Yes I've been MIA... want to hear my excuse?

So I got really good at blogging.  I blogged at least weekly if not daily.  But my traffic began to build up and I began to get a little paranoid.  I love blogging about being a mom, but there are a lot of weirdo's out there.  So I've started a new blog.  I will keep this one open (on invite only) so I can blog the really personal family and friends only stuff every once in a while but mainly to keep up with my family and friends who have blogs. The new blog will continue to be about my adventures as a mom but I will be picky about how much specifics I put in about Liam.

Anyway, please please please come follow me over at playdatesareformoms.blogspot.com.  I hope to see you all there.

Blast from the past

That's me in the red shirt.  

Yep, me at 15.  Cute right?  Ah, this photo brings back so many memories.  I actually enjoyed high school.  But I had a great group of friends and decent self esteem for a teenager.  I wouldn't go back but I do enjoy the memories.

I'm a photographer!

Eli is Liam's best buddy.  

Not in the strictest sense of the word of course, but I did take the photo for today's 30 day challenge.

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Sorry, no Awkward Awesome Thursday for me today.  Really, it's just because I'm lazy and ready for bed.

Angry photo?

What?!  Today I'm supposed to post a photo that makes me angry.  Really 30 day blogger challenge?  I admit that I didn't read through all the questions before I signed on to this, so yeah, my fault there.  But some of these are really stupid.  Why would I take, have, or keep a photo that makes me angry?  So here, instead, is a photo in which I am angry.  I was way too pregnant for anyone to be photographing me.  So Fred's insistence on a photograph of me full term made me pretty peeved.  Actually, now that I've posted it, this photo makes me angry.  Man that last month was miserable.  Good thing the end result was so worth it.

It's a happy picture tie.

Day 7: a photo that makes me happy (now this is one easy post).  It came down to these two.

Only a few hours old but already the love of my life.

The day we brought Liam home.  Freddie's in love too.

Yeah, I've got time.

Day 6 is whatever tickle my fancy, and what tickles my fancy today is the fact that I managed to etch out 10 minutes to exercise.  I don't know about you but I'm big on Mondays.  How I start my week tends to rub off on the rest of my week, so I really make an effort to have the best day I can on Mondays.  But today was a busy Monday for me and I was worried I wouldn't fit everything in, throwing off the rest of my week.  I hate to admit it but when time gets tight, exercise is usually the first thing I sacrifice.  I hated to cancel my workout, convinced that if I did it would spell disaster for my fitness regime for the rest week.  (Here's where I shamelessly pat myself on the back) So I pulled up a 10 minute pilates workout on Netflix and committed myself to a brief, but very effective, core toning.  Gold star for me today!

Style Weekend & my favorite quote

Yes, I seem to have my hand in a lot of different pots but I have a lot of different interests and lately, thanks to my stylish sister-in-law, (yes Chelsey I mean you) one of them is style. Mainly, mommy friendly styling.  I spend most of my week at home but at least once a week, Sunday not included, I like to dress up, put on some makeup and feel a little less haphazardly put together.  So now, in addition to Awkward Awesome Thursdays, Foodie Fridays, and Hot Sweaty Mama Monday, I'm introducing Style Weekend, where I can show off my pretty days, even when I don't get to leave the house.  Kicking off Style Weekend is the lovely pair of boots I found on clearance at Target this week (shhh, twelve buck-a-roos!).  They may be a half a size too big but I think I pull them off.
                                                                                                            
Today's blogger challenge is my favorite quote.  This one hangs on my wall at home reminding me to enjoy the ride.

Life is like an old time rail journey - delays, sidetracks, smoke, dust, cinders and jolts, interspersed only occasionally by beautiful vistas and thrilling bursts of speed.  The trick is to thank the Lord for letting you have the ride.

- Gordon B. Hinckley

My favorite book

Seriously 30 day blogging challenge?; when will these grade school 'getting to know you' questions end?  (Sighs loudly) I suppose I'm obligated to answer this one too, since I am committed to finishing this challenge and all.  So ..... day 4 ..... my favorite book.  In order not to be redundant and simply list the last 5-10 books I read, I will actually contribute something substantial, an actual favorite book.  

