Really Random Rambling

Yes, I know. It's been 10 days since I updated. Family members are reminding me of that, so I figured I had better get going. The problem is that I have a bunch of pictures on the camera that haven't found their way onto the computer yet...and it's been crazy around this house.

But...for your viewing pleasure. Check out the cutest little legs getting ready for a run through the sprinkler. He llllooovvvess the sprinkler. And yes, sometimes we skip the shorts and stick with the swim dipe around here.

And that belly? How kissable is that! It's getting bigger. Seriously, he must be going through a growth spurt because he can't. get. enough. to. eat.

And thanks to cousin Em, Wyatt is now a forced K-State fan. Not that we mind. I think K-State wins the award for most family members who attended there, but we're just not really sports fans (have I mentioned that I love that about my husband?). The funny thing is that Wyatt has a bunch of random sports clothing. There was the Milwaukee Brewers sweatshirt (thanks to the Schmidts!), and it's a good thing the Brewers are in the National League because otherwise this MN girl wouldn't have thought it was so cute. But he looked adorable in that sweatshirt! There have been several Arizona State outfits (thanks, Uncle Ryan), a Gophers polo onesie (thanks, Grandpa), and I think there's an IA Hawkeyes t-shirt for a year or two down the road (thanks to my aunt).

But I love his expression in this picture. The patient boy letting his sweet cousin dress him up.

And last but not least...this may be my favorite picture of him...ever. Melts. my. heart. He and his dear cousin Em. Now if only we can get him to do that with his mama for some professional shots in a few weeks...

Okay, enough rambling. See what happens when I'm reminded to update? Goodnight!

A Year and A Quarter

Wyatt is 15 months, and I've said this every month, but I really love this age. He understands so

much now and is communicating with us...even if we don't understand his words. "Degnum" anyone? In the last week he has gotten very good at shaking his head no and clapping for yes. Last weekend he had a five-day viral fever - yuck, yuck! He wasn't hungry at dinner, but around 9:30 when the medicine had kicked in he woke up and cried and cried. I couldn't figure out what was wrong when it hit me. I asked, "Wyatt, are you hungry? Do you want some milk?" Big grin and giggles - clap, clap! "Do you want a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?" Bigger grin, louder giggles, more claps. Love it!

He also has his first chore. Since he likes to push chairs around so much, he now pushes his highchair back into the corner after every meal and snack. Such a big helper!

Daddy figured out a solution to his attempts to look out the front window. He just needed a few more inches, so now he stands on his cobbler's bench. Works great! Now he can see the "cas" and the "guks" all by himself.

Stuff I've Made (or Found Super Cheap at a Garage Sale)

Summer really is a bad time to take on sewing projects. I don't have a garden this year, so I thought it would be a breeze. Right, Dana.

I have gotten several projects crossed off my list (more slowly than I've added them, sadly), and I've had plenty of fun in the process.

First, curtains. So nice to have curtains up in our family room. While I love the colors, it's a whole lot of solid blahness right now. We took down the sagging broken vertical blind/curtains on the sliding door that in their day were extremely functional. They made it 20 years only to succumb to a one year old. In their place we hung khaki grommet curtains, thanks to Lowes. I love the grommets because they open and close really easily and they hold their shape well.

There are five windows in our family room, not including the sliding door, so on three of them I took $7.99 curtains from Target and customized them. This is the first finished one.

I lurve this fabric. I picked it out months ago, and fell in love all over again when I spread it out to cut it. You know it's good fabric when that happens.

So far two windows are done and strips are cut for the third. I just have to rip about 120" of seam before I can start the next panel. The curtain fabric is a really loose weave, so it takes a lot longer than I thought. I'm still working on a valance design for the two narrow end windows. Hubby really dislikes covered windows (I don't really like them either), so the valances have to be pretty short. The nice thing about the curtains is that we hung them wider than the window to make it look wider but we hardly covered it up at all, and we're both happy.

Summer's first project was a big fun bag. I looked for the right fabric for quite awhile, but I couldn't decide if I wanted a sweet, girlie bag or a fun and funky one. Then I saw this line from Moda and got the best of both worlds. I sometimes wish I made it a little bigger, but it's just small enough that I can still find my keys. That's a good thing. Thanks to My Spare Time for the free tutorial!

My oldest niece turned 8 (of all things! - she's supposed to stay little!) this summer. For her birthday she wanted things for her room she's redecorating. Her momma told me she wants a black and white room with purple and blue for accents. She mentioned a pillow with some fur and something satiny. OOOOOOoooohhhh fun! I never get to make this stuff!

Wyatt and I jumped in the car and headed on over to Hobby Lobby where we found fur, satin, fluffy trim, and a little bling.

