just a photo:

Since i have actually blogged a few times this week already i don’t feel so bad about posting nothing but a photo today.

What is the first thing you think of when you think of your father?

Recently I’ve been thinking alot about my Heavenly Father. I haven’t been to church in what seems like FOREVER because I was told by several sisters in my ward that you should stay home until your newborn is 4 to 6 weeks old. Charlie is almost 4 weeks now, and I’m super excited to be returning to church soon. I miss it. Really. I keep finding myself treating Sunday’s like any other day of the week, and i HATE that. I also really miss hearing the messages, taking the sacrament and speaking with my friends. I get moved to tears just thinking about how much I miss it. Really, I do!

Also… here is a photo of the day my dad gave me away to my husband. (Don’t worry, My husband asked my dad for permission first. Really, he did.)

PHOTOS: weeks 1&2

i have 2 draft posts saved that ill try to publish later today… so come back soon!

As you have probably already guessed I’ve been busy with my new mommy duties, but in addition to a newborn who is 100% depended on me for everything I also have a 3 year old running around who needs my attention too. He is potty trained and very independent, but he still needs his mommy time and his homeschool lessons. Admittingly, We have fallen behind in homeschool. I’m giving us a “summer break” while we adjust to having a new baby in the house. We have slowed down on our book work, but have still done our educational activities as best as we can considering the horrible heat and humidity that has already taken over the gulf coast. We have had temps in the 90ies (F) and its not even officially summer yet! To give Sam a fun outside play day – with the added benefit of being an educational trip – we went to the zoo last friday. We went early and he really enjoyed it, but charlie was a little annoyed that she had to sit in her stroller with a sunshade over her most of the day. We left before the heat got to hot, and overall it wasn’t a bad trip. Sam had a BLAST and none of us got sun burned. My only complaint about venturing out by myself with two kids was the loading/unloading all of the baby and toddler gear that such a trip requires me to bring. Even that wasn’t that bad, so all in all i’d say Friday’s outing was a success.

I also took a poll on facebook where I got the advice of some of my friends who had children. Growing up I was not allowed to have pierced ears (or anything else that altered the way God made me, for that matter) and had to wait until I was a teenager before getting my first holes done. I wanted to get Charlie’s ears pierced as a baby for several reasons, but also did not want to “alter” her body without her first giving me permission. After my poll I decided I would either take her now before she discovered she had ears and would pull on them, or wait until she was 8. If she is old enough to decide to get baptized she is old enough to decide if she can pierce her ears and take care of them while they heal. I decided that I’d do it now – for reasons of my own that aren’t really important – so i packed up the car and headed out to Claire’s, a local boutique that pierces literally millions of baby ears each year. I almost chickened out, but didn’t, and the end result was worth it. Too cute. She did already loose an earring though, and thankfully I was able to get a new locking back replacement and get the earring back in before it closed and she didn’t even fuss while I did it. Here is a photo taken just seconds after she got them pierced.

For being such a TINY baby she is super strong and is already holding up her head and even rolling from side to side. She was born much smaller than Sam was, even though I had gestational diabetes with her, but i elaborate on that in her birth story that I plan on posting later today.

Sam is really enjoying being a big brother for the most part. He has said only 3 mean comments about his baby sister (I’m going to feed her to the dinosaurs, ect.) but for every mean comment he says there are at least 20 nice ones. So i’m confidant that we don’t have to worry to much about her getting fed to the dinosaurs or anything along those lines.

She also had a very good two week check up with our family doctor (we have decided not to use a traditional pediatrician for our children for several reasons). She gained weight and got two inches taller in her first 2 weeks of life! The doctor did notice that her left leg is twisted (developed in-utero like that) and that she may need a leg brace when she starts walking, but has us doing some “physical therapy” at home to help straighter her leg out naturally. The doctor you see in the photo below has been my husband’s doctor for 14 years. He loves our country and God and natural cures. He has lots of non-politically correct reading material in his waiting room, and i LOVE that . He’s an awesome guy and I’m going to be really sad the day he chooses to retire.

