How I lost my phone on 4.20

So heres what happened...
Yesterday Ro and I were out thrifting and running errands with Sylas, (Cash was with the in laws). We needed to stop at Walmart for a couple of things, so we decided Ro would drop Sylas and I off at Walmart to grab the groceries, while he ran to Game Stop. This was at the end of our 4 hour outing yesterday, so by this point Sylas had had ENOUGH of being his carseat and was screaming bloody murder. Not to mention at the thrift store (with no changing table in the bathroom) right before, he took a massive runny dump that soaked him and the carseat in shit.
So Ro pulls up to the door, I grab the diaper bag and my screaming, poop covered child and run into Walmart. I grab a cart and make a bee line for the bathroom in the front. Its being cleaned.... F*$&! Sylas is in full meltdown mode at this point and was screaming. LOUD. Everyone across the store stared at me as I frantically rushed to the back in search of the bathroom. But where the hell was is? Its not where they always are! Between shoes and electronics! Thats where they ALWAYS are! Why is this one different?! Why did we stop at this Walmart?! We never come to this one! And where the HELL is the effing bathroom!?
It was aweful. My eyes filled with tears and I stopped walking and stood in the isle, defeated, screaming baby in tow. I looked around for someone who worked there and thankfully, saw and asked a janitor who led me in the right direction. Back the entire way I'd come and then some. I sped past the same judgemental eyes I'd seen before, and finally found that bloody  family bathroom. I got in there, got Sylas out of the carseat, laid him on the changing table and took a look at the damage. There was poop everywhere. All over his back and front. Thank god Id packed an extra outfit. So I reached for the supplies in the diaper bag to get started. No friggin wipes.... or powder. Are you kidding me!? I had to strip him down and attempt to clean him with wet paper towels. No bueno. This sucked! But I did finally get him mostly clean, into dry clothes, and sitting like a big boy in the front of the basket without the carseat. So he was happy. I washed my hands and we headed out towards grocery. About half way there I started looking for my phone, to call Ro and tell him how much that totally blew. No dice... My phone was gone! Not in my bra, where I usually keep it, not in my purse or in Sylas' carrier. Uggggghhh! I raced back to the bathroom and the kid that went in when I'd left was still in there. I waited for him to come out, scanned him for Iphone sized buldges (negative), and searched the entire bathroom Id just left... nothing. No phone. It was gone. Luckily, Ro had been trying to call me shortly after he dropped us off and when he couldnt get ahold of me, came back to Walmart looking for us. I told him what happened and we looked again in the bathroom, then in the car and found nothing. I was so frazzled getting out of the car and coming in that I couldnt even remember when I had it last! Did it fall out of my lap when I got out of the car? Did I set it on top of the car when I was getting Sylas out and left it when he drove off?! It was toast! Or did I bring it in and leave it in the bathroom for someone to snag... ?? We'll never know. And now Im phoneless, and its torture. I feel like Ive lost a limb! :(

RIP my dear, sweet iPhone. I miss you every second of the day...

Back To The Grind!

Happy Monday y'all!

