clear as mud

Sometimes I get so caught up in blogging about the “right” thing, I don’t blog at all.  I don’t like that I do this… but for some reason, I feel like when I blog, I should write about certain topics {Christopher} to make the (few) people who read my blog happy.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.  Sometimes I’ll write a whole big long post, re-read it, and delete it, because I think, nobody will care about this, it’s just me rambling on about nonsense, and I delete it.

A few years ago (summer 2007, to be exact. ok, maybe a more than a few.) I changed. A lot. I realized I was tired of being used, tired of being stepped on, and tired of being a pushover.  And I tried really  hard to change that about myself. I was tired of always having my feelings hurt by people who were supposed to be closest to me. For the most part, I did change – for the better. I was happier.

All that being said, I’ve realized recently that I’ve kind of slid back into that old Stephanie. It’s hard to explain, but the bottom line is, I’m just not happy. With a lot of things. I’m tired of sitting around with a smile on my face, pretending to be happy. I’m tired of letting things slide. I’m tired of keeping my mouth shut because it’s the “nice, polite” thing to do.

I’m also tired of not being happy with myself. There are a lot of factors to this, but if you know me, then you probably know what I’m talking about. And things in that department, I have no doubt, absolutely go hand-in-hand with my emotions right now.

I love blogging. It’s such an outlet for me. And I LOVE my son. And I love blogging about my son, because it’s such a great way for me to document all our family memories. But I also like blogging for myself. Just to talk about random subjects or my thoughts on something or whatever…

Is any of this even making sense?  I have no idea… it’s late and I’m tired, and I know that tomorrow is a long day at school – so I’m not even sure why I’m up and not in bed.  What I’m trying to say is, expect a few changes in my blog (and myself) over the next few months (and hopefully, here to stay.) I do not want my blog to be just about my child(ren.)  I hate having to censor myself, especially on my blog.

If you’ve muddled your way though that… then I’m sorry. I know it makes no sense, but I’m going to push publish anyway, because it’s marking the START of a new chapter of my life. Enjoy!

Rainy Monday

It’s a nasty, rainy day here today.  I’m just hoping that the possible tornados stay away from us later this evening.

I sat down at the desktop with my memory card from my camera, planning to write a loooong catch-up post, but our Adobe Photoshop program (and I’m not going to lie, I originally wrote “Adobe Photoshop App.”  iPhone addict, anyone?) is acting weird and only transferred over 6 or 7 of 300+ photos.  I know that I could still transfer them over manually, but I prefer using Adobe for a few different reasons.

Since I hate posting without pictures (not sure why?) I decided to go around and snap a few pics with my phone. Here’s a picture of my pond front yard.

This picture is of a potted hydrangea on my driveway. It’s sitting in several inches of water.

I know that these babies are glad to be inside out of the yucky weather…

We had a great Easter weekend, plus the weekend before Easter we always have a big family get-together at my mom’s house, which was a lot of fun, as usual.  Hopefully my next post will contain hundreds of fun pictures from the last month. Haha!  I know I’m so behind, and I do intend on catching up. I just need all of my schoolwork/housework/yardwork/personal life/computer programs to align correctly and work when I need them to work so that I can get stuff done when I want it to be done!

Since I’m all caught up housework (snort. Yeah, right.) I’ve been catching up on DVRd shows today. Priorities, right?

Desperate Housewives. Please don’t ask me why I continue to watch this show. I can’t make myself stop.

Dessert First.  Because I need another reason to crave high-calorie foods.

Amazing Race. Love this show. Hate that the (SPOILER!) Cowboys went home this week.

And this…

oh, yes. That’s right. I’m hooked on Sister Wives.

Has anybody else watched this? I was completely in shock when I first heard about it being on the air last fall, but I started watching it a few weeks ago and I REALLY like it.

Just for the record.

