All about my little man.

I realize it's been ... forever ... since I have really posted any pictures of Jaxon and/or talked about how he's doing, his development, etc. Don't compare me to other Mom's who do monthly posts about their kids ... I admit I have done terrible on that, this summer has been insane floating from house to house for a week here and a week there and I honestly know I have missed out on so much of his 'growing up' this summer because of life circumstances. The good thing is, I have 2 months before baby #2 arrives to obsess over him and spend every moment I can with him.

Here's pictures from him over the summer and what he's up to at 18 1/2 months ...

Jax ~ you make me smile on a daily basis. Your laugh is contagious, your personality gets more and more fun each day... I simply just adore you.

You are discovering new things daily. You point at things and say "see?". You are smart and are constantly observing things, just like your Daddy. You will spend forever trying to figure a toy or device out, and will not give up on it until you figure out exactly how it works.

One of your favorite things to do is to play outside. You love bubbles, swimming, going on walks, and pushing any kind of toy around the yard, though your favorite is definitely your mower. You would spend hours upon hours outside if Mommy let you. {We do spend a lot of time out there, at least an hour or two per day between our morning walks and letting you just run around!}

When asked where your "Bebo" {belly button} is, you point to it. You also know where your eyes, nose, mouth, and ears are. We are still working on 'toes' because you point to your nose when asked where your toes are. :)

You are a fairly good eater. If I had to pick your favorite food, I would say it's any kind of fruit, which is a good thing! Some of your other favorites are: cheese hot dogs, quesadillas, turkey sandwiches, PB&J, any kind of cheese, yogurt, and little weenies. You also love desserts ... ice cream and choc chip cookies are your favorite. We are working on expanding your taste buds, right now we have to 'sneak in' most meats, especially chicken. You are definitely not a fan of anything resembling chicken and most days will not touch hamburger either.

I know every child goes through their "favorite parent" stage. Right now, without a doubt, your Daddy is the man. You light up when he walks into the room and love to play with him, or even just sit with him. I don't mind at all, the time you guys have spent apart the last 3 1/2 months while Daddy was in Denver definitely needs to be made up. I know you missed your Daddy just as much as he missed you and my heart feels full now that we are all together again.

You spent a lot of time this summer with your uncles, Mason and Cooper, and your cousins Landen, Alivia, and Brynn. You LOVE to play with other kids, mostly if they are the same age as you or older. One of your favorite playmates is your cousin, Alivia. You follow her around like a little shadow!! We are definitely missing them now that we live in Texas.

You LOVE the water... a little too much, actually! We had a couple of scares with you jumping into the deep end unattended this summer, so you have lost your chance at swimming with Mommy alone, she is too scared to take you without anyone else's help. We go to the spray park a lot (no deep end there!), and you love to run around and splash in the water. You are full of life and so full of energy.

Mommy got your haircut mid-July and it got buzzed! We definitely weren't wanting it that short, but now that we're used to it, looking at pictures with your hair long throws me off. :) One of my favorite noises to hear you make is you making truck/car noises ... you are such a big boy! And it just makes me smile to hear you doing all these 'big boy' things. Most of your toys are too "baby-ish" for you, so you get bored easily while inside, hence the reason we spend a lot of time outdoors each day. We are working on slowly building your 'big boy' toy stash.

You are such a big helper! Any time Mommy needs something picked up, or Daddy needs help fixing something (ha!) you are always there to help. You understand and listen to Mommy when she says the following things to you:

- Go get your ____ (toy, sippy, shoes, etc)
- Will you put that back please?

- Can you throw this away?

- Can Mommy have your binky? (he only gets binky while sleeping)

- Pick that up, please.

- Can you wipe that up? or Wipe your nose!

- Do you have a stinky? (then he proceeds to plug his nose and make a 'gross' face)

- Can you bring Mommy a diaper?

- (I know there's more that I'm forgetting!)

You do not speak much (other than in Japanese! haha) - so we are definitely working on expanding your vocabulary. I know you understand what we say, and you listen very well to us. We just have yet to hear you respond to us, in English anyway. :)

You LOVE being read to. You bring Mommy and Daddy books to read to you, and always pick a book at night time to read before going to bed. Your favorite kind of books are the ones that have texture or something you can touch/feel, and you also love the books that make noise. (so does Mommy... haha!)

I love how you pose for the camera and say "chhhhheeeeeee" when a camera is pointed in your direction. I love your dimples, and your eyes. I love your little toes, and your fingers. I love the way you smell, especially after bath time! Pretty much, I just love you.