All in all adjusting to be a family of four has been much easier than I think any of us had anticipated. I would like to get a little more sleep, but even that isn’t that bad. Casey helps out alot with house work and loves our family. He plays with Sam and Charlie all the time and does house-hold chores with out even being asked. He works his butt off during the day and is about to start a new semester of school at night. I couldn’t have been blessed with a better husband & father to my children. Oh, and as overwhelming and exhausting as it is to have a new baby (or children in general, for that matter!) I am still pretty sure I want more. Like 4 or 5. Yep.

Photos! (because i’m too tired to write words)

I promise i’ll get around to writing about everything that’s been going on. Lots of good changes have been made in my family that i’d like to elaborate on, and not so good things also – like falling behind in my scripture studies (by alot!) and missing church several times over the past few months. Things have been super-hectic around here, but are calming down much faster than I had originally anticipated… so i’m going to try and get into a new schedule (and stick to it!) over the next week or two. Keep coming back though, i’m going to try and do *somekind* of post several times a week.

(if i look a little high in that last photo, its because, well, i was kinda high from my c-section drug mix-up. One of its contents was morphine. so… yeah.)

oh, and my husband left for a few hours today and came back with a “Taylor” tattoo next to his Sam & Charlie tattoos. He is going back soon (next week, i think) to get the three of them blended together. I’ll post pics afterward instead of now.

she’s here!

Charlie Grace born at 7:57AM weighing in at 6lbs 10oz and measuring 18 inches

Where I’ve been & what I’ve been doing…

As most of you know by now – I’m unemployed. I left my dream job because of some problems I had with one particular co-worker and in doing so seemed to have committed some kind of career suicide. I haven’t been able to find good full time work, but staying home with my son has always been something my husband and I have wanted for our family. Its been hard, financially speaking, but also a blessing at the same time. We have learned to change our budget and to do without the types of things we had before I stopped working and cut our income by more than half. I have been receiving unemployment benefits, a very small percent of what I was making before, but those benefits will be ending soon and more cuts will need to be made in order for us to continue to live on one income. So about a month ago we decided to get rid of my husband’s car. It was something we bought brand new when I was pregnant with our first child and it has become increasingly too small for our growing family ever since. The payment was not ridiculously high and it defiantly got better mileage than my SUV does, but after carefully considering all things we decided that my car was better for our family – safer, and with a larger seating capacity – and that the money would we save by not having to pay his car note and full coverage insurance each month would outweigh the temporary increase in our gasoline expenses. Thankfully, my in-law’s were in need of a newer car. A few text messages and a phone call or two from my husband later and its been theirs ever since. We knew before we even got rid of the car that we are not easily capable of being a one-car family. We live on different schedules and sharing one car would eventually prove to be difficult. So before we even handed off the keys we planned a garage sale to help raise money to purchase a “new” vehicle. Something older that we could use the garage sale funds to pay for. We made a plan of cleaning out one room at a time and getting rid of anything that we couldn’t really justify keeping. Not going to use it? Sell it. Forgot you even owned it? Sell it. Soon after we started cleaning out the house we had boxes upon boxes of things to sell – amazing to me because I give away so many things for free each week via freecycle.org! Before the garage sale had even started Casey had made over $200 just selling old DVDs, CDs, and vinyl records to his friends and also online. Day one of the garage sale was very cold and windy and pretty unsuccessful in the greater scheme of things, but the second day proved time worthy. We decided to try something new and not put prices on anything, other than two larger items, and just allow people to pay what they thought was fair. For the most part everything sold for MUCH less than it should have, but the sale successfully served its purpose. Casey made a total of $750 (in bills) and a few handfuls of change – this ended up being enough to purchase – in cash, and in accordance with our debt free life long plans – an older American truck. We wanted something American that had was not computerized so that we could work on it ourselves. He even had enough money left over to buy tools to work on the body of the truck, also in cash. Anyways, this took weeks of preparation and somewhat explains my internet absence.

