It's a New Year: 2009

It's already 2009, if you can believe it. I hardly can.

2008 had it's ups and downs, but overall it was good.
The most amazing thing, of course, was the birth of my daughter in July.

I now have a 9 year old, and a 7 year old. It's so cliche, but the time goes so fast.

Max, my oldest, is such a great kid. He is smart and funny, he's really at one of my favorite ages. He's not a little kid any more, but he's not quite into the pre-teen age. He's still a kid, but his understanding of the world is so much wider and has more depth. He's a lot like me, his interests bounce around. He gets really interested in one subject and that becomes his intense focus for a few months, then it moves on to something else. I'm 31 and I still do that.
This year his main interests have been Zelda, pirates, and Pokemon. He is, of course, interested in other things at the same time, and builds on his interests out of those things.

Miles is now 7, just turned in December. I have to say I am glad 6 is over, from what I hear it's a universally difficult age. He's wonderful, such a sweet, kind child, and he is SO much like his father. He is fascinated with electricity, taking things apart to see how they work, he loves physics and Rube Goldberg devices. He also loves geology.

They are incredible kids, and I love them so much. They amaze me, and inspire me. They are so loving, and caring, and just perfect.

Maddie is 5 months old now, and holy crap! She is just the best baby ever! I am in awe of her every day. She is just the absolute picture of happy baby-ness. She is bouncy, smiles at everyone. She is sitting assisted, still no teeth, has very grabby little hands, LOVES to chew on paper, drools everywhere. She is such a lovely little person.

Chris and I are celebrating 6 years of our relationship this year in February. I am still incredibly happy to have this wonderful man in my life. We have our issues, sometimes more than other times, but overall things are good, solid, and strong. He is the best partner. Just tonight we went out to dinner, and as always, he insisted on holding Maddie and letting me eat with my hands free, telling me he knows I am here all day with her and how he just wants to make sure I have the chance to enjoy my meal without juggling her.
He is also just madly in love with his little girl. He is an incredible father, he loves to show his daughter off, it's adorable. Most of the time when we're out, he just carries her around. I ask if we want to take the stroller. Usually it's a no, I'll just hold her from him.

He is also a wonderful step-parent to the boys, and he is there for them, to tuck them in at night, to put together their fiddly toys (Chaos Tower, criminy!), to play Legos with them for hours, to show them new things, to make them laugh, to take them out to play. They've had their moments in feeling out their relationships with each other this year, and I know step-parent relationships will have their own unique hurdles. I try to let him figure that out as much as possible, and I know they'll grow their relationship stronger and closer in the coming year.
When we got married 3.5 years ago, Chris made vows to the boys as well, and he took those just as seriously as his vows to me. I love him all the more for it.

I was pregnant for over half of the year, and pretty much miserable. I had never imagined such a taxing pregnancy! I am glad I won't ever have to do that again. The end result was worth it a million times over, of course, but yeah, DONE with that noise.
I am now out of shape, by far the biggest I've ever been, and feeling crappy about it. I am having a hard time getting motivated, but I am getting there.

I am home with Maddie for the time being, and I am enjoying it. I am looking forward to getting some things figured out with regards to my future at this point, some plans in place for when the time comes.
I have been trying to teach Maddie how to drink out of a bottle or sippy cup and so far that has been full of fail. She will chew on them, and finds them novel, but honestly has not a clue what to actually DO with them... I'll keep trying, and we'll hopefully get it sooner rather than later. I would like to be able to leave her so Chris and I can have a date, and so that I will have a little more in the way of options for my time.

Ok, enough with the hurf durfing, and on to some pictures!
(ARGH! CLICK ON THEM TO SEE THE WHOLE PICTURE!!!!! They got cut off! Too hard to go back, would have to redo the whole thing and I don't wanna!)

An Update!

Wow, I haven't updated in a while!

I have just been enjoying my new baby girl immensely. She is such a sweet little thing, and each day Chris and I are in awe of this beautiful little creature.

The boys both admit she's pretty cool, too :)

A Quick Update

I haven't updated in several days, maybe even nearly a week. I figure I'll catch up this week. I was certainly happy to read about Blogger's new feature of being able to auto post by setting up times.
I felt like I was a little too post happy last week and I think this will let me do more posting like I would like without bombarding anyone.