The other side. It might be a little hard to tell, but the black is a black on black animal print. Just a warning, the white curly fleece is a mess to work with, but it was definitely worth it. And I now have an order in for a Christmas gift for the birthday girl's little sister. The fabric is picked out and the pillow is designed in my head. Better add that one to the Finish-Before-Thanksgiving-List.

I also finished my denim skirt made from jeans and an old t-shirt. Note to self: follow the tutorial and use straight jeans rather than boot-cut. I like the skirt, but it needs shortening before it gets posted.

The last pic is my favorite find from garage saling last weekend. Our living room is still rather short on furniture, and I was just beginning to wonder what to put on the wall opposite the window when I stumbled upon this shelf and frame unit...for $9. I actually drove away from it for about 15 minutes, called Randy, and then turned around to go back. Somehow we fit it in the trunk of my Focus (well, almost. It was a slow drive home), and I immediately set it up. Turns out it's a perfect display spot for the vintage spools we keep finding at garage sales, adds a little more personality to the living room, and Wyatt has learned not to climb on it.

Now, for a funky and functional piece to use for a coffee table...and one more chair.

Pregnancy: 50's Style

Another excerpt from You and Your Baby: A Guide for Prenatal Care, published 1949 by (get this) the Pet Milk Co.

This gem is from the chapter "Hygiene of Pregnancy."

Clothing - Keep yourself looking nice. This will help to keep you in a happy and contented frame of mind which is good for both you and your baby. In spite of her expanding figure, the pregnant mother develops a special radiance or attractiveness that is a reflection, perhaps, of her pride and satisfaction in the wonderful task she is performing...

Clothing should be adequate for warmth. Garter-bands and rolled stockings [so glad these are out of style!] tend to interfere with circulation. By avoiding them you can help to prevent swelling of feet and ankles [I wish that was the only thing that caused it!]...Wear heels that are not more than one and one-half inches high.

Some mothers, in later months of pregnancy, need to wear a maternity corset [ohhh mercy]...It should be carefully fitted, to provide support for your body where needed. Non-elastic material is preferrable. Elastic loses its strength. [ah, so glad elastic has made strides]

Bathing - Bathe regularly just as you normally do...Frequent bathing is important throughout pregnancy. [as opposed to....]

Smoking - In the case of the woman who is accustomed to smoking and does not wish to give up the habit during her pregnancy, there is no reason to believe that a moderate number of cigarettes, say a dozen or less per day, will do her any harm. [WHAT!?!?!?!]

Alcoholic Beverages - Somewhat more restraint is advisable as to drinking alcoholic beverages during pregnancy. A cocktail or highball now and then certainly does no harm. [Oh this kills me!] Any excessive drinking should indeed be strictly avoided.

Hope you enjoyed those last two as much as I did! I don't think my doctor would recommend this book.

A Weekend Away

As mentioned before, Randy and I had about 24 hours of free time in OKC. Unfortunately, we're much better at taking pictures of Wyatt than we are of us, but there are a few. We had a great time together, but I think we missed Wyatt more than he missed us. We talked about him constantly.

Our 24 hours were a bit random. It was 150 degrees with a heat index of 170, so everything we did was in an effort to stay inside. We did take about 30 minutes to walk around Will Rogers Park. The roses were sad-looking, but this place has special significance for us.

Almost 5 years ago Randy proposed at the very spot we were standing. I didn't remember; he did. Everything from the rest of that day got a bit fuzzy for me after he asked the million dollar question.

We found some ice cream and a couple antique shops before finding our hotel and some dinner. Our favorite stop of the day was a cupcake shop called Cuppies and Joe - their Boom Boom Pow cuppies is delish!

Sunday we had breakfast at Jimmy's Egg. Yum. Apparently they have them in Wichita, but we had never heard of it before. We ended up at what was perhaps the original and a fun diner.

Randomly, we took in some horse jumping at the state fairgrounds - there's nothing open in OKC before noon. Then a stop at Lake Hefner, a little time at the mall, lunch at the Cheesecake Factory before heading home in our rented tin can. We are now very thankful for our little Ford Focus. It seemed a bit like a ghetto car before we drove a brand new Hyundai Accent. Suddenly our Focus was luxury.

Hello New Truck and...

Warning: this post is long and rather wordy. But keep reading; it's really good at the end.

There are days when God just absolutely blows my mind. Today is one of them, and we are praising Him for His great blessings! TWO of them!

First let me give you more detail on the truck selling/buying. Randy has been looking for pickups off and on for about 6 months on autotrader.com. He started out looking for a 4 wheel drive, 4 door Toyota Tacoma or Nissan Frontier. After looking for several months, we decided that a 4 wheel drive truck just wasn't going to happen in our price range without a ridiculous amount of miles. So he started looking at 2 wheel drive pickups. And then just extended cabs instead of 4 door. Still, everything was really expensive. We finally found several options in Oklahoma City, so when this one guy from Memphis decided to buy our truck (the first guy who was interested....and bought it in a week - praise the Lord), we offered to meet him down there. We've been wanting to get away for a weekend anyhow, so we took the opportunity.

