huge, run down thrift store right down the road from it. It blasted Mexican music and was kind of rough on the outside, but we found a great deal! There were pull out drawers for cabinets that we scored for $6.00. We wanted to put them in the kitchen but the drawers were too wide, so we put them in our master bathroom cabinets.

The bottom of our cabinets were kind of a mess (kind of is relative. they were really a mess). So now they feel much more organized and it's easier to see what's down there now that we can pull out the drawers.

Lastly (whew), we organized some bins we had in the office. They held lots of tapes and dvd's from Jon's various side jobs. We were able to sort through them and put most of that stuff in his closet for storage. So now we have a bin for craft supplies for Brennan, a bin for miscellaneous camera and computer cords, a bin for his current side jobs and an empty bin, just waiting to be filled. :) The rest of the bookshelf needs to get organized, but for now, I'm going to drink a diet coke and relax. Adios!

Gestational Diabetes

2012-01-01T18:51:00.001-08:00

Before we left on our vacation to Michigan for Thanksgiving, I took the 1 hour glucose test and failed it. No biggie, I figured, a lot of people fail it and pass the 3 hour test. So at 30 weeks (two weeks later than I should have due to the trip), I took the 3 hour test. And felt awful the whole time. Between wanting to puke and getting my blood drawn 4 separate times, I was ready to sprint out of that lab. And then I got the call the next day (while at MOPS), that I did indeed have gestational diabetes.

Basically, in women who have GD, hormones from the placenta block the action of the mother's insulin in her body (insulin resistance). This makes it harder for the mama to use the insulin. GD starts when your body isn't able to make (and use) enough insulin it needs. Without the insulin, the glucose cannot be changed to energy and builds up in the blood to high levels.

Now you know, should you ever need to. :) At first, I was STRESSED. Like, seriously stressed about it. Because my midwife wanted me to be monitored for two weeks by an endocrinologist to make sure I could control my blood sugar levels and if you remember, we are paying out of pocket for everything. I felt like we had gambled and lost. We gambled that we'd have a normal, healthy pregnancy and that no crazy high expenses would arise.

Thankfully, we were able to convince my midwife that I didn't need to be monitored and that I was confident I could do it on my own. A nurse came to our house and taught me how to take my blood sugar four times a day with a glucometer and what my new diet would consist of. My midwife (so far) as been really happy with how I'm doing and how low I'm keeping my sugars. Whew. I was praying I wouldn't have to go on insulin, that I'd be able to control it by diet alone.

But honestly? I truly see this diagnosis as a blessing. A huge blessing. It's forcing me to eat healthy. To be conscious of what I eat (especially during the holidays). I haven't gained one pound since I was diagnosed. I'm sure I will as the baby gets larger towards the end, but right now, I'm encouraged! The diet is like, super duper strict. So that's hard, but I have snuck a few double dipped chocolate covered peanuts from the south bend chocolate company here and there and it hasn't effected anything so that's good. :)

So maybe you'll get some bad news in the 2012. But maybe that bad news will end up being a blessing to you. God is good. Stay encouraged.

35 weeks. St. Anthony Hotel- San Antonio, TX

San Antonio, In Brief

2011-12-29T09:56:00.000-08:00

Since my midwife would not allow me to fly home for Christmas (sob), we decided to take a family trip to San Antonio instead. Jon had to work Christmas Eve Eve, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day services, so we left on Monday, the day after Christmas. And guys, it was a great trip, God blessed us. We seemed to randomly miss really long lines and busy spurts pretty much everywhere we went! Brennan slept great in the hotel (always a concern with him), I felt pretty good, and we got to do what we really wanted to do. Our hotel was right by the Riverwalk so we were close to most everything. Here's a brief synopsis. It's hard to choose which pictures to post when there are so many!

Our first day there, we ate Tex Mex at Pappasito 's thanks to a gift card, and then took a FREE boat taxi on the riverwalk. The riverwalk was beeeautiful at night all lit up with Christmas lights!

It was pretty chilly for Texas!

Tuesday we ate a free breakfast at the hotel due to a groupon voucher. The hotel we stayed at was gorgeous St. Anthony Riverwalk Hotel (thank you, Groupon). Then we headed out to the Alamo.

Part of the hotel lobby

Typical tourist photo in front of The Alamo.

I took the audio tour while Jon graciously walked through with Brennan. I love history (I was a history minor in college), and really enjoyed learning all about the Alamo and it's past. It passed from Spanish owned, onto Mexico, onto Texas and for awhile was a merchants warehouse. The room that really got to me was the room women and children stayed in during Santa Anna's assault on the Alamo. General Santa Anna let them all go after the defeat to warn the rest of Texas of his army's strength. Instead, it caused Texans resolve to go up and eventually was a turning point in the war. If your a history nerd-o like me, you can read up on the Alamo here. As we were leaving the Alamo, we saw the huuuge line of people waiting to get in that we just happened to miss.

After the Alamo, we ate lunch on the Riverwalk and then headed back to the hotel for B's nap. It worked out well because Jon was able to meet with one of his 3104Studios clients who is based in SA while Brennan napped in the hotel. Afterwards, we took a river boat tour (again, just missing a super long line) on the Riverwalk, ate dinner and shopped around. Brennan was kind of a disaster from about 6:00 on so we made a quick night of it.

Wednesday, Jon ran out and bought us bagels for breakfast, we checked out of the hotel, and headed to the San Antonio Botanical Gardens. The gardens were beautiful, there was a kids butterfly exhibit, cactus garden, rose garden, log cabin, ampitheatre, japanese garden, sensory garden, waterfalls, etc. Jon set up our camera on a tree branch and we were finally able to get a family photo:

Playing around with the butterfly exhibit

As we were leaving the gardens, we saw a huge group of people entering and were thankful it was so quiet while we were there. We headed back to Houston after that (and stopped briefly for Brennan to pee on the side of road, in which he refused). I miss seeing our families at Christmas, mainly because we love them. :) I dont' care about holiday traditions, but I do care about seeing all of them! But I'm thankful we were able to do this together just the 3 of us before Baby #2 shows up and I'm so glad it was a good time. As they say down here, go hug the neck of your loved ones! Adios!

The Bench.

2011-12-24T19:49:00.000-08:00

A few months ago, Jon moved offices from the main building to the admin building. The Met re-did all of it's children's spaces and the move was part of all that. There was a desk that they were trashing, but it still had some good, solid wood pieces left. So Jon brought it home and made a bench out of it! I picked out a design I liked from Ana White's website. I wanted to be able to put bins of shoes underneath it. Ana White's website is amazing if you're looking to build your own furniture. There are tons of free designs and tips to choose from.

Anywho, here's the finished product, didn't he do an awesome job??

Now, onto planning my next house project. . . . (insert evil laugh).

Pregnancy Faves

2011-12-23T12:52:00.000-08:00

I thought it'd be fun to share a few new maternity items I found this time around that I LOVE.

*First up, Motherlove Belly Salve. This stuff is awesome. I'm not one to spend a lot of money on products like this, but this one is welllll worth it. It keeps your blossoming belly moist, smells wonderful, is all natural, and really helps keep stretch marks away. I owe my friend, Crystal, for introducing it to me.

*I bought a few Motherhood Maternity nursing bras when pregnant with Brennan and I hated them. But I didn't want to go out and buy more, so I stuck with them the whole time I was nursing Brennan. This time around, I knew to stay away from MM (I'm not a fan of their clothes or the way they fit), and decided to hit up one of my favorite stores (Nurtured Family) for nursing bras. I ended up buying a Bravado bra and love it so far.

*Ok, and lastly, LUSH products. We have a big soaker tub in our bathroom and I've really enjoyed taking hot baths (yes hot, shhh, don't tell anyone) with LUSH products. I like the bath bars, not the bombs, so I can chip off pieces of it at a time and have it last a lot longer. If you don't want to pay shipping, most Macy department stores carry them! When I'm pregnant, I have a rib that pops out of place, so baths are wonderful. :)

If you have any pregnancy favorites, I'd love to hear them!

Hello, People!

2011-12-21T10:08:00.000-08:00

Hi Guys!
After a guilt trip from my very sweet and loving sister (Hi Meg), and some subtle hints from my sister in law (Hi Erin!) and a little nudge from my Aunt Sue on her Christmas card (Hi Aunt Sue!), I am finally sitting down and blogging again. Tell me how proud of me you are!!

Brennan is pretty sick with a case of explosive diarrhea (Merry Christmas to me) and has fallen asleep on the couch for the first time in his 2.5 years. Kennady is crawling around the office exploring so we'll see if we can bust out a post while they are both preoccupied. Crossing my fingers.

I'll backtrack to our visit to Michigan in November. B and I flew up early and got to spend some time with the Ackermans before Jon flew in on Wednesday night. I also spent an evening in GR for the annual AUE with my college girls.

(Michele, Me, Wendy, Sarah, Marissa, Suz and April in Nashville via Skype. I love technology)

My heart wishes I could have spent more time with them, but it's not the phase of life we're in right now and that's okay.

It worked out super awesome that my brother's girlfriend, Sarah, planned a birthday dinner/get together the same night I was in GR for the AUE. So I got to surprise Andy at his birthday dinner at 25 Kitchen and Bar.

(Sarah, Catherine, Me, Andy, Dave, John)

Please hold. Sleeping toddler is now up and wants to be held. . .

End of pause. Continuing on. . .
We had such a great time in Michigan! We helped both parents put up their Christmas trees. ..

And played a lot of Can Jam with the O'Neill's. . .

This is my Grandpa McMahon, who flew in from Buffalo, NY to be with us for Thanksgiving, and my Grandma/Grandpa O'Neill. I am so thankful for all three of them.

My parents bought Grandpa McMahon an iPad 2 for Christmas so he could skype with all of us. It was slightly hilarious to see my Dad and Jon teaching my Grandpa how to use it. I wish I had some photos of that!

We went to the Air Zoo in Kalamazoo with the Ackerman's. It was way cool! I recommend it to all you Michiganders with young kiddos. This is Brennan riding in the hot air balloons...

Even Preggers McGee drove an airplane. . .

We also walked downtown St. Joe to see the Christmas lights, which were unfortunately all up, but not on. It was fun to see the storefronts and getting Biggby's coffee afterwards. I truly miss Biggby's. Starbucks is the only chain coffee place in Houston and I'm not a huge Starbucks fan.

I love Brennan's little monster hat (Thank you, Mom A!). There's been a lot of exciting happenings in our family lately. . . my brother John and his wife, Kym, just welcomed a baby boy named Easton last week! And Mark and Erin Zubert had a baby girl two days ago!! We are SO so excited to meet baby Easton and Macy, I cannot wait to hold them!! Hopefully it works out that we're able to see them both SOON!

Gotta jet, adios!

2011-11-17T13:33:00.000-08:00

You guys. I have the cuuutest video of Brennan saying all the words he mispronounces, but I've tried four times and it just won't upload!! He tries so hard to say what his friend, Trenton, was for Halloween (Obe-Wan Kenobi, yes, I did have to look up how to spell that), or my personal favorite, when he says, "cutie patootie". Ah well, just imagine how cute it was, mmkay?

I think I remember telling you all that I was in a Bible study this summer with some staff wives from The Met? Did I? Anyways, we all try and get together about once a month over brunch. I hosted it this Tuesday and we decided to throw in a little surprise party for Thuy who turned 40 today. I hope I look as good as she does at 40!!

SOME of the food.

You know how we ladies don't ever have a birthday past 21. :)

Tomorrow is MOPS. Saturday is the MOPS Missions project (I'll hopefully blog about it later), Sunday, Brennan and I fly to Michigan!! We fly via Minneapolis and Chicago, with a little drive to Bridgman, so yes, I fully plan on using the baby belly fully to my advantage. :) It shall be a long day, but well worth it. I'm excited to see family, and friends, and to take a little break from working. Whoop! However, the weather is amazing here right now, I will miss that!

Rustic Lodge

2011-11-10T12:11:00.000-08:00

Hola guys.

It's Thursday and I feel like I can breathe for the first time this week. I've already worked 21 hours this week among other things and I am tired! But I have the rest of the day free and am starting to feel relaxed! I'm going do to some prenatal pilates, listen to the last week's message online from The Met which I've missed and drink some tea. Hoo-rah.

So onto the boys' room. We decided to put the boys in the same room. Baby #2 (we think we've settled on a name, but not quite ready to share it yet) will be in our room for the first few months, but after that, we're planning on putting him in with Brennan. I kind of wanted to put them in separate rooms and not have to deal with them waking each other up. But Jon really likes the idea of them learning how to share from the very beginning. And we like the idea of having the camaraderie that comes with sharing a room. So I took Brennan's nursery decor and put it up in the playroom and decided to do a rustic lodge theme for their room together. I took most of my inspiration from Katie Bower's blog, see her nursery here. I love her style and I loooved her son's nursery. We wanted to do an entire wall made out of pallets like they did, but after considering time, money, work, stress, we decided to do a sign instead. Check it out:

Jon got an air compressor for his birthday and he's been having so much fun using it. The sign was his first project! He's currently working on a bench that I hope to post on here soon.

Whaddya think??

EGGPLANT

2011-11-08T14:40:00.000-08:00

We got some eggplant with our CSA last week. I've never bought eggplant before. Ever. But I've heard that eggplant parmesan is really good, so I hopped onto one of my favorite food blogs and looked up a recipe. It was a little time consuming, but I decided not to make my own sauce and use canned.

