A Few of My Favorite Things: T-Shirts

There have been some pretty awesome t-shirts that have come out since the election and inauguration.  I may have acquired a few of them.  (All of them are short-sleeved, by the way; it is just way too cold to even try them on without a long-sleeved something underneath.)

I got this one at BootsTees on Etsy, and while it is a little big on me I love the sentiment enough to look right past it.  I was especially excited to have it in time to wear to our Girl Scout meeting where I taught the girls about being courageous and strong.

I got this one from HensandChicas on Etsy, and it is so incredibly soft.

And I got this one for Christmas!  The shirt itself is a little more stiff than the others, but I know it will soften with time and I LOVE the font.

Will any of these t-shirts change the world?  Nope.  But the words on them mean something to me.  They make me feel empowered and invigorated, even on days when I'm not at the top of my game.  And that's got to be worth something, right?



*Also, I apologize for the picture quality.  I took them all myself - major props to anyone who can do this and come out with outstanding photos - and I did the best I could.

Christmas 2013: Christmas Eve

For Christmas eve 2013, as it has gone most years, we spent the evening celebrating with my in-laws.  Unlike most years, my brother- and sister-in-law and my niece and nephews weren't there; they had come down with the stomach flu and were holing up at home for the night.  This made for a very unique situation for Baylor and Mollie in that they had their grandparents', great-grandparents', and great-aunts' full attention for the whole of the evening.  At first, Mollie was a bit shy; some family friends had come over to celebrate with us and Mollie wasn't herself with them there.  As the night wore on, though, she warmed up and was much more herself.

Baylor was extra excited because he had had a new experience at school this year; he got to go shopping for family members of his choosing at Santa's Secret Shop, a little store set up in the hallway at school.  With eight people to shop for and forty dollars at his disposal, he and an adult helper shopped until there was no money left.  They helped him wrap the gifts, and he brought them home the same day, managing all the while to keep his secret under wraps.  I thought for sure he would have spilled the beans at some point, but he didn't and it made for a much more sweet surprise come Christmas.

My father-in-law was the first to get his gift, and Baylor decided he wanted to give him a hint to see if he could guess what it was before he opened it.  The hint was, "It is like a screwdriver", and the gift was a set of drill bits, something he could actually use.  Score one for the little man!

Next up was my mother-in-law.  Her hint was, "There is snow in it."  By this he meant that there was "snow" in the name of it, and it turned out to be a snow globe you can put someone's picture in!

Baylor demonstrated how to get the snow to really swirl around.

We exchanged gifts with everyone, and there was lots of happy conversation and catching-up going on.  My husband's grandparents got some new bottles of wine for their wine cellar for Christmas, and Mollie helped pass them around to show off the fun, quirky names printed on each bottle.

It was a fun night, to be sure, and while it was tough to leave we had to get back to our house so Santa could make his visit.  We knew he was in South America when we left my in-laws because we checked the NORAD Santa Tracker before we left, but we didn't want to cut it too close, you know?

So ...

So it's been a while, huh?  Almost a month, really.  Awesome.  Where have I been?  Here.  Just here.  The kids have been sick on and off for quite some time now (the current illness has been with us for two weeks now), the holidays have hit full force, and all of it has been a lot for me to handle.  Attention has been at a minimum, and when something does manage to get my attention it gets all of it.  All.

Christmas shopping alone has been all-consuming.  I love giving gifts, and I love the challenge of finding the right gift for each person.  I get a little thrill when there is a knock on the door and a postal worker of some sort is there to deliver a gift meant for one of my loved ones.  (Truth be told, I really love it when my mailman comes to the door; he is beyond awesome, very happy and chatty, and he just adores it when I online shop.)  However, having two young children makes Christmas shopping quite a bit more difficult, so I end up torn ... hyperfocusing on online shopping and horribly guilty for doing just that.  All I want is to find the right gifts for people, and yet get it done early enough so I can enjoy other aspects of the holiday season; I have a bit of a one-track mind at times and figuring out what to get all my family and friends consumes almost every thought, which means being able to enjoy the tree trimming, gingerbread house making, snowball fights, and what-have-you is nearly impossible.  Once the last gift is thoughtfully purchased, however, my mind will hopefully be freed up for other jolly pursuits.  (I will, of course, have a bit of a shopping hangover/shopping withdrawl thing going on, but I'll hopefully get over that soon enough as well.)

Also, did you know that adding an 8-foot Christmas tree to an already jammed up living room creates an amazing chaos that can send the rest of the house into a tailspin?  Yes, that's right, our half-decorated tree (long story) is up and has somehow created a mess on every other surface in the house, from the floor up.  My one saving grace is that I have been diligent, nay ... dogged, about keeping our kitchen island (okay, it's really a peninsula, but ... anyway) cleared off by the end of each day.  It is so nice to wake up in the morning and be able to view that amazingly cleared off span of kitchen counter, knowing that at least one spot in the house is "company ready".

