prepping for family meal time

Lane has gotten better at sitting up and soon will be wanting to eat some yummy rice cereal so we put together his high chair yesterday. We are getting much better at putting this baby stuff together so it was pretty quick and no breaks were needed to regroup.

All smiles. He seems to know what the chair is for and I am going to guess it's because at school all the big littles sit in them for snack and meal time. He will soon be joining them!

See he knows it's for eating - unfortunately for him this poor lambie has no nutritional value. The chair also comes in handy for watching basketball and Nascar with daddy - he is more upright in the chair and loves sitting in it so we can't say no.

patiently waiting

Mani is oh so patient when it comes to waiting for Lane to get big enough to torment him. He loves to be nearby and has even learned if he pushes on his bedroom door at night it will open - magic! This from the cat who can't figure out how to get out of the bathroom when he's done eating.

Someone is mostly smiles these days. Minus the awful sore throat, stuffy nose, cough and sneeze. Poor baby! And how do I know what he's feeling since he can't talk yet? Yep, I have it too. So do the rest of the littles at school. I recognize the cough when I walk in the door. He's still happy most of the time. Just not at the moment so this post is done for now!

first week back

First Day of School

Friday! Doesn't look too happy, but he's about to learn what Friday's are all about...

last week at this time we were enjoying some of this...

So it's one week down! It was back to reality week. I headed off to work and Lane started school - we'll stick with that since they call it that and Mark was too. The highlight of my week is the fact I have not changed a poppy diaper all week - major perk! Mark however has had a few to change when he arrives home from work. And I'm not saving them either it just happens right after he walks in the door - seriously. ;~) Anyway this week went pretty smoothly and we are all looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow. Lane went from getting up 3 times each night to just one time last night and I got 7 hours of sleep in a row. New record. He's up to 6 ounce bottles and is growing like a little weed. Still getting some mommy milk, but it isn't fast enough for him so it's mostly like a little snack before the big ole bottle. Monday is a holiday for me - perfect timing if you ask me. Hope I'm as entertaining as the other kids at school. My guess is no, but we can have our own kind of fun. It will start with no alarm clock and a hot breakfast for mommy. We'll probably do a little cleaning and organizing then take a nap. Exciting I know. Really wanting spring to get here so we can get outside. Enough of the snow!

Keenan Inn

The Inn owner ... salting the driveway. Good thing she has sure footing - that is icy!

Emily the Entertainer. Such a cutie pie!

Anna showing off her incoming tooth!

ok... this is just a little late, but I'll still post it! ... if I was doing one of my reviews of my Kansas vacation I'd be on Yelp or Trip Advisor, but I'm sure Julie wouldn't want random people calling to book her guest room so I just get to review it here. Now our visit was much longer than we expected, but I would have been trapped at home too so being in Kansas was nice because we had others to entertain us both.
We had a great time visiting and Lane really misses his cousins. Not sure if school will match up, but we shall see. (daycare to some, but we decided to call it school and come to find out they call it school too so I guess we made one good decision... sorry digression) Emily is adorable and I'm pretty sure the girls at school won't be nearly as cute. I'm biased though because she is my niece.
The room... very comfy and plenty of room for our crap. The bed was great - sheets fresh - lol! Would I expect less. Nope. Hot showers too!
The food... the reason for this review actually. Chef Julie whipped up some great meals and even if she was raiding the freezer it was good stuff. Way better than I could have done at home and all new things for me. She made it look easy so I will be trying them out once I am back to work. Loved the salmon (which you too can try if you have Schwan's service)! The side dish was also good, but I can't remember what it was called. Not risoto, but close. The gnocchi with asparagus and mushrooms - to die for! (that too can be delivered by the Schwan god). The very best dish however was the tiliapia with tortilla coating. Very Mexican and went well with the beans and chips. The very best was the lemony chicken pasta dish with broccoli that she whipped up from Barefoot Contessa. Seriously yummy! Also had another light pasta dish from Barefoot Contessa with marinated tomato's - holy garlic breath. So good! I was so inspired I ordered a couple of the Barefoot Contessa cookbooks that she had (and for her I ordered the new one she didn't have - which hopefully has arrived by now). If you don't have one check out the Barefoot Contessa website for a few freebies. The cookie recipes are also simple and oh so good! So yes we much enjoyed the hospitality very much! Definitely a five star stay for us.

we aren't in Kansas anymore Toto...

so this got lost in the shuffle... so going back a week... here we go!

