The mamas

On Sunday we got together with our mama friends, babies and we even let the husbands come this time. It was so much fun meeting all of the husbands. All of these babies are so lucky to have such awesome dads...and moms! I see many more gatherings in the future with our husbands. I love these babies and mamas. So much fun to be a part of this group!

Coffee update

By using 11 heaping scoops, Folgers is tasting a LITTLE bit better this morning. :)

The best part of waking up....

The best part of waking up is NOT having Folgers in your cup. I heard the coffee maker beep and jumped out of bed. I had high hopes and tried to give Folgers a chance, but I am now sitting here craving good coffee. Joe and I like DARK and STRONG coffee. We have a 12 cup coffee maker and I put 9 heaping scoops to make a pot! I thought since this was the darkest of all the ones Folgers make we might be able to choke it down. I even put an extra heaping scoop for the simple fact it was Folgers. Disappointing to say the least. Not what you want to be faced with at 6am on a Saturday morning!

Anyway, this last week was interesting. I got selected for jury duty and served on a case on Monday and Tuesday. Besides having to leave Liam for 2 days, I LOVED it. I wish people could volunteer to serve.

Hope everyone has a great weekend. August, do you really have to leave us next week? :(

10 Months!

Our sweet little guy is 10 months! He got to celebrate the big 10 at the Kite Festival at Long Beach. He loved watching the kites buzz around. I'm surprised we were able to get this picture, he was so busy looking in a million different directions!

Yesterday my mom told me her friend Karen called and said when she saw the picture of Liam in the bath she thought it looked like me when I was his age. THANK YOU, Karen! I always here, "Hey little Joe" or "He looks exactly like his daddy!" :) Gotta admit, makes me a little sad when I never here he looks like me. Or maybe that's a good thing! Anyway, that made my day.

I'm waiting for my sweet little guy to wake up as I write this. He's been asleep for 12 1/2 hours so far. YAY! So glad we had a couple of nights of tough love, that's all it took for all of us to sleep completely through the night. Last night when I was giving him a bath I realized he has a really bad rash on his belly and under his arms. He's never had anything like this so of course I freaked out. He didn't act like it was bothering him but it looked awful. Joe wasn't here so thankfully my parents came to our rescue and were able to go get some medicine. Hoping it looks better when he wakes up this morning. Now I just have to try to figure out what caused it. The only new thing he had in the last couple of days is yogurt. He also ate A LOT of watermelon on Tuesday though, too. Going to stop the yogurt and see if it clears up. Poor little guy, hate seeing that smooth beautiful skin all scaly, bumpy and red.

Happy Thursday!

This little guy loves bath time! This was taken about 15 minutes ago...he's now fast asleep. He goes to bed so easily. Now that he's not waking up during the night, I can truly say I am SO lucky with the sleep thing!

Project paint our house is underway. Joe just finished pressure washing, now we just have to decide on a color. Never thought this would be such a hard decision. I don't want anything with any shade of brown. So sick of brown. I've got the bug to paint the inside of our house. It's currently about 10 different shades of brown. Blah, blah. But being that we've decided on a sock monkey themed first birthday, it fits it perfectly. Guess we'll wait till after that. I'll be sure to post 'after' pictures of our house Monday (that's Joe's deadline to have it finished). Assuming we pick colors, that is!

We were supposed to spend the weekend in Tacoma, we have a wedding and birthday tomorrow, and we were supposed to go to a big BBQ on Saturday, but Joe put a kibosh on those plans. So now we'll be coming up tomorrow afternoon just for the wedding at 3:15 and birthday if we can make it before it ends at 7.

