Loving Life

My kids love to read and that makes me happy! The best way to get David to go to town with me is with a promise of a trip to the library. The girls are coming home from school excited to read books they got from school.  Ana is on a mission to read all 21 selected chapter books by the end of the school year so she can earn a Barnes and Nobles gift card.  She has read two books in two days.  I think she's well on track to accomplish that goal.  : ) Speaking of school, the girls are still loving it.  They come home every day excited to tell about all the fun things they did and learned.  The skip off happily to school every morning as well. It makes my heart happy to see their excitement for this new adventure in their life. Ana told me the other day that it seems like she's the only one in her class who really enjoys going to school.

Yesterday was my birthday. I finally turned 34. I've been saying that I'm 34 for about two years now. Now I can stop correcting myself. I'm not sure why I was so stuck on 34.  Guess I wanted to be that age for awhile now. Anyway, it was a fun day, but nothing too out of the ordinary.  I started celebrating it the night before since I knew the day of my actual birthday was going to be busy.  I made a nice dinner - chicken and sausage jambalya, my favorite tomato/cucumber marinade, garden green beans, and cheesy garlic toast.  Yum! We topped that off with some peach pie I had made that day. It was discovered that there was no ice cream to go with the warm peach pie, so we had to run downtown to get some. What's birthday peach pie without ice cream?  It was every bit as good as it looks. : ) On my actual birthday, Aaron took me out for lunch. I had planned on being a good blogger and bringing along my camera to take pictures of our lovely mid-day date, but I forgot it as

Last night as I was making dinner, I realized that pretty much everything I was making was red and green.  My salad had red pepper from my garden, fresh garden tomatoes with corn ready to mix in with my pasta (which incidentally was the tri-colored pasta and had red and green in it), along with a bowlful of homemade pesto.  And our all time summer favorite of marinated tomatoes and cucumbers. Not pictured is our red watermelon.  I felt festive as I gazed upon my meal. Close up of our favorite summer dish.  Use equal parts olive oil to balsamic vinegar/red wine vinegar, minced garlic, salt, pepper, and fresh basil and parsley.  Pour it over sliced tomatoes and let it sit for 10-30 minutes. We could eat this everyday - and we almost do, despite how I get heartburn right now from all my tomato eating.  It's too good to let a little pregnancy heartburn slow me down! Today, I picked tomatoes out at my garden at my mom's.  I got 6 plastic grocery sacks full of tomatoes.  I made an a

I guess it's been a few weeks since I last posted a tummy shot.  Here you go.  Sorry for the poor picture quality.  Maybe someday I'll have Aaron take a real picture of me when I'm dressed up nicely.  Until then, this will have to do! So I believe at the end of next week, I will officially be in my third trimester (yea!)  Here's a brief update on how I'm doing: I already feel pretty huge, so I'm a little worried about just how big I'm going to get. Eating is fun and I don't feel sick most of the time. Sleeping is harder and I have more bad nights of sleep than I prefer. The girls talk to their little sister everyday and give her lots of hugs - they can't wait to see her! I love to feel her kick and squirm and watch my tummy move around as she does it. I'm starting back with walking again - feeling pretty slow, but at least I'm moving! Caught another kidney infection early before it got too severe - still on meds for that one. I starte

Since I didn't do a good job yesterday in filling you all in about the girls' first day of school, here is a more complete overview along with pictures taken by my dear husband. As I said before, they were both a little nervous about going, probably Ana more than Abby.  But Abby takes her cues from her beloved big sister and was parroting most of the worries Ana was speaking. Heading out the door! Beginning to short walk to school Aaron walked with them the first day and he said by the time they got to the top of the hill leading down to school, they had found some friends and went happily scampering off to school. Ana is more introverted than Abby, so once she got home, she spent a couple of hours just quietly reading and getting some quiet and alone time.  Once that was out of the way, she told me quite happily about all the fun things they did and about her class, teacher, and classmates.  I think she will have a good year, though she's a bit sad that she only has t