When I first picked up The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, I really had no idea what to expect.  Honestly from the back cover description it looked like your typical housewife fluff filled with insurmountable obstacles by a quirky but relatable heroine which she miraculously overcome in a less than realistic turn of events.  Of  course since I am citing this as ONE OF my favorite books you can follow the predictable plot and conclude that I was wrong.  The Glass Castle  is actually an autobiography of Walls childhood which was, to say the least, highly unusual.  Her parents are their own class of hippie and honestly the fact that Walls and her siblings survived to adulthood alone is an heroic feat.  Despite what anyone would consider textbook neglect and borderline abuse by the parents, you find yourself understanding them and even admiring, in a twisted way, their parenting techniques.  

Overall, a book that left a permanent impact on me and I highly recommend you pick it up if you get a chance.  

Day 3: Favorite T.V. Show & a little something extra for the foodies

Ok, this one is much easier for me.  I won't pretend to be some enlightened human being who only turns on the T.V. for CNN and the occasional documentary on flesh eating bacteria that will one day wipe out our society; I love prime time T.V.  I watch often and it is probably the most relaxing part of my day.  I look forward to that 7 p.m. hour when Liam is down, work is done, and I can veg out with a good sitcom or soap.  So the favorites are as follows (in no particular order)
- Psych, holla to Chelsey and Owen for this wonderful gem
- Grey's Anatomy, yes, the guilty pleasure
- Private Practice, the sister spin-off to Grey's
- Glee
- How I Met Your Mother, this generation's Seinfield meets Cheers
And of course the standard NBC Thursday night line up
- The Office
- 30 Rock
- Community
- And my newest favorite, Perfect Couples; seriously people, this show is the funniest thing since the second season of the Office.
                                                                                                             
In other news, I'm starting Foodie Fridays!  I love, love, love food and I love to cook and bake.  My passion lays in making healthy, tasty food.  I've discovered and invented some pretty amazing recipes over the years and I think its high time I pass my delicious experiments on to you, my adoring public.
Kicking off Foodie Friday is one of my all time favorite shacks, kale chips.  You know that 3 p.m. craving for saltiness that you think will only be cured by potato chips, which you know will be followed by crushing guilt if you give in?  Kale chips are the cure.  I'm not kidding folks, these babies taste just like potato chips, or at least enough like them to satisfy that crispy, crunchy urge.  Try them, I promise you will not be disappointed.

Rough Recipe:

• Preheat oven to about 375*
• Use about 1 OXO salad spinner’s worth of kale (which was a stuffed grocery store veggie bag). Tear the leaves off the thick stems into bite size pieces. Spread out on cookie sheets.
• Drizzle with about 2 tsp of olive oil
• Sprinkle with Parmesan, Asiago or your seasonings of choice. Plus a sprinkle of kosher salt.
• Bake for about 15 minutes, until edges are brown and kale is crispy when moved in pan.

*I must give credit where credit is due; this delightful craving cruncher is brought to you by katheats.com http://www.katheats.com/favorite-foods/kale-chips

Day 2 & Awkward Awesome Thursday

Like my favorite song, I have no favorite movie, which is what today's post is supposed to be about.  Movies I like to watch change depending on my mood.  I could give the standard answers of The Princess Bride or Monty Python and the Holy Grail but aren't those everyone's favorites?  Questions about 'favorites' really bother me because I feel like I am being asked to classify myself into one small category when really my tastes run over a wide range.  However, in the interest of being true to the 30 day blogger challenge, I will give the last 5 movies I watched.

- 17 Again

- The Incredibles

- Ice Age

- Monster's Inc.

- Love Potion #9

That, to the best of my memory, is the list of my last 5 films.  Although, unlike my ipods listing of top songs, none of those could really be considered favorites.  Yep, that's about it.