It was sooo good!

I've been trying to cook in batches, rather than one dish at a time. So the same time I was making the eggplant parmesan (while the eggplant was dehydrating a bit), I also made this recipe of Eggplant Gratin with Creme Fraiche. I personally like the texture of the first dish better, but the second dish tasted just as good or better. I did make the homemade red sauce for this recipe and it was easy AND good.

I also made two types of Okra while the eggplant dishes were baking, fried okra and baked okra. It was my first okra experience. And it was delicious (as Brennan would say!). I've always heard okra can be slimey, but it helped that I dredged it in flour before cooking it.

Eggplant is in season down here, I'm not sure about up north. But if you run across some, try it, it's YUM.

Adios

In Which I'm Getting a Little Granola

2011-11-06T13:40:00.000-08:00

We're becoming a little granola. And we're okay with that. Two new granola-ish things were doing??

1. Cloth diapering our next baby.

2. Joined a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture).

We're also a little granola in other small ways, like we don't really take antibiotics (even with Brennan's ear infections) unless absolutely necessary. We like to let our bodies heal themselves. Even if it takes a little bit more time. And I am going to give natural childbirth a try. I say try because I want to give myself an out in case I fail. :) For realz. I'm kind of low on the whole pain tolerance thing so you can imagine my concern. TMI- I was super constipated early on in this pregnancy and woke up with horrendous stomach cramps (due to lacatives I took the night before that did.not.work.) and was sweating and crying and telling Jon that there was no way I could do natural childbirth if I couldn't handle constipation. We shall see people, we shall see.

So, back to being granola. I took a cloth diapering class yesterday at the world's best baby store, Nurtured Family. I was a bit overwhelmed by the choices and options that you have when cloth diapering. . . all in ones, pocket, prefolds, fitted, contours, wool covers, waterproof covers, etc. The class was awesome and talked us through the different types of diapers, pros and cons, benefits of cloth diapering, how to wash and dry, etc. We decided to go with FuzziBunz all in one diapers.

We are mainly doing cloth because it's cheaper than disposables. It's all about the money, honey. But there are some pretty cool benefits to cloth: they are practically as easy as disposables, no fold laundry, less odor, baby stays dry, wayyyy better for the environment, less diaper rashes on baby, etc. I'm actually pretty excited about this new little adventure for us!

The CSA we joined is called Home Sweet Farm located north of us in Brenham, TX.

A CSA is a farm in which you are basically "buying" a share. You pay to join, and then get a share of the crop every week. Home Sweet Farm has drop off's all over the city of Houston, ours is about 5 minutes away. Every Tuesday we get fresh, local, organic, in season food. I love the idea of supporting LOCAL farmers, eating LOCAL foods, eating foods that are in season, and not shipped 500 miles across country and eating so fresh. So far, we've gotten mainly peppers, greens (arugala, bak choy), eggplant and okra. I gotta be honest, everything's been great but the bak choy, so if you have any amazing bak choy recipes, kindly let us know. :) We tried grilling it and we must've done something wrong because it was bitter and terrible (what'd we do wrong, Katie??). I'm thinking about trying it sauteed in a chicken stir fry, we shall see.

So here's my plug. . . buy local, support local farmers and stores. I highly recommend Nurtured Family and Home Sweet Farm to anyone in the Houston area!

Old Town Spring, Halloween

2011-11-05T07:23:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday, we visited Old Town Spring for a little family outing. I wasn't feeling so hot (turns out I had the 24 hour stomach flu), but it was still fun. It's a little town that was built in the early 1900's as a booming railroad town. There are a lot of antique shops, museums, restaurants, etc. Our personal favorite stops are the toy store and the wine tasting shop. :)

We ate lunch at this little red caboose restaurant and Brennan thought it was awesome.

There was also live music so he danced around while we attempted to eat.

He ran around a lot. He's two and a half. That's what two and a half year old boys do.

"Whatcha talking about? Me??"

Monday was Halloween. I don't go crazy with Halloween decor because frankly, I think it's mostly hideous and I don't like what it represents. But I do enjoy candy and kids and hanging out with friends, so we still celebrate. We met up with other staff families for a BBQ and trick or treating and it was so much fun! Brennan would knock on doors and say, "squeak squeak, trick or treat!" because he was a mouse.

Jon's mom made this costume for him as a child. He, his sister, Erin, her son, Westin and Brennan have all worn it. I love that!

Don't touch us with a 10 foot pole.

2011-11-02T06:59:00.001-07:00

Dudes.
The Ackerman household is down for the count.

I got the 24 hour stomach bug on Saturday. Jon has got a wicked throat/cough cold that Brennan caught.
Then last night, while we were at our birthing class and sweet friends of ours were watching Brennan, we got the text that every parent hates to get. The "your child just threw up" text. Ugh.
And besides that, the wife that was watching Brennan for us is pregnant. I'll feel just terrible if she catches the stomach bug from us!

So I guess, it's one of those weeks where God is telling, no forcing, us to rest. Which is against my nature, but we need to stay home and not infect the rest of the world. Now, to pray that Jon doesn't give in to the super 24 hour stomach bug.

And I had just a sweet post outlined in my head about Halloween and our cute mouse and all that. But for now, I'll just leave you with this beauty: (O'Neill clan, circa 1992?)

Fire

2011-10-28T13:19:00.000-07:00

It's 57 degrees right now. It feels AWESOME. We're currently have our first fire in the fireplace.

I love fall.

Updates!

2011-10-28T09:53:00.000-07:00

I'm trying so hard to keep up with this blog, but it just takes backseat to more pressing things sometimes!! Here's a few updates from us this week:

We took a family day last Saturday (Saturday before? I can't remember. . .) and planned on taking Brennan to the Houston Zoo. The whole time Jon was gone, I told him we'd go to the zoo when he got back (he's into the zoo ever since watching the movie, Madagascar). But once we got there, he saw a train that the neighboring park has and got really excited about it. We let Brennan decide if he'd rather ride the train and play at the park or go to the zoo. He wanted the train.

So we took a train ride and hung out at Hermann Park instead of the zoo. We didn't mind, Hermann Park is one of our favorite parks in Houston.

Jon was still jet-lagging a bit from the trip, but it was still a great family day. Jon did AWESOME dealing with the time difference and jet lag and really was amazing.

Other updates? I had a court case this week for my CASA children and it went so so so great. I was nervous and sweating and furiously taking notes, but overall it went the way we wanted. I wish I could share all the details because it pumps me up, but I can't due to confidentiality. Afterwards, I treated my high heeled pregnant feet to a pedicure. :)

Between CASA work and having a garage sale and MOPS and Bible Study and watching Kennady and taking our Bradley classes and attending OB appts and cleaning and cooking and so forth, it's been busy around here!

Oh, and look what Jon brought home for me today:

A little burst of fall colors since Houston doesn't really get a fall.

Need to make some lunch for a few hungry kiddos around here. Adios!

Sandbox

2011-10-24T12:34:00.000-07:00

Someone got a sandbox a few weeks ago. . .

Friends of ours saw it on the side of the road (heck, yes) and picked it up for us. They are amazing people, I tell you. Jon picked up some sand at Lowe's when he got home from his trip abroad and Brennan has been loving it ever since.

However, we did learn, after his first time playing it in. . . the value of shaking out his pants before he comes inside the house. Sand on tile flooring is no fun.

Thank you Hughes!

Pumpkin Patch

2011-10-18T11:38:00.000-07:00

Brennan and I met up with our MOPS table on Friday to go to a pumpkin patch. We've gone to this one every year we've lived here (and looove it!) so I have a photo of Brennan every year on this rocker:

There are a lot of cute spots for photo ops:

And Sesame Street characters:

And Wizard of Oz characters:

Brennan was asking me, "whats his name?". He asks that about everything and everybody.

Today is the first day Houston has really felt like fall and everyone is celebrating! So many facebook statuses and tweets are about fall and how wonderful it feels. Our highs this week are in the 70's, rather than the 90's. This is big news people. Woohoo!! Happy Fall, Y'all!!

The Stye in My Eye Part II

2011-10-12T10:33:00.000-07:00

You guys. I have a court report to write for CASA, a Care Calendar to create for MOPS and about 20 more minutes before Brennan wakes up from his nap. But I just had to post my stye update for those familia members across the world (aka: Jon is Uganda, Meg in DC, Erin in Minnesota and Mama in MI).

As I said in my last post, the stye came back. Again. After speaking with a friend's mother who is an OB nurse, she said to call my OB office and have them send over paperwork explaining to Dr. Fish eye that it's perfectly acceptable to locally numb a pregnant mama.
I did this on Monday and had an appt on Tuesday afternoon. Dr. Fish eye still did not want to numb me, but I convinced him to do so. Let me tell you, night and day difference. He was able to really work on my eye this time and I think he finally got it all taken care of. I'm a little bruised under my eye where the clamps went, but who cares. I was really really nervous for the appointment, so thank you to everyone who called and texted, truly!

Also, I finally started working on our Ackerman family 2011 scrapbook (I stopped working on it when I got preggo in May). Here's a few pages I've been working on this past week:

Toodles!

1st World Problems

2011-10-08T10:48:00.000-07:00

I was going to complain today.
About how I dropped a ceramic bowl of oatmeal on our tile floor and it spilled everywhere and shattered the bowl. About how Brennan cried all morning for his "Daddy". About how he still won't poop in the potty. About how he pooped today in his playroom and then proceeded to wipe it on the wall. About how I don't feel good today. About how I don't want to single parent for another week. About how my stye seems to be getting worse again.

But then I read from one of my favorite blogs (here) and got a little perspective on my "problems". I love a good dose of perspective.

Trying to meditate on Psalm 16,

Chaeli

Psalm 16:
Keep me safe, my God,
for in you I take refuge.
² I say to the LORD, “You are my Lord;

apart from you I have no good thing.”
³ I say of the holy people who are in the land,
“They are the noble ones in whom is all my delight.”
⁴ Those who run after other gods will suffer more and more.
I will not pour out libations of blood to such gods
or take up their names on my lips.

⁵ LORD, you alone are my portion and my cup;
you make my lot secure.
⁶ The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
surely I have a delightful inheritance.
⁷ I will praise the LORD, who counsels me;
even at night my heart instructs me.
⁸ I keep my eyes always on the LORD.
With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.

⁹ Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices;
my body also will rest secure,
¹⁰ because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead,
nor will you let your faithful^[b] one see decay.
¹¹ You make known to me the path of life;
you will fill me with joy in your presence,
with eternal pleasures at your right hand.

The Doodler

2011-10-06T11:56:00.000-07:00

Whenever Jon is away for an extended period of time (conferences, trips, side business, etc.) I splurge and buy Brennan a toy. We don't normally buy him toys, like, ever. But about two trips ago, I decided it was necessary. :) Mainly for me. And since yesterday was one of the longest parenting days I've had with him in a long time, we took the plunge.

So I took him to Target and let him peruse the aisles but then the "I want that, and that, and that" started and I was done with it. So I made the decision and bought him a doodler.

And although it's not his very favorite thing to do (i.e. watch PB), I think he's a fan. And mama's a fan if it allows me 5 minutes to unload the dishwasher or pee. And since we're working on recognizing our shapes, I can draw all sorts of different shapes and he can practice telling me what they are.

(and yes, he's wearing underwear)

Jon's Birthday

2011-10-05T13:06:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was Jon's birthday (Happy 32 years, honey!). He's right now en route to Nairobi, Kenya and I'm praying he and his long legs are decently comfortable. Not the funnest flights ever. Yes, "funnest" is a word.

It was fun to celebrate his birthday the last day before he left. He requested grilled steaks for dinner and chocolate chip cookies for dessert. Thank you to Erin Zubert for the steak marinade recipe and thank you pinterest for the best chocolate chip cookie recipe EVER.

Jon's mom made matching aprons for B and Jon, arent' they adorable?

Our little helper mixing up the dough.

I was worried the cookies wouldn't turn out since I was missing an ingredient and accidentally added too much sugar. Seriously, where is my brain? I even had to borrow brown sugar from a friend at the last minute. There might be something to the so called "pregnancy brain".

But they turned out fantastic!!

After stuffing our faces, we walked to our neighborhood clubhouse for National Night Out. It's a night where fire/rescue/police bring their vehicles for the kiddos to see and to promote awareness and safety. There was a massive firetruck with it's ladder all the way up and Brennan thought he was in heaven. They also had food, inflatables, give-aways and various booths. Here's B in a police car. I told him it better be the only time I see him in a police car.

Jon, you may be able to read this in Kenya or Uganda. You are loved and missed. Capture some great footage and get your skinny booty back home.

Love,
Chaeli, Brennan and baby #2

In Which I Have a New Favorite Band

2011-10-03T11:23:00.000-07:00

Friday night Jon and I met up with some of our favorite people at the House of Blues downtown Houston for a concert.

John Mark McMillan, Chris August, Gungor and David Crowder on the 7 Tour. We bought early admission tickets so we had a great view, about 3 rows back. However, it was standing room only.

First up was John Mark McMillan, the artist who wrote "How He Loves Us" that the David Crowder band re-made. I thought he did great. (sorry, no photo!). Next up was Chris August and then Gungor.

Gungor was AMAZING. In fact, I'm online buying their album as we speak. I've been playing the Gungor playlist on Pandora the last few weeks trying to learn their music. Because it's sooo good. The cellist on the right was incredible, he could beat box and rock the cello all that the same time. New Favorite Band.