Speaking of which, I need to go clear it off.  It is my little gift to myself each day, and I want to make sure I keep it up.  Hopefully I'll be writing on here again soon!  Very, very soon!

Until then, have a wonderful night!

A Year of Gratitude: Day 247

Today I am grateful that a bathing suit I had ordered arrived this afternoon.  Any of you ladies out there know exactly how hard it is to find a good bathing suit, and that once you have finally found one you will go to hell and back to get it.  (Preferably at a good price, of course.)

So when the suit I wanted, top and bottom, were finally found and at a great price no less, I ordered them up as quickly as possible.  Yay!

Have a wonderful night!

A Year of Gratitude: Day 227

Today I am grateful for my little fashion critics.  I have been ordering and trying on a lot of clothes lately, and when I've asked them they've always given me their honest and interested opinions.  Usually they are hypercritical of what I have on, sometimes unreasonably so, but their hilarious little precocious answers give me a chuckle and remind me not to take things so seriously sometimes.  Even when Mollie, when evaluating a pair of jeans I have on, walks around them then promptly informs me they are too wide (meaning I am too wide, as they are basically skin-tight) I can't help but laugh.  Their little scrunched up, disapproving noses might precede voices of dissent, but they care and are giving me their time and honest opinions and for that I am so grateful.

Have a wonderful day!

A Year of Gratitude: Day 223 (two days late)

Today I am grateful for the cheerful melon colored shirt I wore today.  It is extremely comfortable and made me feel a little more confident than usual, for whatever reason.  And hey, couldn't we all use a little more confidence every now and then?

Have a wonderful day!

A Year of Gratitude: Day 206

Today I am grateful for a couple little packages that arrived this afternoon.  Going into this summer I found myself unhappy and underwhelmed by my summer wardrobe, only having seven or so t-shirts to wear, and only some of those really looking good on me.  My body has changed a lot in the last few years between two pregnancies, during each of which I gained a lot of weight, nursing two kids, and then losing a bunch of weight after going on a low-sodium diet.  Somewhere along the way I lost a sense of what really looks good on me, what really makes me feel like a put-together adult.  So I ordered a bunch of clothes to try, things with bright colors and no horizontal stripes; the latter of which always make me look like I have a linebacker's shoulders.

So far, not much of what I have ordered has fit or looked great on me, but it's nice to feel like I'm moving toward something that could be called "my style".  And no, this isn't some higher calling, some lofty goal to be met.  But there is something to be said for how you present yourself, and clothes are often used to tell other people who we are and what we're about.

I guess I'm just looking forward, hoping that soon I'll look more like ... me.

Have a wonderful night!

A Year of Gratitude: Day 106

Today I am grateful for a large, white box delivered to me by our friendly UPS man.  (Who was, by the way, amused that I was so incredibly excited for this delivery.)  My whole adult life I have struggled to find shoes that really fit; I knew that I had relatively wide feet, though not wide enough to buy "wide" shoes, and that finding something that felt comfortable was unbelievably difficult.  I had had my feet "sized" by people over the years, and every time they said, "8.5 or 9".  So that's what I'd look for, inevitably frustrated at the fit ... somehow too narrow yet kind of sloppy at the same time.

Imagine my surprise, then, when two people within a span of a couple months tell me that my feet actually measure at a 7.5 length.  The first guy didn't really elaborate, but he helped me find a pair of shoes that fit well to run in and I was grateful for that.

The second guy, though, was happy to illuminate my situation.  (And given the look on his face, he thought it was rather humorous, too.)  Apparently, I measure at a 7.5 length, but my feet are so wide that finding a shoe that size would be nearly impossible.  Moving up to an 8 or 8.5 broadens the options a bit, but then you add into the equation the fact that my toes "are nearly squared off ... they don't come to a point" (his words, not mine) and that means that I have to buy shoes with a wide toe box.  Kind of like clown shoes (my words, not his).

Armed with new knowledge about my feet - an amazing discovery at 31, I'll tell ya - I hopped onto Zappos.com and began searching in earnest.  I ended up ordering seven pairs of shoes in the hopes that I could find one pair for house shoes and one pair for wearing out and about.  They finally arrived today in that giant, 13.8 pound box, and I am not sure I've ever been so excited to try on shoes before.

Trust me, that excitement wore off after the first pair were uncomfortably tight, but I plowed forth and found at least one pair of for-sure keepers.  They have made great house shoes this afternoon, and I am so glad to finally be out of my exercise sneakers; you can only wear those things for so long before you start to feel like you should be running everywhere, you know?  Some didn't fit at all, but three others are definite options (here, here, and here if you were wondering) and I'm looking forward to narrowing down my options in the next couple days.

