Eggstravaganza

You know you like the extremely creative title, don't lie.  Easter was quite an event this year, with lots of egg coloring, Easter baskets, a ridiculous amount of food and whatnot.  It may seem that this post is a picture overload but believe me, I cut out quite a few.  

We started the Easter celebration off a few days ahead of time with the ol' egg dying tradition.  

Luca and Ashton came to town for the festivities.

The finished products.  Not too shabby.

We had another egg dying session the next day with Sam's cousins from Jon's side.  Not sure why Sam looks terrified in this picture.

Unfortunately we were lacking in dye-filled cups, as you can see.

The Easter Bunny stopped by a little early with stuffed animals for the kiddos.

Sam loved his gween fwog.

Sammy before church on Easter Sunday.  He was not happy with the tie, but amused me for a picture.

Attempting to get a picture of all the grandkids at Jon's parent's house.  It never goes well....

The egg hunt begins.

If there are eggs hidden in that tree then I consider the Easter Bunny a jerk.

Back at my parents' house for egg hunt #2.  Sam had learned from the first egg hunt and was all over the eggs this time leaving poor Ashton in the dust.

 On a mission.

I hope everyone had a Happy Easter!  I know we did!

Easter Basket on the Cheap

Not sure if you're aware, but Easter is upon us.  I love me some Easter.  Bunnies, baskets, eggs, candy, fancy dresses at church, springtime...what's not to love?  I used to think it would be a sad, sad day when I stopped getting an Easter basket.  What I didn't consider though, is that one day I would get to play Easter Bunny.  I've always dreamed of being a giant rabbit breaking into houses and dropping off eggs and candy!

I ran by the Dollar Tree the other day to pick up some gift bags and noticed they had a big section devoted to Easter.  I thought I'd pick up one or two things to add to Sam's basket, but to my surprise, they had everything one might need for a fully stocked basket.  The entire thing cost me $12.00!

Can you tell Sam's favorite color is "ooange?"

Baseball stuff, rake, coloring book, crayons, stickers, bunny toy, bubbles, chicken eggs with candy, and sand bucket

I can't wait to see Sam's face on Easter morning when he sees what the Easter Bunny left for him.  Notice there is very little candy in this basket.  Call me a lame Easter Bunny if you must, but you aren't the one who has to deal with my candy obsessed child.

The chickens are my favorite part.  Ain't they cute?  Have a great Easter weekend, everyone!

Sugar and Baseball

My child is OBSESSED with sweets.  I know all kids love candy, but you don't understand.  Sam has an endless pit of desire for it.  We've had to completely rid the house of sugary treats, which, believe me, is a drastic measure.  I, myself, am a lover of anything sweet, so this is the ultimate sacrifice.  I know you may be thinking it's a bit extreme to get rid of sweets altogether.  You're being all judgey thinking I'm one of "those annoying moms" and I should just hide the treats or only allow him to have one after dinner, aren't you?  Hahaha, you are very funny.  We've tried all that.  He outsmarts us and figures out the hiding places, he stands at the pantry and cries and cries and cries for "mo" if we only give him one.  It's just not worth the fight anymore.

We do make exceptions when we go out, however.  It's possible that I bribe him to stay in the cart at the grocery with skittles.  Perhaps I buy him a strawberry smoothie from McDonald's to keep him occupied while running errands.  But I don't feel so guilty about the occasional glucose filled bribery since we don't eat sweets at home...see how nice that works out?

This past weekend we caught a Legends' baseball game and Sam took full advantage of the only eating sweets while out policy.

Before we even made it to the food vendors, his Grandma Becky was bribing him with M&M's to smile for the camera.  I'm telling you, he'll do anything for candy.

And then he discovered the classic ballpark treat known as Cracker Jacks.  I had to stick very close by while he indulged in that since I have a huge fear of kids choking on popcorn (thanks, Daddy.)

And then came the biggest prize of them all when it comes to ballpark treats - a little piece of heaven called Dippin' Dots.  It doesn't get much better than little cryogenically frozen balls of ice cream.  No, really.

I tried to get him to share with me, but nothing doing.  (Forgive my crazy looking hair, it was quite windy and chilly by this point.)

Only one thing was possibly more exciting than the food at the ballpark.  A real live Legends ball player came over and gave Sam a baseball.

His second favorite thing to candy (and his mama) is a baseball.  Or a football.  Or a basketball.  You get the point, I just didn't want to come out and say "my kid loves balls!"  But I just did.  This is getting awkward.

