drawing with Nana

Sometimes to keep Jordan occupied for a little while I give her a huge pad of paper and one crayon, but I kept finding that it never actually would entertain her for long.  I usually like to write her name and date at the top and finally realized that there were always more scribbles around that than anywhere else on the paper.  That really got the wheels turning so I got down and drew several pictures on her pad of paper and that seemed to make her happy.  She colored every picture I drew (duh!  I really should have thought of this sooner!)!

Later the same afternoon that I made this discovery, Nana came over.  Jordan showed her the coloring she had done and wanted Nana to color with her.  Nana is a wonderful artist and drew an entire scene for her!  She loved and still loves it!  She will pull out the pad and just look at that picture signing everything she sees.

I just love the way she is laying while they draw and color together!  Jordan has found this new position and lays like this all the time nowadays.  One day I looked over and she had somehow figured out how to get the graham crackers off the table (ha!  I know exactly how!  This kid is such a climber these days.) and was laying on the floor like this with her snack, watching a movie.

That reminds me, we have recently begun letting her watch movies (Sesame Street) and while we have major restrictions as far as how much she can watch, it has become a major life saver!  Jordan is quite a quality time girl and wants my constant attention all day long.  I have tried many other approaches but so far nothing has been too successful.  But this movie watching thing has really come in handy!  I can actually step over the gate to do laundry without her having a meltdown on the other side!  I am now able to make dinner without a little girl pulling and crying at my ankles!  Sometimes I can even sit on the couch and get a tiny refresher of a nap or even some reading done in a book!  It's amazing!

Blueberry girl

My friend Amanda made an AWESOME blueberry pie for our Bible study one night a couple months ago.  Normally I do not like pie, much less fruit pie but this was amazing.  Actually I quite LOVE pecan pie, but other than that I'm not a pie lover.  I got the recipe which turns out to be Pioneer Woman's blueberry pie recipe in case any of you out there in bloggie world are interested.  The best thing about this pie is she allows the blueberries to do all the work.  There is no more than two tablespoons of sugar in it and barely any other ingredients to get in the way so it ends up being this really healthy pie and that easily gives me the excuse to eat it for breakfast!  In fact all three of us here in the house have eaten it for breakfast!  Jordan thought it was wonderful and ate nearly two pieces!

She obviously made quite the mess and even got some in her hair, but it is hard NOT to when they're hanging in your eyes so much!  We are growing her bangs out but it is quite the process, let me tell you!   On a completely different note, Jordan just saw this picture as I'm writing and is now wiping her face with her hand to show that she had a messy face and is laughing as she does it.

One more story.  Jordan was sick for about a month with mostly diarrhea but there was some nausea as well.  By the end of it she weighed less than she did 3 1/2 months prior at her 15 month check up.  It was awful for both of us but I cannot imagine what she was going through.  Especially seeing her now that she is all better, her goofy little personality has come back and she seems to be laughing and giggling all the time nowadays.  It makes me feel even worse for her being sick after seeing this major change in her personality.

Picture overload!

I have not posted on here in such a long time (besides the giveaway).  I'm sure you didn't need me saying that for any of you to have noticed!  I am planning a picture overload since it has been such a long time so be prepared!  I haven't for surely decided yet whether it will be a series of posts with all related pictures together or if I trust myself enough to go that route; I'm afraid if I do that I won't get much farther than two posts!  Regardless of how they come I'm sure you'll all be happy with SOME type of post from me!  I do not have any belly pictures yet; for some reason I have not gotten around to taking any with this one but one of these days I will do a side by side comparison with my belly now and my belly when I was pregnant with Jordan.  AND in two weeks from today we have our ultrasound!  Hopefully we will be able to find out what we are having!  If not, I'm not quite as concerned as I was with Jordan.  With her I felt like I just NEEDED to know and prayed and prayed that it would be clear.  This one, I just don't feel the urgency to know.  It's so strange how very similar the pregnancies are but how different my mindset is!  

My grandma gave this adorable hat to Jordan for Christmas last year but she hasn't really gotten a lot of use out of it until now....for a couple of reasons.  One, her hair was too short and it just looked kind of silly, but now that her hair is getting longer it looks absolutely adorable on her!  Her hair has some natural wave to it that just flows perfectly out of the hat.  I love it!  And two, she was terrible about pulling out all the ribbons and I couldn't get her to stop!  Now she is old enough to explain why she should not do so and if she does that there will be consequences.  It's great!

The winner!!