We had a pretty good weekend in the Birdhouse (aka, our house, since everyone says it looks like a little bird house)! Friday night, after the kids were down, the mister went out with some friends to play pool, so this mama got the whole house to herself! WOOT! I chose to spend it vegging out on the couch, sipping wind, watching Parentood on Netflix and trolling blogs. Pretty exciting stuff, huh? Saturday morning the in laws picked up Cash to take him to a kids carnival with his cousins all day, and ended up keeping him over night. We had a pretty chill day here, I caught up on some cleaning, we played games, and that night a few friends came over and we drank beer and played Hot Shots Golf. We're loving that game right now, and play it most nights. You can play with up to four people so its so much fun when we have people over, which is often. Sunday morning my dad called to say he and my step mom would be coming into SA and wanted to meet for lunch! Yesss! Free lunch! And they always go somewhere nice, so we love it when they come into town. Luckily the in laws dropped Cash off just in time and we headed to The Rim to meet them at BJ's. We originally planned to go to Red Robin, but there was a wait so we went next door to BJ's. We'd been there before and both the service and food was mediocre, but we decided to try it again anyway. Unfortunately, it was the same. But my folks had were having so much fun with the boys that it didn't really matter. Cash was showing off all his smarty pants tricks, spelling, counting, and naming colors and shapes, while Sylas hammed it up like his usual adorable self. They're so cute together. Anyway, afterward we decided to go over to Boerne to their new humongous HEB for a little grocery shopping. It was a pretty great time, and they totally hooked me up with a bunch of groceries (including 2 HUGE bottles of wine and stuffed salmon that I'm planning to make tonight!) and even filled up my car! WOOT! I love my parents. They're pretty fantastic. And I absolutely love seeing them with the boys. Even my step mom, who has never really cared for kids, LOVES the boys. Especially Cash, she has so much fun with him and its pretty awesome to see. So we said goodbye and came back home for a relaxing rest of the day.
Today its back to the grind! I got up early this morning, knees feeling good, and did day two of the 30 Day Shred! Stamina wise, I could tell it was easier for me than the first day, but still butt kicking. My knees were another story. By the end, I couldn't even walk or move. My knees were THROBBING and I wanted to cry from the pain. So I grabbed an anti-inflammatory, sat down, and elevated my poor knees. Thankfully, now I'm feeling a lot better. I think I just need to take this thing one day at a time, keep resting and icing between workouts, and keep up the hard work. I had a Dr's appointment on Friday afternoon, where they told me Id lost 8lbs. (Thats a total of 19 in the last almost 3 months) I'm not going to lie, I was more than disappointed. Ive been working out hard this month and completely changed my diet for the better, yet somehow lost less than last month. I came home and measured myself, thinking that I'd see the results better there. Nope. I only lost a total of ONE lousy inch! GRRRR.... this knee pain only let me work out 3 days last week, and Ro's parents brought over a package of cookies (UGH) that we snuck into a couple times so I know I hadnt been as good as I was weeks before, but still, SO discouraging. I was pretty bummed, and spend much of the day sulking. BUT its my own fault. I need to get serious and stay strict with myself if I want to see the results I'm looking for. Also, we'll be investing in a scale so we can stay on top of daily weight better. So I'm vowing that this week will be better!

Hope you all had a great weekend and a happy, happy Monday!
Thats all for now...

xo, L

The (WAY late) Easter Post.

I know, I know.. Easter was last weekend. Better late than never, right?

We had a pretty good little Easter, nothing to crazy. Saturday we took the kids to an Easter Party/Egg Hunt at Lackland AFB with Ro's parents and their cousins. They had a DJ, dance floor, tons of food, and the Easter Bunny even made an appearance! We managed to get a photo of him and Sylas, but Cash wasn't having it. Oh well, pick your battles. Best part, they gave away mass amounts of cheesy popcorn! SCORE! We ended up coming home with 2 bags and a box full of cheesy popcorn goodness! Yesss, *fat kid dance*

Easter Sunday, we just went over to the SIL's and spent the day with the whole family. She had BBQ, another egg hunt, and a whole lotta wine. It was good times.

Here's the proof in photos!

Lackland AFB

Cousins!                                                            Egg Hunter                 

 

Ro's parents dressed the boys that day btw....

 

Cool chin sticker dude                            Lovins from Daddy

 

Gramma and Cashy made Sylas his own customized visor

 

 Yeah those shorts were a little tight...                         Rather eat than dance

 

                     'What the.....????' 

Easter Sunday at Tia's

Ro does his best impression of a potato 

Mucho better

 

My Easter outfit

 

Daddy and Sylas, in the cutest little vintage romper EVER

Our 1st Easter as a family of four

 Hydrating for the hunt

Found one! 

"Dare! Eggzzz!!"

 

 

 

 

 

Hope y'alls Easter was grand!

xo, L

Sylas is 5 months old!

I cannot believe it. My baby is five whole months old. Only one month away from being HALF a year old! Unreal. We are seeing more and more of his personality every day. He is such a happy baby. Very observant, has to be able to see whats going on, especially what his big brother is up to and thinks he's the bee's knees. Still laughs histarically while being changed, so we think he must be uber ticklist like his momma. He loves his jumparoo, watching cartoons with Bubba, and just about the only think we've found that makes him vere from his delightful disposition, is baths. He hates them and creams bloody murder the entire time. Hopefully this is just a phase, I'd hoped hed be a little water baby like Cashy, and even I was when I was a baby. But besides that, he's a pretty fantastic little dude. I could spend hours snuggling and making goo-goo eyes at eachother, and I miss him every second Im away from him. I never thought my heart was capable of loving anything as much as I love Cash, but boy was I wrong. And how could I not, I mean look at him...

Right?!