In addition to the garage sale I decided to make and sell 500 Tamales (at the same time as the garage sale!). I had five different flavors to choose from and packaged them by the half dozen. I spent about 15 or 16 hours a day for an entire week slow cooking the meat, mixing the dough, and rolling out the scrumptious little things. I regretted having committed to such a huge project almost immediately after I started, but it also proved worth while. I made enough money to purchase a backyard play set for my kids and have hopes of starting an in-home preschool as a source of income after my baby is born where the play set will also be beneficial.

Provident living proved worth while. Don’t use a credit card. Work hard, save up and pay cash for whatever it is you want to purchase. Oh, and don’t ever underestimate your change jar – there might be enough in there to buy you a used car! One mortgage (as of now), one more car note, and a never-ending mound of medical bills until we are debt free, baby! Whoo!

One more thing that has taken up a lot of our time is little real estate venture that we have accidentally stumbled across. One day while driving through Themiddleofnowhere, Texas in hopes of locating an old truck for sale we, instead, found a house for sale. We instantly fell in love, but knowing it was out of our price range (like REALLY out of our price range) we didn’t get our hopes up. Come to find out, the house is listed for literally HALF of its market value and has been on the market a LONG time. This has given us a tiny bit of hope that they will accept a lower offer and we have began spending time talking to realtors, mortgage brokers and gathering up all of the requested documents deemed necessary for moving any more forward. We have been wanting to move for quite sometime now, but haven’t been able to find a property within our price range that was actually worth moving to. If we are able to purchase this new house we would have to rent out our current property (we can’t justify selling it for market value right now, as a new construction home in our area its just not worth it.) There is a lot of things that need to fall into place for this deal to work out, and its pretty unlikely at this point, but its still something we are perusing and dedicating quite a bit of time too.

Moving or not we aren’t ready at all for this baby yet, either. When we were trying to get pregnant it seemed like it took forever to get a positive test result and then nine months seemed like forever to wait. Turns out your second pregnancy just flys by! I seriously have no idea where the time has gone, but I’m going to start dedicating more time to getting things ready for little Charlee’s (or Charlie, still undecided!) arrival. With my first child I was ready months early, but this time has just gone super quick! I have heard from other mothers of multiple children that this is common (have a toddler distracts you from everything else that is going on at times!) so I’m convinced that I’m normal. For once. LOL.

Also, in realizing that our baby will be here pretty soon I have been trying to spend a lot of one-on-one time with my son. I know this might seem ridiculous because we are home all day together, but we have been trying to break our usual routine and go out on “special dates”. Last week we finally went to the Downtown Aquarium where a well deserving two year old boy got to see fish, sharks, turtles and even ride on a train – twice! He enjoyed going, and I knew he would. I had combined all of his most favorite things into one destination. It was way over priced, but also priceless at the same time. We also went out to paint ceramics together too. That’s something we have done before and really enjoyed and thought we should go make something together one more time before sleepless nights make me unable to plan fun trips for a few months. I also took my husband out on a date last Friday too… and overall we had a blast!

Now that I’ve rambled on forever , and seriously doubt that I still manage to have any of your attention at this point, here’s a few photos of Sam the Man from the past few weeks. Enjoy!

Filed under being a mother, family, photos, we're pregnant!!!!!!, what i'm doing... | Tags: 500 tamales, american cars, garage sale, getting ready for baby, homemade tamales, houston downtown aquirium, hubby and wifey date night, mommy and son dates, old truck, pregnancy, tamale sale | Comment (0)

better late than never: hog edition

ever wondered what that hog looked like that i had to house for a night? (you can read about it here)

Here he is:

My husband and son spent quite a while with him (outside of course) before it was time to put sam to bed. Sam even named him “Gordy”. Casey even took him to work the next day (thats the only way he’d make it to the slaughter house on time).

