Bathroom Remodel and Santa

*I found this in my drafts and decided to publish!  Not sure why it never went through.  Fun memories!


When Jenn got back I put her to work. We refinished the the master bathroom cabinets. They look SO great! I'm really happy with the results. We also decided to purchase new light fixtures and faucets. We had to order the faucets and they won't be in for another few days, but I'm really excited about everything else! We decided to replace the light bulbs with LEDs. I was a little hesitant because LEDs are about $15-20 EACH, but they look great and will save so much in energy costs.

Today we went over to the Hill Country Galleria to see Santa. We got there a little early and walked around a bit. Santa was a little late, but we were about 4th in line, so it wasn't a long wait at all. Santa was very patient and friendly and I felt like he really liked kids and was happy to be Santa! It was a use your own camera thing, which as great. We got a couple of really cute pictures. No tears at all despite it being past lunch time!

After Santa we headed over to Maudie's and had lunch. Jenn declared that she could eat Tex-Mex every single day, so we're doing our best to see if this declaration is true.

The Zilker tree lighting is tonight, so we'll see if we make it over to that. I'm so excited that the Trail of Lights is back. It's been missed and was one of the last memories we have with Vivian, so it's very special to us. Isabel had been once, but they stopped doing it due to budget reasons. :-( We are so excited that it's back! Can't wait to spin under the tree and get dizzy drunk!

Nightmares

Last night Logan had a nightmare about spiders.  Brian went in to calm him down and he flipped out.  He was screaming and trembling and was convinced that spiders were everywhere.  It was so sad to see.  Poor little guy.  I tried calming him down too, but he just wasn't having it.  We eventually got him to stop convulsing and shivering like a drug addict who needed a fix, but it took a long time.  We eventually decided that TV in our bed at 2:30am was likely the only way we were going to get any sleep.  It worked.  Little dude passed out after his show and slept until almost 8am!  I'm not looking forward to tonight.  He's already had a couple of freak outs and convulsions thinking about the spider in his bed.  :-(  It's so bad that you can't touch him because he thinks it's a spider.

Mondays are our pretty calm, not overly scheduled day of the week.  Today we had a birthday party at a park after playgroup from 4-6pm.  Not a great time for tired kids.  We lasted about an hour and then I had had enough.  This little girl was being just being mean to Izzy and kept coming over to tell me she didn't want Izzy to play with her and that she wanted to be alone.  Um, Ok.  We're at a birthday party with 30+ other kids.  Good luck finding that alone time.  And Izzy was just doing her own thing.  It's one thing to hear whining from your own kids but to hear it from other people's it another.  I seriously was about to go postal because her Grandma brought her and was totally oblivious to how obnoxious she was being, but thought better of it and tried to get away from her.  So we moved and this girl follows us and tells me again how Izzy is bothering her and won't leave her alone.  I'm like 'listen homegirl.  Back the eff up!

I don't know what your deal is, but you need to go have a chat with Gma over there because this Mom ain't havin' it.'  Gma finally realized what a little shit her granddaughter was being and came over to talk to her.  Gma did some regulating, which was sort of fun to see.  I was just glad it wasn't Izzy being the little shit for once.  And Izzy did get a little butt hurt over the whole thing, which always sucks to see.

So after Logan decided he needs to start flinging shit all over the place I decide it's time to get to peace out.

Isabel also started to get itchy eyes, so it was time.

I have a post saved about how life has been the past few weeks, but I realized how whiney it sounded, so haven't hit publish.  Basically we're scraping by to send Logan to therapy and now to try and get Brian's car fixed (it needs a new engine), and his truck tuned up in the meantime.  The truck got new brake pads and a new starter Saturday from Brian.  We're hoping a friend of a friend can do an engine swap on the Mazda for a reasonable price.  The shop the Mazda is at now quoted Brian almost $7k.  Hahaha.  So Halloween activities have been low key.  Gramma came a couple of weekends ago and spoiled us with a trip to a pumpkin patch and some lunches and watching the kids (including putting both to bed by herself!!!!) while we went to see a movie!!!!

