Baby's First Plane Ride

Jeanie and I took a quick long weekend to Colorado to visit Joel and his 3 girls, so the girls could have some cousin time. And so I could see my brother!

Off bright and early! I was so nervous about the flight, but we thankfully were seated next to a dad with young kids and Jeanie took a nap, so it went pretty well!

Joel picked us up and we went for lunch to Cafe Mexicali, yum.

Tengo hambre!

We enjoyed the beautiful Colorado sunshine.

Jeanie had fun exploring crawling around and eating the crumbs off a different home's floor.

With cousin Ellie, this girl loves babies, but she kept saying "when I grow up I'm going to have no cat, no dog, no babies, just a husband." So funny! We shall see little girl :)

She loved holding her.

Molina had her 'class mascot' for the weekend so we took pictures of Spirit doing different things for the class journal. He made waffles, went in a fort, played the piano, and met cousin Jeanie :)

All the girls, this was post-nap, so some were crabby. 

Flying home!

She cried a little more on the way home because it was so late and she was fighting sleep, but this girl was a champ and did super well overall. And I even discovered a new tooth when we got home.

Meanwhile at home, Doug was potty-training August, the morning I left he had tarped the play area, and while I was off having fun he was taking him to the potty every 15 minutes, so we are well on our way to down to one babe in diapers! Woohoo!

Valentine's day

We had a nice family day before I worked the weekend. And my dad came over on the 13th too to watch the kids while we went out for dinner, so that was awesome!

Wagon ride earlier in the week

Doug gave me a valentine every day this week. 

I used to sleep with my butt up in the air too :)

10 months old!!!

My Valentine.

Family sledding walk around the neighborhood

Valentine's heart shaped pizza, never gets old. 

 And out for ice cream!

snowboarding

My friend told me about a deal that several ski resorts in Michigan partnered with McDonalds to get people out doing winter sports. An hour lesson skiing or snowboarding, equipment rental, and lift ticket for $35. What a steal!! I have asked Doug almost every winter to go snowboard with me and he always told me the same thing "I can't turn left", so I signed us up for the lesson so we could move past that :)

I learned to snowboard years ago out in Colorado by an old friend/boyfriend that I would always date when I was out babysitting for a wealthy family who had a house in Aspen, anyway, long story, but needless to say I hadn't been snowboarding in 5+ years so the lesson wasn't wasted on me. 

It was snowing, but wasn't super cold, it was beautiful!

Turns out we had a couple friend out that evening too so met up with them for a couple minutes. It was a fun evening. We didn't stay too long because we had to pick up the kiddos from Doug's parents, but I was glad we could go.

Then this week I saw on facebook that Mickey Mouse was coming to a local bar and grill. A couple friends had been wanting to meet up for dinner so we met there. It was pretty much a guy dressed up like Mickey Mouse making rounds to the tables but it was pretty neat. I don't know why, but August LOVES Mickey Mouse. For the past year or so he spots him wherever we go, on the Huggies diapers, on a cereal box, on other kids' clothes, on the top of someone's car antenna. So I thought that would be fun. He came and visited our table 3 times. 

Dinner with our friends and seeing Mickey Mouse and saved hundreds by not going to Disney, priceless! :) 

reflecting

A facebook friend posted this video the other day and I had tears rolling down my cheeks. (I can't seem to find a non-FB option, this one only has half the video). My babies are growing so fast. I feel so privileged to be their mom and to spend so much time with them, but it still just feels like it is flying by too fast.

laying low

The first half of the weekend was good, I worked Friday but we had all day Saturday and Sunday together with not much to do so that was glorious. We had eggs and waffles both days and I got to take an afternoon nap!

I made a lot of baby food cubes this weekend. On Friday Jeanie had her 9 month appointment and while the doctor was mostly happy, she said she would have liked to see her gain another pound. She said she wants me to eat more calories so my milk is more "like whole milk". This is frustrating news as my own doctor found I have 'borderline high' cholesterol and I should be eating more low-fat! However, I think this still means can have healthy fats like olive oil, avocados, and not so much like extra butter and ice cream. Lol, bummer. Anyway, Jeanie has a full bag of green bean, pea, sweet potato, broccoli, and asparagus cubes in addition to the other little things she gets.

I had asked for a mini chopper for Christmas and in a miscommunication of asking people, I received 3 choppers! I love my Blend-Tec blender, but it does not do a good job for smaller portions like baby food.

