Tag: personal

Meet Matthew

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I got a text from PW last weekend that said Matthew is here and he looks AWESOME. Before I could text back Who the hell is Matthew??  I realized he was talking about the damn deer he hunted in November. And by here he meant on our living room wall. And in our freezer. Yea…..

Meet Matthew

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Matthew is named after our friend and the guide of the hunt. It’s an homage to the great tracker that he is. Baylor is in love. She greets him when we walk in, pets him randomly throughout the day, says goodbye when we leave and is chowing down on the venison pepperoni sticks. She is, in a word, a traitor.

The Truth About Girls – Number 1

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The truth about living with little girls is that no matter what is in the dryer, it will come out with glitter on it. When you have a girl, glitter just seems to come out of their pores. It’s on their clothes, their dress up clothes, hair clips, shoes, stickers…you name it, it has glitter on it. And in turn, so does everything in your house.

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Orngen Juice

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That’d be “orange juice” in Baylor speak.

Between the sudden freezing temperatures and theiving neighbors (I asked a woman to stop picking our oranges one day and her response was “Oh, I didn’t think you were using them” and then walked off with an arm full. Who does that?!) we picked all of our oranges off our two trees. I hate doing it because it’s so much more fun to pick what you want and let the rest ripen on the tree. Arg.

Anyway, I got a new juicer that was easier for Baylor to use and we set out to juice about 75 oranges this morning. She gave up after about 20 but Auggie and I made it through the rest of the bags. Three pretty bottles of juice were our prize!

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Chef Wand and her Sous Chef Augustus

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Loving the new juicer

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If being cute makes you a good cook, Auggie won the James Beard Award

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The final (delicious) product

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Happy Valentine’s Day

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Or as Baylor says “Balentimes” Day.

When you’re 3 1/2, nothing says love and Balentimes like barnyard animals. I sent her to school today with 22 handmade valentines – almost all of them containing pig, horse and cow stickers. I didn’t realize what she was doing until she was a few in and then I thought they were cute! Only she could get away with putting pigs on valentines.

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This is the one she made for me 🙂photo 5

Auggie – 4 Months

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The wild man has continued his growth spurt – 3 lbs and 3 inches these last two months! He’s now 19 lbs 26 inches – 75th and 95th respectively. I knew my shoulders hurt for a reason… He is now grabbing, holding and examining anything he can get his hands on and of course, get into his mouth. He’s getting close to sitting up without help and is desperately trying to get his swimming arms and legs coordinated enough to crawl and keep up with his cousin, Mason. Who he currently out weighs despite Mason being 6 months older.

You can really start to see the difference from his two month pictures. Those legs are stretching out!

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Photography is serious,Mom

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This is how he spends most of his time not in the jumper

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Always angling for a better view.

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Those wrist rolls don’t even compare to his thigh rolls – hard to decide which I love more…IMG_4776

Snow Day

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When Peter and I lived in DC, we had no idea what we were doing when it came to freezing weather and snow. Having both grown up in AZ, we had never cleaned gutters (our desert homes didn’t even have gutters), removed hoses from the bibs before a freeze and we had no idea when you were supposed to put out salt (we actually thought you just threw it on top of the snow. That is not the case). Thankfully our landlords caught on and would let us know what to do. We also had a very nice neighbor that actually cleaned our gutters for us one fall. There was a language barrier so when we pantomimed asking to borrow his ladder, he just brought it over and got to work. We were never sure if he was being nice or if he thought we were too stupid to do the job ourselves. Our money was on the latter.

The last winter we were there, a HUGE storm was predicted – not unlike the one that is supposed to hit the Northeast today. We went to Target to stock up on supplies: salt, shovels, etc. except our cart also contained a lot of wine and a new sled. The storm hit over night and we woke up to a foot of snow. It was beautiful! We made coffee and snuggled back into bed to watch the news…only to have the power go out exactly 1 minute later. After waiting for a bit, we decided to go sledding. When we returned, still no power. We made breakfast on the grill off the deck and threw a bottle of champagne into the snow (see? our supplies were super important). We then bundled up, grabbed a dog to warm us up and read books. By 6pm there was still no power. And no heat. And no fireplace. We were woken up at 5am the next day to everything in our house coming back to life when the power came back on – we were bundled up like homeless people with both dogs under the covers.