I love the face you make, pictured above. It is your 'wow, did you see that!!??' face. It cracks me up... it is usually accompanied by a "wooooaahhhhhhhh"!! Mr Man, you always have us smiling. You bring pure joy into our lives.

You have a "tooth-filled" mouth, finally! Your teeth were really slow at coming in for the longest time, and now all I get is big toothy grins and smiles. Your bottom 2 molars came in at the same time, and the week after your top 2 molars came in. You point to your mouth and say "owwww", that's how I always know when your teeth are hurting you.

You love to give out Hi-5's to anyone who asks for one, and you wave at anyone who makes eye contact with you! While grocery shopping the other day, every.single.person we went past you had to wave at. Then you look at me and smile, so proud of yourself. You are also so silly, you laugh even when you have no idea what other people are laughing at. I love how outgoing you are.

I hope I am always able to show you and tell you how much I truly love you. Even through so much heartache and sadness this past year, you stayed so happy and oblivious to everything going on around you. You have given me a reason to smile each day and even through the tears and pain we've been through, you are a reminder of God's grace and a smidge of His love for us. I know you are going to be an incredible big brother to the little guy coming in a couple months ... you guys will be best friends and I know you will love him. I love seeing you grow and develop and seeing your smile each morning and your wave "na-night" before going to bed each night. I cherish my times home with you, there is no other place I'd rather be than a stay at home mommy to the best boy ever.

I promise to try and be better about updates so they aren't as long next time! :)

I love you, my Mr. Man!

Clearance section.

The problem with surprise pregnancies is that you can't plan your previous maternity wardrobe around them. {that's a joke ... kinda.}

When I was pregnant with Jaxon, I found out on July 4th, so I really didn't start wearing maternity clothes until July 15th the fall season rolled around. This time, I found out in February, which means I needed summer maternity clothes. So unfortunately I have had so buy some new outfits, and because my stomach is twice the size as it was last time at this point, a lot of my maternity shirts are too short on me already. And because I wore jeans and sweatpants with my last pregnancy, I needed to buy some shorts.

So what's a girl to do? Go shopping online, I suppose.

The UPS man rang my doorbell today and here's what he delivered.

Don't worry sister, I won't wear those shorts with that shirt. I was just too lazy to change again.

Love the details on this one :)

The only one I'm iffy on is the stripped grey shirt ... the cut is weird, you can see underneath my arm the cut goes in and I'm just wondering if it looks awkward.

Your thoughts? Love 'em -- hate 'em?

::Walking away now to go clean that dirty mirror of mine!::

Simple pleasures.

It's the little things in life that make me happy.

Besides the obvious {my boys}, here's a few of them...

A candle burning. Love the "coziness" of the flame, and the way it makes my house feel and smell.

My cup of coffee in the morning. Bonus points if it's in a cute mug.

Fresh cherries! No other words necessary!

What about you?

No name chicken.

I am not a very big risk taker. Once I find something I like at restaurants, I usually continue to order it time and time again, because I like it enough to do so. Then there will be no disappointment in trying a new meal, only to wish that I would have just ordered my usual. My husband? The complete opposite. Very rarely orders the same things and is always encouraging me to try out new recipes at home.

So my handy dandy Iphone has an app that I found the other day called "All recipes" - stemmed from the infamous website www.allrecipes.com. It has this cool feature that you can select the ingredients you already have in your house and it will bring up recipes that you can make.

Fast forward to last night ... I am trying to decide what to make for dinner, and know that I have tons and tons of frozen chicken in our deep freeze. {It's one of those things that I always buy at the store thinking "I don't know if we have any of this at home ... guess I better buy another bag" sort of thing} I came across a recipe called "Texas Chicken" and thought -- well, why not. I guess we're Texans now. The recipe called for chicken breasts, ranch, and vegetable oil. You baked the chicken in the veg oil and add ranch for the last 15 minutes to top it off. It sounded gross to me, greasy and very bland. So I decided I would go out of my comfort zone and just make up my own recipe.

Here's what I did! Looked in my pantry and found a packet labeled "seasoning mix". I had no idea what it was, but I thought I would cover the chicken in this mystery seasoning mix, add ranch, and let it marinade with the seasoning and ranch for about an hour. I lined a 10x10 baking dish with a little more ranch, added the seasoned chicken, and baked it at 350 for 45 minutes. Then, I took it out, added mozzarella cheese to the top each piece, and baked it for another 15 minutes.

IT WAS DELICIOUS!! The chicken was so tender that it literally fell apart while taking it out of the pan. The seasoning was perfect, I think I could duplicate it again with taco mix and maybe some Lowry's or another similar seasoning. The ranch added just enough 'tang' to it and kept it moist while baking. I served it with rice and some biscuits and it was a hit! We'll definitely be trying it again, and hopefully can duplicate it since I don't have anymore random seasoning mixes in my pantry.

Moral of the story? It's a good thing to go out of your comfort zone. Granted, this could have been a complete disaster, but it wasn't. And for that reason, I am proud of myself!

It aint so bad.

I was a little sad the other day after looking on my phone for a frozen yogurt place in Waco, only to find a bunch of frozen custard and ice cream places show up on the map.

Then I came across an article called "50 reasons Waco doesn't suck" {seriously!} and what was #42?

Mr. Snow’s self-serve frozen yogurt.

A simple, fun, and healthier hands-on food experience. Walk in, grab a cup and fill it up with as much frozen yogurt as you want, then top it off with fruit, candy, syrup or all of the above. You’re charged by the ounce, so what’ll it be? Vanilla yogurt with crushed Oreos? New York cheesecake yogurt with fresh strawberries? Something funky like a mix of Yellow Cake Batter and mango yogurt? Or will you go down the wall of flavors, squirting in a sample of everything? Located on La Salle by the Baylor campus, students are lining up to help themselves to their own frozen yogurt creations. — KM

It was a little tough to find the place since the article doesn't give an address, and the name of the place does not show up on our Iphones, but we went for a drive and eventually found it. And as soon as we pulled up, I heard the angels singing.

My yummy-ness.

Tyler's ... don't you love how he put fruit on his, and mine is covered in chocolate?

Haha, blame the baby.

Jaxon clearly approves. :)

Storms.

Yesterday afternoon, Waco got hit with a crazy storm. It started out just as a thunderstorm, but soon enough the winds were so strong I couldn't even see out my front window or back door ... I love rain, and especially love sleeping in it, but not this kind of rain. Jaxon was crying, terrified of the thunder & lightning, and then to find out my husband was on his way home during the storm only added to my panic.

But eventually the storm stopped, Tyler was home, and we went outside to check out what happened ... only to find this:

This huge branch is hanging upside-down in front of our house, seriously barely hanging on. Glad the tree guy is coming today to cut it down!

This tree literally snapped in half (look at the size of the trunk!) and fell onto their house ... it was just a couple of homes down from ours.

Pictures don't really do the storm justice, but the 70+ mph winds were so strong that they tipped a car over down the street.

Tyler and I joked that the easiest way to meet your neighbors here is to go on a walk ... everyone is always hanging out on couches on their front lawns (yes, i am being serious about the couches!). And after this storm, everyone was out roaming around checking out the damage.

Gotta love the south!

Changes.

Well, my sister finally convinced me to make the switch from Wordpress to Blogger. I am not sure why I didn't do it earlier, but cheers to a cuter and easier to understand blog.

We made it to Waco! The past week of our life was a complete whirlwind ... but we're here and finally getting settled into our new home. We looked at a total of 5 houses to rent and by the end of the day, we chose the one that we thought would fit our family and our budget the best! It is an older home, which I love ... has lots of old home charm! Definitely the polar opposite of our last house. I loved that one too, but this one just has more character. I do, however, miss my dishwasher. We didn't realize until AFTER we signed the lease that this new place doesn't have a dishwasher! Oh well. I miss the open layout of our old house and the big bright windows in every room, and going from 2200 sq feet 4 bedroom house to a small 2 bedroom home has definitely brought some "where the heck am I going to put this?!" challenges, but so far, it has all worked out. Luckily this house came with tons of storage (garage AND a shed) so it has been fine.

My biggest obstacle has been decorating ... having enough stuff to decorate and furnish our old stuff, and not wanting it to be cluttered in the new house has been a little tough. It's hard to find a balance between it being OVERLY decorated to feeling empty, so I am struggling trying to find a happy medium there. Right now it doesn't feel homey to me, and I think it's just because of the white walls. Our landlords weren't keen on us painting, and with me being 7 months pregnant and having Jaxon to worry about (I can just see a paint can spilling as I type...), I dropped the subject and decided to just grin and bear it.

