This is My Forties

It's been pretty cruddy weather here the past few days. We've been watching a lot of movies and playing inside games. It gets pretty boring in the house. Plus the rain makes me feel sleepy. I bought Noah "The Sandlot" and he loves it! I'm also a big fan :) I am not going to complain too much about the rain because I know it could be worse (like in Ohio or Kansas). During our inside time this week I did a lot of cleaning and shopping. I found some new baby clothes and Josh and I picked out a crib set (on clearance YAY!). Some of our house looks cleaner than when we moved in hahaha. NESTING! I think mijo #3 will be wearing the zebra outfit home, but I'm not sure yet. We'll see what Josh thinks this weekend. Tomorrow is finally Friday! :D Finally the clouds parted today and we got some sunshine and warm temperatures. Don't hate... congratulate! ;) We went to the Phinizy Swamp again, of course. It's the closest park to us with wildlife...

I put a player on the side.  At first I had my default one up there, but it's not kid friendly so I made a new one.  Fun Disney songs, kinda sad "my baby isn't gonna be a baby for long" songs, "living the family life" country songs.  Let me just admit right now that I am all sorts of pregnant because "Baby Mine" from Dumbo totally made me cry!  Hard... like a dang baby hahaha.  I couldn't even listen to the whole thing!!  Someone else tell me that song still makes them cry too!  And yes Jen (my pregnant friend) you totally count ;)

Hello all. Sorry I've been slacking so badly on the blog. I have been frantically cleaning for the past 4 days for some reason.... hormones, maybe? Isn't it a little early for nesting? I've been having some fun with my new camera, but I haven't really gotten to go out and try it because of the weather. I want to take it outside to the swamp and try out my lenses in natural light. It just so happens that the day before I got my camera the weather was amazing so I took the boys out to the swamp and we had a fabulous time. I let Tristan walk the entire time even though all I could picture was him falling through the fence into the freezing nasty swamp water. I try to suppress my Mom fears when I feel it gets in the way of learning. He had so much fun! He touched everything he saw... moss, a hermit crab exoskeleton, pine needles, dirt, wood, sand, feathers... anything. Noah had a great time too! We talked about what animals we saw... and there were tons of ducks ...

Well I knew it could happen here, but I thought it wouldn't... it's snowing!  It's not just little snow either.  It's nice big chunks of "Ohio" snow ;)  The boys are so enthralled.  I am going to have to take them back outside to play.  We went out earlier when it had just started, but now it's really coming down and they aren't going to leave me alone until they get to go back outside.   It's actually sticking to the ground now too... CRAZY!  My neighbor behind me is from Florida and she was outside with her camera, really excited... she's never seen snow :)  Too bad my other Floridian neighbor isn't here too (although she lived in West Virginia for awhile so I'm sure she's seen snow) What a cool day!

Not much has been going on here lately.  Josh got to come home for a 4-day weekend and we've been lazing around and shopping here and there.  I haven't taken any pictures lately.  I think it's because I know my Nikon D90 will be here soon and I've lost my motivation haha.  The boys have been super cute, though!  Expect to be completely bombarded with photos in about a week ;)

It's another boy!!! :D We're both really happy even though we "wanted" a girl (really all we want is a healthy baby). The next few years of our lives will be filled with much excitement. Poor kid is going to have a few pages in his baby book about how badly we wanted a girl, but I assure you all he will be greatly loved :) Maybe since we're so willing to adopt we should go ahead and adopt a girl when we're ready. The tech said he looks great and everything is measuring right on schedule. He is currently one 1lb, 7ozs. Here are the pics of our very proud baby boy. I wouldn't normally post a pee-pee picture, but Josh is away and I want him to be able to see them. Now we need to come up with names! haha We had girls names picked out, but boys names are so hard to find. They have to be strong, uncommon, but not weird. It's not an easy task. AND we don't have to have a baby shower or buy any clothes! This weekend we're going to the stor...

Today at 4pm I showed up for my sonogram, both boys and a bag of toys and snacks to keep them quiet. They kicked me out because "you absolutely cannot have kids in the sonogram room"... DOH! Luckily they were nice enough to pencil me in for 9:30 tonight so I knocked on a lot of neighbors' doors to find someone to babysit the monitor for a couple hours. No luck. One's in Florida, one works nights, one is going to the airport at 10, one never came home, the other one creeps me out so no thanks. Finally I called my friend Rachel whom I've known since Basic Training and she's going to drive all the way over here to sit in my house for me. Bless you, Rach :) So... later tonight I will scan and upload the new pictures and the BIG NEWS!! Wish me girl good luck! ;)

During our Christmas break we got some great news from... you'll never guess... the ARMY! Josh had been talking to his reenlistment NCO for about a month and we were waiting for better options before we decided for sure whether or not it was a good idea for him to stay in longer. We were hoping for DC since it's closer to my family and the job would be pretty exciting, but DC never was available. Well a better option definitely presented itself anyway! We're going to Madrid, Spain!!! :D :D We will be leaving in mid-June after the baby's born. The job is amazing and will keep Josh on his toes. It's not your typical Army job, it's a NATO job and he will be working side-by-side with a lot of foreign officers from Europe and elsewhere. It's the kind of job that a lot of people (like me) would be too intimidated to even try and do, but my baby will wow them like it's nothing :) He's amazing! The reenlistment only added 3 additional years to his ...