Saturday morning we dropped Wyatt off at Grandma & Grandpa's way too early for their taste (thanks, though!) and headed to OKC with 6 possibilities to look at. We arrived with an hour to look before we needed to meet our potential buyer.

Truck #1 - bald tires, enough front body damage that we questioned if the air conditioning would work, not very clean inside. Later we test drove it and found that in fact the air conditioning did not work (did I mention it was 150 degrees on Saturday?). They still wanted too much money.

Truck #2 - oil everywhere underneath, really bald tires, baling wire holding a hose in place. Still wanted too much money.

Truck #3 - Sold

Truck #4 - Someone was pulling out of the parking lot to test drive it as we were pulling in. We called back later in the day and it was sold.

In an hour the Lord made it extremely clear that these four pickups were not for us.

We met the buyer from Memphis, sold the truck (yay!), and rented a car for the day. Then we went to check out two more pickups at the last dealer. Ever watch the History Channel show "Pawn Stars"? Picture the main bald guy in a ghetto dealership. I laughed the entire time, thankful that my husband has some law enforcement training. The pickups we wanted to look at were literally parked 4 deep. Before he started moving trucks for us to test drive two, we talked money. If he couldn't come down to what we want, there was no point in attempting to move the maze. He couldn't come down and we couldn't go up. Living within our means.

By 2:30 Saturday we were free to start the fun part of our weekend, but that's another post. We left OKC in a rented tin can (one-way rentals are really expensive, by the way), thanking the Lord for making things very clear to us, for leading us, and for the fun, much-needed weekend away. We left OKC ready to buy a car and deal with the pickup issue later. We left OKC ready to seriously compromise on a pickup because what we want is really really hard to find, and we were resigned to settle. We resigned peacefully, knowing God would lead, but we certainly weren't expecting much.

Today Randy came home from work, ready to eat dinner and go look at a pickup. He had seen it downtown today - a 4 wheel drive, extended cab Toyota Tacoma with the right amount of miles AND a price we could possibly pay. Seriously?!?! Is the title clear? Are there major mechanical issues? When the guy told us his bottom dollar, our mouths about dropped open. It was less than what we had discussed at dinner. And actually with sales tax, it was exactly what we had discussed at dinner.

Randy test drove it....and drove it home.

We're both a bit in shock tonight. It's almost exactly what we really wanted but never thought we'd get. It's a truck that he actually really likes (read: we won't be selling this in a year because he just really can't stand it). And it's exactly what we gave up on several weeks ago. Randy thanked the Lord well when we prayed with Wyatt before bed tonight, "Thank you, Lord, for being so faithful to us even when we're not."

AND...on another very exciting note!

That precious little one we were going to learn more about today is a very healthy baby boy! And very clearly one - the sono tech didn't even have to tell us what we were looking at! We're excited for Wyatt to be just 19 months older than his best friend and playmate.

Goodbye Big Truck

Another vehicle sold. When I met Randy he had the silver Toyota Tacoma that everyone in town recognized. That's how my older brother knew who I had started dating. It had a 4" lift and 33" tires and a big bumper. He took it to Moab, UT every year to go four-wheeling. We went once after we got married. It broke for the first time. But the morning before it broke was truly fun! At that point he either needed to put a lot more money into it or sell it.

We sold it, and bought a Toyota FJ80 with a straight axle (and yes, I actually know what that is now). It got a 2.5" lift and some big tires. But it never got rock sliders and sadly, never climbed a rock. The closest it got was a day trip across some Kansas fields that Google called roads.

As often happens when you have small children, we need to buy a new car (the Ford Focus just will not comfortably fit two car seats and no, we are not buying a mini van...yet). The Toyota was a gas sucker and big tank, so we posted it on ih8mud.com (a Toyota forum and the name is very fitting). Just over a week later, the FJ 80 is at home....in Memphis. It's new owner sent a picture today.

He took it out on fire roads in the Ozarks on the way home. We're hopeful that this soccer mom vehicle turned off-road wannabe will now fully fulfill its potential and climb some big rocks. And maybe one day when our kids are a little older we can once again have a rock climber.

In the meantime, my husband's attitude and willing heart about this is amazing. I'm truly sad to see him give up the hobby for now, but he reminds me what this is all about.

A very precious boy who turns 15 months old today, who LOVES truck books (first words in the last month and a half - "ca!" (translation: car) and something like "guk!" or "chuk!" (translation: everything is a TRUCK!!)

And another little person....who we will learn more about this afternoon - in ONE HOUR!! And about raising them to love Jesus first and about living within our means joyfully. Wow, I love that man!!!