                                                                                              

On to my Awesome & Awkward week

Awkward:

- Liam has been sick all week ... which is not so much awkward but awful.  But when I took Liam to the Dr. he asked me if I was still giving Liam fluoride drops.  I looked confusedly at the Dr. for a minute before remembering the prescription I was given for them 4 months ago but never filled.  Yep, bad mommy.

- Made a pot of cabbage soup on Saturday and then just left it there until last night, not because I was too lazy to refrigerate the leftovers, but because I didn't think it was that good but I couldn't justify throwing away a whole pot of soup.  But tossing it 5 nights later because it's spoiled, no problems.

- Our living situation ... I still need to blog about how we live in one room and people frequently stroll unannounced through our kitchen.  

- I made no bake cookies twice this week because the first time I ate them so fast that Freddie was surprised to come home and find THEM ALL GONE the next day.  To alleviate my guilt I made more, so it's like I never at an entire batch on my own in the first place.

Awesome:

- Half of this should go in the awkward section but I can't really go into detail about it so I will just post the awesome part, Freddie is getting more hours at work for the next few weeks.  Can you say "Pay Day!"

- Liam's favorite new word is DADADADA, so cute.

- The hot ham and cheese sandwich I had for lunch; classic grade school tastiness.

- I have a Valentine's Day balloon still floating in the corner of our room.

Hope you all have a week with much awesome and little awkward.

Afternoon at the park .... and day 1 of the 30 day blogger challenge

Liam loves the park

Aren't my boys so cute!

Ok friends, I'm going to embark on a 30 day challenge, specifically the 30 day blogging challenge in which I will attempt to post every day with the help of some specific prompts.  Of course the first one on the list is about my favorite song, awesome, off to a good start... I don't really have one.  I could probably pick my top 100 but that would be an awfully long post.  So instead I went to my ipod and picked the top 10 off of there. 

10) Under Pressure - Queen & David Bowie

9)   All These Things That I've Done - The Killers

8)   The Scientist - Coldplay

7) Sugar, We're Goin Down - Fall Out Boy

6) Time Is Running Out - Muse

5) Sometime Around Midnight - The Airborne Toxic Event

4) Mr. Brightside - The Killers

3) Glycerine - Bush

2)Helena - My Chemical Romance

1) Float On - Modest Mouse 

I don't necessarily know if all of those would qualify as a favorite song, most of them are up there because I love to run to them.  But I will say that number one is there for a reason.  I listen to it most when I need a good jump around, scream your head off, just get through the day, song.  It's kind of a mantra for me.

The tortured child & pictures

So we got our family pictures today.  Finally, I mean, Liam is only 10 months old.  Pathetic since the husband is a photographer.  Poor Liam is sick, (stupid cold) but we finally had it all scheduled and ready to go so like the mean mommy I am I made him go.  We got very few smiles but a few turned out.  Here are some of my favorites.

Liam & Mommy

Love the father & son fist bump

Awkward hands, but once I get a minute I'll work some cropping magic

Awkward Awesome Thursday

I'm stealing this blog prompt from one of my favorite blogs The Daybook and instituting Awkward and Awesome Thursdays.

Awkward: 

- This photo I took while attempting to take a picture of myself and Liam.  Nope, it's not cropped.  I was zoomed in that much.
- Having clients walk though my kitchen while I'm in the middle of dinner prep.  Besides the obvious awkwardness I can get a little messy while cooking in a small space.
- Been eating a TON of blueberries lately and sharing them with Liam, so I seem to have developed perma-blue fingers.
- One of the tires on my jogging stroller went flat mid walk this week making me look crazy as I struggled to push it home.
- One of the guys that lives up stairs caught me jumping around my kitchen singing to Katy Perry's Firework.
Awesome:
- The Government ponied up and we are getting a nice, fat, tax return.
- Finally scheduled a time to do family pictures with the hubby and baby.  I'll post them Monday.
- Thanks to the warm weather this week, Liam and I got around to exploring the neighborhood for a local park.  I found a good one just three blocks from home nestled behind an elementary school.  Would have never found it had I not taken a short cut home because the tire on my jogging stroller went flat.

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Hope you all have had more awesome this week than awkward.