Tristan brought his dish to the sink and threw some things away for me (that I actually asked him to toss haha). OK well it may not be that huge an accomplishment, but to me it is :D I will let them do chores ASAP hahaha. Now if I could only get him to stay on the floor while I'm changing him. The naked butt squeal and run is always entertaining, but it's not the easiest thing for me to get up and sit back down anymore. I will be taking and uploading some new belly pics this weekend. I promise! :)

Tristan is running like a champ all around the house now. He's got a new favorite game. He runs as fast as he can towards someone and then SLAMS into them, dives into their legs, or whacks them really hard with his arms. I'm trying to get him to be gentle because he also thinks it's funny to bounce on my stomach like it's the couch. I know I can't be helping since I laugh, but you'd laugh too if you could see his face. He likes to wrestle. All he wants to do is wrestle. He starts fights with Noah all the time and then laughs and runs away. He also gets in kissy moods too and everyone gets free Tristan kisses :) Tris is also getting 2 new teeth... the big kind! They don't seem to be bothering him too much. In fact I think he likes having the extra support for chewing, and the extra surface area to brush. He's getting better with a spoon, and by that I mean he's actually willing to try and use one. I thought it was time he got to sit at the...

Certain things have gone unmentioned that simply must be said about Noah and Tristan! Let's start with Noah. Having Noah around is almost like having a parrot. We will go someplace and he randomly repeats the last few words people around us say... really loud, which no one has seemed to notice yet. He repeats and narrates everything that is happening in movies and in real life as he interprets it. Here are some fun examples from the past week or so: The other day "The Animal" was on TV at our house, I thought nothing of it... I mean there's nothing too bad about that movie. Some part came on with his black friend, talking about people not yelling at him for doing the wrong thing (just because he's black). What was Noah's interpretation? "That black man is smoking because he's black, Mommy!" no no no no no.... oh man. So that took a little explaining and hopefully I erased something in the process haha. I am so tired of kids' movies!!...

Our New Years was pretty awesome. I cooked all day long and it was marvelous. We had our neighbors over and we played some Rayman's Raving Rabbids TV Party (the one where you use your butt). I love that game. We all had a blast and were stuffed from all the food I made. I think I am going to keep some of the dishes as our new traditional New Years meal: the Pernil, which is Puerto Rican slow roasted pork and Borracho beans, which are one of the few Mexican dishes I actually like. That and pumpkin pie, apple pie, and fresh baked bread. My first time making apple pie and I totally nailed it ;) hahaha. Seriously... it was delicious. In other news, Josh left for his TDY and will be gone for 70 days. However, I am pretty sure he'll be here for the weekends. He's only a 3 hour drive away. We'll see how it goes. I might go down to Florida for awhile to visit Janine, Maggie, and the twins... YOU HEAR THAT, GUYS?! ;) haha We'll see. Right now I am in "be g...

We began the next leg of our journey with a trip to the car wash. The boys thought it was soooo cool! Next stop the Adventure Science Center in Nashville, TN (way to go Josh for finding this one). They had a little North Pole set up with a snow machine and a few other fun games like a virtual snowball fight. This place would probably be a lot more fun when the kids are older, but we had a good time anyway. Josh and I were saying it would be fun to go without the kids and just play with all the science experiments for hours as a date :) We're such dorks. After a few hours in Nashville we headed back home. We figured if we made it past Chattanooga this time we could drive straight through. Home was only a 6 hour drive from Nashville. We made it without having to get a hotel again. It was great to be back home. We had a wonderful trip, but we were definitely tired of driving. Plus we were able to relax and unpack before ringing in the New Year.

We left Leavenworth pretty early Christmas morning and followed Logan out to Gpa and Gma B's place, which was a 3 hour drive. The drive was just fine because everyone had plenty of chill time out of the car the past few days. The new house is coming along great and we were happy to see Grandpa and Grandma B. again! We had dinner and the guys took Noah out for a spin on the 4-wheeler. He didn't want to stop! Unfortunately Great Grandpa had just gotten out of the hospital so he and Great Grandma couldn't drive up from Oklahoma City to see us (another 3 hour drive). We decided that since one of the biggest reasons we made the trip was to see them in the first place, we would go down there early the next morning. That drive was rough. There and back... Tristan did NOT want to be in the car and the screaming grated on both our nerves. Luckily it was short enough of a drive for the screaming to only last maybe 30 minutes both times. We were really happy we made the trip to...

We arrived in Leavenworth, Kansas late afternoon on the 21st. Tristan and Noah played in the snow for maybe 5 or 10 minutes because it was WAY too cold to stay outside. Tristan loved his first snow experience :) Santa came to visit while we were there. He must have somehow known we were out of town! He's quite a guy haha ;) Logan (Josh's brother) also came out. It was great to see him again and the boys had a great time wrestling around :) The boys loved all their presents. Great food, lots of laughs (especially about pietastrophies, right Grandma? ;) We had a wonderful visit and the days flew by. I think the pictures speak for themselves. Grandma thought to save a little tree decorating for Noah and Tristan to do since we didn't decorate a tree ourselves. They got to put the angel on top of the big real tree! We were off again on Christmas morning, headed to Gpa and Gma B's house in Missouri (3 hours away). Logan came with us.