Moving right along.  Actually, that's all I got, but this was too cute of a picture to pass up.  A-dor-able.

The Burn

Sorry for the blog absence but the last time I wrote a post I was about 2 sentences away from publishing when I accidentally hit some magical combination of keys that actived an "abort all" mission, thus completely wiping out the post I had worked on for close to an hour.  I was very mad at blogger for allowing this to happen and its punishment was a boycott.  I have now moved on.

By telling you the following story (again) I run the risk of being filed away in your brain rolodex under the "really stupid people" file, but that's a risk I'm willing to take in order to keep it real here on my blog.

A few nights ago Jon got home very late from work, exhausted and hungry.  Being the good wife that I am, I told him to take a load off and I would cook his dinner (he eats 6 meals a day for his diet, hence the late meal.)  He showed me exactly how he wanted it cooked in some fancy pants way, and I obliged as he went to lay down and watch t.v.

Step one was to get a pan good and hot on the stove top with some olive oil and sear a piece of pork on each side.  Check.  Step two was to put said pan with pork in the oven at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes.  Check.  Step three was to take the pan out of the oven, put it back on the stove top, set the pork aside to rest, and make a sauce with the pork drippings and several other ingredients, including white cooking wine.  I made it to the point of setting the pork aside with no problem, and started grabbing ingredients out of the pantry to make the sauce.  

I grabbed the bottle of cooking wine first, unscrewed the top and started to pour it directing into the pan sitting on the stove top.  I stopped myself just short of tipping the bottle all the way over, thinking, "duh, you shouldn't pour alcohol directly over a stove top."  SAFETY FIRST!  So, instead, I grabbed the handle of the pan with my bare hand and lifted it off the stove to pour the wine.  Ahem, let me say that again.  I COMPLETELY WRAPPED MY BARE HAND AROUND A 400 DEGREE HANDLE AND LIFTED IT OFF THE STOVE TOP BEFORE MY NERVE ENDINGS SENT THE MESSAGE TO MY BRAIN THAT IT WAS HOT AS A CAMPFIRE IN HADES AND I SHOULD PROBABLY LET GO ALREADY.  I immediately threw the pan back on the stove, but I knew it was too late.  It was bad.  It was really bad.

Normal person's thought:  Do not touch.  My thought:  I'm gonna get you, handle!

I ran to the sink and stuck my hand under cold running water and yelled for Jon to come give me sympathy, because really, there was nothing else he could do.  The tears were streaming at this point and blisters were forming all over my hand as I rotated from running water to dunking my hand in ice water to wrapping a cold washcloth around it.  But, I'm telling you, the pain was SO intense.  Oh, the pain.  I tried to tough it out with household remedies, but I gave in after an hour.  The pain just would not subside, and I needed the good stuff.  I needed prescription pain killers.

I apologize for the graphic nature of this picture. 

I drove myself to the ER around midnight, steering with my right hand and reaching over the wheel with my left hand soaking in a cup of ice water (Jon stayed home with Sam, who was sleeping.)  My intentions were to run in all dramatic-like and demand painkillers, but after careful re-consideration, I decided they might think I was one of those crazy people who injures themselves on purpose for a ticket on the Percocet train.

A gown for a hand wound seems a bit dramatic to me.

A very nice doctor gave me a prescription for painkillers.  Then a nurse gave me a tetanus shot (what the hell?) and proceeded to spread burn cream on my blisters (which was not for pain, only to prevent infections) and wrapped my hand up to resemble a half woman-half lobster creature.  So, you see, they took away my ice water and wrapped my scorched hand in a nice little gauze oven.  And then it felt like I was holding a pile of burning coals in my hand, which, I didn't think was possible, but was actually more painful than when I  first burned my hand on a sizzling pan.  I apologized to the lovely nurse, ripped the gauze off my hand as fast as I could and stuck it back in the cup of ice water.

Before I tore the gauze off like a crazy animal.

After a stop at the 24 hour pharmacy (where I was sure this crazy looking guy was going to mug me for my painkillers) I finally made it back home and into my bed.  Except, hahaha, there would be no sleep.  Even with the Percocet, I couldn't take my hand out of ice water for more than a few seconds without the pain being too much.  I tried sleeping with an ice water-filled sandwich bag rubber-banded around my wrist, but that wasn't so much conducive to sleep as you could imagine.  Let's just say, it was a long night.

The moral of this story is to never do anything nice for anyone ever.  That's the lesson I was supposed to learn from all this, right?