Although, let's face it, life is so much more fun when there is a little awkward thrown in with the awesome.

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Personal hygiene parody

My Daily Soliloquy

To shave or not to shave.  That is the question. 
 For whether tis nobler in personal hygiene to use my scant time
 to rid myself of unsightly stubble
 or to take up arms against a sea of oral bacteria 
and by flossing end them.  to maintain pearly whites, to be cavity free.
Once more.  And by flossing to say it is less important 
to shave, to style hair, to apply mascara
that is necessary to improve my condition. Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished, to be daily primped 
to perfection -- perchance to appear put together: ay, there's the rub.
For in that perfection, I'm not as good a mommy.


Seriously though, I've said it before, and I'll say it again.  The dirtier, hungrier, more tired I am.  The cleaner, well fed and happier Liam is.  This morning, like every morning, I had 10 minutes to practice personal hygiene.  I used 2 of those minutes standing in the shower deciding if it was more important to shave my legs today or floss. Let alone do my hair or put on make-up.  Now, before I start sounding too pitiable, I will confess that I actually have a full hour in the morning to take care of myself.  But I usually chose to spend most of that hour working out. I could get up a little earlier, but I'm running on 6 hours or less of sleep most days as it is.  And that's about my limit.

But it's worth it.  I love being a Mom.  Even if most days I look less than put together.

Life is like Jr. High

(Editor's note: it has taken me a week to finish this post; so lame)This week Tom Brokaw made a profound statement that has forever changed the way I think about life.  He said   (contextually referencing Obama's State of the Union address to Congress) that life is like Jr. High.  At first I laughed at the analogy, it was funny especially when applied to our most of our less than mature Congressional Representatives.  But I can't seem to get his statement out of my head.  Is life really like Jr. High?  I, for one, hated Jr. High but loved high school.  Weird I know, but I feel like I spent my entire three years in Jr. high school hating myself (awkward stage of early teen years) and wishing I had friends.  Looking back on it brings a feeling similiar to the one I get when I go to the dentist.  So when Brokaw say's life is like Jr. high, which I associate with the dentist, does that mean life is like a giant tooth ache?  Talk about a depressing life.  I for one like to think life is more like kindergarten.  We eat things we aren't supposed to, learn how to count money, share our things and that hitting is bad.  The only thing that doesn't fit is nap time.

Thanks Tom, but I don't think I want to live my life as if it's Jr. high.

What can I say, the kid is a natural.

Liam loves his tongue.  He has recently discovered all the amazing things he can do with it one of which is to provide countless hours of entertainment to both himself and his doting parents.  I present the amazing Liam and his tongue.

Liam is a total ham.  I just hope his early discovery of this special talent doesn't spell disaster during his dating years.

We're not the Harlem Globetrotters, but we've got game.

The hubby and I have invented a new game.  We call it poop shoot.  The rules are simple, from where ever you are when you changed the diaper, attempt to make a "basket" with the dirty diaper.  Sounds odd, and probably also gross, and at first it was a little hairy.  Diapers were bouncing off walls, doors and floors with a basket made only half of the time.  Gradually we got better, much better.  This morning, from outside the key (read: the far side of the bed) with my left hand and over my shoulder, with the help of a bounce off the closet door, I made it!  I must say I do have an impressive shooting record, but that shot tops them all.  If only I had a live action recap to share, you would no doubt be impressed too.  Instead you will have to make do with a picture of our ball court.

Small basket, I know.  That's just how good I am.  And yes, I do need to take out the trash.  

Is a makeover really better?

So I revamped the look of my blog.  Do you like?  I'm not sure if it looks better necessarily but at least it's a change and I've added some personal touches.  The problem with me wanting to blog is that I would like my blog to be aesthetically pleasing but I know next to nothing about html.  So I have the choice of ripping off some random blog template or having a boring looking blog.  Because I'm not so hot on the boring blog I've previously ripped off other templates from generic template sites (read, hotbliggityblog.com).  But I got tired of their advertisement banner on the corner of my page so I switched to the blogger template designer.  I have to say it is definitely a step up.  Not only was I able to chose a layout for my page (which was quite refreshing and although I'm not convinced I've achieved feng shui in my design I'm satisfied that it is remarkably better than before) but I played with a wide range of colors and a smaller but doable range of fonts.  What has been created is slightly less generic albeit formulaicly (is that even a word?) produced blog makeover.
Still, I am jealous of all the creative blogs my friends manage to produce.  How do you do it?

