Pictures!

I promised pictures last time so since I am on a blogging roll I might as well make it two posts in a row!!

My dear lovely eldest sister Julie bought my unborn baby some babylegs. I thought these were the most hilarious things I had ever seen! Adorable but I just didn't have a clue as to when I would use them. Sam pulled them out of his drawer the other day and let me try them out on him. They are so cute and funny on his chubby legs as seen here:

These are such fun things to have around. I will definitely dress up a baby girl (if I ever have one) using babylegs frequently! They would be perfect when the weather is a little too cool for bare legs.

This morning Sam was playing with Daddy's toolbox. Like father like son,

I find myself saying this ALL OF THE TIME!

And lastly, just because he is freakin' cute when he gives me a cheesy grin:

It is so very difficult to get cute pictures of Sam right now. We haven't pulled our camera out since we moved (awful I know) so all of these pictures were taken with the iPhone. I hope they don't look too crappy. Have a great day!

Making Jennifer Happy

Ha! Jenn has been asking me to post a few recipes for awhile. Today I had a friend request my pizza dough recipe so I had to type it up for her and thought I would just copy it over here to my blog. My highly unused unread blog but oh well! This is a really yummy homemade pizza crust recipe. I got it online somewhere... I use allrecipes.com frequently so that may be where I picked it up. I know I googled whole wheat pizza crusts.... ANYWAY! Here it is:

1 1/4 cups warm water (110-115degrees)

1 (1/4 oz) package dry yeast (I have used different kinds and they have all worked)

1 Tbsp honey

1 tsp salt

1 1/4 cup all purpose flour

1/4 cup olive oil

2 cups whole wheat flour

Dissolve yeast in the warm water. Mix in the honey and salt. Then stir (by hand or with a dough hook) in the all purpose flour followed by the olive oil. Lastly, use the dough hook on your mixer to combine this with the whole wheat flour. Adjust the water and flour as needed to make a nice ball of dough. It won't be too sticky if it has enough flour in it. The dough should all combine into one ball when you are using a dough hook. When combined, remove from the mixer and kneed the dough for a minute or two (you can add more flour at this point if the dough is too sticky). Then place in a bowl, cover and let the dough rise for an hour or until it has doubled in size. Punch the dough down and let it rise for another 45 mins. Separate the dough into two equally sized pieces and make your crust any shape or size that you want. The rolling pin is very useful at this point. I use a pizza stone to bake mine... I put some corn meal on the stone before I put the crust on so it doesn't stick. I bake the pizza at 425degrees for around 12-15 minutes.

If you have a bread machine then just put all of the ingredients in and set it to the pizza dough setting. It will do the rest for you!

Another recipe Jen has been begging for is one that I inherited from my lovely sister, Liz. This one has been used for many different things. It is generally a shrimp sauce but could be used for chicken or as a topper for rice. It is a big spicy but delicious nonetheless!

"Shrimp" Sauce

1/3 stick of butter

2 Tbsp Olive Oil

2 Garlic Cloves

3/4 tsp salt

2 tsp chili powder

2 tsp black pepper

4 tsp Worcestershire

1 Tbsp Lemon juice

Mix all ingredients in sauce pan. Cook over medium heat until bubbling, then reduce heat to low. Pour some sauce over shrimp before cooking (grill, saute, whatever) and save some for dipping. YUM

Go check out Jenn and Dave's site, it's great! They have two adorable pups and were the best neighbors we could ever ask for. (I wish they would move to LR so we could be neighbors again)

I did it!

I clicked the 'new post' button on my home page! Yeah! :) I am sure that you all have been patiently awaiting my return to blogging. I have to say that my absence has been for so many reasons. We have been incredibly happy since moving into our new (rental) house!! We have been busy with getting the house set up and working on the yard. Sam is a HUGE fan of the larger space. I now can see how cramped he was in our 1200 sqft townhouse. 2400 sqft is much more suited to this busy little guy. At first he didn't want us out of his sight but now he has become comfortable in his space and will often play in the family room/basement area without having a parent in tow. This is great for laundry day for me!

I keep on saying that Sam has become more and more easy over time. The toddler years are so fun! He says a new word almost daily. Some of his recents are "bubbles", "jeep" and "mommy". Cuteness abounds!

So, how was your labor day? We enjoyed our 4 day weekend (Cliff works 4-10 hour shifts now) so much. Friday we went to the River Market to eat lunch then I got out to a movie by myself that afternoon. (Yeah!!!) I honestly can't remember what we did that evening. Saturday we started on the awful landscaping in our front yard. We hustled to get most of the area near the driveway finished before it rained. That afternoon we went to Best Buy, Sam's Club and ate at Jason's Deli. Sunday was church and delicious barbeque chicken by Cliff. That all led up to a buy laborous Monday! We went on a 2 mile (HiLlY) walk in our neighborhood. When we got back I was so gross already that I decided to start on the landscaping in front of the house. I worked for 2 hours, then Cliff came out and took over so I could have a break for about 30 mins. Sam went down for a nap then I went out to mow the yard. It was a humid day and I was about to faint. I had to stop mowing with only a few passes left. Cliff said I was more red than he has ever seen anyone. I made it and finished up after a water break. This afternoon we just played relaxed and I made some delicious banana bread. mmmm!

We have been out of town many many weekends since moving and we plan to head up to NWA in the next week or two again. We need to help Cliff's mom out (she broke her arm up by her shoulder 2 weeks ago) and we need to see my family.

I will be starting work this week at a local church for their Bible study childcare. I am looking forward to the extra $! Hopefully Sam will have fun playing with some kiddos too.

So, what was your favorite activity of the Labor Day weekend? I hope you all were able to relax and spend some much needed time with your family and friends!

I hope to get back in the swing of blogging soon. Pictures with the next post, I promise :)

Pack pack pack

Who wants to come help?!?! If I don't even want to participate I guess I can't expect any one else to jump in on the fun! It has been a pretty rough past week or so, I can't lie. Being a stay at home mom is not all peaches-n-cream. It is TOUGH. Sometimes you just want to go out of your mind when your teething toddler throws his lunch on the floor. Even better when he smashes it into the carpet and/or couch. (I definitely wouldn't know anything about this, it's all hypothetical). :-/ I am sure that Cliff wonders what I did all day when he comes home to me waiting at the door with no dinner on the table. I find that I lose my patience too frequently but I am imperfect- God made me that way! I strive to do better and I feel like I was more patient today than last Friday... thank God for that.

Lacy is still in the hospital in intensive care on the ventilator. It's so tough seeing my friend go through this. She is the model of a (near) perfect person. She is patient, kind, loving, nurturing, and has always dreamed of becoming a mom. I know she could have never thought up this situation she is now in. She has been a mom for 3 weeks and has only held her baby 2 times. I pray that she will remember when she held him for the first time but we definitely have pictures to prove it at least. If I think about her situation too much I just find myself in tears. She will get better and has been making vast improvements but I just wish I could give her the first 3 weeks of her baby's life to have in her memory. He is a precious little boy. I have held him and loved on him for her. He is so perfect and is doing amazingly well. He will probably get out of the hospital very soon- before his mommy. (don't worry, I offered to babysit) I have been emotionally drained. I can't imagine what Lacy and Ben's families have been going through. They are so faithful and it is so obvious every time I see them. They have held up better than I would ever expect anyone to under these circumstances. If you pray, throw one up for Lacy, Ben and baby Andrew!

TOMORROW we get the keys to our new (rental) house! We are so very very very excited to get out of this apartment complex. We cannot wait!!! Sam is going to stay with his Grandma Haynes Wed-Thursday and my parents are going to pick him up Thursday and come to LR to help us move on Friday morning! I am so thankful to have their help. I am also thankful that the weather forcast is expecting temps to be in the high 80's!!! We are so thrilled. This will help with our move so very much. A far cry from the 100's of this weekend and last week. YEAH!!

We are also ridding ourself of cable tv and our home phone. Tell me that we are crazy but we are going to try it out and see what we think. I think it could be good for us. I don't watch it that much anyway so why not save the $$?!? We will keep the tv and watch movies frequently, I am sure. Don't worry, we will still have the internet, we are not THAT crazy.

I LOVE reading all of your blogs... trust me even though I am bad at blogging I love catching up with all of you!

Been a long time...

I know you all were on pins and needles waiting for our exciting news last week. Man how I disappointed you all by not having a new post up until now! I am a blogging FAILURE. Oh well, maybe you will forgive me and we can move forward in our blogging relationship. I sure hope so cause I would hate to lose any one of you 6 subscribers! Heavens, NO! I need every eye, and ear I can get.

We have been waiting to hear if our application for our new (rental) house has been accepted! We still don't have a final answer but they are just waiting on 1 thing so surely it will go through and my telling you all this isn't totally jinxing us! We are so thrilled to (hopefully) be doubling our square footage in the next month or so. We are now at 1189sqft and the new place is almost 2400sqft. Thank the Lord! We need to be able to stretch without kicking eachother in the face. Sam needs to be able to run around in a house that takes him more than 2.5 seconds to get from one end to the other. We need a guest bedroom so we can welcome lovely people to our home (or another baby, whichever comes first- haha). This place is only 3 bedrooms but it has 2 living rooms, a sun room and a screened in porch. Wohoo! We will again be taking care of a yard but I'm kind of looking forward to mowing and planting some flowers (Jennifer- do you want to come help). We will be breaking our lease here at the 'ole townhouse but we don't care. :) The house is in a safe neighborhood in West Little Rock- this is a hard thing to find right now so we had to jump on it.

Enough about that!! We had a really nice weekend. On Saturday morning I made my husband happy and we went on a family hike! He has been wanting to do this for ages so I had to give in eventually. I'm just not that much of an outdoorsy girl. We had a good time. Cliff started out with Sam in the backpack carrier but by the halfway point I could tell that he was tired. I kindly offered to carry the load and promptly realized that I got the UPHILL portion of the hike with the extra 29lbs on my back. It

was grueling but Sam seemed to love it! He kept on pulling my hair and giggling. He would leannnnn really far to one side to try to look at my face and then just laugh. Funny kiddo. A few pictures from Cliff's phone (not that great of quality).

You can definitely see how tired I am in this picture. Hideous, I know! (We were at Pinnacle Mountain State Park.)

This is a turtle that I nearly stepped on. Poor thing was scared to death(almost)! He quickly ran off after he realized that I spared him from a certain demise.

The rest of that day was a date day for me and Cliff!! His mom came down to watch Sam while we went to lunch, a movie and to look at Craigslist furniture for our new place. It was a great (and much needed) day away. Sunday we did much relaxing before grilled chicken and church.

Yesterday was a little crazy. One of my dearest friends, Lacy decided that she had to deliver her baby nearly 10 weeks early! I got a text that she was in L&D at about 3:30pm. I was freaking out to say the least. She ended up having an emergency c-section around 6pm. Andrew Davis Stang was 4lbs 12.5oz and 16in long. He is doing well from what I've heard! I can't wait to go see him and hope to do so soon. He is here at Baptist while she is still in Mountain Home. Poor momma!

I will try to keep up with this more frequently this summer. Hope all are well!!

Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda

I need to blog. I have lots to say (I think). I just seem to have too much else to do right now! Dishes, laundry, cleaning, feeding, napping (haha, joke), playing, going to the park... the list could continue!

I will say that Cliff and I had a most marvelous weekend! We finally had the chance to just stay here in Little Rock and hang out at our place for the majority of the 2 days. It was hot (said in a whispered voice like Sam says) hot hot! Summer is definitely upon us.

Sam has been c-r-a-c-k-i-n-g us up lately. He has now caught on to counting (a boy after our own hearts). He will say "waaahn (one), tee (two), waaahn, waahn, tee......" he said three a few times but mostly it is just waaahn and tee. It's pretty stinking cute and I will definitely try to get a video of it soon. He is turning into a bit of a mocking bird. That will be a really scary thing here in a few months. (momma, watch your mouth) I try to get him to say his name and he just says "sssss" in a whisper voice.

It is so much entertainment each and every day. He also has started giving us kisses and hugs without us asking for them- awww! On Friday I watched a friend's little 3 year old for several hours. Sam kept on giving him hugs and Josh did not know what to think about it. :-)

Stay tuned.... I'm sure I will be back later in the week with some potentially exciting news! This could be good!!!

15 months

WOW! Sam is 15 months today. It's hard to believe... I think this requires a comparison shot:

Sam on May 13, 2008

Sam on May 19, 2009

My how he has grown! Time flies.

Well, the weather has been perfect for the past few days. I am loving this and not looking forward to the too hot to get outside days that are coming up. We have been to the park to play the past 3 days. I tell Sam that we are going "bye bye" and that is it...he is standing by the door trying to get outside! I have to watch what I say to him because if I am not quite ready to leave yet he will whine and whine until we leave. It's pretty cute though...

We had a busy weekend! The trip was uneventful, thank God!!! Do I even have to remind you of how our last trip went??? (See Dallas posts.) This week started off with my "I officially feel old" birthday. I don't know why 26 is old in my book but it is. I'll try to embrace it anyway! I had a most wonderful birthday... last year was pretty awful. Cliff was sick and we were packing up to move to LR. We were NOT happy about leaving our friends, family and beautiful house behind. I'm so thankful that we have grown to really like LR!!! I couldn't ask for anything more... (except a house to live in...that's all). So anyway, this birthday started off with a visit to the park where we hung out with friends. It was fairly relaxing even though Sam got himself incredibly dirty from head to toe with rock dust. To the bathtub he went. That evening we went to P.F. Changs for dinner. Yummy! Sam loves vegetarian lettuce wraps. Wow...he would have eaten the entire plate if we let him. My gift wasn't in yet so I received it yesterday in the mail... an iPhone!!! I am pretty excited and nearly addicted to it already. Any advice on applications or uses from anyone who has one?

Sam just woke up so I have to cut this short. I'll catch up soon!