Last up was DC* Band.

Of course, they were great. But by their fifth song in, my feet were killing me. I'm a wimp and I'm preggo, what can I say. So we left a little before the end of the concert, but still I'm so glad we went.

Halfway through the concert I slowly made my way through the crowd to the bathroom because I had to GO. But making it back to Jon was super hard, people just weren't paying attention and it was PACKED. I texted Jon that I didn't think I was going to make it back to him and he told me to "use my belly" to get through. Ha!

IT'S A BOY!!

2011-09-30T11:31:00.000-07:00

Ackerbaby #2 is a BOY!!

I thought I'd be a little disappointed if it was a boy, but honestly, I'm surprised to say that I'm super excited! I love the idea of two boys, two brothers, being close together in age. They're going to share a room and this little man can wear a lot of Brennan's hand me downs. Woo hoo!

Mainly though, we're just happy the baby is healthy. And the ultrasound showed my due date a week earlier than what we originally thought. We had Brennan almost 2 weeks early, so I just kind of assume the same will happen with this one. Which puts us at the end of January/beginning of February. Original due date: Feb 13th. Ultrasound due date: February 7th. My guess? February 1st. I'm short, these babies don't have anymore room to grow, so they decide to come out (that's my very-scientific hypothesis). :)

Now, to pull out Brennan's newborn clothes and start planning for a BOY!!

Stye in the Eye

2011-09-29T07:06:00.000-07:00

So about a year ago, I started getting styes in my eyes on a regular basis. Like one a week. I've inherited this gene from my dad, who used to get styes all the time, too. About 5 weeks before we flew to Michigan for my brother David's wedding, I got a stye on my bottom lid (right eye) for the first time ever. I've always had them on my top eye lid, not the bottom. And it hurt like the dickens. And it wouldn't go away. I kept waiting and waiting and eventually, it was too late to get into the doctor's before the trip.

So I had a huge red bump on my lower eye lid for the wedding, and the photos, and the seeing all the family and friends we haven't seen in forever. It was fabulous. My sis kind of saved me by pulling me aside 10 minutes before the wedding ceremony and putting black eyeliner on my lower lid to help cover it up. (thank you sis!!).

So when I got back to Texas (week 7 of the stye-that-won't-go-away), I finally called a random ophthalmologist and scheduled an appt. So get this- The guy is Asian, I have no problem with Asians, in fact I like them a lot, but he smelled like fish. Especially his breath. So I breathed in fish breath air the entire appt. And he told me that because I was pregnant, he would not use any anesthetic or pain medicine to numb my eye. He told me, "this is going to hurt, just keep breathing", and then cut open my stye and poked/squeezed it for about 15 minutes. I yelled. I probably scared all the people in the waiting room. In between "owwww, THAT HURTS!!" I told him, "don't listen to my yelling, please get this thing out!!". When I checked out, I asked the receptionist if they could hear me yelling and they said "yes, we felt so bad for you!". I told me I needed a stiff drink.

So anyways, it's not many weeks later and get this- the stye remains. See image below:

(self portrait taken with my cell phone)

My lovely fish Doctor told me that it "should be completely healed" but if any stye remained, I'd have to wait until I have the baby to have the rest taken care of. So I get to live with this puppy in my eye for about ohhh, 4 months. My OB told me that when you're pregnant, often your body does weird things (duh) and my body was just not able to heal itself from this stye like it normally would be able to. I'm telling you, I am a baaaad pregnant woman. Does not suit me well.

Channeling the DIY'er

2011-09-24T18:04:00.001-07:00

Our new house has a formal dining room and an eat-in kitchen. Which was kind of a bummer to me because I didn't really want a formal dining room. I mean, how often does one even use that room? Our counter-top height table that we've had for a few years seemed a bit big for the eat-in kitchen so we decided to put it in the formal dining room. I really wanted the Charlotte table and chairs from World Market (looked all over for a photo!) but World Market was sold out of them. We called all the Houston area World Markets and were bummed. And we love World Market furniture, it's really well made and I love the style. I told a couple friends we wanted a white pedestal table for our eat-in kitchen but I was having a hard time finding one.

When we were on vacation to Michigan for Dave and Catherine's wedding, a friend texted me that she had found an oak table and chairs at Goodwill for $70.00 and if we wanted it, she would have her hubby pick it up for us. I have been wanting to try my hand at painting furniture so we said "yes, pleease!"

So I was going to do this FANTASTIC blog post on how I made over the oak Goodwill table. It was going to be awesome, full of photos of the products I used, photos of us in action working on it, etc.

However, the camera I used was our dual purpose family camera/Jon's 3104Studios camera. And we had a little miscommunication while Jon was finishing up a side job and the photos got deleted. Yup. Booooooo.

So this is what you get. No whining (this is a phrase I use a lot).

I don't have a before photo now, but here's a picture of the table after it was I used an electric sander on it. I first sanded with a very coarse paper, and then went over it with a higher grit. And yes my arms felt like they were going to fall off.

The table had some spots where it bubbled up on the top, so I used wood filler in those spots, and then sanded over them a few times to create an even surface.

After the sanding it twice, I primed it.

I then used antique white paint (matched to the antique white spray paint I used on the chairs) and painted two coats. I finished it off with two coats of polycrylic to hopefully seal the table and make it a little durable. Here's the finished product:

For the chairs, we spray painted them with primer. Then spray painted 2 coats of antique white. Then spray painted a sealant on them. I am not too happy with the coverage of the spray paint, but I thought it'd be easier than painting them by hand. I'm also not super pumped about the look of these chairs so I'm calling them "temporary". We'll see. :) I also put two coats of polycrylic on these.

Overall, I'm pretty darn happy with the results. I know the table and chairs will get dinged up from use over time, and I'm totally okay with that. I actually thought about distressing them myself but figured it would happen over time eventually.

Whew, this post made me tired. Time to go eat chocolate chip cookies with the hubs. Adios!

ORB Love

2011-09-18T12:54:00.000-07:00

Hi guys! ("hey guys" it's such a northern thing to say. Down here everyone says, "y'all" instead. Which I just can't bring myself to say just quite yet, unless I'm kidding.). Today feels weird!! Weird because we woke up to rain and we haven't had rain in like, ya know, forever. It also feels weird because I haven't really seen my hubby for like, a month. And no, I'm not prone to exaggeration if you were wondering. No, but really, he's been swamped at work (swamped as in, working til 1:30 am every day), just got home from a conference, and is now pressed super hard to finish a side job that's due tomorrow. He told me stayed up til 12:30 this morning working on his side project and finally decided to go to bed after he realized he'd fallen asleep at his computer.

Don't get me wrong, I'm so thankful for his job at The Met and I'm thankful for his side business (paying for a birth out of pocket isn't exactly, umm, cheap). But we're both ready for this season of craziness to be over. We get a good two weeks or so of "normal" hours until he leaves for Uganda. Whew.

I've been staying busy with house projects. Since staying home with B, I feel the need to complete projects BY MYSELF. To feel a sense of accomplishment. To say to myself, I did it, I can still get projects done even though I don't make a regular paycheck (besides my part-time nanny job). I took an ugly glass and gold light fixture from our entry way, taped it up (which took for-ever), spray painted it with 4 coats of oil rubbed bronze (ORB for you younghouselove followers) and I think it turned out great!! Here's the before and after:

BEFORE:

AFTER:

I loooove ORB. It's a dark brown with specks of metallic color and it looks awesome. We also bought a spray can of silver/metallic paint so we could spray paint our gold ceiling fans. We started with the one in our master bedroom. I'd rather have a sweet looking light fixture above our bed, but it's Texas, and it's hot, so a ceiling fan is a necessity. No before to show, but I'm sure you can imagine a gold ceiling fan.

We recently bought a $70.00 round pedestal table from Goodwill that I've painted white. Once I finish the project (I'm applying a few coats of polycrylic to it), I'll post some photos up here. I'm affectionately calling our baby in utero our spray paint baby. Ha!

Odds and Ends

2011-09-16T12:55:00.000-07:00

-This morning was our second MOPS meeting of the year. You all know my love of MOPS from previous posts. Our first meeting was a crafts meeting (we rotate crafts and speakers). We made a cute chalkboard canvas- here's Brennan modeling the one I made for his new bedroom:

- I think I told y'all how Jon traded in his video camera for a Canon 7D, right? Well, the camera is amazing. You don't have to be a good photographer, it just takes good pictures! Friends of ours just had a baby girl and asked me to take some photos for them with the new camera. She is a doll, check her out:

-We moved into our new house in May and worked hard on it for a few weeks, I wrote our progress out here and here. Well, then I found out I was pregnant and about a week later became super sick. And all progress came to a halt. Thankfully, I've been feeling pretty darn good (yay 2nd trimester, I loooove you) so we've started working on the house again. I ORB'd some fixtures around the house, here's a before and after of our dining room light fixture:

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Please ignore the dead grass in the first picture. Texas is in DROUGHT and we decided to let the backyard grass go. Jon does water the front lawn, but it would have cost us and arm and a leg to keep the back yard watered. Not worth it. It'll pop up again as soon as it rains, if it ever rains. I find myself praying for a tropical storm or a hurricane or SOMETHING. Plus, there have been many wildfires in Texas and the state just needs some rain.

Ok, that's enough for now. How's that for an update?? Maybe a baby bump picture next time? Nahhh

Look Whose Back!

2011-09-15T06:51:00.000-07:00

Okay guys.

You did it. You convinced me to keep the blog up and running. Those last two comments on my last blog did me in. Hilarious. And also Erin and Judy's jabs on Facebook helped too.

I think time just got away, I was non-functional this summer due to nausea and then we left for two weeks and then I got wrapped up in our lives here. . . being a CASA, heading up playgroup, Wednesday morning Bible Studies, being on steering for MOPS, watching Kennady 20 hours per week, ORB'ing half of our lighting fixtures, etc. But I'm ready to start again (I think)!

Jon's away at the Story Conference in Chicago (I am SO so so going with him next year, fyi) so I'm going to attempt to blog during Brennan's "nap" today. I say "nap" loosely because he's started fighting it. Oh two and a half. And Kennady's here, so who knows what'll happen. But be on the look-out!!

Grateful to be Pregnant and Grateful for My Husband

2011-08-02T08:49:00.000-07:00

Guess what?

After 8 weeks of feeling so crummy I could barely move myself from the couch to our bed, I just vacuumed our entire house. By myself. In one fell swoop. And didn't feel like puking the entire time. Can you even imagine? Annnd, I drank a cup of coffee (Erin, can you believe it??) Now, I don't want to jinx myself, but wow, that feels amazing. I'm 12 weeks along, could this be the end of the "N" word? Crossing my fingers. . .

I should back up. We found out we were pregnant the first week of June. We were both in a little bit of shock because it happened like, the first month we tried. But we are so happy! This baby is so wanted!

At about 6 weeks I got stomach flu like symptoms the entire weekend. It was the beginning of my "morning sickness". What moron coined the term "morning sickness" anyways? I haven't met one woman who had nausea only in the morning. Anyways, it's been a rough 8 weeks. Jon called my OB and asked for a prescription of Zofran for the nausea and then picked it up for me at our pharmacy. I didn't even look at the bottle, it was small white pills and the pharmacy slip said "for nausea" so I assumed it was Zofran. Fast forward to our 10 week appointment with our OB and I'm telling her how I'm so tired I can barely function and she mentions, "oh, that's because we prescribed you Phenergan, not Zofran". ARE YOU SERIOUS??

As soon as I stopped taking the Phenergran, I was still nauseous, but I'd rather be nauseous than nauseous AND exhausted. I'm still pretty mad about that. Needless to say, because of other reasons besides that, I've switched OB's and am now seeing a Midwife whom I really like!

I kind of feel like my whole life as been falling apart a little bit lately. I'm too sick to exercise so I feel like my body is in a state of atrophy. And we've eaten pretty poorly, and Brennan has gotten used to having a mom who lays on the playroom floor rather than playing with him. All you women out there know the 1st semester fog and know what I'm talking about. But I know I'm on the upswing and it will be worth it.

Let me tell you who the rock star of the family is though: Jon. He seriously has been amazing. I'm so darn thankful for him. He cooked, grocery shopped, took care of Brennan, made him meals ahead of time so I just had to re-heat his lunches, he basically took over all our household duties. And he never complained. Dang, I am thankful for that man.

And now I'm about to cry. Oh, pregnancy.

We leave tomorrow for Michigan for two weeks! I am sooo excited to see these people:

And these people:

Toodles!!

Coming This February. . .

2011-08-01T08:54:00.000-07:00

Just Another Day in Paradise/ it's too hot to do anything else. . .

2011-07-13T14:24:00.000-07:00

What are you guys up to this afternoon? This is my view:

(Crickets)

2011-07-10T14:15:00.000-07:00

(crickets, crickets).

The sound of my blog as of late. So sorry! I've tried updating a couple times and blogger kept giving me an error! Plus is the dog days of summer 'round here and I just haven't felt the blog love. But I'm back! At least, I'll try to be back!! VBS starts tomorrow, so we'll see how much I actually blog.

This past Saturday, we were invited to a grape pick at a vineyard down here. I was a little worried about Brennan overheating, but he did great. We got to see the grape crushing, tour the property and were able to bring home a few bottles of their own wine. Thank you Jason and Crystal for the invite!!

We also went to Academy and bought B a pool for the backyard. As I mentioned, it's dern hot down here and somedays, I just want to throw him (and possibly myself) in the pool without driving to the pool in our neighborhood.

