Being Two is So Hard!

Monday, Marcus took the two big kids fishing on the pier all day, so it was just me and the Mase-man home by ourselves.  He plays pretty well by himself for the most part, but when he doesn't get what he wants, look out! 

 

He asked for cereal for breakfast and wanted to be independent and get his own.  We see how well that went, haha!  At least he tried to clean it up himself.  I think three Cheerios ended up in the trash and the rest ended up getting spread around the floor until I got the big broom out and swept them up.

After breakfast, we played for a while and I had to go out and get a few things out of the shed, so I let him play outside.  He didn't want to come in and threw a fit when we went inside for lunch.  As I was getting lunch ready, he put on Mickey Mouse on the TV, which I had told him not to, so when I turned it off and brought him to the lunch table, this is what I got:

That lasted about 5 minutes, after which he calmed down and looked sleepy, so I asked him if he wanted to eat his lunch and then go lay down for a nap.  Emphatically, I got "NO!" So I let him sit there while I ate my lunch.

I look over a minute later and he's decided that his banana maybe isn't so bad after all.  He ate the whole banana and part of a sandwich, all while clinging to my arm like this.

 

It got quiet a minute later and I started hearing deep breathing, so I look over and he had fallen sound asleep on my arm, haha!  



 

 

I'm telling you, being two years old must be super exhausting!

28 Weeks! Third Trimester, Finally!

We finally hit 28 weeks yesterday! Miss Paisley and I made it to the third trimester, yay!  I had my 28 week appointment yesterday and had to sit for the fun glucose testing.  We're still waiting on the results, but I haven't had gestational diabetes with any of the other pregnancies, so I don't expect anything out of the ordinary for this one either. 

I still feel good, although sleeping is becoming more and more troublesome because I can't seem to get comfortable.  Besides my belly getting in the way, I've been having restless legs like crazy!  It makes it hard to get settled and I usually end up tossing and turning until I finally fall asleep.  Other than that, I've been having lots of heartburn in the afternoons and evenings, but I figured out that if I take a Zantac around lunchtime, it seems to prevent me from having heartburn all evening.

 

As far as the moving progress, today is T minus 2 weeks until we hit the road! It feels like we still have a ton of stuff to do, but really we won't be able to make much more progress until we get the U-Haul and can start loading it up.  Our shed has been filling up quickly!  I expect Monday the 8th and Tuesday the 9th to be very busy days and then Wednesday we will officially be moving! 

 

 

The timing has actually worked out really well because I have had to take some time off from all the moving stuff to focus on finals this week!  I just submitted my Governmental and Non-Profit Accounting paper today, and now I have two papers left, Federal Taxation and my capstone course, the Senior Seminar!  My Senior Seminar paper has to be a minimum of 10 pages, and I'd like to have everything done by Friday, so I see a couple of late nights in my near future.  But it will all be worth it because then I will be completely DONE!  I won't officially graduate until August 15, but all of my courses will be finished and I can spend this summer relaxing and getting ready for our move and baby's arrival!

 

Speaking of summer, the kids have been playing outside almost every day this week and today, while waiting on lunchtime, they made "stained glass windows" from the colored magnets for a fun, quick project.

 

 

And sometimes, despite our objections to the contrary, even big kids need naps.  We both sat down with books while the boys were napping and I looked over to see her sound asleep.  Nope, she wasn't tired at all... ;-)



Our Summer Bucket List

I'm so excited that summer is finally here!  We have been using this opportunity while Marcus isn't working to complete our "Beaufort bucket list" before we leave town.  We spent a full day last week at the beach and stopped on the way back and got a yummy watermelon and a cantaloupe from Barefoot Farms.  We spent Saturday morning running errands and going to the farmer's market, where we scored two bags of fresh peaches and a bag of green beans.  Nothing says summer to me like watermelon with salt or a big juicy fresh peach!

We've been to the library and played at the waterfront park downtown and Saturday, we had family pictures taken.  They turned out fantastic!  I am so excited to get a few large prints made to go up in our new house!

