Thumbs Up/ Thumbs Down 2012 #22

Up:

• Memorial Day always brings back years of memories spent at the Major Family Reunions. We would all go to Thompson Park in Amarillo for a picnic and then we would go visit the cemeteries and put flowers on all the family graves. Grandpa (Ted Major) always made this weekend so special and I can't help but think about him today as he spends his first Memorial Day in heaven.
• We are on our way to Montgomery, Alabama for two months while Mike attends SOS (Squadron Officer School). I'm looking forward to Mike having more normal work hours and more time with the family and of course being in 'the South' again! The best part is we are already in Texas and the kids have been phenomenal little travelers. 
• My parents watched the kids last night while Mike and I went to Mass. It was so refreshing to actually be able to listen the message and pay attention the entire mass without our little distractions being there. I wish more Catholic churches had nurseries; it just makes sense. Then we ate some yummy food at Abuelo's! Oh Texas, how I've missed you!
• Tonight we got to meet our nephew Will for the first time! What a cutie! I was in town when he was born, but he was in the NICU and we were unable to visit him at that time. You would never know he was a NICU baby, he is so happy and healthy! So great to see and spend time with Abby, Andy, John, Will, and Dave!

Down:

• Jackson is now regressing in the eating department. The things he would always eat no matter what are one by one being dropped off the list. He just eats next to nothing. My hope is that something has eventually got to give and he will get hungry and eat. All I can do at this point is pray. He's happy, sleeps well, and is growing like normal so I guess at this point that's all I can ask for.

Kennedy hanging out with MiMi and PaPa!

Our little golfer!

He finally got brave enough to get in the pool!

Mmmmm....corn!

Kennedy loved the water!

Cat nap on the swing outside!

Hanging out with her uncle/godfather Dave!

Sweet baby Will with Abby!

Dave entertaining Kennedy while the rest of the guys braved to cold pool.

The sun was going down, so the pool was no longer warm. I think John's lips turned purple.

S'mores!

Cousins!

Favorite Thing:

 Traveling is challenging enough with kids, but at least we can always count on a good night's sleep at Homewood Suites. They have such an awesome hotel with meals on weeknights, full size fridge, microwave, and dishwasher for all the kids stuff. They also have a door separating the rooms which makes it great when bed time rolls around so Mike and I can stay up past 8pm and not disturb the kids. The other thing I like is that the bedroom has a ceiling fan, definitely something you can't find at other hotels. They are very affordable, I think the military rate is like $99/night!

Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down 2012 - #21

Up:

• Our little girl turned 7 months old on Saturday! Hard to believe we are now on the short end towards the 1 year mark! Also, we used the last of our gifted diapers this week. Cannot stress enough how wonderful that diaper shower and all our family/friends are to us. We are definitely blessed - thank you!

Daddy was my spotter!

And this is why everyone thinks I have a little boy when we go out; she always pulls off her headbands.

• I did my first 'garage sale' on Saturday. We used to have mega garage sales growing up, but I just haven't had enough stuff to do a full up garage sale on my own. I did a community yard sale on base and took a couple of other girls stuff besides my own to sell. The turn out wasn't great and not a lot of people showed up to even sell, but we made a total of $225 between the three of us, which isn't bad. It was also a perfect day for an outdoor garage sale which also means it was the perfect day for this fair skinned girl to get scorched! Oops, at least I made some money in the process!

Down:

• Another "worst mom ever" moment. It happened the first day of school when I didn't get JP's picture and here we are at the end of school and I did it again. No, I got a picture and remembered teacher's gifts! However, there is the matter of the end of year party. I was only notified that there was a party and to bring food. I did not realize that it was a ceremony where the kids sang songs and got certificates :( I was hurrying to get there because I had to feed Kennedy and then of course, anytime your running late there is the last minute double diaper changes because both kids decided to poop. I was like 5 minutes late, that's it, and I walk in just in time to see all the 2 year old class leaving the stage. I was so upset Jackson missed his special moment. He had no idea that he'd missed anything, but I did and I feel awful about it.