I think it's safe to say he loves it. We put it on the patio, with the patio umbrella providing shade. When you get a small breeze and have a cold drink, and stick your feet in the pool, it's not to shabby.

Hope y'all are staying cool. I'd take this over a Michigan winter any day of the week. But still, whew. I need to get myself a cold drink. Adios!

Lots o' Firsts

2011-06-25T14:56:00.000-07:00

Brennan has had a lot of firsts these past couple of weeks. I am so darn thankful that a lot of these transitions are going so well. Like my friend Trisha said, he's making us for the first year of his life, haha!

Like I mentioned before, he's basically potty trained! As a first time mama, it was an area I was kind of nervous about. I think the trick was that whenever we were home, we let him run around in his birthday suit (or with underwear on, Thomas the Train underwear if you must know). I read that tip from this blog. When the kiddos have accidents, you can tell them, "see that, that's you going pee pee (or tee tee as the southerners say). After a half day of accidents, he was starting to get the concept and sitting himself on the potty. I think it makes them aware of that sensation, when he was wearing a diaper, it was like he didn't even know he was going. We are facing one hiccup: he won't go without his potty insert, which means he won't go on public toilets! Any advice on this? I would hate to carry that potty seat around with me everywhere I go. ewww. Sometimes we just keep him in underwear when we're out and about and sometimes he wears a diaper. Usually he just holds it til we get home, but sometimes not (aka Target on Friday night).

Another big first for B, we took him to the movie theatres for the first time! We saw Cars 2. He sat in awe the entire time. Didn't make a peep. As for the movie? It was a bit intense, much different than Cars. I don't think it's anything terrible, but it seemed like a lot for a 2 year old.

And lastly, after finding Brennan reading his books instead of taking a nap last week (he had crawled out of his crib unbeknownst to me), we decided to switch his crib into a toddler bed. It has gone swimmingly. Not a big deal at all. He hasn't gotten out of bed at night or during naps (so far). Score 2 for the big B (not to be confused with Biggby, which I immensely miss).

Happy Father's Day!!!

2011-06-20T09:19:00.000-07:00

I am blessed to have an awesome, God fearing Dad, great Father in law, and a wonderful daddy to our kiddos. The trifecta. Happy Father's Day to all three of you!

On a completely unrelated note. We have the bathroom mirror project almost completed. Here's a quick before and after of the master bathroom:

BEFORE

AFTER

I think it looks so much better! We still need to paint over the caulk and finish the guest bathroom, but hey, progress! I got the idea from pinterest and we basically followed this blog's tutorial.

House Project Updates

2011-06-14T13:44:00.000-07:00

We've been in our new house for a little over a month now. I thought it'd be fun to look back at what we've gotten accomplished on it so far. Maybe as a little nudge to help us continue working on it, a little encouragement so to speak.

So here she goes, here's what we've gotten done on the house 1.25 months in:

*Painted the living room and master bedroom

*Washed windows inside and out

*Put up shelves in garage and made work bench (not shown):

*Cleaned out garage

*Caulked guest bathroom tub

*Hacked down shrubs in front yard

*In progress, framing both bathroom mirrors (this is our "before" picture, and yes, I'm standing in the tub to take the photo):

*Installed new gate lock in back yard (crazy 2 year old could run, slam his body against the gate door, and open it up despite it being locked!)

*Made mantel monogram "A" (thank you Erin Z for the idea, I think I stole it from you, but I can't remember!):

*Bought and installed new light fixture in kitchen

*Sanded and painted areas where pest control made holes in our wall (pest control is a must down here)

*Put up new ceiling fan in living room

Gosh, there seems like there is more, but I can't remember. Mad props go to Jon, who did the majority of the projects above. I'm a blessed woman.

P.S. Although Brennan was a bear last week due to teething, he's made up for it this week by potty training himself. Seriously. He walks into the bathroom, asks us to turn on the lights, and he sits himself down and goes. This kid is awesome.

Saturday and Bumper Stickers

2011-06-12T12:35:00.000-07:00

I'm excited to post a little house project that Jon and I have been working on (well, I did cut two pieces of wood, that counts, right?). But it's not done yet so I must wait.

But we really did have just the best Saturday yesterday. I went to a MOPS steering retreat in the morning (which was exciting!!) and Jon got some good one on one time with the B man. After I came home, and Brennan got a nap, we hit the pool in our neighborhood. Brennan is finally to the age where he'll jump into the pool into your arms and he loves the pool. After swimming, we went to Chili's for dinner and had a family movie night watching "Madagascar". Ahhh, I love Saturdays. Then Jon and I sweated our faces off working on our house project in the garage, but that's beside the point.

In other news, I love Texas bumper stickers. They are awesome. Check out some of my favorites:

And my personal favorite:

Oh, Texas. I have no words. I do love living here, but some things are just over the top times ten.

Two year molars = poke my eye out with a stick

2011-06-08T20:23:00.000-07:00

Dudes.

Brennan is getting his two year molars in. Which, ya know, I never thought would be a big deal. But holy cow.

He's teethed before (obviously) and it's been the normal whiny, drooly stuff. But this time, totally different. He had a fever yesterday and literally looked sick. He layed around on the couch and wouldn't sleep unless I was holding him. Today, he was a hot mess, again wouldn't nap and is now crying himself to sleep. It's 10:23 and he still hasn't fallen asleep. This is sooo not our child. But we know it's teething because he is sticking his two fingers back on his two molars and chomping on them. And we felt back there and he has one tiny little piece of the molar that has popped through, but that's it. Whew.

How long did it take your two year old to get their molars through? Did you have to deal with symptoms like this?

I miss my happy baby, come back to us soon, son!!

Vintage Park this past weekend. Our favorite hang out place!

Brazos Bend

2011-06-05T14:06:00.000-07:00

We spent our Saturday at Brazos Bend State Park, just south of Houston. We really like exploring what Houston has to offer and love the different wildlife. We were a little concerned about the heat seeing that the heat index was 102 for the day. But it had a lot of shade, and a good breeze, and honestly, the heat wasn't too bad. Thank you Jesus!

Brennan sandwich on the lookout deck

We rode our bikes on a couple paths around lakes and were able to see a ton of alligators. This little man was hanging out on the bike path so we rode by one by one.

Chillin' in the water

Nate, Cailey and Brennan

We went with friends of ours and picnicked afterwards under a huge tree. I told Jon I want one of these in our backyard, tehehe.

Gym, I'm not a Rat.

2011-06-02T12:00:00.000-07:00

Here's today's weather from weather.com (my screen shot):

Not sure if you can see it, but it says 101. Feels like 156 (I don't exaggerate, right Meg?). Lord have mercy. Anyways, I've decided to get a gym membership every summer since most of our main activities have ended for the summer and it allows me to work-out and Brennan to get some socialization in. If I didn't, we'd stay in the house all summer long and that'd be pathetic. I just joined 24 hour fitness which is down the road from us and really convenient.

So far, I love it! I took a boot camp class yesterday that was a full one hour of intense plyometrics (jump moves), lunges, squats and a little step. I died. Today, I die. Saw the whole life flash before my eyes in the middle of planks with a twist. I just took a quick 15 minute hot bath while both Brennan and Kennady napped because I hurt. All over. Bad. But it feels soo good. I'm totally going next week. And I'm stocking up on more Advil.

House Tour

2011-06-01T05:50:00.000-07:00

Our new house is still very much under construction. Lots and lots of things we are working on and needing to do to it, but I thought it'd be fun to show a quick tour of the house "as is" this Tuesday morning.

Two things. There is a part 1 and part 2. Please watch Part 1 first. It's kind of funny. And he didn't pee on the floor, THIS TIME. Also, you may want to let it buffer all the way through before watching it.

(p.s. I'm sorry for the bad quality, it was either bad quality or editing it into three different segments and I didn't have the patience to do that.)

Part 1 (i.e. what it's like to try and get something done while being a mom):

Part 2:

Quick weekend home

2011-05-30T18:15:00.000-07:00

Happy Memorial Day everyone!

I just got back from an awesome (but too quick) weekend in Michigan with my family hosting Catherine's wedding shower. Here is the quick run down:
I had the worst travel day ever, but made (miraculously) both flights and arrived in Detroit around noon on Friday. If I ever recover, I'll blog about what happened.
Meg, Catherine and my mom picked me up from the airport and we went out to lunch and did some super fun shopping at Meg's favorite store, Trader Joe's. I love those women. Then we headed to my parents house, ate dinner, made our pom pom flowers and mom and I got to work baking and cooking for the shower.
Saturday, my dad took us out for breakfast and then we got to work at the church finishing the food preparation and decorating. Mad props go to dad who put up all our cute little Martha Stewart homemade pom pom flowers:

Our centerpieces were mason jars filled with fresh flowers, with ribbon and raffia tied around the middle and paper from the paper source.

Our menu was mini brownies with piped dyed frosting, mini cheesecake squares, cheesecake balls (Kym, those were amazing), truffles, lemon bars, a fresh fruit platter and a yummy salad with gorgonzola cheese, homemade candied walnuts, homemade poppyseed dressing and cranberries. YUM. We also had homemade lemonade and sparking flavored water for drinks.

Here's the pretty bride-to-be opening up gifts (with her helper, Kaitlin):

After the shower, I ran home to see my brothers really fast before they headed back to Lansing for a wedding they were both in. I'm bummed I wasn't able to see more of my family, but I knew it was going to be a short weekend.

Sunday, we all ate breakfast together and then mom drove me to the airport where I had a very smooth and uneventful flight home. Thank you Jesus. I'm pretty sure I'm going my skin will break-out for the next month due the Friday flight stress. Greeaaat.

Oh, and here's my latest bread baking success (from this book), straight up white sandwich bread:

P.S. HI again to Aunt Sue and Sarah! :)

2011-05-26T14:07:00.000-07:00

Apparently, the small child knows his Thomas the Train characters. This cracked me up.

Weekend Recap

2011-05-24T11:33:00.000-07:00

Hey friends!

Sorry I haven't blogged much lately! Lots and lots of stuff going on! The days are full of watching Brennan, or Brennan and Kennady, MOPS, Bible Study, playgroup, grocery shopping, cleaning the rental house, unpacking, unpacking, unpacking, etc. Thankfully this weekend was a little bit of a break and we got to catch up on some things. The third Friday of every month, The Met hosts Common Ground, which is a time for women to get together and hang out while working on all sorts of crafty-stuff. Some knit, some sew, some scrapbook, some just hang out and eat (yummy dessert is provided). I am working on a special scrapbook project so I went and got a lot done. Uninterrupted time to work and hang with girlfriends? Yes, please.

Saturday I woke up bright and early to hit up the Canyon Gate (our neighborhood's) garage sales. It was a bust. There were lots of garage sales, I just didn't find anything. We spent the rest of the day working on the house- Jon built wooden shelves for the garage and I washed the windows inside and out.

Some of the shelves in mid-progress

There aren't basements in the south. Did you know this? So we are using half of our garage to store items that were in our basement, hence the shelves for all our rubbermaid tubs. The other half will house our CRV.

Saturday night, Jon and I went out a date to celebrate our 7th anniversary! After working in 90 degree weather, we were ready to shower and clean up and eat!! We got lucky and someone cancelled their reservations at The Melting Pot and we were able to get in, woo hoo!! (note to self, don't wait until 3:00 day of to make reservations next time).

It.was.awesome. It was our first time and we looooved it. We were there from 7:30-10:00 just talking, taking our time, eating, relaxing. We got the Big Feast four course meal which included cheese fondue, salads, our main course (filet mignon, chicken, pork, shrimp and beef tenderloins) and chocolate fondue for dessert. Our server was so awesome, she took our photo and printed out the picture for us and gave us complimentary champagne. I was so full, it almost hurt (ok, it did hurt).

Sunday, after church, we went to the Art Car Parade in Houston with our friends, Andrew and Cathi (remember this from last year, mom A?)

(did your children ever go through a "the camera is the enemy phase?" B refuses to look at the camera.)

Did you also know that the south has fire ants? They do. And they are the devil. We unknowingly put our chairs down in fire ant heaven and Brennan has a few bites to prove it. I hate those things, part of the curse I tell ya.

This was my favorite car:

Some other cars in the parade:

Theme Song For Today

2011-05-20T11:23:00.000-07:00

Love to you all, be back soon!

Move and Mothers

2011-05-13T11:20:00.000-07:00

Yo. This is only my 15th attempt to get this post out. After a thunderstorm briefly took out our power, and then Brennan woke up crying from his nap due to said storm, and then I spilled Diet Coke, and then blogspot went down and lost my previous post, I'm finally getting it up (or am I?). Here she blows!!!

I wanted to post a few pictures of our big move day last Saturday. The guys did the actual moving and some girls met me at the new house to start unpacking. Carlee, Cherish and Crystal helped with the kitchen and I will be forever grateful.

The guys moving (James, you crack me up):

We decided not to rent a U-Haul truck because it was such a short move (.9 miles). Thankfully, our life group came out with trucks and a willingness to help. We only had one casualty, a stool that fell out of the truck, but thankfully we were going to be selling it on craigslist so it didn't really matter (part of a breakfast nook we no longer use).

We already feel more at home in this house than in our rental. Maybe because we know it's ours, or maybe because it actually has some paint on the ways, or probably both. Whichever, we are glad to be here!