Anyway, at his appointment last week he weighed in at a whopping 19 pounds and 25.5 inches long!!

See...

 Im happy to report that he's healthy as a horse!

Sadly, he did have to get 3 shots, but he took them like a little man and only cried for a second.

And lastly, I'll leave you with these. Its such a rarity to be able to capture these two together in a photo, especially a good one, so I couldnt be happier with these. 

xo, L

Vacation Log and Photo Dump

I FINALLY got around to uploading and editing all of our photos on the camera from our little Kansas vacation, and here they are! Along with the story of our incredible journey... (I'll do another post with our Instapics for the week)

We picked up the rental last Monday and decided that driving through the night would be the best option for driving ten and a half hours with an infant and toddler. We rented this FANTASTIC crossover, the 2012 Ford Edge, that was so roomy and comfortable and completely badass. We completely fell in love with this vehicle over the length of our trip. We’re seriously thinking of making it our next car this year sometime. Anyways, so we loaded up, ate dinner, bathed the kids and got them dressed for bed, then put them in their carseats with milk, and BAM- both passed out before we even got out of San Antonio. SUCCESS! … or so we thought. Cash ended up waking up when we were going through Dallas, half way through the drive and stayed away until 45 minutes before we arrived. He was good though, and quiet, so it wasn’t too bad. Luckily, when we got there, my sister Ashley was there waiting (the folks were at work) and took the boy, plus my nephew Ryder, so Ro and I could sleep. We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening hanging out at the house and called it an early night. The next day, we got up and got all the kids bathed and dressed to go into Wichita to have all the grandboys’ pictures taken. My mom, sisters, nephew, and us met my brother and his family at the portrait studio, which was quite the experience with a four year old, 2 two year olds, and 2 four month olds. We got some pretty good shots, considering, and I’ll post them in another post. Afterwards, we all went out to eat at Applebees before heading back to the Eldo. Thursday we spent the day relaxing, and Ro and I left the kids at home with my mom and sister and drove into town to explore. El Dorado has the most adorable bunch of houses, and we love to just cruise up and down the streets and scope them all out. First we hit up Braums for some UH-MAZING single dip cones (for only $1.30!!!!!), then spent the next few hours creeping around and taking pictures of gorgeous houses. We also found quite a few thrifting spots! Id been to the Salvation Army and the Goodwill there before, so I knew I wanted to hit those up, but we also found a huge blue building labled The Bargain Barn, and a cute little shop called Gizmo’s Flea Market. The finds in this town were INCREDIBLE. Seriously. I hit up a lot of stores here in SA but never have I ever experienced such a epic amout of finds. Especially in the furnature department, which of course, is off limits to me since I have no way of getting furnature back home to Texas. Naturally, I found my dream couch at the Salvation Army. But more on that later. I plan to do a post just on my Kansas thrift finds. I will tell you, however, that I did make that sweet girl MINE! Hahaaa!

Needless to say, we had a pretty fun day just cruising around town and eating ice cream cones.

Friday was a big day. My sister decided that come hell or high water, we were going to the the matching tattoos that we’ve been wanting to get for years, while I was there. Back when we were still in high school, I bought all 3 of us girls a necklace from James Avery with a silver clover charm that’s made up of 3 hearts, one for each of us. We wore them constantly and decided that some day we would get matching tattoos of the charm. Since we’re only together once a year at the most, it never worked out for us to get it before, but this time she was deturmined. So we called a shop, made an appointment and planned to go in on Friday while Mom kept the kids. Which meant that we had to decide exactly what we all wanted, if they would match exactly, or all have their own style. We decided on the later. Ashley got a single line version of the charm on her ribs, and Bailey and I got them on opposite forearms, hers in black and grey and mine a traditional style with color. Mine is currently in the gross, scabby phase, but hopefully it heals nicely because it’ll end up being the center piece for a tattoo Ive been planning. Anywho, we got the tattoos, then headed to the mall, ate delicious prezels and drank Orange Julius, and picked up some green accessories for Saturday. You should know, upon planning this vacation, we picked the dates in accordance to when the annual Fake Patty’s Day celebration takes place. It’s a HUGE St Patty’s Day party in the down town area of Manhattan Kansas, home of Kansas State University. Its an area called Aggieville, and its basically streets and streets of bars where all the college kids party. Take that, throw in a bunch of green clothing, and LOADS beer and you have the ultimate party. The reason its called Fake Patty’s Day is because they host this insanity a week BEFORE the real St. Patty’s Day, since the 17^th always falls during Spring Break and a lot of people go out of town. Thus they created this holiday as another excuse for everyone to party and for the bars to make even more money. The people there take it very seriously though! They get up at like 9am, and have house partys for Kegs and Eggs. Green keg beer and green scrambled eggs. After the house parties, everyone heads downtown to Aggieville and hits the bars to drink LOADS of gigantic $5 cups of green beer. My sister has a fabulous downtown apartment above one of the resturaunts in Aggieville, right in the middle of the party. We were able to go down to the bars and get out drink on, find friends, and take them back up to the apartment to take shots, or pee. It was a crazy day. We both drank WAY too much, but luckily Bailey didn’t, so we filled our bellies with greasy food and headed home to Eldorado and the kids. We had a BLAST but I was excited to get home to my babies. Plus I was a little worried about Mom having all three boys by herself. She was fine of course.