It's late and we just finished watching another episode of Dexter. I love that show. We're 3 episodes into the 2nd season now and it's still fantastic.

We went to Galveston yesterday for a birthday party and that was great, I will post pictures soon. Here's a sneak peak:



They were fine in the water (I got in a bit, too and it was nice and warm) but out of the water in the wind and those boys were cold and wet.
It was in the mid 80s here yesterday, but that's almost cold for a TX beach. I can never figure out people from other areas of the country that think 75 is balmy and go swimming in a pool, that's insane to me! I think my kids are the same way. :)

It's been a good weekend, and I have made my to do list for the week (and really, there's not a whole lot on there I can come up with), and am looking forward to getting the rest of the house in order. It's almost there!

Long Day, Busy Week

This past week went by really quickly! I'm not even sure where it all went. It felt busy, though.

So, this week I made a few recipes from different blogs and they were wonderful!

First I made made this Smoky Refried Bean Soup and it was wonderful. The only things I did differently was I left out the green pepper, I didn't have any and I am not thrilled about them cooked. I love them raw, though. And then I substituted a chipotle in adobo for the chili powder, hot sauce and paprika. For the tomatoes called for in the recipe I used the Muir Glen Organic's Fire Roasted Tomatoes. Between those and the chipotle and adobo sauce, it had a great smoky flavor. It also had the perfect amount of spice to it. It was super simple to make, too.

Another thing I made were these Banana Cookies. OH, they were good! They were like banana nut bread in a cookie. YUM! I didn't add the clove to the recipe, and I'm not sure I will in the future.

In my veggie box this week I got 4 heads of wonderful red and green leaf lettuce, a huge bunch of cilantro, 4 smallish onions with green parts, one bunch of bright lights swiss chard, and one bunch of beets with greens. I think that was it. It was all gorgeous and the other night I made an awesome salad that went a little like this:

Wash and dry green and red lettuce, tear into pieces.
Dry roast half a cup of pecan halves until fragrant, toss them onto the lettuce.
Cut 1 1/2 navel oranges into segments and add to the salad.
Squeeze the 2nd half of the left over orange over the salad.
Add a large handful of cilantro very finely chopped to salad over oranges.
Add as much fresh goat cheese, crumbled (the best you can with goat cheese), onto the salad as you like.
Squeeze a lime over, add fresh black pepper.

That was a mighty fine salad. The only thing I lamented not having on hand was a red onion. I would have taken a quarter of it or so, finely chopped it and added that as well.

Today was a TaeKwonDo class and clinic for the oldest. The clinic was board breaking. He broke his first 3 boards ever, and was THRILLED with this, as you can imagine an 8 year old to be! I was so proud of him, he loves this sport and is so into it.
He used hands and elbows to break the first 2, then the 3rd, he decided to do a kick. The board broke into 3 and the 3rd piece flew way over the instructor's head. No one else's board did that, so of course that was a big deal, too.

Unfortunately, due to an accident on the interstate on our way to get there, we didn't have time stop and pick up a new digital camera before this. ARGH. That was very disappointing. We did get a new one afterwards, though, so I'll have new pictures to be posting again soon.

We ended up getting another Canon Powershot, which is what our last one was, and it was a great camera. It suffered an unfortunate fall several months ago, but in the 2 years we'd had it, we never had an issue with it, other than it's lack of indestructibility. ;)
The new one is a much improved 8MP, with a 4x zoom, and it was a very reasonable price. It's amazing how much things change in just two years' time regarding technology.

I have so many things I would like to post about, but I have been so tired by the time I get to sit in front of my computer in the evenings that I only manage to make it maybe halfway through my blog feeds before I just crash. I haven't had much energy for posting!

And now, the RIAA is stealing my sleep (heh), and I have to do that whole coffee demo thing in the morning at what will actually be 9 to my poor brain instead of 10 like it should be!

Also, it's still cold. WTF? It's over a week into March! I'm in Texas! It's supposed to be pushing 80 on a regular basis at this point. I am not ok with this weather thing, and I would like to call for a moratorium on all of this unseasonably cold weather.

I think I may need some sleep!