Ok, back outside to make sure Joe doesn't stop working till the sun goes down...... :)

mint.com

My friend Carly told me about this website, mint.com. It's really cool, it keeps track of all of your financial accounts and tracks all of your spending and categorizes it for you. It's interesting to see where all of our money goes. Just when I think I'm doing really good at not spending, I log on and get a slap in the face. The most common message is, "You spend a lot on gas." Haha. That's very true. But our cars are paid for so I don't mind. If I still had my Jeep it would be different. Big car payment, HUGE gas bill = double bad. I'd much rather have an older pre-loved car. Don't mind spending a ton on gas! Anyway, our top two spending categories in July were 1) home (mortgage) and 2) bills and utilities. I'm going to do better at tracking this month, it's really interesting to see! Anyway, I highly recommend this site, very helpful tool. And it adds all of your accounts, all you have to do is give your login info. Even has all of our retirement accounts so we can see everything. It's motivating and makes me want to save, save, save!

This is a random post, but I have to say how proud I am of Liam. Last week at his appointment his doctor told us he's a "trained night crier." He was still waking up during the night and the only way to get him to settle down was to feed him. She informed us that he had suceeded at training us to get up and basically learned how to manipulate me. Haha, smart boy, right? She said we needed to work on breaking that habit, saying if it doesn't stop by age 1, most likely it won't happen until age 2 or 3 when he's so worn out from his daily schedule he just can't wake up. That scared me! So we had to practice a little tough love and let him cry. Torture. Pure torture! The first night he cried for about 50 minutes (she told us not to go in...it just makes him more upset). He finally fell asleep and then slept the rest of the night. The second night he woke up at 4:30 and cried for 20 minutes then slept until 7:30. Last night he went to bed at 7:05 and is just now making sounds. YES! I am one happy mama!

Happy Tuesday!

Weekend recap

Liam waiting for the doctor at his 9 month appt. last week

Whew! Another busy, fun-filled and productive weekend in the books. Actually, all of last week was a busy whirlwind it seems. But then again, it feels like every week is becoming more and more like that. Anyway, last week was a perfect week. Wednesday Joe was off so we did a Costco run and met Kim, George and Sophie for dinner at Goldie's and then went to YoCream to use our gift cards that we've had since Christmas. Perfect summer night! I had my yogurt loaded with fresh raspberries, blueberries and pineapple. I knew it was going to be spendy, as you're charged based on weight, but I knew it would be worth it. We went to pay and the girl said, "Are you sharing with him (pointing at Liam)?" I said no, and kinda looked at her like she was crazy, I'm sure....my baby doesn't eat that stuff! And then she said, "If you were sharing, it would be 99 cents...are you sure you aren't?" So then I said I was and she told me to take mine off of the scale. AWESOME. I felt guilty but she wanted me to only pay $.99 for it with those kinds of hints. I was so excited...and can't wait to go back and load up with $10 worth of fresh fruit and get it for practically free. Haha, it's the simple things in life, right?!

Oh, Liam also had his 9 month check-up on Wednesday. He's over 9 months but we were in Whistler when his original appointment was, so we had to reschedule. He's right on track for everything, 20lbs 1oz at 9 months/2 weeks old. Believe it or not (I was surprised), the doctor said he's on the "petite" side.

Saturday my in-laws came down to bring us their pressure washer and some painting supplies. Operation paint our house is underway. Can't WAIT to have this project done, and furthermore, not have a purple house anymore! Joe did prep work most of Saturday, between Squirrel Fest festivities, and all day yesterday. He's off Thursday-Tuesday so he hopes to get it totally painted by then. Here's to hoping! Now we just have to decide on a color, the hardest part of it all!

Yesterday we celebrated my sisters birthday. Bruno's, carrot cake and ice cream. The perfect birthday in my opinion. :)

Happy Monday!

You know you're getting old when....

You get excited when you get this magazine in the mail! Yep, that's me. And I also stayed up too late reading it and loved it. Recipes, feel-good stories...a good magazine. No trash. I'm too old for that garbage. ;)

Wordless Wednesday

Nastiness in a bottle

I gave in and decided to give coconut water a try. Uh, what's all the hype about? I thought it was absolutely disgusting. Like really disgusting. It's right up there with the barium sulfate that I had to drink. Did I just buy the wrong brand? Anyone know?