So let this be a lesson to all you east coasters getting ready for the blizzard. Salt is all well and good, but make sure your sleds and wine supplies are stock piled too.

5pm Saturday

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8am Sunday

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There were steps under there somewhere

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We were told icicles were bad news…I enjoyed every drop of them!

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Abominable snow Travis!

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We learned the hard way that the SUV should be the last one in. Trying to get the Audi over the ice berm created by the snow plow was challenging.

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We couldn’t figure out where all the kids were…turns out they were waiting for the big dummies to shelp up and down the hill a few times and tamp down the snow.

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Jumping Bean

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Auggie got a new jumper for Christmas and Grandma and Grandpa were kind enough to deliver it a few weeks early and I swear the kid hasn’t left it since! He loves to bounce and spin and grab the toys. So much so that he’s worn through not one but TWO pairs of jammies. He’s literally jumping out of them!

Loving on his favorite Lamb

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First casualty

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And the latest…

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Rose Colored Glasses

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At a particularly bad time in life, my mom, sister and I were looking for a new home. I remember her telling us that we needed to pray that God would find us a new house and that if he did, we would plant a rose garden in honor of Mary. A short time later we found a little rental house that was run down, but had lots of potential. And in a corner in the backyard was a neglected little rose garden. We used to spend hours trimming and fertilizing and the results were some of the most beautiful roses I’ve even seen.

Flash forward a few years and we were ready to buy the house down the street. Again my mom prayed that if we got the house, we would plant a rose garden. And again there was a neglected rose garden behind a small wall in the backyard.

Those rose gardens spoiled me because they were old and established and produced amazingly large blooms with powerful scents. It was nothing to have a large vase full of 20+ roses, all from the yard. When PW and I remodeled our house, we built raised beds for vegetables and roses – the vegetables have done great, the roses, not so much. After some research  a lot of trial and error and some additional plants (vines on the block walls keep the heat index down in the summer), I finally have a bush that has lasted a full year AND produced blooms. Not a vase full, but we’re getting there. I have plans for a second bush (and maybe a third…) so hopefully this time next year my post will be filled with beautiful blooms!

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As it opened, it changed color

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Until I have the vase full of home grown roses, I’m relying on Pottery Barn’s Heirloom Rose diffuser to get me through. I put it in the bedroom and it’s gentle scent makes me happy every time I pass by.

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Pottery Barn’s Heriloom Rose large oil diffuser – $39.00

Face Time Fiasco

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I got a new Iphone 5 a few weeks ago and wanted to sell my old 4, but since the back was shattered, it was a no go. So PW and I decided we’d give it to Baylor to watch cartoons and play games on. A little ridiculous  yes, but it means that I can now take her on a run AND have my phone to listen to music. Also it means my icons will stay put instead of mysteriously disappearing…

Baylor is in love. She makes “phone calls”, “sends texts”, “writes emails” and plays games and watches Doc McStuffins. All perfectly safe since the phone is no longer connected to a network…or so I thought. I didn’t realize that when you turned the phone off and back on that it would take itself out of airplane mode. So last night she brings me her phone and says “my phone is talking to me”. I assumed she had dialed a number and was getting the recording that says you’re not connected to a network. But when I looked at her phone, our friend Brian was staring back at me. You can still make Iphone to Iphone calls, texts and Face Time if there is a wifi signal and since the phone wasn’t in airplane mode, she was able to Face Time  Brain.

All I can say is thank God she called someone we love and not a random water company customer or something. It was fun to catch up for a few minutes – he was very amused by the whole thing. It was also a good excuse to figure out how to turn off all the connections on the phone! Also we discovered that you can password protect adding and deleting icons (Settings – General – Restrictions) which will keep her from deleting and then moving my icons around so I’m confused about what is missing…

I woke up in the middle of the night wondering who she had been sending texts too and or Face Time requests. It took me 10 minutes to find the damn phone but when I did, it appears nothing funny went out – phew. But if for some reason you did get something odd from me, I’ve been hacked by a 3 year old.