A year or two ago, I found a (house) floor plan that I LOVED. I had it saved on my laptop, but when it crashed and burned from a virus, I lost the website. A few weeks ago I started looking for it again. It was pretty much like looking for a needle in a haystack and I was afraid I would never find it.

BUT a few days ago I found it! I was SO excited. Stephen and I aren’t planning on building a house anytime soon, but if we ever do, I am about 99% sure that this is the plan I would pick.

Here is the link to the website.

Um, yes, the master bedroom has his and her bathrooms. I won’t have to share my bathroom with a stinky boy. And yes, that is my very favorite thing about this floor plan.  Mama’s bathroom = no boys allowed.

I am pretty much just posting it here so that it never gets lost again. :)  There are a few things I would change about it.  I would expand the laundry room so that it would be an actual room, not just a closet in the wall. And I would see if it was possible to add a half bath.

On a side note, Happy 20 Month Birthday today to Christopher. I cannot believe he will be two in 4 short months!

I should have time for a full update on Wednesday. We had a busy weekend!

Quick Post

I have a whole post that I plan to write out, but I haven’t had the time (or energy) to write it all out. I always feel like it takes me forever to write a post. Not sure if that’s the same with everybody else?

Tomorrow I have lots of busy-work homework (I hate busy-work. Seriously hate it.) but maybe sometime tomorrow night I can write a decent post about the happenings over the last few days. The end of the semester is approaching very quickly, and for some reason it seems like there are always a million end-of-the-semester projects and homework that the teachers like to throw in at the last second before finals.

I’ll leave you with this picture of Jasper that I took yesterday. I’m in love with it!

Just Call Me Suzy

Suzy Homemaker, of course.

I got the bright idea (ha) earlier this week that I needed to make and freeze several meals for us to have on hand. I have tried doing the monthly/weekly meal plan, but it doesn’t work out for me very well, for several different reasons – one being time.  I decided I would try this, and if it works out well then hopefully I will be able to do this next fall since I will be going to classes at Henderson five days a week.

What?  You mean I hadn’t mentioned that yet?  Gee, must’ve slipped my mind. Either that, or I’m hoping that by not talking about it, I won’t have to do it.

Anyway, I sat down a few days ago and made a list of a few meals that I wanted to make and freeze. Some of these dishes I had made/eaten before, others just sounded good.

I then made a grocery list of everything I needed.  Unfortunately for my checkbook, my pantry was pretty bare, so I had to stock up on a lot of things.  Good news is, I have plenty left over so I shouldn’t have to go on a huge shopping trip any time soon.

Trust me when I say, you don’t want to know what the Grand Total of this list was.
Also notice – there is no tomato sauce on this list. It’ll be important later.

My mother-in-law took Christopher for us for a few hours this afternoon. Stephen had a lot of homework to do and I figured it would be the perfect time for me to prepare all my dishes!

I got all the recipes printed off and most of the ingredients set out. This picture is everything except for Chili and Ritz Chicken Casserole.

And then I cooked… and cooked… and cooked.

I  made Chicken Lasagna, Chicken Potato Casserole, King Ranch Chicken, Filo Breakfast Casserole (which better be really good because it was way too time-consuming and I probably won’t make it again. I’ll try a different, easier breakfast casserole.) Ritz Chicken (two batches – one to freeze and one for dinner tonight {which would be the half-eaten casserole in the bottom right corner}) Swiss Chicken, and my mom’s Chili.  In case you were wondering, that’s eight – yes, I said EIGHT – dinners that I prepared tonight. It took me almost 6 hours. I think it might take me less time next time I do it. I learned a few things while doing it today. (One of which is to never make Filo Breakfast Casserole when you’re trying to save time.)

I am hoping to use these once, maybe twice a week. I’m wanting to stretch them out for a while.  We should be able to eat off of them for at least 2 or 3 meals.  I made a double batch of chili then I added beans because (1) Stephen prefers beans and (2) it stretches it out. I froze the chili in three parts, and each section should make 4 or 5 bowls of chili. We’ll see, I guess.  I would be okay with doing this once a month in the fall. It would make life so much easier on me if I didn’t have to worry about dinner every single night.