Ah, that was an adventure indeed.

my intresting day…

When Sam woke me up this morning I asked him what he would like to do today. “Swim with Sharks and go Jumping” he calmly told me. After explaining that we could not actually swim with sharks but we could visit them at the aquarium one day I agreed to ‘Go Jumping’. Today was Toddler Tuesday at the Ruckus Room – so the price you pay is only your age. Parents are free and Sam is two, so $2.15 later we had an all day admissions pass to their facilities. It was been unusually cold and wet here so we haven’t gotten outside for much active time recently. I enjoyed sitting with the other moms (although, next time i’ll bring a book and a snack) and Sam enjoyed running wild non-stop until it was nap time. I then took him to my teen-aged-brother’s house where he napped (and my brother “babysat”) while I ran out to get a much much much needed hair cut.

I only get the opportunity for one hair cut a year, so I try to enjoy it. Today’s cut wasn’t as awesome as I had hoped, but all in all I’m happy to have had the opportunity to go and get it done. I quickly went to pick up Sam afterwords and head home while my husband (in my place) went to pick up my brother to go to the barn pick up a pig and take it to get slaughtered. Now, this doesn’t seem like it would be too difficult or that interesting, right? Oh, and I should mention that even though I am a Texas gal I have honestly never done this before. My brother, Jacob, got expelled from school recently – his teacher thought he was a terrorist… ah, public schools! – and has been sent off to a special school filled with barb wire, security guards, body searches, ect. As part of this he was removed from the Agriculture program at his regular high-school. He already bought and raised a pig, and seeing as though he wouldn’t be able to show or auction it off as part of a school activity he is being forced to remove it from their barn and do what he’d like with it. Jacob lives in a nicer part of town, one where having a loud diesel truck like his is extremely frowned upon… and housing a pig is absolutely out of the question. So, that leaves two options. Sell it or Slaughter it. We have had no offers to buy it, and he had to remove it from the barn today. I was somehow roped in to picking up this pig and taking it to get slaughtered and processed today.

Now – a little side story – my husband was recently hit by a drunk driver leaving a bar next door from his night job. His car was parked and vacant and the other driver sped away (not before a witness got its plates and called a sheriff!) so no one was injured. His car had some minor damage and has been in the shop since yesterday getting repaired. Since my brother isn’t driving himself to school right now and he is only working part time he has kindly lent my husband his obnoxiously-loud-F350–stereotypical-redneck-jacked-up-a-million-feet-and-even-has-ranch-hands diesel truck so that i won’t have to drive him to work at 5:30AM. Cool, right?

Well, my truck – a 2002 Eddie Bauer Ford Expedition, is capable of towing a trailer just fine. It does not have enough indoor cargo area to transport a pig (nevermind the poop that would get on the carpet and seats…) to a slaughterhouse. So my husband, who just so happens to have tonight off, offered to go in my place to pick up and transport the pig in the bed of Jake’s truck.

He got off work and headed out to pick up Jacob and go to the barn. It took over an hour to hog-tie this thing (no pun intended) and load up into the truck. They got to the slaughterhouse a few minutes after closing and therefore weren’t able to drop it off. It can not go back to the barn, and it can not be left unattended at the slaughterhouse. Most of all it can NOT stay in my parents neighborhood.

so…

Since I live in a part of town where deed restrictions are not enforced – and even if they were pigs happen to be allowed, i checked – I will be housing this creature tonight. He will stay outdoors, of course, but at my house none-the-less.

ah, its just another day in the life of Taylor – something interesting and odd happens each and every day!

Sam at ruckus room:

Visiting Teaching – October, 2009

Ok. So tomorrow morning I have my first visiting teaching appointments. I will be going to different sister’s houses and teaching them a lesson and checking up on them. I’m not exactly sure what to expect since this is my first time (and I haven’t had visiting teachers visit me yet) but I’m looking forward to the new experience. I also have my first home teaching visit tomorrow evening. This is where two men (one is my neighbor, Dan) come to my home and teach me a short lesson and check on me.