Yay for new shoes!  I'm so grateful I can finally say that with such a sense of relief.  And so are my feet.

Have a wonderful night!

Bryson in Asia: My Cowgirl and The Little Workers

Mollie and I have been a little at odds with ourselves now that Baylor is in preschool in the morning.  Most days we end up going to the grocery store to pick up a few things and ride Sandy, the penny mechanical horse at the entrance to Meijer.  Mollie even took Sally for a ride one day!

We also end up at Minds in Motion quite a bit, mostly because we have a few kids' birthdays to shop for at the beginning of October.  One day while I was there, I noticed they had kids' rakes on clearance, so I scooped them up in hopes that the kids would help me tackle the enormous carpet of leaves we had on our front lawn.  

They gave it a try, to be sure.

But the help was short-lived, and they ended up mostly wandering around nearly hitting each other in the face with their rakes.

Oh well, maybe next year.  For now they make handy landscape rakes!

South Haven: The Odds and Ends

Here are the last of the pictures I'm going to share from our trip to South Haven.

Sleep was pretty hit-or-miss on the trip, due in no small part to the Monsters Inc. incident that occurred just days before we left.  Needless to say, this was a common sight on our trip.  

Baylor is a bit better at not napping, so he wasn't as bad off as his dear sister was.  

Many nights of the vacation, we played an awesome game called Ticket To Ride (for those of you that like Settlers/Siedler, this would be right up your alley).

I brought our pediatrician's handbook with us just in case, but the kids thought it was for general reading as I had stowed it in the toy/book bag.  Bless Aunt Christine's heart, she read it to them anyway.

There were a few rousing sessions of hide-and-seek, even though the house didn't have a ton of good hiding places (at least not on the floors we restricted the game to).  Oma made due, though.

She showed them how to hide their eyes while counting, too.

But Mollie, as usual, has her own way.

One day when the weather wasn't so nice, my mom, sister, and I took a trip to Michigan City to do a little fall clothes shopping for the kiddos.  We came back with, among other things, these awesome faux glasses for Mollie.  Doesn't she look like a little hipster in them?!

The town of South Haven was great, perfect for exploring and strolling around.  There were lots of neat shops and good restaurants.

The strolling really was great there.  

We actually discovered our favorite restaurant on our last night of the trip.  Brix Corner Oven, located on Eagle Street, featured flat bread pizzas fired in their outdoor wood-fired oven.  All the seating was outside, and we picked the perfect night (albeit a little windy) to try it out.  It definitely wasn't your typical pizza fare (e.g., pepperoni, sausage, etc.), but it was most certainly delicious.  If you're in the area, I highly recommend trying it out.

Oh, and did I mention that Mollie took all the pictures while we were there?  Well, she did.

She needs a little work keeping the whole subject in the frame.

But she's coming along, that's for sure.

After our dinner at Brix, we took a walk out on the pier.

It was super windy, but that made it all the better to watch the kite boarders.

It was a gorgeous evening.

But very, very windy!

When we got back to the beach house we enjoyed some cupcakes we got earlier in the day.

And the kids got to wash their hands in the sink, something they'd been pretty fixated on all week.

The next day, after packing up, picking up, and visiting the farmer's market, we headed home.

The kids didn't actually watch a movie on the way home, but they love wearing the headphones anyway.

It was a wonderful vacation in a lovely town.  Hopefully we'll visit again soon!

DQ and Mall Love

The other night after dinner, my mom, dad, sister, and I took the kids to the mall for a little shopping, elevator riding, and ice cream.  The last of which was, of course, the favorite.

Baylor opted for a tropical fruit smoothie.  I just loved how his little cheeks sucked in while he was drinking.

Mollie shared a vanilla cone with my mom.

It's always such a bummer when all the dessert is gone.

Okay, maybe not always ...

We were starting to get bundled up and all of our things gathered, when Mollie took off toward the center of the mall, arms outstretched all the way.

It turns out that, while my sister and I were finishing up at Gymboree, Mollie had discovered and fallen in love with the giant pillar near the middle of the mall.

I think she would have stayed there all night if I had let her.

But, sadly, it was soon time to go home.  As I reassured the kids, though ... I'm sure we'll be back there soon.

Livin' Large at the Costco Food Court

The other night, big spenders that we are, we took the kids to Costco for a little dinner and grocery shopping.  Mollie was getting hungry, so I left Baylor with Bryson in hopes that the boys could get all three slices of pizza, cups, and silverware to the table for us.  Baylor, being the budding big boy he is, got to carry his own slice of pizza!  He almost dropped it, seen here, but he eventually made it to the table safely.  Whew!  

After dinner, Bryson and Mollie went to the car to drop off the stroller and Baylor and I explored the vending machines.

When something says "Push" it is your duty to check it out, right?

For whatever reason, the kids just love going to Costco.  I guess there's just so much to explore.