Happy Mother's Day!

I am soooooooooo lucky. I have the best mothers in the world, and  I get to celebrate my first Mother's Day officially this year thanks to my super cute lovable son. And my hubby was so awesome and surprised me with beautiful flowers and the other love of my life - Texas Roadhouse. And my daddy was so awesome and took us out to dinner last night - yay for not having to cook dinner! Here are my shout-outs:

My Mother: I love my mom so much. She had flowers delivered to me yesterday with a sweet sweet note and I was so surprised and touched by that! I'm so grateful to her for working so hard to take care of her kids. I admire her for the obstacles she has overcome and for her go-get-em' spirit. She kicks butt, seriously. I know she won't care me putting her age out there, but she turned 50 and completed her first triathlon in the same month. She has done one more since then plus a ton of other runs/races/killer hikes. I want to be like her when I grow up - after having 6 kids that's pretty dang good I'd say. Most of all, I love her because she has become my best friend. One of my favorite things to do, when she's not busy on a backpacking trip or something, is to go over and hang out with my mom. I definitely appreciate her much more after becoming a wife and mother myself, but it's so nice to just hang out and talk and realize - mostly for the good :) - that we have a ton in common. It gives me hope for my tom-boyish self who hates shopping, shaving my legs, and decorating stuff, that I can still turn out to be a respectable woman someday :). Thanks mom, I love you!

My Mother In-Law: I totally totally lucked out in the mother in-law category. Actually, probably one of the main reasons I married John was because of his mother. :) But seriously, I think of her and the word LOVE pops into mind. This woman had 9 children, and I asked her how the heck she did it, she just smiled and said "boy, I love my kids." She totally does just LOVE. In capital letters. She is such a good example of Christ-like love and just goodness! She never subtly tells me how I should run my home or raise my kids (even though she raised 9). She is always willing to serve and help out whenever she can, and never ever complains. I think the sisters in-law can agree, she didn't cut us any slack with our husbands - whenever we complain about duties with our 1 or 2 kids, they can justifiably retort - "my mom had nine!" She is incredible.

My Step-Mom: I also lucked out in the step-mom category. She's definitely not like the future step-mom in The Parent Trap (Lindsay Lohan version). I don't know how my dad got so lucky, and I still think he bribed her or something, but he found a wonderful person to spend the rest of his life with. She has two lovely girls of her own and came into a family with 5 rowdy boys and 1 rowdy girl (most of us had moved out by the time she came into our lives, but still she has to deal with us regularly when we all get together). I think it was pretty shocking to her at first because she's very...well I guess just normal and polite, and we're not. But she is an amazing woman, and I have a lot I can learn from her in patience, cooking, sewing, and many other skills and talents that she has. She is also gracious enough to watch my little boy on a weekly basis, and I am so grateful for that! We are very lucky to have her in our lives!

Myself: J/K - but I just thought I'd add that I love being a mother. It is the most fulfilling, amazing experience I have ever had. I still can't believe that I can be blessed with such an incredible little boy to care for. I'm quickly finding out that it's an indescribable feeling being a mother and I just feel so blessed to be able to look at this cute little kid several times a day and still be overcome with happiness and love each time I see his litte 2-teeth smile. Man I'm lucky. Sorry for the cheesy mooshy gooshy post, but I just wanted to thank my 3 incredible mothers on this beautiful Mother's Day.



Me Trying to Be Bloggy

So like I never wanted my blog to be just about my life. Idk, it's kind of like a protest sort of. I'm not on Facebook. It bothers me to find out important events in my friends' lives in such an impersonal way when the entire rest of the world finds out. It just seems like I should be talking to my friends on a more regular basis than that. Idk. Like I was all excited because I got a text that one of my friends had her baby and I told my mom, "hey did you hear?" and she was like, ya I saw that on Facebook a minute after birth! I was like dang. And the same happened with a friend's engagement. But I must admit, I found out about the engagement from peeking at my mom's Facebook while she had it up at her house the other day. In fact I probably still wouldn't know about it unless I had succumbed to the temptation to look at her "wall" and see what the whole world is doing while I sit in my loser cave at home. Not on Facebook.