The day after we moved was Mother's Day. Jon said my gift was being in the new house. :) Although, he did get me some other gifts and brought me starbucks for breakfast (my fav, marble mocha, nonfat milk, no whip, if you must know).

The fam on Mother's Day:

And the little man that made me a Mother (he thinks the map at The Met is his personal playground):

Love to you all!

And we're in!

2011-05-11T17:37:00.000-07:00

Hey y'all!!

I'm posting from the kitchen counter of our new house! We moved on Saturday and praise be to God, it was super smooth. The days leading up to the move, not so much smooth. But we got it all packed, thanks MOSTLY to dear friends who brought Brennan and I food (Laura), helped me pack the kitchen (Tammy) and packed up the living room (Shelly). I am so so so grateful to them.

We also had a lot of help moving on Saturday from our awesome life group at church. We started at 9 and by 1:00 most of our stuff had been moved here. I had some girlfriends helping me unpack as the guys brought stuff in and it worked out great. We had the kitchen and living room done by Saturday night. The rest of the rooms, however, are still mostly in boxes :)

We just got internet tonight, so I hope to upload my photos from my phone and do some more updating later this week.

Love to you all!

Packing's for Losers

2011-05-03T12:07:00.000-07:00

It's Tuesday afternoon and I haven't started packing yet and I'm blogging. Why you ask? Because I am a slacker, that's why. And because I figure if I just wait long enough, the magic packing fairy will come to my house and save me from my troubles.

We did however, get the living and our bedroom painted at the new house, hooray!! We spent all day Saturday, all day Sunday and last night and finished her up. And we got a lot of the small, little things done, such as buying new smoke detectors and batteries (remember this post?), changing filters, changing out locks, buying a garage door remote, etc. It's getting warm in Houston so we are becoming especially thankful that our new house is very energy efficient (double pane windows and radiant barrier in the attic).

I'm still baking my way through this book, however my last attempt wasn't so pretty. It looked like this:

A weird looking bread triangle.

It was supposed to look like this:

I don't have a pizza peel and you're supposed to use the peel to simply slide the bread from the peel to the oven. However, I had to pick up the bread and transfer it to the oven which resulted in the weird looking bread. Oh well, still tasted good!

Off to pack (I think.. .)

PAINTING

2011-04-30T15:30:00.000-07:00

We decided to paint our living room and hopefully, our master bedroom before we move in. I say "hopefully" because who knows if we'll get to it or not. We move in 6 days and I haven't even started packing!! Anyways, it's much easier to paint before we move in so I'm hoping we can get it all done.

I went to Lowe's and picked up some samples. Living room samples:

We decided to go with the bottom right (Lyndhurst Timber from Valspar using No-Voc paint) as an accent wall and the bottom left (Dusty Trails Olympic paint) for the rest of the walls. I got the idea to use Dusty Trails from this blog.

Bedroom samples:

We went with the far left sample, Valspar's Metropolis (again in no-voc)

Our friends offered to watch Brennan today so we could get a chunk of the painting done. I had visions of Brennan running around and touching walls and smearing it across the floor.

Tomorrow, we paint again!

Quick Update

2011-04-26T06:08:00.000-07:00

I wanted to update real quick like because I haven't in a while. Brennan has a friend coming over to play and then we close on our new house and I'm nannying Kennady all day so it's going to be a fast update, so sorry! Here's some quick photos of what we've been up to:

I made a wreath!

Closer shot

We've been going to lots of birthday parties. Here is Brennan and Barrett at Colton's party this past Saturday.

I'm continuing to bake my way through this book. Latest: ciabatta bread. I had gotten the book out from the library but I like it so much I just ordered it from amazon.

And lastly, we've been playing outside a ton. This is Brennan and his cars.

Oh, and here is the video that Jon and Andrew (and others) made for Easter services on Sunday. It's a little long, but worth the watch.

The Road from The MET Church on Vimeo.

I'm hoping to update soon with pictures of our new house and the painting process and all that. See you soon!

The Guild Shop

2011-04-20T13:17:00.001-07:00

Jon had to work all day Saturday doing a video shoot for Easter. I was determined not to sit at home all day so I loaded up the B man in the car and we headed towards downtown Houston to hit up The Guild Shop. I had read about it on this blog and it looked amazing. I had high hopes.

It turned out to be a big fat FAIL. The store itself was awesome, awesome, awesome. But it really was a total fail. First of all, we hit a huge traffic jam on I-45 and it took us forever to get to the store. I love Houston traffic, did I ever tell you guys that? Then the store made me dump out my yet-to-be drank coffee (oh no you didn't!) before I could shop. Then they told me I couldn't have a stroller in the store.

I tried to gently lead my 2 year old son through an antique store FULL of glass and ceramic and vases and plates and frames but alas, it was stressful. And then about 5 minutes into perusing the store, I noticed Brennan had lost his two favorite race cars he was toting around in the store. So I ran around the store looking for Lightning McQueen and Mater. Luckily I found them near the antique toys (should have known). I was sweating and stressed and Brennan was miserable.

After that, we hightailed it out of there and went home to play outside, which we probably should have done from the beginning. But I'd rather try and fail at sometime than sit at home. So I'll leave ya with a tip, don't antique shop with a 2 year old in tow, ha!

Easter Prep

2011-04-14T11:38:00.001-07:00

Anyone who has a family member or friend that's on a church staff understands this: the two weeks before Easter (and Christmas) are CAAA-RAZY! Jon's been working over-time and will be until Easter Sunday. It's not too bad and I'm not meaning to complain, it just is what it is. And we close on our house two days after Easter, so that worked out great!

Unfortunately, Brennan woke up in the middle of the night on Tuesday with the stomach flu. Booo. I kept telling Jon to go back to sleep since he's got a lot on his plate but he wanted to make sure the B man was okay so he stayed up. It was our first experience with the stomach bug. I told Jon I think we earned our parenthood card. ha! Yesterday wasn't super fun but he seems to be on the up and up.

In other news, I'm currently reading this book and it is awesome.

It's about a family of four that chooses to live off of food that they grow in their own gardens or can buy locally for an entire year. It's seriously so interesting. I know, that's weird, right? Oh well. I'm weird.
She talks about teaching her kids to be patient and wait for the BEST- and food tastes it's best when it's in season. So unless it's canned or frozen, they don't eat strawberries unless strawberries are in season, or cucumbers, or whatever it may be. She also discusses the impact of pesticides and insects that are now presticide resistant and how organically grown foods have more antioxidants than conventional foods because they need those antioxidants for themselves simply because they are learned to grow in an environment where they have to fight off bugs and such. She also discusses why most people view local and organic foods as foods for rich people.

We haven't exactly jumped on the whole organic and local train ourselves (yet), especially seeing that this is what I made for dinner.

2011-04-12T19:19:00.000-07:00

Still working/baking my way through this book. Last night I baked this batard loaf. It was sooo good if I do say so myself. Tomorrow night, it's ciabatta time!

And here's some more sneak peaks of our house. The formal dining room:

We hope to eventually put down hard wood floors in this room, paint the lighting fixture to an oil rubbed bronze and maybe even put up some wainscotting.

This is the office:
We're still not sure if this is going to be an actual office, or a playroom or what. No major plans for this room for a while though.

I hope you're all doing well! It's been super gorgeous weather these past few months so we've been outside a lot (gotta get in our outside fix because June hits, ha!). Jon's working on a pretty decent sized side project and I've started packing so our evenings are filled with work! But it's good work so we're happy. Take care!

Quote

2011-04-11T11:46:00.000-07:00

I saw this quote on moneysavingmom the other day and loved it.

"The real measure of your wealth is how much you’d be worth if you lost all your money." -Author Unknown

I like to move it, move it. . .

2011-04-09T12:46:00.000-07:00

Can you believe this- we close on our house in two weeks. Two weeks. And this will be our third move in less than two years. Wowsers. My mom motivated me to get off my hiney and start the packing process. We went to Target and bought six bins (which I've been meaning to do, promise mom!). We pretty much have all of Brennan's non-essentials packed!

I dropped my parentals and Steve off at the airport about two hours ago, le sigh. We had an awesome time together! The Dad and Steve played a lot of tennis, my mom and I got some home decor shopping done for our new house, the parents went on a date night out to the Woodlands Market Street, and we spent quite a bit of time outdoors (they enjoyed our back patio for their morning devo time:)

Welp, would love to fill y'all in more, but this chica needs to start packing!

Ohhhh, Bread!

2011-04-07T18:36:00.000-07:00

As you know, I'm trying to bake my way through this book. I've already baked a boule:

And yesterday, I baked a baguette:

Two successes, whoop!!

We've had a wonderful week with my parents and Steve-O so far. They've watched B for us so we could go on a date night (mediterannean food, my new favorite, and Lowe's, ha!). We've checked out Harwin, which is a super cheap shopping district where you can score really awesome jewelry. We had not been before so it was kind of a drag for the boys, but mom and I had fun!
We've eaten Tex-Mex at Los Cucos and chilled at home playing my favorite game, bananagrams! Tomorrow is their last full day and they leave Saturday afternoon. But, I'll leave you with another sneak peek of our new house!

SNEAK PEEKS

2011-04-06T12:35:00.000-07:00

A few shots of our week so far. . . .

Mom and Brennan playing bubbles together (one of his favs)

Opening birthday presents from Grammy and Grandpy (sorry it's such a bad photo, Steve!)

A sneak peek at the house (we took mom and dad by to show them the new digs). . .

Another sneak peek. . . living room and kitchen.

Weekend Recap

2011-04-05T14:04:00.000-07:00

Hey guys!

It's been an eventful weekend!! Friday night I watched Kennady (the sweet baby girl I nanny once a week) until 8:00. Then Jon and I cleaned the house, set up beds, extra, attempting to start preparing for my parents arrival the very next day. I even sent Jon out grocery shopping at 10:30 at night because we literally had no food in the house.

Saturday morning I went for a run (and ohh, for some reason, I felt TERRIBLE). Anyways, I rounded the corner to head towards home and saw flames shooting out of our neighbors house. Thinking back, I should have gone straight to their house, but I sprinted home to get Jon and we headed over there. There were already two other neighbors outside. We knocked on the other neighbors house to get them out of their houses in case the fire spread. We talked very quickly about going inside to see if anyone was in there but it was already completely covered in smoke.

About 5 minutes later (but it felt like eternity), the firefighters arrived. They actually asked Jon to help move the fire hose. It was a little traumatic. We saw them pull a lady out and put a tarp over her. We found out later that two women had died. We still don't know what caused the fire.

After that little event, we ran some quick errands and then I picked my parents and little brother, Steve up from the airport. They had tickets to the Final Four games which were held in Houston, so my brother, dad, and Jon went straight to the Reliant Center where the games were held. My mom and I went out to dinner, went shopping at Hobby Lobby, worked on the yard and cooked.

WHEW. Will update again soon with the rest of our adventures. I'm just thankful for my parents and their sacrifice to come down here to be with us and help out. We love them.

Bread

2011-04-01T20:20:00.000-07:00

So I recently got the book, "Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day" out of the library and it's been rockin' my world! The basic premise is that making fresh, homemade bread everyday is doable and should not take up hours of your time. It takes about 15 minutes to make the initial dough, but you keep that dough in your fridge (for up to 14 days) and tear off a small 1 lb portion every time you want to make a loaf and bake it.

My goal is to bake my way through this book (and run 25 miles a day to make up for the calorie influx). I'll try to keep track of my progress here on the ol' blogger. I'm excited!! I started with the boule (see photo above) and it turned out really yummy! There's flatbreads and naam (ohhh, who doesn't love naan), pitas, challah, bagels, etc.

STATS

2011-03-31T06:41:00.000-07:00

Brennan Joseph Ackerman

Likes:
- Cars
- "Cars" the movie
- Being outside
- Playing with other kiddos and being social (I swear, he should be on the welcoming committee at church)
- Fruit

Dislikes:
- Time-outs
- Getting his nails cut
- Coming in from outside
- Meat

Weighs: 30 lbs

Parents: Jon and Chaeli. We're falling in love with him more and more everyday. The 2's are awesome!

C'mon Man!

2011-03-29T07:42:00.000-07:00

Jon writes, shoots, and edits videos for a living for The Met church and I realized last night that I hardly ever post the videos he's created on here. Our church just finished up a series called "C'Mon Man", a look at biblical manhood and here's a video that he and his co-worker, Andrew, created. I hope you enjoy it!

Birth

2011-03-27T18:39:00.000-07:00

Early Friday morning I got to witness a miracle!! (how's that for an opener??). My sweet friend Lynne, and her husband, James, invited me to attend the birth of their baby girl, Rose. Looooong story short, I have a individual insurance plan with Aetna and in the state of Texas, unless you are under a group insurance plan, you cannot get maternity coverage. In fact, you can't even buy a maternity rider. If Jon and I wanted to have a 2nd while living in Texas, we'd either have to pay around $12K out of pocket to have a baby in a hospital or we could have the baby with a midwife in a birthing center for around $5500.00. We were telling James and Lynne all of this and they thought it would be really good for me to observe a birth with a midwife attending. And let me tell you, it was a privilege and an honor to be there. Watching James coach Lynne in the privacy of their own home was ahhhmazing. Painful and peaceful all at once. I wont go into detail because I want to honor their privacy, but James and Lynne, THANK YOU for inviting me, you two amaze me. And yes, I balled my eyes out. (and almost passed out or puked all at once during one moment but I really think it was because I had been up since 3 am and I hadn't ate anything.)