Picking flowers at Sweet Berry Farm

Lunch!

A rousing game of tic-tac-toe

Logan stole Izzy seat for a minute.

Gramma checking out the 'train.

Riding the train!

Not a bad day!!!

I got a random FB message from one of my sister's friends Saturday morning.  He basically said he was in Austin for a company event and had prepaid for a bunch of spa treatments at this amazing spa downtown and a girl flaked, so if I wanted a massage and facial to be there at 10am.  Done.  Massage was good.  Facial was amazing!  Even gratuity was paid for!  I couldn't believe it.  Almost $300 in spa treatments for free.  What a nice guy.  I owe him one....or a million!

My super happy grateful face.

We have trick or treating at the retirement home tomorrow, an activity that I personally just love.  Seeing the older folks with the younger ones is just so fun.  And then the big parade and party at school on Thursday.  Fun!  Can't wait to see how it all goes!

I'll leave you with this gem of a conversation with Isabel:
Izzy:  One day will I have lots of hairs on my toes like Daddy?
before I can answer (and secretly glad she didn't say 'like mommy.')
Izzy:  and LOGAN YOU WILL HAVE HAIR ON YOUR PENIS!!!!!

I died laughing.  The end.

This dude.  Please please please sleep in your own room tonight!

It's a wash

Rain rain don't go away!  Despite staying inside all day and having the longest day as a SAHM in a long time, I'm loving the rain!  We so desperately need it.

Today we went to the gym and that's about it!  I have dinner in the crock pot and made bread and some pumpkin bread.  The house smells pretty spectacular.  Other than that I've been telling the kids to stop jumping, climbing, leaping, etc etc all day long.  The new swing in Logan's room has kept them occupied for some of the day.

Dueling crock pots.  One to take to Logan's teacher.

Most of the mulch under the play area washed away!

Super bread!  I'm using a new yeast and it's amazing!

Logan playing 'nap.'  Wish he would actually take a nap!

Isabel and Logan playing nap.

Visitors!

First some random pictures!

Logan's swing is up!

Like a boss.

Snacks.

Delicious pumpkin loaf!

Sad soup.  :-(

Sad bread.  :(

The Yuans came to visit us for a few days this week.  We had fun hanging out and playing.  We hit up the Austin Science and Nature Center for a little bit and then showed Elizabeth what Chick fil a is all about.  Yum!  Mark stood in line for 3 hours at Franklin's BBQ and treated us to some delicious food.  Not sure if I would be willing to wait 3 hours for it, but it was good!  You have to get in line around 9 or 9:30am to get guaranteed food when they open at 11am.  Mark got there around 9:45am and didn't get food until about 1pm.  This place sells out every single day.  Crazy!

We stayed up talking too late most nights and Isabel had her fist real sleepover.  Elizabeth and Isabel shared Izzy's bed and managed to get some sleep.  The first night it took a long time for them to fall asleep and they were up from 4:30am until 6am or so, but then they fell asleep until almost 9am.  Last night they slept until 7am.  I think Isabel is pretty tired from all of the toy sharing and fun.

Elizabeth and Isabel

Friday I'm having some old coworkers over.  I'm excited to see them again, but not excited about all of the work I have to do to get the house back in order.  It's amazing how quickly hours of cleaning and work can get destroyed with 4 extra people in the house!  Totally worth it though.

Since I didn't get this post up before the weekend I'll update that too!  Friday my lovely friends stayed until almost 1am!  We had a lot of fun laughing and catching up.  I do miss those girls.  I love that we started out gossiping about former coworkers and then ended up discussing Obamacare.  We are a bunch of smarty pants if I do say so myself!  ;-)