This is a Chop –n- Stir. Does anybody else have one?  I’d seen an advertisement for these somewhere and mentioned to Stephen that I wanted one. I prefer my hamburger/sausage/any kind of “ground” meat to be chopped very small. I don’t like biting into big chunks of meat. Stephen has a hard time using a spatula to chop the meat as small as I like for it to be. Anyway, when we were in Branson over Spring Break, we picked this up in one of the kitchen outlets. I LOVE it! It breaks my meat up super small without any problems. Stephen and I both like it a lot.

Here’s a funny story. The chili recipe I use calls for 1 can of tomato sauce per 1 pound of meat. (I usually make 2 pounds at a time, so I buy two cans of tomato sauce when I am buying ingredients for it.)  Stephen loves chili, and there have been several times when we are at the store and he’ll say “I would like for you to make some chili. Do you have everything you need to make it?”  And I’ll say, “I have everything but tomato sauce,” because chili is the ONLY thing that I use tomato sauce in so it’s not one of those items that I just keep in my pantry all the time.

Or is it?  Apparently, I’ve picked up tomato sauce a lot, thinking that I would use it to make Chili. Then a few weeks would go by, I WOULDN’T make chili, and the next time I would go to Wally World I would think, I don’t have any tomato sauce. I need to pick some up so that I can make some chili.”

A few months ago, Stephen was unloading the groceries and laughed when he put up the tomato sauce we had bought that day. He told me that I was STOCKED UP on tomato sauce and that I didn’t need to buy any more for a long time! We both got a kick out of it and I told him how I always think that I don’t have any tomato sauce and so I buy two jars of it at the store.

About a month later, I was at the store. We had just had several days of nice, Springy weather and then a cold front moved through. I was trying to decide what to have for dinner and frito chili pies popped into my head. (They’re my favorite “cold-day” food.  Warms me heart and soul!)  I ticked off the ingredients in my head and thought, I have everything but tomato sauce.  So I headed over to the canned vegetable aisle and picked up two jars of tomato sauce.

It wasn’t until I was unloading the groceries at home when I had remembered the conversation that Stevo and I had had several weeks before. I laughed and laughed at myself, told Stephen about it, then called my mom and told her about it. It sounds exactly like something my mom would do.  Sigh.

When I went to make Chili this afternoon, I found all of these sauces in my cabinet. I should be set through next winter! Ha!

And lastly, because I know that some of you don’t care about my venture into freeze-ahead meals, and picture of the C-Monster.

Ha. How do you like that one?  Why yes, that’s crayon on his high chair. Not my brightest moment, thinking that my 19-month-old would keep his coloring sheet on the high chair. This pretty much sums up how our day went yesterday. Maybe someday I’ll re-hash how everything went down. Let’s just say that I put him in his high chair to try to keep him out of trouble and to try to keep myself from going to the loony bin. Mission not accomplished. (Although don’t worry your pretty little heads, he did not get in trouble for coloring on the high chair. It was my fault, and a Magic Eraser took care of all the damage!)

Cranky Christopher

This morning, Christopher woke up kind of early. Normally he sleeps in till at least 8 or 8:30, sometimes later, but this morning he was up at 7:15. I know it’s hard on him because we get him up around 7 or 7:10 on the mornings that Stephen and I go to school, so I understand that he may get a little confused on the “off” days.  I don’t mind him waking up early, really.  I just prefer for him to wake up in a good mood.

99.9% of the time he is the HAPPIEST child!  Seriously.  I could not ask for a sweeter, happier little boy.  But he was CRANKY this morning and I know it’s because he didn’t get enough sleep last night.  Usually when he’s sleepy he lays down for a nap very easily, but for whatever reason this morning, he decided he wanted to be up!