• Last year while Mike was deployed our Keurig started acting up and brewing the wrong cup sizes, then it just quit all together. Luckily it was in warranty and we got a brand new replacement brewer! Well almost a year later, here we are again with a different problem that is not fixable. Thankfully we are still under warranty on the current brewer and they are sending yet another brewer to us. I feel like we have just gotten shafted. So many people I know haven't ever had any issues and here I am taking good care of my machines that keep breaking. The upside is that we haven't had to pay for new brewers and the company has been great about everything.

Future Tiger!

Getting some sun!

Love to see them play together!

Favorite Thing:

I have recently been on a Greek Yogurt kick - it is really yummy and packed with protein. At the commissary they sell the Yoplait for $.70 and the Chobani for $1 each, so I've been eating mainly Yoplait. Then at my conference a couple weeks ago the RD (Registered Dietitian) that works for Chobani came and spoke to us about the product, processing, etc. because they are building a new facility in Twin Falls, ID. May I just say, number 1, I want her job! How cool would that be to live in upstate NY and work for an awesome yogurt company. Number 2, they have a tasty product that is also well manufactured. It has 5 active and live cultures and 3 probiotics and made with all natural ingredients. They also just started a whole new line of kids yogurt called Chobani Champs where the yogurt is in smaller packaging and already blended. They had tons of free samples at the conference so I tried to try as many flavors as possible while I was there. My favorite is the Apple Cinnamon - delicious! I highly recommend it!

Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down 2012 #20

Happy Mother's Day to all you wonderful mommys out there! Give yourself a pat on the back for everything that you do!

Up:

• It is rare that it happens, but this year my birthday falls on Mother's Day!  I think it's pretty cool! I was also born on Mother's Day back in 1984 - best Mother's Day present ever (I'm guessing)! What a blessing 28 years later to be celebrating my own birthday and being a mother to my two precious babies - Jackson & Kennedy!

• We enjoyed great company with friends for dinner today! Not to mention Mike smoked another fabulous brisket! Thanks everyone for making today special!
• A while back my friend Lauren asked me if I would be interested in having a group of girls over to the house to learn about organization. I was definitely flattered that she thought I had something to offer, but didn't really know how to teach people to organize short of giving them a tour of the whole house to show them what I had done, so that's what I did! I think the evening went really well and I hope they took something away from it. 

Down:

• Talk about a bad day. Monday we drove home from Salt Lake City, surprisingly the drive home was smooth and uneventful. As soon as we get home I started unloading the car. Jackson said he wanted to draw with chalk on his easel, which I thought was a good idea to keep him entertained while I was still unloading. BIG MISTAKE! He decided to do some more art on the walls upstairs. Then later that evening as I was switching out the laundry, he happened upon my purse. He found my lip stick pouch, unzipped it and picked out my favorite lipstick (which is no longer made) and decided he would color all over our white carpet in the living room. I was livid! Unfortunately after all my efforts to get the stain up, it didn't work and I'm sure we'll be paying for that when we move out. Sorry, I was too mad in the moment to get pics of these events. 
• To top that day off, after the kids went to bed I decided to put together the new toy storage system we purchased at Ikea. Of course I didn't get very far. Apparently there was some type of manufacturer's error and the holes were drilled in the wrong place by like a 1/4-1/2"!!!! I was really upset because on Thursday night I had a group of girls over to show them all my organizational stuff. Even though I wasn't able to have those in place for my talk, Ikea pulled through and is sending me replacements. They are also letting me keep the defective ones which I think my Dad could probably rig and make them work too! Needless to say that day ended with a much needed glass of wine and some DVR'd Grey's Anatomy to make me feel better!

Kennedy, so happy about the warmer weather so she can wear cute stuff like this!

...and these tiny adorable shoes!

The fruit is starting to be on sale again so I made a delicious fruit pizza!

We went bowling when Daddy got home on Friday. Love Jackson's stance here!

There's that stance again while he watches Daddy.

Kennedy watching the bowling from the side lines.

Don't know if you can see it but this is the closest I've ever been to a real beehive. This was in a tree in the Babies 'R Us parking lot of all places. They just called the exterminator thankfully! 