This weekend we stayed close to home and watched college football Saturday.  My Aggies!!!!  What a great game.  So glad LSU won too.  It poured last night for HOURS.  Like really serious downpours.  It was amazing.  Brian said we got more rain in 12 hours than we did all of last year!  So there was flooding going on today in parts of Austin.  The last day of ACL Fest was cancelled due to flooding at Zilker Park.  Crazy.  We made a trip to Ikea.  We needed to pick up the hooks to put up Logan's swing.  We searched the whole house last week looking for the silly hooks.  So after everyone is in the car ready to go I said 'hang on a minute, I need to get the Ikea Family card.'  Yep, found the hooks!  Since the kids were really excited about going to Ikea (they get to play in the play area while we shop), we decided to go anyway.  We dropped the kids off and went to the cafeteria for 99 cent breakfast!  Woohoo!  A pseudo date!  While we were there we wanted to check out the flooring options for Isabel's room.  We need to get that carpet out soon.  Ikea is discontinuing their flooring line.  I thought maybe we could get some for cheap since we just need to do a small area, but it was too much of a hassle to try and find someone and look at samples.  We picked the kids up and left.  I did pick up a new cookie sheet!

I put together a meal calendar for Logan's teacher last year.  She had back surgery and was in the hospital for a week.  We're going to try and provide meals 3xs a week for a month.  My first day is tomorrow and I'm attempting to make another pumpkin chocolate chip loaf.  I made a huge loaf when the Yuans were in town and it turned out perfect.  So good.  The problem is is that I have no idea how to bake it.  It was in the oven and the power went out for about an hour and a half.  I decided to try and salvage it and rebaked it.  It worked!  The chicken tortilla soup in the crock pot and bread in the breadmaker couldn't be saved.  I didn't want to be responsible for food poisoning so I tossed the chicken.  It was sad.

More random pictures from the camera.

Hike a couple of weeks ago.

Waterfall behind us....kind of.

They were SO tired. 

Logan was done.  Good thing it was just a few hundred feet back to the car!

Family pictures

This morning we had family pictures scheduled.  As I mentioned before by some miracle we all had outfits picked out that I was pretty pleased with.  I was actually looking forward to this morning's session.  We met our fantastic photographer in approximately 100% humidity.  Seriously.  It was supposed to rain today and the air was sticky, thick and gross.  Despite sweating our asses off I think we got some good shots.  I think the best picture came at the very end.  We worked so so SO hard to get Logan to smile.  In the very last shot we finally got him to smile and we all collapsed.  We were literally jumping through hoops!  Isabel was her usual model self.  Girl cracks me up.  Brian and I had sweat pouring off of us, so hopefully our pitted out clothes and sweaty faces can be somehow photoshopped out!

After the photo session we came back home and did nothing.  We got rid of DirecTV and our new uVerse service hasn't been installed yet, so we are without TV.  Big mistake during football season!

It finally decoded to start raining a little while ago.  Logan and I sat outside listening to the thunder for a while.

Hopefully we can listen to the Aggie game in a little bit.  Wish we could watch!  It's breakfast for dinner, so need to start the pancakes, eggs and bacon!

9 year old and a tough lesson in tights

Isabel saw the pediatric cardiologist today.  Dr. Finnegan did another ECHO and EKG and cleared her.  He said she should come back in 5 YEARS!  That's when she'll be NINE!  Crazy.  Dr. Finnegan said we won't be seeing him.  Boo.  I guess he plans to be long retired by then.

It's too bad because he's amazing. I know I've said it before, but he's the best medical professional I've ever come into contact with.  He has a photographic memory, doesn't take any bullshit, has a great bedside manner and expects greatness from everyone who works with him.  This extends to the front desk.  While we were there in the waiting room he popped in to see what he could do to expedite patients getting in the exam rooms.  I guess they were down a nurse and he was taking patients back himself.  I know he can be tough for the nurses to work with because he will call your ass out in a second (as I overheard in the PICU while we were there), but for patients, he is seriously the best.  I really wanted to put this on the blog because too often I can complain and whine, but I really want to recognize this great doctor.  I need to write him a letter before he retires.

Back to the exam.  So the doctor said if Izzy faints again and recovers quickly (as she did before) that we do t need to head to the ER.  He said to call the office and he will refer us to a cardiac rhythm doctor  to get to the bottom of it.  It can be totally harmless, but with our family history we need to make sure.  He said it was likely due to her being in one position (a canoe) and then moving around before her body had time to catch up.