It's time to announce the winner of the Macaroni Grill prize package!  I selected the winner using a random number generator at random.org and the number selected is......commenter number seven!  Amanda, that's you!  I have sent you an email letting you know as well.

Thank you everyone for playing!

Time for a giveaway!

Who loves Macaroni Grill?!?!  Well I hope you all do because MyBlogSpark has contacted me once again to host a giveaway and this time Macaroni Grill is providing the prize package!  

The winner will receive a Macaroni Grill frozen entree, serving platter and tongs!

The frozen entree we received, as will the winner, was Basil Parmesan Chicken which contains white meat chicken, broccoli, tomatoes, pasta tossed in a creamy basil parmesan sauce.  To be quite honest I was a little nervous when making it for dinner for a couple of reasons.  One, I do love basil but have experienced too strong of basil in recipes too many times that I'm always nervous to try something basil anymore.  Secondly, Brandon has a thing against vegetables so when he took one look at it, he immediately commented on the broccoli.  But once the meal was all cooked up, which was extremely easy by the way (literally toss into a skillet, pour in a little milk and let it cook away for about 15 minutes, stirring here and there), we really enjoyed it, broccoli, basil and all.  Brandon even said that it was pretty good even with the broccoli.  I could not taste strong basil at all; it was just perfect!  I do have a funny thing about meat so I picked all the chicken out but Brandon thought that it was good.  We really enjoyed it and you can't beat having dinner on the table in 15 minutes!  It says that it serves two but for our family it actually served the three of us (Jordan doesn't eat much) plus Brandon had some leftovers the next day in his lunch.  It could probably be stretched even farther if served with french bread and a salad.  Now, onto the serving platter, holy moly this is a heavy duty dish!  I was quite surprised to lift it out of the package and feel the weight of it.  I was quite impressed.  I have used it multiple times since the initial use with our Macaroni Grill frozen entree.  Same goes for the tongs, which have also gotten a lot of use!  And the tongs start at 10 inches but can be extended to 14!  

Anyway, onto how to enter the giveaway!  

The Macaroni Grill frozen entrees are available in four flavors:  Basil Parmesan Chicken, Grilled Chicken Florentine, Roasted Garlic Shrimp Scampi and Spicy Italian Sausage Pomodoro.  

To enter, please share in the comments which frozen entree you would most like to try or if none of them strike your fancy, share which Italian meal you would like to see added to the lineup. Please also leave your email address so I may contact you if you are the winner.  

The contest endsl Tuesday, Sept 7th at midnight MST.  No comments after that time will be accepted.  The winner will be announced Wednesday, Sept 8th.

Good luck!!

Gettin' wordy

Jordan said her first sentence this week!  She's not really much of a talker using real words so much yet but we that are here with her all the time can easily pick up on words she is saying that others may think is just jibber jabber.  Anyway, sorry I know you all are dying to hear what she said!  Jordan's first sentence is:  "I love you"  it makes me smile every time she says it.  She also learned to say flower...in Jordan speak.  Everything to her is "Bah!"  so we've been teaching her sign language for all those things so that we can know what she's really talking about; for example many times she excitedly comes to me after looking out the window saying "bah! bah!" over and over again and I had no idea what she was talking about.  Later when we were looking out the window together and saw birds and squirrels I showed her the sign for each and now whenever she excitedly comes to me shouting bah! bah! after looking out the window she's combining it with the sign so I know what she saw out there and can then talk to her about it.  It's very nice!  But where I was really going with that is that like previously mentioned she says bah for everything.  She likes flowers a lot and I forgot the sign for flower but I've been trying to teach her "ffffff-llll-ow-er" so she'll say that instead of bah whenever she sees them.  The other day she was sitting at the table eating and saw a picture of herself sitting next to some flowers and I hear her say "ffff-bah!" repeatedly.  I love watching her learn how to communicate...especially when she says she loves me!  :)  Another thing we think is cute and hilarious that I want to share before I sign out is Jordan says "dibble, dibble, doyle"  It's so funny.  If we say dibble, dibble Jordan goes off on this long string of dibble, dibble jibber jabber where she somehow rolls her tongue or something while she's talking because some of sounds that come out of her mouth are the oddest sounding noises but she acts as though she is rattling off some major important conversation.  It makes us laugh every time.

On a completely different note, these pictures are a couple of my favorites from all three of ours first trip to Glacier.

Happy Anniversary!