Anyway, overall we are really happy with the house and I know the longer we're here the more like "home" it will feel. Plus, the saying is definitely true: "Home is where they love you". And I have two (and a half?) boys that love me immensely here, what more could I ask for?

Be back soon, and with pics ... I promise :)

Howdy, y'all.

Do I really have to start talking like that?  I refuse to say those two words ... howdy, and y'all.  Because they are both made up, and I am the grammar nazi.

Well ... Tyler accepted a job in Waco, Texas!  We are excited for lots of reasons.  First and foremost, it is a stable company and the job is NOT a contract! (hooray!)  They have incredible benefits, including 15 days of vacation a year as a newbie, excellent medical benefits, they take 10 days off in-between Christmas and New Years (and that doesn't count against your vacation time) AND they are paying for us to relocate.  Not only that, but all of those benefits start on day 1!  And with a baby coming in a couple of months -- ::gulp:: -- that itself is definitely an answer to prayer.  What else could we ask for?  Well, I guess we could ask for it to be in Kansas City or in the Midwest, but obviously God has other plans.  And we are okay with that.

Stability. Finding a house we can call our own.  A husband who comes home every night after work.  Perfect, perfect, perfect.

It is such a bittersweet thing.  I think this move is harder on me for one reason, and one reason only ... my boys.  I want so badly for them to know their grandparents, not just know OF them.  It kills me to lose my support system that is just hours away.  Okay, I guess I shouldn't say "lose it", because I know I'll never lose their support.  They just won't be able to rescue me when I have a 22 month old naughty boy and a newborn on my hands.  And not just their grandparents, but their aunts/uncles and cousins ... I know our families will always be apart of our lives, I have no doubt.  I just wish they could be apart of our everyday lives.

The second reason it will be so hard is because of our friends.  We have established a second family here in KC through our church and small group.  These people are irreplaceable and will forever hold a spot in my heart ... seriously.  I know the friendships we have with them will not die, and we can only hope our paths will cross again someday (soon).  And our friends that aren't apart of our small group but are still here in KC, including the newlyweds Brian & Angie that we adore ... tears ...

I have a feeling this move will be similar to our California move ... we lived there for almost a year and found work back in the Midwest and moved back 'home'.  Right now, I can't see this being a permanent, forever and ever and ever "until we retire" sort of thing.  Although, if Texas is where God wants us until we grow old and die at 99, then Texas it will be.  We have always prayed for His will to be done, and that will always be our prayer first and foremost.

We are loading the truck early Saturday morning and will leave for that hot, tornado-filled, snake-infested, red dirt state first thing on Monday.

This is definitely going to be an emotional weekend ahead, I can feel it in my bones.

Time for an update.

Once upon a time, a girl really missed her husband.  She wanted to go visit him, but after looking at airplane ticket prices, disregarded the idea.  Her husband sent her a text message asking her to come visit, emphasizing how much he really missed her and how he needed her.  So she jumped in the car and drove 12 hours, with a 1 year old, by herself.

True story!  {and the drive was seriously a breeze!}

I am in Denver!  We are together again.  And even though we're staying at his roommates house, who is a bachelor, who has 1 bathroom towel, no forks, no washcloths, and absolutely nothing except opened dog food in his fridge... we are together.  And even though we have no idea where we'll be next week, let alone in a month, we can go through this crazy ride together.

Right now, we have Tyler's resume out all over the country.  I mean, all over.  From Minnesota to Texas, from Washington to South Carolina.  And we will go wherever there is a good, stable job.  And medical benefits.  Because Lord knows we need those things.  Stability and benefits.

I have reached the point that I am ready to just go wherever we can that will give us some peace for a while.  If it ends up being somewhere other than the midwest, it will be temporary (1 year or so?) and we will continue to look for something close to our families.  But we have both reached the point that we're just ready to be settled again.  Sick of living out of a suitcase, sick of the constant worrying and stress.  Ready to just have a place to live, to decorate, to play, to eat, to belong... and to be a family again.

{can't you just see the pure joy in all of our faces?}

Dreaming.

Want to see my dream house?



I love yellow houses.  Love the big wrap-around porch.  Love the gazebo in the yard.  Cherry cabinets, granite countertops, brazilian cherry floors, stereo system wired throughout the house and a 1,000 bottle wine cellar in the basement?

Imagine what you could do with 4,140 square feet...

I keep dreaming of the day when I can sit on my front porch sipping a cup of coffee while my boys play in the yard.

Sign me up.