It reminded me of my birth with Brennan. I always wondered what it would have felt like not to have been loaded to my eyeballs with pitocin.

Sneak Peak

2011-03-25T13:18:00.000-07:00

It's under contract, people!! Inspection went pretty well but the gas and water were not turned on for the inspection, so our inspector has to go back out and check those two things out. We're still crossing our fingers! I'll post more photos of the inside once all the i's are dotted and t's are crossed. But here's the basic details for ya:
4 bedrooms
2 bathrooms
1 office
1 formal dining
1 kitchen
1 living room
1 back yard (woo hoo, though not as big as we were hoping)
1 flagstone patio (hello, gorgeous)

Some boos:
Not on a cul de sac (we really wanted to be on one)
Not a big back yard (but hello, it's suburban Houston, we had to realize that to get that here, we'd need to really up our price, and the hubby works full time at a church, don't ya know.)
If I had my choice, I'd take out the office and make the living room bigger, since that's where we spend the most of our time. We have a huge living room in our rental house and I looove it.
Looks tiny from the front (i.e. not a lot of curb appeal)

Big pros:
Below our target price!
LOVE the neighborhood (it's in our current neighborhood, .9 miles from where we live now!)
LOVE the school district
4 bedrooms!
Gas stove (I like to cook, this was one of my wants)
1 story
Fire place!
It's in a gated neighborhood (but that's also kind of annoying that we have to have a home phone)

It was a rental for a few years before the owner decided to sell it, so it's pretty plain jane on the inside. I think that's part of the reason my heart doesn't really skip a beat when I think of the house. But I'm trying very hard to envision it with paint and all our belongings. Pro: it's a blank canvas, right!?

We'll keep you up to speed on how everything proceeds, thanks for your prayers!

Livestock Show

2011-03-21T12:13:00.000-07:00

(Update: Hey guys!! We did end up making an offer on a house- the sellers counter offered, we counter offered, and they accepted! I don't want to post photos or information until it's a done deal, but we're excited!!)

Besides the Houston Rodeo, there is also the Livestock show going on at the same time. There's all sorts of things to do, a petting zoo, shopping, a birthing center, pig races, more mutten bustin', etc. We took our family while they were in town visiting.

Riding on the tram from the parking lot to Reliant Stadium

Children's section- learning how food goes from crops to the grocery store.

Petting zoo!

I looked down and Brennan was fast asleep.

Birthday party!

2011-03-21T11:58:00.000-07:00

For Brennan's birthday party this year, I decided to have a jungle theme. He would have preferred a CARS themed birthday but too bad. :) Here's some photos of the party:

I put Jon and Ron in charge of turning the columns into palm trees. You would have thought I tasked them with solving the problems in the middle east with the amount of complaining I heard from them. :)

A shot of the trees/columns

We had a coloring station on the back patio with monkey photos and stickers.

The cake and birthday banner

Judy, Erin and I made this cake together and I was soo happy with the way it turned out!!

Happy Birthday, Brennan!!

Present opening!

Zoo Time!

2011-03-21T11:50:00.000-07:00

Living a thousand miles away from any family makes us sooo thankful when family comes and visits! Jon's parents flew down to visit with us for a week and help us celebrate Brennan's 2nd birthday. His sister, Erin, and her two kiddos also came to visit. Our first day together, we decided to go to the Houston Zoo while Jon worked.

There is a pretty cool children's section at the zoo and the boys loved playing with the otters!

We also got the check out the new African section of the zoo. Check out the rhino!

Here are the boys next to the Gorilla cages:

Besides me not being able to find parking (errr), it was a fun day! And I think we effectively wore the boys out. :)

Rodeo, yeehaw!!

2011-03-21T11:21:00.000-07:00

My dear friend, April, came and visited us for a few days during the Houston Rodeo. We were sooo glad to have her here! She lived on my floor my freshman year at Cornerstone University and we've been friends ever since. She's part of my college girlfriends group- the group of us that were in a bible study all throughout college and still get together even though we live across the country.
She was here for my first time watching my little nanny client- it was so nice to have her support and advice since she was a nanny after college.

After nannying for a bit, we went out to lunch at Coco's Crepes and then headed out to the Rodeo. We had awesome seats, a few rows up from where they keep the animals:

We found ourselves laughing hilariously the entire time. There was muttin bustin' (where kids ages 5-6 ride a sheep across the stadium for as long as they can hold on), cart races, calves haulin', I mean, it's funny stuff.

After the rodeo, was the Kieth Urban show. They bring in a huge rotating stage onto the floor of the stadium. I'm a horrible photographer, here's the best shot I got:

April- I know you don't read blogs, but if you ever happen to read this, THANK YOU for visiting us during your vacation. We're already looking forward to next year's rodeo!

HEB Lovin'

2011-03-18T07:00:00.000-07:00

There's a store in Texas (maybe it's a southern store, or a regional store, I really don't know), that's called HEB and it is THE best grocery store in my opinion. It has serious service, every time. It has super fresh food, the best selection of foods, great selection of natural foods, and Jon's personal favorite, a huge cheese counter. :) Anyways, I am apart of a survey group and I got picked (hooray) to be a comparison shopper for HEB!

Basically, they give you $150.00 to buy whatever you want in their store. An HEB employee than buys everything you just bought at a competitors grocery store to compare prices. $150.00 of free groceries? Yes, please. We were so thankful for the provision! I stocked up on toilet paper, lots of dishwashing soap and laundry soap, a huge thing of olive oil, diapers, wipes, etc. It was so fun!

Thank you HEB! You have the BEST produce and meat selection and I LOVE your store!! Now please start doubling and tripling coupons so I can buy other items there, too!

Jibber Jabber

2011-03-17T11:52:00.000-07:00

I just love my son so much. Every day, I love him more. However, we're getting to a point in his communication skills where it's becoming frustrating for us both. For example, earlier this afternoon he wanted to go out on our back patio to play, but he wanted two cars to play with. He kept repeating the same words over and over again and I kept saying, "I don't understand, what cars do you want??" and the process repeated itself for 10 minutes. He was frustrated I couldn't understand him and I was frustrated I couldn't help him out. He was apparently looking for two particular cars, I just didn't know which ones they were.
We're at the stage where he just REPEATS and repeats. He actually speaks very clearly most of the time but if you can't figure out what he's saying, he doesn't know what else to do but keep repeating the same words. It's cute, MOST of the time, ha!

What we've been up to.. .

2011-03-15T10:01:00.000-07:00

Brennan's Jungle themed 2nd birthday party:

Jon and I went to the Houston Rodeo with our friend, April and had awesome seats!:

Jon's parents, sister Erin, and her two sweet kiddos came down to visit with us:

(Mom and Baby Lincoln at the zoo)

Hope to update again soon!

2011-03-07T12:53:00.000-08:00

Hello!!

I'm a little sleep deprived mixed with excitement and other emotions so if this blog entry is a little whacko, so sorry.

Our ahhh-mazing Life Group at the Met, Growing Covenant, had a ladies retreat this past weekend from Friday to Saturday late afternoon (which did not cause the sleep deprivation, but definitely added to it). It was sooo fantastic! And I was a ding-dong and took 0 photos, so sorry. We laughed, ate, studied scripture, played wii dance dance revolution, etc. Then I came home and we immediately left to meet our realtor to look at some potential houses (all were a big fat FAIL).

Today I had the couple I'm nannying for (did I tell you all that?) come over for a while just to check out the house and meet Brennan. I am nannying for a 7 week old just once a week and am SO very thankful for the job! I randomly posted my application on a nanny website and a couple from Cypress contacted me needing a nanny one day a week, which is all I wanted to do. A little extra income for plane tickets and such. Hooray!

But I'm super excited because in about an hour, I'm going to pick my good friend, April up! She's visiting with us for a few days and going with us to the Keith Urban show at the Houston Rodeo tomorrow night. Can.not.wait. It's my first rodeo experience. I plan on totally getting into it. :)

We drop her off at the airport on Wednesday morning and Wednesday afternoon, the Ackermans and 3/4 of the Zubert clan flies in to visit for a week. Can I hear an Amen? We haven't seen them since Christmas, very excited for the visit!!

I may not be posting much for the next week or so but I'll try to put up some photos. Here are a few to tide you over for a while:

On Brennan's birthday, he's in a diaper due to the eating of cupcakes.

This photo is for John and Kym. . . B watching the Thomas video you got him. He's a bit addicted. It's actually becoming a problem, thanks a lot! :)

Brennan decided to color on our couches. Thank goodness we bought these with the stain treatment so virtually everything comes out of them with the wipe of a wet towel. Best decision ever!

Brennan's Birthday and D-Now

2011-02-28T06:58:00.000-08:00

Brennan's birthday was last Thursday and we decided to do a low-key celebration since his party isn't for 2 more weeks. Being the awesome parents that we are, we woke up on Thursday morning and realized we hadn't bought him one present. Ha! So after getting him out of bed and singing Happy Birthday to him about 15 times that day, I took him to Target and let him pick out a Thomas train. I also made pizza (his favorite) and cupcakes for dinner. We had his friend, Barrett over to celebrate with us. And of course, I completely forgot to take photos (but Jon has video so maybe I can get that from him).

The cupcakes I made B had a yummy whipped topping that tasted like marshmallow creme. I can send you the recipe if you want!

Friday night and all day Saturday was D-Now for the Met students. An explanation of D-Now from the website,

"D-Now 2011 is a high energy "camp-like" weekend experience. Its an experience built around a TRUTH-focused biblical community allowing Students to build strong relationships within their groups, host homes, and weekend Experiences."

We weren't able to host a group of students because we didn't have enough transportation (bummed) so we volunteered on Saturday instead. The students competed in an Amazing Race and one of their stations was to drink 1 gallon of milk. And that's the station they put us at to host. Yep.

Luckily, the rules stated that one person could drink the entire gallon by themselves or they could pass it around between them (hello germs, how are you??). And there were only two pukers,so not too shabby. Honestly, it was SO MUCH FUN! I had a blast. After the Amazing Race, they had lunch (chick fil a), a worship set, a time of teaching, free time, etc. It was so well done for the students and I've heard stories that it was very impactful as well.

We also house-hunted on Saturday night and I'm almost convinced that buying a house could be as stressful as selling a house. See you soon!

Only in Texas. . .

2011-02-24T11:27:00.000-08:00

So the soaked rice turned out great! For anyone interested, here's the recipe I used (from this website):

2 cups long-grain or short-grain rice
4 cups pure warm water, plus 4 TB kefir, vinegar, or lemon juice
1 tsp. salt
2-4 Tbsp butter (real butter, puh-leease)

Combine the rice, water and yogurt (or kefir, lemon juice, vinegar) in a stock pot with a secure cover. Allow to soak for 7 or more hours if possible. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, add salt and butter, cover tightly. DO NOT REMOVE THE LID. Cook over the lowest possible heat, for about 45 minutes.
Variations: use 1 cup coconut milk, or homemade chicken, beef or fish stock for part of the liquid.

*Brown rice is the highest of all grains in B vitamins and it also contains iron, and vitamin E.

In other random news, I was driving down a major highway by our house heading to playgroup this morning and traffic came to a sudden stop. I was wondering what in the world was going on. Lo and behold, this was going on and I just had to take video on my cell as we drove by:

I asked some friends at playgroup about it and apparently these trailriders ride on their horses from all over Houston to the Reliant stadium downtown on Saturday to join the Rodeo parade and kick off Rodeo season. I googled it and found this article.
Tehehe, only in Texas. It's a whole 'nother world down here!

Chaeli

Houses, Healthy Food, Brennan is a crazy talker, etc.

2011-02-22T11:52:00.000-08:00

I've got a lot on my mind right now, we looked at a few houses with our realtor this morning and one that we really really like currently has an offer on the table (they're negotiating), so we're seriously considering offering on it TODAY. We'll see, we'll see.

(edit, we decided not to make the offer due to several reasons (one being the seller has a full price offer right now).

Regardless, something really cool happened with Brennan this weekend- he spoke an entire sentence! Jon and I were doing dishes in the kitchen and he came up whining. I said, "Brennan, use your words, what's the matter?" And he said, "I want Daddy to play choo choo (trains) with me". Holy cow! This child is growing up FAST!

I'm reading through the book Nourishing Traditions right now. It's about food and how modern methods of preparation and ingredients really isn't good for our bodies (microwaving, bleaching, heating to super high temperatures, etc.) I wish I understood more of the book but I just don't, it's a lot of medical talk I just don't get. But I have gleaned a few interesting points. Here ya go, take it or leave it, this is more for my benefit than yours, ha!:

- polyunsaturated oils and hydrogenated oils = BAD. Most people benefit from more fat in our diets than less but the fats must be chosen with care (i.e. evoo, good quality butter, etc).

-whole grains are great, but soaking them before eating them nuetralizes the phytates and enzyme inhibitors and basically predigest grains so that all their nutrients are more available to our bodies. (also helps people who are allergic to grains tolerate them much better). Both fats, carbs and proteins are devitalized by processing and refining (i.e. eat them in their whole state).

-animal fats are good (meat, eggs, milk).

-fermenting milk is a process that partically breaks down the lactose and casein and results in yogurt, kefir, etc. Helps people that have trouble digesting dairy. Pastuerization puts a strain on the bodys digestive mechanism because it takes about the enzyme content. However, not sure we're ready to jump onto the fresh milk wagon. Again, go with real butter.