After looking at all of them the winner ended up being the Ninja because it has a double blade. It works really well.

Saturday night we went over to our neighbor's house for dinner.

Sunday Daddy pulled August in the sled (I think that was during my nap)

Saturday night my neighbor had commented her son had been throwing up, but he was fine by dinner time. I didn't think much of it until Monday... da da dummmmm!

My boy was sick. And like many a mom-tale before me I'd heard about their children throwing up on them, it was finally my turn.

It was disgusting.

So he spent most of the morning sitting watching this little Christian bear video Boz learning letters and colors. While I washed our clothes, scrubbed the carpet, and kept Jeanie away.

Yes that is a picture of a puke pile, conveniently close to, but not in, the throw up bucket.

Even now days later I feel like I'm still smelling 'phantom puke' smell coming from somewhere. EW.

This poor boy, he felt so horrible, I felt so bad.

He has rarely napped since we took away his binky, but when he does he wants to lay on the carpet by the door for some reason. So I laid down a towel and he feel fast asleep.

He was done puking by nap time, but then he developed a fever that lasted into the night. A dose of Tylenol did the trick and he was back to his normal self by morning. Thank God! It's so sad and scary to have sick babies.

life lately

Just a couple pics from the first couple weeks of our year.

2020 Goals

This year, for the first time, Doug and I actually sat down and made some mostly joint goals for 2020.

- Read 2 books, then discuss and apply. The books are You & Me Forever which we got as a wedding gift 5 years ago, finally started reading this last fall, and realizing there is a lot to think about and could be pretty life changing if we allow ourselves to be changed. Doug feels the same about Tactics and so we will do the same with that one.

Doug has some weight loss goals, and unfortunately I got bad news from my new primary care doctor that I have "borderline high" cholesterol :( I was pretty surprised to see that, and disappointed as I already do exercise, not smoke, and eat pretty healthfully including lots of beans and fiber. But obviously that needs to come down. Heart disease is the #1 killer of women and I want to do all I can to be healthy and fit for myself and my family's sake.

- Lower my cholesterol into normal/good range! So I plan to exercise more faithfully, eat less cheese and icecream?, add salmon weekly and vegetarian dinners 2 nights a week. And then ask my doctor for a re-check in 3-4 months?

- Dance lessons. Saw a video on facebook and it looked so fun, so we're going to do that together.

- Buy our second rental property and get it rented. We are ready on the bank end, now just waiting for something decent to come on the market!

- See a financial adviser. This one is more what I want to do than Doug necessarily. We are saving into our Roths, 401k, 403b, 529s for the kids, and the rental property plan. I just want someone, with expertise, to look over our plans and see if we need any tweaks. It haunts me that just a little something done not right now could cost us literally thousands of dollars over the years before our retirement. I've also started reading Retire Inspired, after getting it as a gift from my sister years ago, and it's helping me get more motivated. As he says in his book, the only one who will plan for my retirement is me!

- Do a 5k together.

- Walk the Mackinac Bridge.

- Talk with our neighbors about building. I cannot shake this desire to build our own home. But both my parents and best friend are building, and it is SO expensive. We found out our neighbors build theirs and kept it to about $100 a square foot, (national average is $175), but they said they did a lot themselves. So we would like to sit down with them and see how they did that and if it would be feasible for us. I think having some real numbers would help us see if we could afford it, without being too house poor. We will have our house paid off in a couple months, so in some ways it seems crazy to go from banking all this extra cash to having a medium/large mortgage for 30 years, but on the other hand would love to have a little more land/ little more space/ stay in our neighborhood. So we are at least going to start sort of pursuing it until we come to a hard 'no'.

- Learn to play a piano song. Last Christmas my dad gave me sheet music for a song I liked and I don't think I played the piano all year. After seeing Mannheim Steamroller last month I was feeling nostalgic and missing being connected to music. I used to play piano and clarinet, although neither well, but enjoyed it and could be better with some practice.

- Read through this stack of books:

My game plan is to take a book to work and on my pump breaks I will alternate working on my BSF Bible study homework one pump break, and read on the second pump break. That way I'll get in an hour a week. And it will be a better use of time than just scrolling the internet on my phone.

- Travel. We also have plans for a trip to Germany for my old host brother's wedding in September. While in Europe I hope to see at least one more country, talking with Doug about where to go and what to do. Would love to do Greece, but not sure if we have enough time to do it justice and/or if it would be too hard logistically with the kids. We shall see.

Looking forward to 2020!