Hide and seek

I've taken to hiding from my son.  He is going through this phase where if he can't see me, he isn't happy.  It's so bad that when I bath him at night, I can't sit on the toilet while he plays, I can't even sit comfortably on the floor by the tub; I have to be hanging over the side, with my hands in the water or he cries.  Freddie can put him to sleep just fine, but if I leave him in his crib and say "night night" he screams and cries as if I'm never coming back.  It was cute at first; endearing even.  But now I'm getting frustrated by how clingy he is.  I'm having a really hard time getting anything done.
So I'm hiding from my son.  I put him down to play, distract him with toys (read, 'my car keys') and then try really hard to stay out of his line of sight for as long as possible.  I am currently writing this post from the floor beside my bed, a spot where he has no view of me from his current position.  Problem is, once I finish, I'm not sure how to leave with out him seeing me.
Really though, it's only a matter of time before he realizes I'm missing and he starts to cry for me to play with him ... and there he is.  Time to play peek a boo.

Adorable even when cranky.  

A place to call his own

Since we moved into the Red Plum in October, Liam has gone from sleeping in the one room with Freddie and I, to sleeping in the closet, and now finally ... still sleeping in a closet but a much larger closet that is all his own space.  This week's big project has been turning the storage closet just off our room into Liam's own bedroom.  It has been a success.  I'm quite proud of this little space that I've so lovingly prepared for him.  Sure it isn't my dream nursery but it's all Liam's own.  Now I have a safe, baby proof place to put him when he starts crawling ... when ever that may be.

2010 Highlights

I can not believe that it is already 2011.  My Mom mentioned to me the other day that when she was younger (we'll say teen years) she could not even comprehend living in the year 2011.  
Anyway, another year has come and gone and I feel the need to point out this years big points.


#1 Surprise Event
Freddie and I both changed jobs this year.  Freddie now works for the wonderful Photoworks Portrait Studio in Orem and they are lucky to have him. If you were intrigued by my shameless plug please visit their facebook page http://www.facebook.com/photoworksportraitstudio 
and their blog http://photoworksportraitstudio.blogspot.com/  I of course, found a wonderful job running a framing shop.  We live at the shop so I never have to leave home to work.  I am definitely loving my job although a major goal for this 2011 year is to drum up more business ... now for another shameless plug; call me for all your custom framing needs.  


#1 Big Purchase
2010 also marks the passing of our faithful cavalier, a car that was not just a vehicle to us, but a vessil of adventure.  In the short 3 years we owned it, we put a record amount of highway behind us and visited most of the western U.S.  On a positive note, we did lease a 2010 Corolla that we have since put 11,000 miles on (mostly highway of course) and we are happy to say that it is a sensible, reliable, fun vehicle.  

#1 Best Discovery

Of personal note, I discovered skinny jeans this year and I must say, I love them.  Not only are they great with flats, but they are so boot friendly I can't believe I didn't go the skinny route years ago.  
Plus, as new mommy, I feel like I can wear jeans and still look put together in a flash.
#1 event in Schooling
With this one there is a big tie.  Freddie changed majors from Math to Visual Arts and Communications; a move which has been long in coming and very welcome.  We are excited to see what he will be able to do in this field.  The other event in schooling is that I graduated!  Finally.  I really can't say anything that will emphasize how awesome this event is except, GRADUATED.
Finally, 


#1 Overall best event this year
Of course the best thing about 2010, we got Liam.  He is amazing and I still don't know how I ended up with him.  
I hope everyone had as wonderful a 2010 as I did; I'm looking forward to the highlights of 2011.  Happy New Year!