So every now and then I like to treat all the 3 people (including my mom I hope) that read my blog with something other than Ron Paul. So here's my attempt to be bloggy.

When I read blogs there are a few recurring themes.

The first: Home Improvements. My home is what they call a "fixer-upper." And few things have been fixed up. When we bought our little home (almost 3 years ago), it had been for sale so long that all the landscaping was pretty much dead (ok, we sealed the deal by not watering much). So we had this semi-retired couple move in next door and totally re-design their home and yard into something found on the cover of Better Homes and Garden. So while relaxing on their back porch the other day, enjoying the bounteous flower beds and luscious green grass, their back wall was encumbered with the sight of our two long-dead trees. Now bored because their masterpiece of a household was complete, my sweet neighbor has been nudging us along with subtle hints that we need to clean up our dump. I completely understand that we need to keep our yard orderly, so when I get the time, I definitely don't mind a day in the sun pulling weeds. It's tricky with a little guy, but I like yardwork, so I'll do it. I just have a hard time with power tools. For instance, I couldn't start the dang weed whacker or the chainsaw. So I brought out the inner cave-woman in me, which is actually the outer cave woman if you know my style (or lack thereof), and got to digging. Side note: my husband works outside at least 60 hours a week so bless his heart the last thing he wants to do is work for hours in our yard. But I found that if I attempt something the hard way, which is the way I like to do things, right as he's coming home, he will step in just out of embarrassment I think. So I started digging out the trees in my yard, so I could eventually pull them over. I was shoveling and using an axe to chop the roots so I could get the dang thing out of our rock hard dirt (that should be grass) while Henry was secured in a lawn chair nearby laughing at me and our dog that he loves.

John gets home and says what the heck are you doing, this is going to take you forever. And to myself I was thinking, "no it's not just watch." And he came over and pulled both of the trees right out of the ground, just like that.

And that's how we get things done around here. :)

Theme 2: Cooking

I just cooked my first pot roast because I love beef. And it's my favorite Sunday dinner. I got the recipe from Pioneer Woman, so at least there's potential for it to be delicious. This is a picture of the goodness that just emerged from my oven. PW had a nicely arranged presentation in her photo, but if you know me, I don't really put a high priority on presentation. Looks can be deceiving, the important thing is quality. Anyway, I'm very proud of myself.

The only advice I have is if you're as cheap as me and don't want to turn on the A/C yet even though it's like almost 100 degrees already, don't cook a pot roast in your oven all day because my house is so hot right now. It's probably cooler outside. But oh well, I'm learning, and I really wanted pot roast. This would go really good with homemade rolls. But let's not get crazy.

Finally, Theme 3: Cute Kid Updates

Henry is allllmost crawling. He does a mean pushup instead. I think he's the cutest kid ever. So here's a picture of him almost crawling. I love this kid a lot a lot. 

Thanks for suffering through me trying to be bloggy. :)

I Am Human :)

Ok, I got a lot of flak when I announced that I was starting a blog and it was all about current events and the 2012 Presidential Race. I warned people that it wasn't going to be about my personal life, but still they were surprised to only see one picture of my new little boy. I got a camera for Christmas, so here you go - but don't get used to it :) PS I'm an awful photographer - but hopefully I'll get better!

Our latest family photos...Henry didn't turn out too bad for having two goofy-looking parents :)

Henry's favorite Christmas presents from his Aunt Tiffany

We had an awesome Christmas - took some time off to spend with family at the farm.

The weather was awesome, nice and sunny and warm. I'm an awful mom and got Henry a little sunburnt :( I guess I should've known that with a mom as white as me and a dad as white as John that poor Henry should never go outside! Thank goodness for aloe vera, straight from the garden. His sunburn disappeared the next morning - we kept him extra shaded the next day just to make sure!

We hope you all had a nice Christmas and a Happy New Year! On to 2012!