I'm attempting to soak rice this afternoon, I'll letcha know how it turns out!

Toddler Games

2011-02-16T15:03:00.000-08:00

I recently got this book out of the library and I've been attempting to play at least one game a day with Brennan.

One of the ideas in the book is to put some flour, rice or cornmeal in a casserole dish or cookie sheet to let the toddler play in. It was a hit. I pulled up one of our chairs to our island and he played in it for at least 45 minutes.

This was his face when I told him to say "cheese":

I wisened up after a few minutes and stripped him down to his diaper, he was covered in flour!!

Homemade

2011-02-13T19:03:00.001-08:00

I posted this idea a few months ago from another blog I follow and finally decided to do it- easy peasy scrapbook paper pictures. What I love about this idea is that I can switch out the paper very easily and change the entire look. I bought 4 frames at Walmart for $12.00 and four pieces of scrapbook paper for $1.00 at Hobby Lobby. Not too shabby for $13.00! I wish I would have bought frames with very little border instead of these thick black ones, so that would be my suggestion to you if you're going to do it!

Today I made this tuxedo cake I found on this blog. I am really falling in love with cooking and baking and I love trying out new recipes. My goal is to try one new recipe a week. Anyways, I made this cake for Jon for Valentines Day and I'm pretty sure it's a winner. I had him try the whipped cream topping and he wouldn't stop eating it so I'm guessing he likes it. I'm bummed the chocolate glaze didn't turn out thicker, but I was running low on heavy whipping cream so I used evaporated milk instead, what can a girl do?

Anyways, those are some fun homemade things I've been doing lately.

Washing the car with Daddy

2011-02-13T18:54:00.000-08:00

The best part was when he got out his cozy coupe and started washing that. I love this kid.

It was warm and sunny here today so we headed outside after church and naps to enjoy it. Houston has terribly hot summers, but at least right now it's amazing out! We're thankful!

Chazown!

2011-02-11T11:49:00.000-08:00

Hey y'all.
We just found out we have tickets to go see Keith Urban at the Houston Rodeo this March. I'm now using "y'all" every day and going to the rodeo. That's what 18 months in Texas does to a woman. :) I kid, I kid. Kind of.

This weekend, The Met is hosting a Chazown experience and I'm going to go. Check out Chazown here. The staff took two days to go through Chazown earlier in January so Jon really encouraged me to go this time around when they offered it for everyone. I'm a little antsy from sitting in training for 2 weeks for CASA, but I'm sure it will be worth the time. Anyone else gone through Chazown?
From the website, Chazown is: "It's the Hebrew word for vision, and it's what God had in mind for you when you were created. Each of us is a masterpiece, placed on earth for a unique purpose that's solely ours to fulfill. Come uncover God's dream for your life - your Chazown."

Lots more going on around here but I need to run. We are completely out of breakfast food and I'm not going shopping again for at least a few more days. I'm going to make some cinnamon scones and cinnamon buns to get us through the next few days. Take care!

"Snow" Day

2011-02-05T10:58:00.001-08:00

Yesterday, Houston had a snow day. But it didn't snow. But there was some ice on the roads, so they shut down all the major highways and cancelled all schools and activities. We were bummed because I was supposed to have MOPS on Friday and there was a Parents Night Out that night. We had invited some friends over for a game night during PNO so we had to cancel that as well. BOOOO. Here's a brief recap of B and I's day at home:

He played with his cars behind the couch cushions (so weird, he loves to play with them in the couch cracks)

We colored together. And then he colored on his face, which leads us to the next photo. . .

(JUST KIDDING, NO NAKED PHOTO OF THE B MAN ON THE WEB!)

Then I gave him a bath and let him run around naked aftewards (his all-time favorite activity). I couldn't get him to stop running long enough to get a good photo.

I made kale chips.

After his nap, my friend Laura and her kiddos came over to play. We were both ready for a change of pace so it worked out great!

Today is sunny and 60 so we're heading outside to play, yay!! Stay warm, y'all.

Worship Night

2011-02-01T12:05:00.000-08:00

To cap off the 21 days of fasting at The Met, they had a worship night on Sunday night. It was awesome. The Spirit moved, it was thought provoking and fun and worshipful.

Sunday morning, Jon, B and I went downtown to watch our friend Cathi run the Houston Marathon. We were able to see her around miles 17, 22 and the finish line. It was perfect temperature but a little drizzly. I totally forgot to take my camera out of my purse so I don't have any photos. Of course I cried watching the people finish, just like I did last year. Cathi, we're super impressed by your work ethic, you're a rock star!!

I realized I hadn't put very many photos of Brennan on here in a while so these are for the Grandparents in Michigan!

"Helping" us roll out pizza dough Saturday night

B and Barrett swinging at Barrett's birthday party

Jon and B

I heard the Midwest is getting a huge snow storm today/tomorrow. . . stay safe and warm everyone! Dad, no crazy driving, you hear me? :)

2011-01-29T18:59:00.001-08:00

Well, we are pretty darn certain the B man has an ear infection but today was much better because Jon was home. Whew. On the drive from The Met to Chipotle last night for dinner, I wasn't sure I was going to make it. I was literally resting my forehead on the steering wheel while waiting at a light as Brennan cried/wailed in the background. If he's not doing better by Monday, I'll take him in to the doctor's for round 4/5 of antibiotics.

Anywho, today was a fun day! We went to a birthday party for a little boy who is 1 month older than Brennan. They are pals and his mom is such a blessing to me. We switch off babysitting so we can both go to hair appts and doctor appts and random stuff like that.

Afterwards, we went and looked at a few houses with our realtor. Here's the two we looked at:

*all images taken from har.com

Our lease isn't up until May so we aren't ready to buy just yet, we're just checking out homes we find interesting and researching neighborhoods (and whoo-wee, there are so many neighborhoods to choose from, it's a bit overwhelming). Neither of these were "the one". We made every mistake you could make when buying our first home so we feel almost like we're first time home buyers this time around. During FPU this past fall, Dave Ramsey went through the 10 biggest mistakes you can make when buying a home and Jon and I we're just dying, we had made like 8 of them! If you want tips on what not to do, give me a call. :)

Time for bananagrams, ha!

2011-01-28T18:30:00.000-08:00

Rough day with the B man. . . we think we has another ear infection (fourth or fifth since this fall) but we're not sure. Ugh. Catch ya on the upswing.

Chaeli

A Gentle Answer. . .

2011-01-27T11:17:00.000-08:00

"A gentle answers turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger." Proverbs 15:1, NIV

I've joined Beth Moore's Siesta Scripture Memory Team on her blog this year and I'm pretty pumped about it. The goal is to memorize 24 verses a year. You log onto her blog the 1st and 15th of every month as accountability, to write who you are and what your verse is for that two weeks. She recommends choosing scripture that pertains to your current life situation. This verse speaks to me in regards to disciplining Brennan, when he's upset or doing something he's not supposed to be doing, instead of yelling at him all day long, I'm trying to respond softly and gently. If we're telling him not to yell at us or others, but we turn around and yell at him, how is that teaching him? It helps calm me down and calm Brennan down, especially when I'm putting him into timeout and telling him gently, "I don't want to do this, but you disobeyed mommy". He seems to understand it better. I also deeply believe that your words can bring life to others or destruction and I desperately want my words to be life-giving. It's something I'm working on and this verse reminds me of that.

If you're interested in joining the scripture verse team, it's not too late to join, just click on her blog and comment on February 1st with your verse.

If you're curious what Jon and I have been doing in the evenings during the media fast. . .

Playing bananagrams!! (thank you to Katie Foster for introducing us!). It's like less complicated Scrabble. I'm in love.

CASA (no, not the house)

2011-01-23T18:01:00.000-08:00

My beautiful and smart sister told me about CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) and then two weeks later one of our renters used her CASA supervisor as a reference and I suddenly became really interested it. What's CASA? So glad you asked. :)

When a child is taken by CPS (Child Protective Services) due to abuse or neglect in the home, they are often lost in the system. CPS case workers have on average 50 cases per person. They're overworked and often don't know the details of their cases (how could you?) and dont' know what's truly best for the kid. When you become a CASA, a judge appoints you guardian ad liteum of a child (or several, depending on each case). You, the CASA worker, are representing the child's best interest in court. So the goal is to get to know the child, and his/her therapists, teachers, CPS workers, foster parents, etc. in order to recommend to the court what would be best for the child (i.e stay in the foster home, return home, get special tutoring, medication, healthcare, etc. etc. etc.).

It's kind of a process to become a CASA worker, I am going through a sweeeet organization called Child Advocates in downtown Houston. First there's orientation, then a two week training program, then an interview and finally the swearing in by a judge. I started training yesterday bright and early and it was a good 7 hour day of training. The next week and a half I have training almost every night, but it's so worth it. Yesterday was difficult because of all the horrific information and images they showed us (Basically, be prepared, this is what you're going to be dealing with). A lot of things did not bother me until I had Brennan, now I'm a lot more sensitive to things relating to children. It's pretty saddening and horrific and pisses you off all at oncee. Nauseous, that's the word, I felt nauseous most of the day. (it probably didn't help that I literally started off the day by wiping out in front of the building while daydreaming and walking all at the same time. yep.).

Anywho, I have lots of thought swirling around in this head of mine but I'm going to keep them to myself for now. This week shall be crazy, downtown is definitely a drive away from us. And Jon's got a week of cooking and B watching in front of him, but it'll be good. And now I know there's a slight step to enter the building so really, it can only go up from here.

If your'e interested in becoming a CASA pleeeease email or call, it's hard work, but it's so necessary and rewarding.

Gotta go nurse my hurt knee. ha!

Adios!

HomeGoods

2011-01-18T14:32:00.000-08:00

Y'all. THIS is the place. For real. I went to HomeGoods for the first time today in The Woodlands and felt like I was walking on air the whole time (Jon says I'm a bit dramatic). I texted him several times in the store warning him about how much I loved that place. He then threatened to call our credit cards and report them stolen. It's basically Marshall's store for home. goods. And it's awesome (did I say that yet?). Luckily, I only ended up buying a few things, some fluffy pillows for our bed, a modern looking bowl for the kitchen and a deocration for our table. I could've done a lot more damage but then I looked at our budget. HA!

Texas peeps, there's one in The Woodlands and one in Copperfield, I'll go anytime you want!!

The.end

PSA

2011-01-17T11:02:00.000-08:00

This is a public service announcement to PLEASE turn off your computer and stop whatever else you are doing and READ THIS BOOK!!

Jon and I have done a lot of reading while on our fast and I just finished this book last night. It was awesome. To summarize, it's the true story of an older white man (who is a very successful art dealer) who meets a homeless black man on the streets of Ft. Worth, Texas. Half the book is written by the art dealer (Ron), the other half by the homeless man (Denver). It spoked to me, encouraged me, made me cry, made me laugh, seriously, read it.

Ok, bye now.

Oh, P.S. don't look at the photos in the middle of the book until you finish it, it gives too much away!

Wants to know. . .

2011-01-14T18:06:00.002-08:00

What's the best piece of real estate advice anyone has ever given you?

Christmas Trip- Part 2

2011-01-13T07:04:00.000-08:00

Our church is going through a 21 day fast that started this past Monday and I've decided to give up desserts and Facebook and Twitter. FB and Twitter are huge distractions for me that I can spend far too much time with and dessert I just plain have no self control with. So that's how I made that decision. Jon is giving up ALL media, including radio, TV, Wii, internet, etc. So when he's home, I'm basically giving all those things up too so I don't tempt him. It's been crazy, we've slept great three nights in a row, when our bodies tell us were tired, we go to bed! Imagine that, ha! Life without media distractions, try it sometime! Anywho, I am still on email and am still updating my blog. Sorry it's taken me so long to get the rest of our Christmas posts up.

Soooo, after spending some time with the O'Neill family, we drove to Bridgman to be with the Zuberts and Ackerman's. We've been blessed that we're all able to come into town at the same time. (Side note, I was watching the Today show and the top 3 places for jobs are Minneapolis, Washington D.C. and Houston, where the Zuberts, my sister, and we all live, crazy!).

We exchanged gifts with the Ackermans (thanks Judy for sending us a box of gifts we could'nt fit in our luggage!!)

The boys got haircuts (Brennan's first "real" haircut)

Hung out with Jon's BFF, Carl.

Lincoln, Westin and Brennan

Walking through a Christmas lights display in St. Joe. It was cold. Really, cold.

After Bridgman, we spent one last day with my parents. We had a blast hanging out, playing with Steve's new Kinect game and my mom and I were able to scrapbook a little. The plane ride home was a little rough because we had to wake Brennan up early to make our flight and he was a crank-ster. But other than that, we can't complain. Thanks to everyone who picked us up and dropped us off at various airports and checked in on our house. It feels good to be back in the normal routine of things.

Be back soon, promise!

Christmas trip- Part 1

2011-01-06T13:31:00.000-08:00

A Brief Synopsis:

We flew into Detroit to spend time with the O'Neill's. Our second day there we drove to Lansing to see our Trinity friends (it was sooo good to see everyone), close a bank account, see Mariam and her beautiful baby girl, Heidi and lastly to check on our house. It was such a blessing to us, the house looked GREAT! Our renters seem to be taking really good care of the house and we don't take that for granted. It's decorated wayyy cuter than the way I had it! We needed to check on all the work we had done (new furnace, new fence, new electrical, new trees, yes, we're broke :) and it all looked good! That was a huge relief for us.