Sunday, we spent much of the day nursing hangovers. My stepdad made busciuts and gravy in the morning and barbequed all day for the family dinner we were having later. My grandma, uncle, cousins, brother and his family all came out and ate bbq that afternoon, hung out and the guys (and me) even went out and shot all the guns in the pasture. It was great fun, and made me miss being able to go to the range all the time like we used to before we had kids. Monday was our last day in El Dorado, since we planned to leave that night. Bailey was off work that day, so we took the kids into town, met Mom for lunch as she was getting off, then decided to go back to the thrift store for a few things I still wanted to snag, including my glorious couch. It was great ending to an incredible trip and I cried as we loaded our things back into the rental and said our goodbyes. Ive had to do this so many times throughout my life that I don’t usually get upset about it anymore, but it seemed especially hard to leave this time, and I did. And after a looooooooooong drive back to Texas, we finally reached out little green house.

We had such a great time, and I was SO incredibly sad to leave, but I can honestly say that I am glad to be home. I really missed our little home and our regular schedule. Sylas didnt sleep well while we were gone, AND caught a nasty cold which caused him to be uncharachteristly fussy, and Cash barely ate the entire time. I can happily say that Sylas is (mostly) well and back to his usual giggley self, sleeping all the way through the night and Cash has been eating everything in sight! Not to mention the fact that there were two kitties anxiously awaiting our return! Looking back while editing these photos reminded me of what a great trip we had, how much I missed my family, and how much I HATE living so far away from them. If I could ever convince the mister to move, I most certainly wouldn’t hesitate. It makes me so sad that Cash and Sylas will never be as close to his aunts, my best friends in this world, and my mom as they could be if we lived there. Theres nothing, besides my dad, keeping me here, but Ro’s entire family lives here in San Antonio and his close circle of friends, so convincing him to would be next to impossible. But I’ll keep trying. In the mean time, I’ll just have to get us back up to Kansas as often as possible. We’re already planning to return in August, if at all humanly possible, for my brothers wedding. Fingers crossed it actually happens!

Ryder and Cash playing outside on our first day

 

He fell climbing in the wagon and Ryder just kept on pulling him, haha

Bubbleface.

They had some major issues sharing, but if they both had the same toy they were perfectly fine. Boys.

The wind was INSANE the first couple days we were there.

We have a picture of them exactly like this from last year. :)

I have the cutest nephew in the world. Obvs.

Grumpy Sylas

 Ryder LOVES to give kisses, esp to baby Sylas

 Sylas and Mamie

 Story time with Aunt Ashley

 She loves her boys.

 Lovins from AA

 He loves her.

 He really is such a snugglebug.

'Love me, AA..."

 Bath Time!

Mamie has the coolest toys at her house

 Cruisin into town..

 The gorgeous Courthouse in the center of town.

 These signs were everywhere. Apparently theres a big meth problem in El Dorado...

Taco Tico!!!! Home of the taco burger. So YUM

 Whatchyall know about Braums

 Best cones for the price, like EVER.

Eldo

 Cool old motel on the edge of town

 Freshhh

 Gigi and my newest nephew, Jace!

Bailey, Ryder, Gigi and Baby Jace

Baya and Ry

Jacey

Tickles from Auntie Baya

Lilly

Old man, Harley

Hope you enjoyed this glimpse into our Kansas Vacaction!

Still to come, our week in Instapics, including getting inked, beautiful houses of El Dorado, and Fake Patty's Day!

xo, L