We went to the mall after the long appointment.  Why?  Why do I do this to myself?  It's really not worth the free underwear coupon I was going to redeem.

Izzy had dance class today.  I took her and her friend (who was over this afternoon to play) to class.  Her friend had a little hole in her tights. After class the hole was pretty big.  Isabel was wearing a brand new pair of tights.  Somehow between picking her up from class and getting home she had a huge hole in them.  I knew she purposely either made the hole or ripped it so that it became bigger.   Soooooo I told her that she would have to buy new tights with her own saved money.  She cried and ran up to her room.  I heard a loud noise and went upstairs to investigate.  This is what I saw:

And she begged me not to take all of her money.  I told her that I would take however much we needed to buy the tights and that she could still keep the rest.  She asked how much tights cost.  I told her $4 so we counted out $4 in coins and with dollar bills.  I asked her how we should pay and this is what she came up with:

$3 in bills and $1 in quarters.

I have a feeling she won't rip a hole in her tights again.

Room Parent....M&Ms

We're in the 2nd week of school (for us).  Isabel continues to do really well.  She's making new friends and is slowly asking about her BFF from last year less and less.  Today when I dropped her off out of the blue she yells across the room 'MOMMY!' (at this point my 'INSIDE VOICE' yell is about to happen) YOU LOOK REALLY BEAUTIFUL TODAY!!!'  Oh my heart.  She must have known that I'm sick, feel like shit, have been eating like shit, haven't worked out, etc, etc.  What a way to make Mom feel good, right?!  Especially in my shorts with two tiny holes in the back pockets (I forgot and wore a thong for the first time in, oh, 5 years, today...hello butt cheeks) and pitted out shirt.  High five little miss!

I'm somehow room parent, but that's ok with me.  If we hadn't been gone the first couple of week of classes I would have volunteered anyway.  It's just so much easier with Izzy's allergies.  It seems like it should be a pretty easy job this year.  The teacher is amazing and said she prefers to plan most of the parties herself.  Score!  I think I'll just be in charge of teacher bdays and appreciation gifts.  We will go see the cardiologist tomorrow for her exam post-fainting spell.  Her regular pediatrician wanted her to see the cardiologist to be cautious.

Logan is still adjusting to his new class.  Actually, I think his teacher is adjusting to him.  She seems geniunly surprised by him.  This is the same lady who taught Isabel all last year.  She saw Logan all the time.  I'm not sure what she expected.  She has made a couple of concerning comments that lead me to believe that maybe he is not in the right environment.  I gave her Logan's OT's phone number today and I hope she calls her.  I told his OT what his teacher said about him and she was really surprised.  She told me that if I hear anything like that again to have her call.  So that's exactly what I did today.  Logan's evaluation with the school district is on Thursday.  I am really hoping that he gets into the program.  I would be very surprised and upset if he didn't.

Logan has been doing well.  He still is pretty rigid and tantrums frequently, but full meltdowns are becoming fewer and fewer.  His repeating has gotten SO much better, except with books, and where he holds consonants for a long time (can't remember what the clinical term is) has gotten much much better.

We have had a lot of stressors in the household recently and I remembered that we have tons of M&M bags leftover from the flights.  Bad bad thing to have in the house.  Sure, I could save them and give them away with Halloween candy (Isabel can't eat them because they are a 'may contain' food), but no, we just eat them.  So good.

We have family pictures this Saturday.  I bought a voucher last Christmas when my favorite photographer was having a promotion for a mini session that donated half of the amount to charity.  A cheap session and a charity donation?  Yes please!  I have the perfect outfits for everyone.  That never happens.  Usually I'm running around trying to find things that semi don't clash and I forget about myself and then end up wearing a black shirt.  Not this year!  I am ready.  I just had to get a tiny bit of pink nail polish out of the dress that a certain little princess will be wearing.

I think Brian and I both would kill for a date night.  It's been a really really really long time since we've gone out just the two of us.  I actually can't remember when it was.  My goal is for this to happen in the next 4 months.  It probably won't, but I can wish.

And I'm now very excited that New Girl is new tonight.