We ate our oatmeal for breakfast but he was whining the whole time. We always share a bowl (I eat just a few bites of it – he has the majority of it) but today when I would take a bite he would cry and fuss because he wanted it.  Then he whined and cried when he was dragging a toy into the living room through the kitchen. He was fussy when I changed his diaper and cried when I swatted him on the leg for not being still while I was changing his diaper. He wanted to go into my bedroom, but Stephen was sleeping (Tuesday nights are his late night at the paper and he didn’t get home until 5:30 this morning) and so he cried when I wouldn’t let him in. He screamed AT THE TOP OF HIS LUNGS for some reason that I cannot even remember!

I tried laying him down at 9 but he refused, so I kept him up for a little while longer and tried laying him down again at about 9:45, but he just screamed and threw his pacifier out of the crib.  I was going CRAZY because I knew that he needed to sleep and wouldn’t stop being fussy until he did, plus the house needed to be semi-quiet so that Stephen could sleep.

I finally loaded him up in the car, grabbed a cherry diet pepsi and some quarters, and headed to town.  We went through the car wash and to the drive-thru at the bank, then just drove around aimlessly for about 30 minutes.  His eyelids finally started getting droopy and his head was wobbling around, so I headed home and put him in his crib and now he’s asleep!

Hopefully he’ll wake up on the right side of the crib this time – we have a big grocery shopping list that I’ll have to tackle when he wakes up!

Weekend Wrap-Up

We’ve had a good weekend!

Friday evening after Stephen got home we played cards with my parents, which is our normal Friday night routine. On Saturday, Stephen’s mom took Christopher to church with her and Stephen and I had some time alone at the house to work on homework.  Later in the day I went to work in my flower bed, doing some redesigning. I ended up digging up an old Azalea stump that was in a weird spot and not really producing any new growth, anyway. I am SO excited because the Azaleas that I planted last summer are about to burst with beautiful pink blooms.

Yesterday afternoon we went to dinner with my parents and my aunt Gloria, my cousin Tonya, and Tonya’s two boys. They were visiting from Texas for the day and had spent most of the day riding 4-wheelers at Wolf Pen Gap.

Last night, Stephen and I watched The Other Guys. If you haven’t seen it, DON’T.  It was a waste of two hours of my life that I will never get back.  Halfway through it, I took my laptop over to the couch and caught up on Facebook, blogs, Twitter, and also looked up floor plans for my eventual dream home. :)

This morning, Stevo got up with Christopher and let me sleep in WAAAY too late. Ha! It was SO nice.  We hung around the house and played some Wii (Mario Brothers, anyone?) and around 12:30 headed over to Stephen’s mom’s house to work on her backyard. We got SO much accomplished but there’s still a lot of work to do.  I planted a TON of plants. Dahlias, Daylilies, Purple Echinacea, Black-eyed Susans, Foxgloves… and I’m sure a few other things that I can’t recall right now.  Stephen broke out the Rototiller and prepared a spot for her summer garden.  We still have a TON of stuff left to do to her yard… it’s just slow-going right now with school and Stephen’s job. I’m really looking forward to summer break! (I’m not going to take summer classes the first summer session, so I’ll get about 5 or 6 weeks off this summer! Although – it’s not by my choice. Henderson just isn’t offering any classes I need during the first summer session! I would choose summer classes over fall classes any day of the year!)

We got cleaned up from playing in the dirt (and sand, if your name was Christopher) and headed to dinner at Richie and Gina’s house. Gina made spinach and mushroom enchiladas, beans, corn, and guacamole and OH MY GOODNESS it was all SOOO yummy!  We had to roll ourselves to the car.

All in all -- a really great weekend! Unfortunately, tomorrow is Monday and Stephen and I have to start our school week a day early and drive to Arkadelphia early tomorrow morning to take care of some school business.  Five weeks till Summer Break!