The girls had their first day of school today!  They were both very excited, but also very nervous. We got to go to school last night to take their school supplies and unload them in their desks, meet their teachers, and eat ice cream at school.  What a great thing - if I equated school with ice cream, I'd be happy with it too!  This morning, I unfortunately was unable to see them off on their first day of school. I had to take David to his physical - one that you schedule four months ahead of time when you don't know that it will be the first day of school.  : (  However, Aaron did a fine job of seeing them off and he even took some pictures.  I will try to post them soon.  They both had an enjoyable first day and were excited to tell me all about it. As I said, I took David to his 12 year check-up/physical.  He used to be at about the 80th percentile on the growth chart for his height.  But now his is officially off the top end of it.  I guess growing almost six inches in a

We had a great first day of school with David!  I think he even enjoyed it and was happy with his work.  I love starting off a school year on a good note like that.  I worked very hard the past few weeks in getting the lessons all mapped out and written down.  I'm not sure how many hours I poured into it, but I hope that it will free up many hours in the future of this year. I told David that this planner is now his life for 7th grade.  He must take good care of it and it will lead him well. He will learn to use it and rely on it to keep him on track and keep him organized throughout the year.  While I told him he may not get everything done in one day that's listed, he should have it done by Saturday at the latest. Here's our nicely organized school cupboard.  The most encouraging part of today was our writing class. That is the one subject we have butted heads on the most.  He despises writing and acts as if I'm trying to kill him when I have him write anything.  Thi

Tomorrow begins a new season in our lives.  David starts 7th grade tomorrow! We are starting school a little earlier this year than normal since we'll be taking a lot of time off in December to welcome a new little girl into our family. I always get excited and nervous at the start of each new year. This year is no exception. I decided to try planning out my entire school year in advance instead of my usual week by week approach.  I'm hoping that cuts down on my workload as well as my days of feeling unmotivated and not doing school, and that it will give David more responsibility in getting his work done.  But I did try to make sure to plan in some wiggle room days so that it's not all work and no play.  Second semester has more wiggle room than first semester.  We're going to try to hammer down the first semester and get a lot done so that we can relax a little more once baby is born. The girls start school next week. I have some mixed feelings about it.  While I am

Whew! It's hard to believe it's already August.  Time sure is flying by. I've kept myself quite busy the past few weeks. School will be starting soon and so that means last minute summer projects are underway!  Here are just a few things I've been up to lately: 1. Cleaning out the girls' room.  Things got quite a bit out of control up there. We were waiting for some cooler days to venture into the room to clean it out before school starts, as their room gets to be stifling in the heat of the summer. Yesterday and today were the days to get it done.  We sorted and cleaned and ended up with two trash bags of clothes to pass on to a friend (we have a great source of hand-me-downs for which I am super thankful!).  We also got rid of three trash bags of "stuff" to lighten up their room.  It feels so good to have that done.  A special thanks to my MIL for her help on the morning of Day One - it got us much farther along in the process than if we were just doin

While I don't consider myself a grammar/word snob, there are certain words currently in vogue that irritate me to no end.  Maybe it's because I'm pregnant and have a higher level of sensitivity to irritating things these days. These words are usually just a shortening of the actual word, as if we were too lazy to finish saying the word we started.  If you are one of the people who consistently uses any or all of the following words, please do not be offended.  I will not accost you if you end up using one of my "Top 10 Words That Irritate Me".  Nor will I stop liking you. I will merely pretend you used a different word and go on my merry little way.  Really, I'm not neurotic.  Really.  However, if you begin using these words around me because of this post, I will not be held accountable for my actions.  You asked for it.  So without further ado, here are my Top 10 Words That Irritate Me, in no particular order 1.  Preggers .  I am not preggers.  I will never

Welcome back to part two of our vacation! Once the kids had sufficiently dried out to just being damp, we allowed them back in the van where we went back to the hotel to shower and properly dry off from the big lake adventure.  We nibbled on some snacks on our way down to Kenosha, WI where we toured the Jelly Belly factory.  They have free tours available.  They didn't take you to see any of the actual production, but you got to ride on a little train and watch various clips about how they make Jelly Bellys.  It was pretty interesting.  We each got a free small bag of jelly belly's to take home with us too.  And of course you also had the option of spending your life savings on Jelly Belly's in their store once the tour was over.  We each had a dollar to spend, and found several small bags of candy on sale that we bought.  After that tour, we ended up at a Civil War Museum - this was mainly for Aaron's enjoyment, but the rest of us enjoyed it as well - just not as much