Forgot to post this last week. This is the gorgeous Catholic church in Sun Valley. Unfortunately they only do weekend masses and we weren't there on Sat. or Sun. There's always next time!

Favorite Thing:

I love a good challenge! A couple of weeks ago I purchased a twin bed off a local classifieds site. I had been wanting a twin bed to put in K's room so that when we have guests, Jackson can just sleep in there with her. Specifically I wanted a Captain's bed because those have a lot of built in storage. If you were to purchase one they range from $400-600. Obviously that is not in Mike's 'value tree' as he would say. Then I found a Captain's bed on this site for $200 - what a steal! I'm pretty proud of myself because this has been my project all the way through. I took Mike's pick-up and picked up the bed myself, unloaded it myself, sanded and stained it, repaired a broken drawer and replaced the knobs. Of course I had some guidance from my Dad, but I did all the work. To get to the point, my favorite thing this week is more of a challenge - to do something for yourself to make you feel proud and accomplished. It could be anything - making, crafting, organizing something - anything! I think sometimes as moms we get wrapped up in our children and doing things for/with them that we sometimes lose sight of the things that make us happy and keep us sane. I think it's so important to hold on to that because that is what makes us who we are and helps us set a good example for our children to be independent and your own person. I think I'm rambling now, but I just wanted to say that I had so much fun redoing this bed. It didn't turn out like I envisioned, but like Mike said, "Did you have fun doing it? Then is was worth every penny!" Here are some before and after pics:

Before

After

Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down 2012 #19

FYI this was written on Sunday, so there may be some retractions next week!
Up:

• It's not often that I get time to do things I enjoy or am passionate about by myself. My schedule generally revolves around the kids. This week, Mike took off work Wed.-Fri. to watch the kids for me while I attended the Idaho Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics state meeting. It was in Sun Valley which is a place we'd been wanting to go since moving to Idaho. The conference was amazing and had some really knowledgable guest speakers. I was able to get a lot of continuing education hours to maintain my registration. Mike had a good time exploring the town with the kids despite the yucky weather.  We will definitely make our way back to Sun Valley before moving from Idaho!

Unfortunately this was the only pic we got while in Sun Valley - Jackson thought he was hot stuff sitting in the big chair!

• Mike has gets to work in Salt Lake City all this week for a training. Sun Valley and Mountain Home are the same distance from SLC, so we decided to make the trip with him. Ok I will admit, my motivation was purely selfish - Ikea! I love this store and we were able to go get a car full of stuff I'd been wanting for a while. If you've never experienced this awesome place, I highly recommend it. Anyway, we are heading home Monday, short trip, but always a fun place to visit. Mike won't be home until Friday, but glad he'll be home for my birthday and Mother's Day!

Down:

• Apparently Mike thought it was a good idea to leave the computer open for all to play with while he went to the restroom one day when he was watching the kids. Of course, when he comes back Jackson has turned on some type of closed captioning thing on my computer that narrates EVERY thing you do. I have no idea how to turn it off and it is highly annoying. Mike thought it was hilarious and has made no efforts to fix it. (Thank you Krista Hughes for fixing this for me!)
• This week there was another F-15E crash. Thankfully both the pilot and WSO ejected and are fine. It is really hard for me to understand/accept why these things are happening. Obviously I have always known that Mike's job came with risks, but two crashes in the span of a month seems a bit much. My only hope is that they figure out what went wrong so it won't happen again.

Favorite Thing:

As mentioned above - IKEA!!! As an organization enthusiast, this store is packed with economically priced things for storage/organization. I've been wanting the Trofast organization storage system for the kids' toys for awhile, but just haven't made it down to Ikea to get it, plus there is always the part of convincing my husband of the necessity of my purchases. To my surprise, Mike put more in the cart than I was originally planning to get! Also, they sell the best gingersnap cookies there that I can't ever leave the store without. It is absolutely worth the trip if you've never been to one. If you don't have one in your neck of the woods, check out their catalog/web page to see all their great stuff!

So this was a pic from last summer when JP and I went to Ikea. I failed to get any pics this visit.