This one is my favorite!  I am so thankful to have met Ariel and been able to take advantage of her awesome photography skills, as well as her friendship!  It is finally beginning to hit me that we will only be here two more weeks.  I think as a former military family that you get used to being moved around and moving away from people, but this move is going to hit us the hardest because of the amazing friends, mentors, and support system that we've found here.  I am consciously blocking all of the emotions out of the equation for right now because otherwise I'd be a blubbering, hormonal mess! 

So instead of thinking about how soon we're leaving, we've been taking time to take advantage of Beaufort's natural beauty and get outside and enjoy!  We have even been getting the outside of the house spruced up and ready for closing in a few weeks.  Marcus wanted to pressure wash the driveway and it made a huge difference!  I have been clearing out weeds, mowing the grass, and edging the sidewalks.  It's been so nice outside that it has been very relaxing to get to work in the fresh air.

 

Yesterday afternoon, while the boys were napping, Marcus took Taylor to the pier to try and catch bait for their early morning fishing trip this morning.  They caught a few greenies, so Marcus threw his big pole into the water and a few minutes later, reeled in this guy:

 

His first cobia of the year! So he brought it home, fileted it and I shelved our regularly scheduled dinner plans and we had a fish fry!  It is still amazing to me that we can have fish for dinner that was just swimming around the Broad River a few hours ago!

 

 



We've still got quite a few things that we want to do before we leave, but as we wrap up our Beaufort bucket list, we're looking forward to adding quite a few fun things to add to our Alabama summer bucket list with Mimi and Poppie!

Cooking Lessons

Taylor is getting to the age where she wants to help me cook all the time, so we've been working with her on kitchen safety and cooking skills.  So far, she's made pancakes, scrambled eggs, various baking projects and helped me mix things together when I'm making dinner. 

Sunday night we made chicken salad and corn on the cob and the kids had a great time shucking the corn:

We only had one ear end up in the trash. I'll give you one guess who dropped it! ;-)

I taught Tay how to chop eggs (carefully!) and she did three by herself.  The only thing I did for the chicken salad was to boil and shred the chicken!

 

Last night, we made stuffed green peppers and Taylor helped me brown the ground beef, saute the mushrooms, and mix the filling together. 

 

 

I am loving the fact that she wants to help because its like having my very own sous chef!  Actually, I'm doing more of the prep and letting her do more of the cooking, so maybe one day I'll become the sous chef! :-)



Eating Real Food

Lately, I've been feeling very convicted about how we eat as a family.  Not because we eat terribly, but I've been allowing too many processed sweets into our normal diets instead of them being occasional treats.  I have been watching several documentaries on food and how the obesity epidemic in the United States is getting worse all the time and it honestly scares me.  I read a statistic last week that in 1996, less than 20 years ago, the states with the highest levels of obesity were less than 20% of the population.  Today, the state with the lowest level of obesity (Colorado) is at 21.3%, while the highest states are at over 35%!!  You can read the study, as well as see the list of states by obesity levels as of 2013 here. 

Raising a growing family and seeing these trends makes me realize even more how much of a responsibility I have to my family to give them the tools to eat healthfully and to be able to prepare healthy food for themselves as they grow up.  I feel like we've lost the art of cooking in our society and become so busy all the time, that as a result we've seen the numbers of convenience foods explode in grocery stores.  While convenient, most of these foods contain way too much sugar, salt, and preservatives for me to consider them a healthy choice for my family.

Thanksgiving 2013 (Stephanie, Mom, and Me)

I am so thankful that my mom showed me how to cook growing up and passed down the basics of preparing meals and baking, as well as ensuring that even if we ate out because we were busy, we ate dinner as a family most nights.  But most of all, she showed me how it was a privilege to feed your family and she instilled a sense of pride in a well-prepared meal.  From her example and encouragement, I have since expanded my skills to include learning different techniques as well as learning how to make more things from scratch, especially with regards to baking.   

So what does all this mean for our family?  I don't think we were doing too bad to begin with, we don't drink sodas at all and we try to eat dinner as a family every night.  But I had allowed convenience to trump healthiness and we were eating way too many Pop-Tarts, breaded chicken nuggets, and frozen pizzas and way too few fresh fruits and vegetables.