Yesterday Brandon & I celebrated our six year wedding anniversary...SIX YEARS!  It's hard to believe that it has been that long already!  The time has sure flown by!  It doesn't seem like it was really all that long ago but I look at our wedding pictures and we both look so young and I suppose we were!  I had barely turned 18 but just eight days before the wedding and Brandon is two years older than me, so barely 20 himself on our wedding day.  What a wonderful day!  Some funny memories (now they're funny, not so much at the time!) from the wedding:  during our vows I started stumbling over my words during the "for richer, for poorer, for better, for worse..." part and our pastor chimes in to try and lighten things up and ease my nerves and says something along the lines of "but hopefully for richer!"  Then later as we were trying to light our unity candles someone beforehand had cut the wick so low that as we tried lighting it the wax from our candles kept drowning the wick so we could not get the unity candle lit!  I was so embarrassed and silly me thinking "I hope people aren't thinking this is a symbol of how our marriage is going to be!" but once again our pastor jumped in making me feel a lot better and said "like a good marriage it takes a little work."  Later when we were doing the cake, when Brandon gave me my bite a small piece fell down my dress and on first reaction Brandon started to reach for it but then realizing it had gone down the dress already wasn't sure what to do and of course everyone is watching during this part of the reception so he was quite embarrassed.  I went in the other room to try to fetch this lost piece of cake and Brandon starts to follow but my dad teasingly yells "you better not!" only to embarrass us even more!  What a day!  We went to Disney World for our honeymoon and it was so cool to experience so many firsts with my brand new husband!  Until that trip I had never ridden on a plane, never been so far away from home, never seen palm trees and never seen the ocean, never gotten a tattoo and never driven in such crazy traffic!  Somehow we discovered a place that let people as young as us rent a car (I think most places you had to be at least 25) so we were able to save some money by not having to pay for a cab everywhere we went and it allowed us more freedom of where to go.  One day while there we took a day drive to Clearwater on the coast and hung out at the beach.  One week was certainly not enough but it gives us reason to go back again someday...and this time with our children!

July 24, 2004

Big hairy deal!

Jordan's hair has been getting so long and I LOVE it!  I am able to do so much more with it than a goofy single ponytail off the very top of her head.  I have even managed to French braid her hair too!  I really wish I had a picture of it because I was so proud that she sat still long enough for me to do it and it turned out really good and managed to stay in all day long!

In other news...I had an early birthday present of getting to see our next baby!  Everything is looking good and the baby is measuring perfectly with the estimated due date, which is February 22nd...two days after Jordan's second birthday.  I was a little upset about that at first but since there is nothing we can do about it, I think it is quite funny.  I love how you can see the baby's legs in the picture!  At one point during the ultrasound she got a side view and I could see a little arm too, it was so precious!

Garden pals

A few weekends ago my generous dad came over to rototill my very sad garden and helped me get it started by planting some things.  Jordan had a great time helping him!  (just kidding, he was all done and just pushing it back to his truck but she really did enjoy herself...she was quite proud).

I don't know what I would do with my dad each year because I am a terrible weed-picker so by the time the season comes around to plant each year my garden has become so over taken by weeds its not even funny.  He hauls his tiller over every single year to do this for me then always sticks around to help get my plants and seeds into the ground.

This year we are growing about 8 tomato plants so I can can and freeze some not to mention make loads of spaghetti sauce and salsa and the like to keep us well supplied even after summer has passed.  We also got an ancho pepper plant, parsley and basil then I planted some zucchini, summer squash, winter squash, water melon, two kinds of pumpkin, onions, peas, green beans and I think that's all.  And I've got my strawberries growing strong still!  This is their third year with us.  The three plants I bought three years ago have spread so much they take up quite the chunk of my garden and the actual berries are bigger this year than they have ever been!  I have plans to move them out of the garden to a special area of their own so they can grow and spread as they please but I have to be honest, I am quite nervous about the transplant because I just don't want to lose any!  A friend of ours gave us a huge container of raspberry starters this year that seem to be growing quite well also.  Maybe next year they will begin bearing fruit (certainly not holding my breath on that for the first couple years)!

One of these days hopefully I'll get around to taking a picture of my garden to share with you all, but don't expect it, you know how terrible I have been about blogging lately (for which I apologize).  I am hoping to pick back up on the blogging every monday like I used to do but we'll see if that ends up happening.  I have so many things I want to blog about it's quite overwhelming.  BUT as you wait for me to get in my blogging rut again go check out Healthy by Choices who is hosting a giveaway for a favorite book of mine, in fact I've mentioned it on here before, The Unhealthy Truth by Robyn Obrien.  Get over there quickly because the giveaway ends tomorrow (sorry, I knew about it a couple days ago but am finally getting on here today)!

An epic tale of Jordan and Mommy: