Our Days

I don't typically buy ice cream from the store.  While I was raised on Blue Bell....I've come to realize that there are just so many unnecessary ingredients inside. I do like to make homemake ice cream but that doesn't always happen.  I've been hearing good things about Halo Top ice cream.  I was definitely impressed with the short list of ingredients....all words you can pronounce.  This red velvet flavor was okay.  I got a few others for us to try out too.  Have you tried this brand and like it?

Last Saturday, some of my local leaders and I hosted a Speed Oiling class.  We each had to bring a couple door prizes.  I made this little tree scent set.....put pine oil on the sticks and place those in your artificial tree to get the tree scent.  I thought it turned out really cute!

Our annual pumpkin painting party barely happened this year.  We are still not completely finished.  We had to paint and let some things dry.  Sigh.  This is just such a busy time for us.

This made me laugh!  The Walking Dead started back on Sunday.  Oh my, did you watch it??

There is a cute little coffee shop close to our new house.  Their coffee and homemade pastries/muffins are really good.  I love supporting small businesses.  I'm excited to be closer so that I can go there more often.

Shawn and I both voted on Monday.  I was pretty surprised to see so many people there. Praying for our country!

Cooper and I are going to try to start walking the track at our local gym.  He and I went this week and it was great having some alone time with him.  He makes me laugh!

We were planning to have a Bible verse writing party at our new house but because of all the delays it kept getting pushed back.  Our sheetrock should be going up today or tomorrow so we didn't have time over the weekend to coordinate anything.  So, I asked my friends on FB for some of their favorite verses to bless our new home.  The four of us went and wrote on boards in all the rooms.

Last Monday we had the meeting with the cabinet company.  The guy that came to help us was a complete idiot.  He had a horrible attitude and didn't offer any suggestions for anything.  Before our meeting, I spent HOURS on Pinterest and Houzz and I basically drew the preliminary plans myself with a pencil and a ruler.  Our meeting lasted less than 1 hour and we were so disappointed.  I decided to write a letter to the owner and express our concerns.  We are spending a lot of money on this house and a lot of extra money in the kitchen.  We honestly were not even given examples of what the trim or cabinets looked like.  We got an email back and an offer to come to the show room to work with someone and get a CAD drawing of our cabinets and walk through exactly what we want.  We are scheduled to do that on Monday and I know I'll feel much more confident once we have that meeting.

I feel like almost every single area of this house has been difficult.  Things have been overlooked, done wrong, slipped through the cracks.......talk about feeling tested.  I do know that God is working on patience with us for sure.

Busy Busy

We FINALLY have a fully completed roof.

And our front door got delivered and installed.  I can't wait until the house is finished and we can rip that paper off so that I can really see it.  Puts a smile on my face!!

So for the first time in about a month, we didn't freak out when we saw rain in the forecast.

A week or so ago, I went for my first Thermography session. This is an alternative screening in place of mammography. There is no radiation and no squeezing. The results were pretty spot on too with some other things he showed me.

I paid extra to have my face/neck, back and stomach scanned.   Google for information.  Its much safer than all that radiation.

A while back, I mentioned this book.......and honestly I only got through a couple of chapters and then life got crazy. I picked it back up this week and still love it as much as I did the first time.

The first 2 tasks that I'm enforcing are:

1.  No toothpaste in the sink.  I mean....its gross.  And I use their bathroom often, see toothpaste in their sinks and then I end up rinsing it out.  I'm over it.  So, in order to earn their daily allowance there can't be ANY toothpaste in the sink.  I'm certain their wives will thank me one day.

2. Making their beds.  The author talks about how a "made bed" will vary from person to person but the idea is to have the covers pulled up. Some days we actually get pillows up on and some days its like this.  Baby steps, people.

Wednesday morning was "Donuts with Dad" at Cooper's school.

Fall doesn't mean a darn thing in Texas.  It's been in the 90's all week long.  (sigh)

In the mornings, we have about 25 minutes between when Hudson gets out of the car and walks into school and when Cooper's doors open.  He likes to play on the playground with some friends until its time to go inside. They ask that parents don't just drop their kids off and leave.....for safety reasons....so we just sit in the car and wait. It's usually hard to pick him out because of school uniforms and all the boys look alike from a distance.  On this day, my guy was on the top of that metal dome thing.  I love getting to watch him play and have fun.  Last year of recess and play time since next year is Middle School. 

A major  benefit of working from home is that you can declare a random Friday as "Date Day" and go see a movie you've been excited to see.

It was good!

It's Friday evening.  The boys got haircuts after school.  They came home and showered and we ate dinner and now we are all unwinding.  We will probably watch a scary movie (Cooper's request) before bed.  Looking forward to a low key night with my boys!

Plays and Games

At school on Friday, Coopers's 5th grade class did a play during chapel on Daniel and the Lion's den. Here is my cute little lion.

And they sang some sweet songs too.

The nurse called me a little after we left and said that Cooper's eye was bothering him.  She flushed it out and it still hurt so she asked if he wanted her to bandage it for him.  He said yes.

I had NO idea he would walk around school like this all day long.  Crazy kid!

I saw this the other day and laughed so hard because this is exactly how I feel when I open that camera!! Ha!!

Saturday we went to church and I begged my boys for a picture.  Hudson thinks he is too cool for pics so its rare these days to be in a picture with him.

Saturday night after church and dinner we came home and had game night for a bit.  We played this new Googly Eyes game. You draw a card and then put crazy glasses on with blurry lenses and then have to draw what was on the card.  It was harder than I thought it would be. We had some good laughs though!

One day last week, I got this text from Hudson.  It was really hard for me to not take the laptop to him.  I usually give my kids a free pass each semester but other than that, I need them to learn some responsibility.  Ugh, being a parent is so hard sometimes.

Got this text from our sales rep when she saw some roofers on our house.  Geez, this has been the longest process ever!!  They are almost done.....about half a days work left and then that dang roof is finished.

Almost there!!

4 Day Weekend

Nothing new to report on the house.  As you can see, the roof is still not finished.  I'm obviously not happy with this but I try to look at the bigger picture- it WILL get finished one day and there are so many worse things that could be happening right now.  So, we patiently wait.

Wednesday, Oct 5th marked 5 years since Jason died.  I haven't had the emotional energy to dedicate a post to it.  I will say that I spent the entire day in bed.  I've found that I haven't given myself much time to grieve lately and I think I was really needing it.  So my sweet hubby took the boys to school and did everything that day so that I could just "be."

On Thursday though......we did watch the 3rd Indiana Jones movie and we ate a few Junior mints.....both things that Jason loved!

My boys had a 4 day weekend and instead of hanging out with us, they decided they wanted to visit their grammy for a couple of days.  This meant we had a couple of kid-free days/nights.  On Friday, we went to an afternoon movie.

I did not read this book so I only had the trailer to go by.  I had been waiting for months to see this movie and I have to say I was a bit disappointed in it.  It wasn't horrible but it wasn't as good as I had hoped.

On Saturday, we had an event at our church to learn a bit more about setting up a trust (good times!) After that we went to Ra Sushi.

I am not a big sushi fan.  Shawn loves it though so anytime we don't have the kids we try to eat it since there is no way they would try it.  I will do the California roll or the veggie roll like this one below.  Not sure I'll ever love it like  he does but I'm learning to adapt to it.

After lunch, we went to see Deep Water Horizon.  Good movie. Lots of action.  I enjoyed it more knowing it was a true story- even though I hate that those people had to experience that!

We spent some time shopping and looking at furniture......then ended our night with a yummy dinner at Chuys. This blackberry margarita was awesome.

Meanwhile.....my boys were at my moms house.  Cooper and grammy are making some ornaments for a tree she is making.

Hudson got to use the sander.

We got the boys back yesterday and ended our night with Goonies.  My boys had never seen it (ugh, I so wish it didn't have all those curse words) and they loved it.  This movie was a favorite between Jason and I.  We had lots of inside jokes and would use lines from this movie often.  I tried to share some of that with the boys.