So, as Step 1 in our quest to eat more whole foods, I am making a concerted effort to include lots of fruits and veggies at every meal.  For example, this morning for breakfast, instead of cereal, we had Greek yogurt with fresh fruit and a slice of sourdough toast with homemade strawberry jam. 

Last night for dinner, we had stuffed green peppers, which I filled with tomato sauce, ground beef, brown rice, and sautéed fresh mushrooms, topped with mozzarella cheese.  Every day at lunch, I've tried to include a bowl of fruit and/or sliced tomatoes for sandwiches or baby carrots for dipping.  Not all of the kids eat every bite, of course, but I have noticed that with more exposure, they are more willing to try and even enjoy the veggies.  It does take some time to prep everything, but I think it will pay off huge dividends in the long run.

I know that there are several other steps that I'd like to implement in the near future, such as baking our own bread, switching to raw milk, and buying only local meats and produce, especially when we get to Boise and can begin gardening and canning again, but we're taking it one step at a time so that we don't become overwhelmed.  I'm sure I'll be writing about those ideas in the near future!

27 Weeks

Well, the end of the second trimester is finally here.  This is the last week and I'll be in the home stretch.  Miss Paisley is definitely making her presence known lately.  She kicked me so hard the other night that she almost knocked my Bible off my lap!

 

She likes to be active mostly after breakfast and when I'm lying in bed at night.  I've been having way more heartburn, especially in the evenings after dinner.  Other than that, my energy is still up and I'm feeling really good!

 

We've pretty much gotten everything packed up that we aren't in the process of using.  The last week we're here, we'll have to get the rest of the kitchen stuff and all the furniture ready to go, but other than that, the packing is essentially done!  We've taken care of everything that needed to be repaired around the house--so proud of Marcus for changing out the water heater by himself!!  He saved us almost $400 by doing it instead of having a plumber come. 

 

Last night, Marcus had a brilliant idea and gave the kids the water heater box to color on.  It kept them busy for over two hours before they had to get baths. 

 

 

So much fun for them!



Trusting God in the Midst of Change

(Photo Credit)

The past few days have been very interesting to say the least.  After Marcus made it through the entire hiring process to become a Sheriff's Deputy, we got the email on Tuesday that they were not going to hire him.  Talk about a huge disappointment.  We have spent many hours praying for and working towards this goal, including flying him across the country twice on our own dime in order to go to interviews and testing. 

Once he made it through all of these steps, we honestly thought that the job was his and we began planning as if it was.  So that email Tuesday was definitely a sobering dose of reality and we began to wonder if law enforcement is really where God wants Marcus to be.  So we continued to pray for God's provision and we trusted that He would provide a job, whether it was in law enforcement or in a different field. 

Well, yesterday (Friday), Marcus got a follow up email from the HR director at the Sheriff's department saying how sorry she was that he wasn't selected for the patrol job, but would he be interested in a different job within the department?  They will be hiring this summer for jobs in the Detention Center, which is what Marcus has been doing here for the past eight months.  He has heard great things about the job itself.  The benefits are great, hours and pay would work well for our family and our schedule as well.  So although it isn't the job that he originally applied and interviewed for, it was one of the other jobs that he was interested in. 

I find it interesting that between Tuesday and Friday there really was no panic when our original plan went up in smoke.  I think both of us just knew that God would provide.  Knowing that we serve a God that is bigger than any of our little issues brings such peace in the midst of what could be a very stressful situation.  He has been so faithful throughout this whole process from us deciding to move and getting an offer on our house that would allow us to stay here until June, to working everything out with moving Marcus's truck and all of the other small little details that come with packing and moving cross-country.   Romans 8:28 tells us that God works all things together for the good of those who love Him.  We have seen this so vividly in the past few months! 

(Photo Credit)

The first verse that came to my mind on Tuesday night when everything seemed up in the air was Psalm 46:10.  The NASB says, "Cease striving and know that I am God." The ESV renders it "Be still..."  This is one of my favorite verses in the Bible because it reminds me that He is in control, no matter what our circumstances are.  He is able and He is faithful to do what He has promised.  Our part is to stop trying to do it all ourselves and allow Him to work! Our prayer is that we can continue to do just that.