The trip home from Kansas was a long one! It was quite the trip starting with it being rescheduled at 5:30 am because there were no taxi's in Manhattan (KS). There was no way I was waking Julie up and then loading us all into the minivan to go careening into the trees at the bottom of her driveway. American was nice enough to reschedule us for the 3rd or 4th time this week. We finally got to the airport via something way nicer than a taxi around 11am - huge thanks to Tiffany!

Our flight was a little late getting out, but they assured us we would make our connections. The first sign that maybe they weren't telling us everything was when we had to wait 30 minutes to dock at the gate in Dallas. Lane pretty much voiced what we all wanted too and proceeded to have a loud screaming session. When we finally got off the plane we had to wait for our carry on's. And wait, and wait and wait. It must have been at least 30 minutes if not more. Turns out the baggage ramps were frozen and there was one for the whole terminal. Ok fine I did have an hour to get to my plane initially. I clearly wasn't paying attention to the time because while I did dash to our next flight I barely made it. No potty break, no diaper change and no Pappasita's (this was the saddest moment as I was really wanting some Mexican at this point... ok all I really wanted was some lunch, but it did look good!).

So... we make the connection with a minute to spare and they gave me a whole row - 2nd from the 1st class and I got to bring on Lane's seat. If you have not flown long distance sharing a two seat row with a 400 lb., 6 ft tall man let's just say you will need a drink to survive, but you can't drink because junior might want a snack in flight. Ok, who am I kidding there is no way I could breastfeed in that situation... anyway... I was super grateful to finally have some space on the plane. I was told to pick up my stroller at the baggage claim area. Note to others... it is always left plane side. So I carried Lane in the car seat with my huge backpack and diaper bag through Newark airport to the baggage claim. That was an awesome workout. Grabbed my overstuffed big suitcase and proceed to wait and wait for the stroller. It didn't show up. Turns out it was at the gate. If they would have told me to go get it I probably would have had a melt down. The girl at the luggage claim counter clearly thought I was an idiot. I really didn't care at that point, but I was not about to go back through security with the baby and all my crap.

The bonus of the whole trip was the place I parked at. They have your car waiting for you and this means it is cleaned off and dug out. That alone was worth the $64 I paid to park there for 8 days. I would have paid them $50 to do that actually given the ice buried lot it was in. When he say I had Lane with me he told me to tell him next time and he will have the car warmed up. How awesome is that? They even honored the discounted rate for my entire stay not just the first 6 days. So we finally made it home by 11 pm and Lane had some daddy time before being shipped off to bed. Acutally he shipped daddy off to bed and we had some baby wind down time before hitting the hay. He was so excited to see Mark it was so cute...

Port Aransas - day one

We survived the drive from Houston - took about 4 hours or so and the first stop was a snack stop for me because I was holding out hope I would find a Chick-A-Fil, but after Houston there was none. boo. The drive was long, flat, brown and long, flat and brown... not too exciting as you might imagine from my long, flat and brown description. Heck, I didn't see anything other than McDonalds and Subway (in gas stations of course) once I left Houston. LOL! The Walmart was dinky too. Think little grocery store. I did find some good crackers to tide me over. Everyone drove a pickup truck and the speed limit was 70 on roads where I would expect at home for it to be 55. Sweet. It was sunny and that was deceiving because it was COLD! Started out at 29 degree's and ended the day at about 48. Keep in mind we are in Texas almost down to the the Mexican border on the ocean. It should be warm here. And it's freezing. FREEZING. Saturday it should be in the 60's and hopefully we can get a walk in on the beach. More pictures too of course....

another 29th Birthday

the Birthday desert Mark ordered up...

Pappasita's makes for a yummy birthday.

Don't ask what I had it was some sort of combo and it was yummy!

Hit the road with Mark for one last trip before returning to work next week and it just so happened to be my 29th birthday again. Houston has great shopping so that kept Lane and I busy the first afternoon and what better thing to buy on your birthday than a new outfit. Bummer that the Loft didn't have any sales, but they were just putting out all the new spring clothes and being that I had gift cards I didn't mind much. Lane also scored an outfit too - lucky boy. Next stop... to see Grandma and Grandpa in Port Aransas.

Stranded in Kansas

Being stranded is not such a bad thing when there is lots and lots of good food (see Julie's blog "Kickin it in Kansas" for pictures...) and lots of baby entertainers. It is way better than being stranded in Dallas during Super Bowl Week (read... no hotel rooms that we might be able to afford) or in Chicago where they are getting more of a blizzard than we are here.

Emily takes the cake for entertainer because she can make Lane laugh just about every time. He has yet to get his eye poked from what I've seen, but she is under close watch. A pat on the head seems to keep her happy for now.