Anyways, I decided to make the sisters that I was going to visit a little goodie bag to let them know I was thinking about them. Each bag includes the lesson (I hope I got the right one!) some Halloween treats and a glowstick. I decorated each bag with a Halloween theme, and I kinda like the way they turned out.

I thought I would share the process with ya’ll so that you could maybe make goodie bags to let your friends, family, and neighbors know that you are thinking about them. All in all I made 10 bags, even though I am only visiting teaching 3 different ladies. The extras will be passed out to my (female) family, friends and neighbors. I might even mail a few out of town. We’ll see.

First you’ll need some cute paper to print your lesson on. You’ll need one solid color of cardstock – i choose a pumpkin color, and one vellum sheet. The vellum is a see through thick paper. I choose some with dots in a circular pattern. They reminded me of pumpkins, somehow.

Then you’ll need to type out the lesson (or cheat and copy it from the online book) and print it on the see-through paper. It will be extremly difficult to read – don’t panic. Its easier to read when you attach it to the solid color cardstock, I promise. Also sometimes when printing on the paper you’ll notice a “dusty” smell. I print on this paper all the time and have yet to ruin a printer, so again… don’t panic.

after getting all of your lessons printed out you’ll need to cut them. Somehow I never mastered the skill of cutting with scissors. I can operate them safely, but can not cut in a straight line. I have a green paper cutter, but after I started this project tonight I realized that I had left it on the other side of town at my parents house when getting ready for my first craft show a while back. I tried cutting them the old-fashioned way, and ended up loosing 4 sheets of paper in the process. I broke down and text messaged my neighbor, a sister in my ward who loves crafts, and asked if she was still awake and if i could borrow hers. She was awake, and I did. Things got alot easier after I brought this baby home. This is it:

So the point of that long rant about the paper cutter is this – you’ll need to cut up your lessons. The way I formatted mine consisted of three parts. There were two parts to the lesson, and then a quote from D&C. I cut them up individually – making sure to cut the solid color cardstock into the same size also – and them punched two rectangular holes into the tops of each page.

Then you’ll want to get some ribbon and put it through each regtangular hole twice. First forwards, then backwards. This creates a fake bow (no loops or knots) and it won’t bunch up. The ribbon stays flat.

repeat this until all of the see through pages have been attached to the solid color cardstock.

now for the bag part of this “goodie bag” you’ll need a simple brown lunch bag. The lesson pages I made barley fit into these bags, so keep that in mind. you may want to measure first, i didn’t.

Now take that bag and crumble it up into a little ball. Un-crumble it. Re-Crumble it. Reapeat untill bag has lost its regular shape, and has also lost its firmness.

While the bag is crumbled get some ink. I wanted to use brown, but couldn’t find mine so I ended up using “eggplant” instead. It was a purple-ish brown and it worked fine. (i have a craft room where everything has a place and everything is labeled. I try my best to keep up with this room but it appears that i still misplace things… or maybe i just don’t own brown ink… i honestly don’t know.)

Take your crumbled bag and press it directly onto the ink pad. This will help with the distressed look of the bag. repeat untill you have achived the desired look.

Just a side note – i decided (for once) i was going to dry and be nice and neat while doing this project and instead of getting ink all over my hands I thought it would be best to wear a plastic glove. I only did this for the first bag I made, and did the rest without it. Its easier without it.

Gather  your goodies, and fill your bags!

I wrote “October, 2009″ on each bag and then added other embellishments. Each one turns out a little differant the the next.

more photos from my baptism:

I have been trying to write a post about my baptism, but its really hard to explained what happened. All I can say is that it was AWESOME and just gets better every day, really!

Here are a few photos taken that day. I am trying to work on a slide show of photos with a song playing in the back ground, but I haven’t quite figured it out yet. If you know how and feel like sharing some tips just holler at me, I would really appreciate it.

Also, please excuse me for looking a little strange in some of these photos. There were 4 camera’s shooting at once as well as people trying to get me to laugh. I never knew what camera to look at!

If you would like to see more photos taken on the day of my baptism (but not at the church) click here.