26 Weeks and a Trip to Charleston

Tuesday I was 26 weeks!  Only 14 left to go.  It finally hit me that I'll be 30 weeks when we go to Alabama and 34 weeks when we begin our trip to Boise!!  We'll definitely be praying that Miss P holds on until closer to her due date!  I would NOT want to have to find a hospital somewhere on the road!

Both Marcus and I needed to get our VA ID cards, but the closest place we could get them made was in Charleston, so we decided to make a day of it and take the kids to the aquarium while we were there. 

From the entrance to the aquarium, we could look across the river to Fort Sumter.  There was a ferry that took people on tours of the Fort.  Maybe if the kids were older we would have taken them.

Also across the river is the USS Yorktown.

The aquarium was literally right on the water.

 

Inside was a coastal rainforest exhibit.

Daddy and the kiddos in front of the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge

Mommy and the kids

In this touch tank there were a couple different types of sting rays and a bonnet head shark.

In a different touch tank, they had horseshoe crabs and smaller sting rays.

 



Had it not been naptime, I think we would have had a better time.  Mason ended up having a total meltdown and he and I had to leave and go wait in the truck.  He fell asleep about 2 minutes after I put him in his car seat!  I was also not impressed with how expensive it was for the size and quality of the exhibits.  If it had not been a somewhat spontaneous trip, we might have done a little bit more research and gone somewhere else instead.  But you live and learn, and I think the big kids enjoyed it.  We got what we needed to get done accomplished, so I count it as a productive day!

Pinterest Inspired Dinner and Dessert

Let me preface this post by saying that *normally* I meal plan by the month, so that I don't have to worry about it being 3pm and I still have no idea what to make for dinner.  But I've gotten a bit off track with the pregnancy and getting ready to move, so meal planning has taken a bit of a backseat.  Every once in a while when I'm not feeling inspired, I turn to Pinterest to find something that sounds good.  I've made this recipe before and everyone loves it.  I just throw four chicken breasts, a can of corn, a can of black beans, a can of Rotel (or diced tomatoes), and a whole block of cream cheese into the Crockpot with cumin, garlic, and onion powders and let it cook for six hours on low.  I shred the chicken and let it cook for another 15-30 minutes.

 

I served it over brown rice with all the burrito fixin's:  tortillas, cheese, tomatoes, avocado, and sour cream.  Yummy and filling!

 

For dessert, I had some grapes and bananas that were getting towards the end of their useful life, so I decided to make a fruit salsa and cinnamon-sugar tortilla chips, which I also found on Pinterest.  I diced up some grapes, strawberries, bananas, and a pear and added three tbsp. of homemade strawberry jam to make the salsa.  For the tortillas, I cut the tortillas with a pizza cutter into fourths and brushed melted butter across them.  I then sprinkled cinnamon sugar across the tops and baked them at 350 for about 8 minutes.  They were delicious and the kids loved them!

 

A yummy dessert using ingredients I already had on hand.

 

Pinterest recipe link for chicken here and dessert here.

Mother's Day 2015 - Park Evening

After we left church on Mother's Day, we went out for lunch at Applebee's and then went home and the boys laid down for a nap while I finished up some homework.  Taylor and Daddy bought me some beautiful roses, a Mother's Day card, and some Twizzlers, yum! :)

It was a gorgeous day, so we decided to grab a pizza for dinner and have a picnic at the park.  We all had a blast.  Everybody got in on the action, even Daddy!

Taylor helping her brother! Proof that it does happen occasionally! :)

Mase munching on a breadstick

Daddy and Hunter racing across the lily pads.

Mason trying to figure out how to get down, lol!

Miss Paisley and I relaxing on the bench.

 

This was right before Mase decided he wanted off and almost flew into the mulch, lol.

Tay and Hunter swinging like a crab.

Whee!!

We saw this cool flower; I have no idea what kind it is, but it was beautiful!

 

We drove home with the windows down and enjoyed the sun going down.  I couldn't have asked for a better Mother's Day!  I even got a back massage, which is a little slice of heaven for this pregnant mama!  :)