Cliff, Jon, Brennan, Chaeli, Katie, Charlotte

The next day was Christmas Eve and the Fosters stopped by for a quick visit. Katie's one of my oldest and dearest friends, I'm so glad we got to see them, even if it was briefly!

Later that day, Meg, Dave, Steve, Jon and I took Brennan and the dogs outside to play in the snow. I'm really glad we did because unbeknownst to us, that was all the snow we were going to see!

The next day was Christmas. We opened presents with some of the O'Neill family while the rest showed up later in the day. We spent the day eating, playing games (ping-pong and Kinect) and hanging out. The house was packed, but it was fun.

Andy was a huge Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fan in elementary school. Mom bought him one of the characters as a joke. But Brennan ran up and grabbed it from him before he could enjoy it, ha!

Everyone's here, family photo time!

Aunt Meaghan brought Rice krispie treat kits in the shape of a train to decorate with the kiddos!

I had forgotten we brought this cute Santa outfit with us until Jon brought B downstairs one night. It was hilarious!!

One day we were there, my parents rented out FaHoLo's indoor swimming pool for an hour. It was so much fun! We played volleyball and relaxed in the hot tub. I'm soo not putting photos up of me in a swimsuit but I promise, we went!

Mom and Dad, thanks for hosting all of us and letting us eat all your food and borrow your car! We love you all!

Be back sooooon!

2011-01-06T08:30:00.000-08:00

Hey friends!

Long time, no blog, sorry!! I figured we saw most of the people that read this blog in the last two weeks so it wasn't necessary. :)

I'm hoping to download all my photos from our Christmas trip to Michigan sometime today and will hopefully have a post up soon. It was such a great trip. The traveling went as smooth as can be which I am so grateful for. We literally walked through security at both the Houston and the Detroit airport (thank you family security lines!!). Jon didn't have to be "felt up" which was his greatest concern. :) Brennan traveled great, slept great (thank you Jesus) and was in general, a happy camper despite his double ear infection diagnosis the day before we left (ughhh). He doesn't travel well in a car (when does that get better??) but he did great while we were there.

It was so great to see all of you- I'm already planning our trip home this summer! However, we're glad to be home in our own beds. Now, if we could only get Brennan off of Michigan time and onto Texas time so he's not waking up at 6:15, all would be perfect. :)

Heading to the Great White North!

2010-12-22T07:30:00.000-08:00

Hey Y'all!

Our flight leaves in about 3.5 hours so I'm running around vacuuming and sweeping and packing like mad so I can come home to a clean house! Jon has a ton to finish up at work before he can leave on vakay so he's been super busy. I think we got 5 hours of sleep last night, possibly! But I wanted to pop on here and share the latest video Jon created for The Met. It's the continuation of Samuel's story (and it's kind of long, so grab a snack and sit a while). Hopefully we're seeing a lot of your smiling faces soon!

Mylius Family Story from The MET Church on Vimeo.

Our Little Christmas

2010-12-20T12:15:00.000-08:00

On Saturday morning, we celebrated Christmas just the three of us. I wanted to do it on a morning when Jon didn't have to rush off to work. To be honest, Jon and I were so excited to give Brennan his wooden train set that we didn't even sleep that well. We set it all up the night before so when he came out into the living room he'd see it. It was awesome, he loooves it! The kid loves his milk, so when he played with the trains all morning without one sip of milk, we knew we had a winner.

Jon and I weren't going to exchange gifts, just like last year. However, my sweet husband called me up last week and said, "Guess what? I bought you a Christmas present. And I got a really good deal on it, it was only $100.00".

Are you kidding me? So although I love his heart for giving (this guy has the most generous spirit out of anyone I know), I felt really scrambled and rushed trying to find him a gift. Thankfully, my friend, Cherish called with an awesome idea to have Brennan paint a picture for Jon's office at work. Brennan had a blast "colowing" and Jon loved the gift, whew.

Working on his masterpiece.

After opening presents, Jon made us a yummy breakfast, I'm convinced guys are innately better at cooking breakfast than girls. At least that's been my experience.

We fly to Detroit on Wednesday for Christmas with our families, so excited! It's supposed to be 75 degrees here tomorrow so I'm pretty sure our bodies will go into shock once we land, ha!

It's The Little Things

2010-12-15T08:05:00.000-08:00

I had been wanting to get Brennan a particular toy for a while and even put it on his wishpot. Wishpot is awesome, by the way. So his birthday came and went in February and we never bought the toy, mainly because we don't really spend money on toys for him. He gets toys from garage sales or his wonderful Grandparents or hand me downs so really, he has plenty.

Fast forward to Saturday and we're driving through our neighborhood and see that exact same toy I wanted for him sitting in front of someone's house waiting to be picked up by the trash man. So we grabbed, I cleaned it off, and here it is! Brennan loves it!

Randomness, really.

2010-12-14T11:40:00.000-08:00

-I'm not a very good "stay at home" mom. What I mean is, I'm not good at staying at home with Brennan. I get antsy if we stay home even one day. I neeeed to get out, NEEED! Even if it's just to Target or the park. Anyways, I took Brennan to the doctor last Thursday because he was a walking disaster and I figured something must be wrong. He rarely gets fevers or pulls at his ears, so the only way I know he's sick is when he just has meltdowns for every little thing. He had an ear infection. So Thursday and Friday we stayed home and tried to lay low. Ugh. Hated it. Anyone else feel me on this?

-Thankfully he's feeling better this week so we can do our usual routine of playgroups, bible study, MOPS, walking with friends, etc. Did I tell you I'm the new playgroup coordinator for our Lifegroup? We meet once a week at various places, people's houses, the mall, parks, splash pads, etc. It's fun for me to find new areas to meet at and it helps me get to know Houston better.

-This morning, our MOPS table had a Christmas cookie exchange and my husband is officially in sugar heaven. Last year, we had the exchange the day before we flew to Michigan for Christmas, so I gave them all away. This year, they're all ours, ha!!! :)

-Last week, our Bible study (we studied this book) finished up for the year and we all went out to lunch at the Bake Shoppe It's awesome! I snapped a few photos on my cell phone:

Kind of "Texas" in design but I really like it. (see, told you, random post). Is anybody still reading this? Helllo? Hello?

Can you believe Christmas is NEXT week? Holy guacamole. It was 78 degrees here on Saturday, I can't believe Christmas is next Saturday, it's not computing. That's all I have for today. Maybe I'll post some more randomness tomorrow, that is, if anyone is still reading by this point. . .

Christmas- Texas Style

2010-12-11T11:10:00.000-08:00

Last night, Jon and I were planning on going out on a date (sushi for him, Charming Charlies for me, it's all about the compromise in this relationship, ha!). But Brennan has an ear infection, so we had to cancel. Instead, we decided to drive around the Prestonwood Neighborhood which is known for their Christmas light displays.

It was pretty neat, each road within the neighborhood had a theme, such as Frosty the Snowman, the 12 Days of Christmas, etc. Then, we came across the "Texas Christmas" street. Check it out:

Oh Texas, you kill me sometimes.

This morning, I really wanted/needed to get out of the house. After being home with Brennan for a few days, I get antsy. So we went to some Tomball Festival we stumbled upon and walked around. Today is gorrrrgeous outside so we wanted to be outside and enjoy the weather (high of 78 today). The market was a perfect place to do that! There were all sorts of vendors, rides, food, etc. We even got to see this gem:

"Swingin' Home for Christmas"

This state is awesome.

Christmas Stuff

2010-12-07T12:30:00.000-08:00

So the Christmas craziness has begun in the Ackerman household and I love it! It seems like there is something going on every single night with Christmas parties and get togethers. It's kind of weird because it doesn't SEEM like Christmas, it's not that cold and there's no snow on the ground. But it is the Christmas season and my favorite time of year!!

Our FPU Class

Wednesday night was our last FPU class and we ended it with a little party. Let the Christmas eating begin, right? :) The last session was about giving. Be responsible with your money, live below your means, so you can give! Not so you can hoard. It was my favorite lesson of the entire session.

Thursday night we had dinner with some other staff families. Friday night was our Life Group's Christmas party, thank you Jesus for Parents Night Out! Saturday, Jon and I went to the shooting range with some friends of ours. The husband is a police officer and had all sorts of guns to shoot with. If I do say so myself, I'm a pretty good shot. :)

Jon at the range. We are totally Texans now.

Saturday night, our friends Ashley and Daniel had us over for dinner. Ashley's been a blessing in my life, she has a son almost the exact same age as Brennan and they are little buddies. I met Ashley at a StrollerFit class I went to once. She came up to me in our Life Group and said, "you look familiar". Turns out a few weeks after that class, her and her hubby decided to join our class. They grilled steak on Saturday night with this amazing sauce and it was soooo delicious.

This year, I decided to make these cinnamon rolls for some Christmas presents (neighbors, co-workers, etc.). Lord have mercy. They are amazing (and calorie free, in case you were wondering). I've mentioned Pioneer Women several times before on this blog because she's awesome and everything I've made from her recipes has been good! Here's the final results:

See? Totally calorie free!

Yesterday afternoon was The Met's Staff Christmas Party. They had a pretty-darn-close-to-real-looking Santa Clause there. B was not a fan.

Classic.

Thanksgiving.

2010-11-27T06:47:00.000-08:00

He was so excited when we put the small tree up, I couldn't wait to see how he reacted to the big tree. Christmas is like 14,000 times more fun when you have a toddler!

It's Saturday morning and B and I are hanging out at the house. Jon is at breakfast with a friend. B is ooohing and ahhing over the Christmas tree and decorations. He loooves the lights! Now, if we can get him to stay away from the ornaments, life would be good. :)

We went to a friends house for Thanksgiving and had a great time cooking, eating, and playing the wii. I made a sweet potato casserole, toffee and these rolls. I had a slight mishap while making the sweet potato casserole (I accidentally dropped the hot pad in the oven and didn't realize it, while the potatoes were cooking which resulted in a lot of smoke and a flame engulfed hot pad, whoops). I made Jon taste test the potatoes to see if they tasted like burnt fabric but he claims they were okay, whew! It was a bummer not to see our families on Thanksgiving but it helps to know that we fly out in three weeks for Christmas! We were able to skype with The Zuberts and my parents in Buffalo so that was so nice.

Looking at the Black Friday ads (how we spent Thanksgiving morning)

I was totally not expecting to go out shopping yesterday during Black Friday. But Jon and I decided last minute at about 10:30 to go to Kohl's. And it was actually not too crazy! We found some good deals we didn't even know we were looking for (ha!). I also did a lot of shopping online which is my favorite way to shop, especially since a lot of stores give free shipping and we can have items shipped directly to our parents house in Michigan. We also put up the Christmas tree and decorations yesterday. I've got a great video of us putting the tree up which I'll put up later today, we're off to explore downtown, adios!!

Edit. . . here's our video of us putting up the tree (Meggie, like the music??).

Merry Christmas 2010 from Jonathan Ackerman on Vimeo.

Mama Video

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This video was on our Met MOPS facebook page and I loved it. All you mamas or mamas to be, check it out!! The makers of the video asked moms if they could go back to before their first baby, what would they tell themselves. All the women in the video are moms.

2010-11-21T12:29:00.000-08:00

The Groobs shoe drop in downtown Houston went great on Friday night! Here's Jon multi-tasking the night away:

I'm glad we brought Brennan, some of the homeless never see little kiddos so they loved him.

Yesterday Jon watched B so I could meet a friend for coffee. After Brennan's nap, a sweet friend of ours snapped some quick photos of us for our Christmas cards. Then we headed out for a going away party for some friends that are moving to Argentina. I spent the rest of the night watching Gilmore Girls in bed. I'm addicted.

Anyone had experience painting in a rental house/apartment? We/I want to paint a wall in our living room but we have to paint it back white before we move out. I think it's worth the effort even though it's not a long term thing because I really want to warm that room up. But we're also worried that we wont get it back to the same white as the other walls and will get charged some of our security money. We know what color paint is on these walls but each batch of paint comes up a tiny bit different. Any advice?

Groobs dudes

2010-11-19T11:52:00.000-08:00

Every fall at The Met we have a series called, "The Big Give". Different ministires are highlighted and money is raised to help different organizations out, etc. (side note, why do I have this blog? I am THEE worst at explaining things, especially when I write it out. So sorry if you hardly have a clue what I'm talking about). Anyways, last year (year before that? not sure. . .) during the Big Give, a guy saw a video about kids who had no shoes. At all. And he decided to do something about it. Tom's Shoes is an organization whereby you buy a pair of shoes and they give one away. This man decided to do one better and started his own shoe company, Groobs. Through Groobs, you buy a pair of shoes, he gives one away AND gives 50% of the profits away to the charity of your choice. Check it out here (perhaps add one to your Christmas list, hmmm?).

All that to say, tonight Jon is heading downtown Houston where some college students will be giving away 250 Groobs to the homeless of Houston. He's going to be shooting some footage and photographs to get some b roll (how do you like that, honey?). We decided to go as a family and take Brennan as well so it'll be interesting! I think Jon's putting B in a backpack while shooting with his video camera, we'll see! I am so proud of my husband and what he does for a living. Statistics show that people remember 10% of the spoken word and 85% of what they see. Videos are so impactful! He's a rockstar and I'm grateful to be along for the ride. I haven't been able to be with him during his shoots since we've had the little man so I'm excited for tonight.

Pssst, if you want to see more videos from The Met, click on this vimeo link.