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?

Copycat

 

Sam loves movie night possibly more than anything in the world.  He runs around the house yelling, "movie! yay! movie! yay!"  We take all the cushions off the couches and make a giant bed in the middle of the living room floor, turn off all the lights, grab a snack to munch on and watch the feature film of the evening.  Last weekend it was "Shrek Forever After."  I wouldn't really recommend it for a toddler with the creepy Rumpelstilskin and complex storyline, but Sam was ok with it.  When the movie was over, Sam was in 2 year old heaven jumping up and down on our makeshift bed.  Leave it to mom to spoil all the fun by telling him it was time to go to sleep.  He immediately plopped down next to daddy, imitating him, and yelling "I seeping, mommy, I seeping!"  This child... he totally knows how to work me with his cuteness.  I let him stay up a little bit longer....

They Say It's Your Birthday

There's a little bit less than an hour left of my 31st birthday.  I felt like I should say something before letting this momentus occasion pass by.  To be honest, this is the first birthday I can think of in a long time that I haven't dreaded or woken up with a bad case of the birthday blues.  I don't know what it is, but I just never get excited about my birthday.  I have kind of felt like my birthday is cursed.  Yes, I am that dramatic.

Last year's birthday was a big suck fest, which unfortunately set the precedent for much of my year as a 30 year old.  2010 was, no doubt, a test....a test of faith and strength.  I can't say that I passed with flying colors, but I did learn that in order to grow into a stronger person you have to endure growing pains.  The fact that I really never had experienced this life lesson first hand until I was 30 years old is something I'm incredibly thankful for.  I think I'm good with life lessons for a while though....


This year I decided to have a different attitude.  I was all "bring in on, birthday."  I haven't been depressed about getting older and I'm feeling good about where I am.  This is seriously a foreign feeling for me regarding my birthday.  I think I likey.

My new found birthday good feelings were helped in part by a great weekend.  Friday night Jon and I stayed home to watch the UK/OSU game which may have been the most exciting game ever.  In history.  It was awesome and we won!
 
Saturday my family went to The Pub for my birthday dinner.  I got to sit in the Queen's chair...don't be jealous.  I got a picture with everyone that was really cute except one minor detail.  You see, my parents recently returned from Florida and Jon works outside a lot so they came together in the picture appearing as a glowing field of goldenrods.  And then there was me.  The polar bear that had somehow made the trek from Canada.  The ironic thing?  I got a spray tan gift card for a birthday present.

Sunday night we met up with a bunch of friends for my birthday and to watch the UK/UNC game.  I was secretly worried my birthday curse would steal the win from UK, but no... we won!  The curse has been broken! 

Today was a typical boring day at work, but Jon sent me a bouquet of cheerful, springy flowers to liven up the place.  Then Jenny, Sam and I went out to eat at P.F. Chang's.  Jenny never fails to be highly amusing and Sam was a little angel. 

All in all, it was a great birthday, and I have so much to be thankful for.  Bring it on, 31.

Cleaning out the Camera Phone

I've decided when I'm at a loss for blog content I'm just going to browse through the photo album on my cell phone for inspiration.  I am the first to admit I am perhaps a bit over the top with my camera phone.  I take at least a couple pictures every day, mostly of Sam.  I send them to Jon, my sister, my mom or post them on Facebook.  I might be a little obsessed.  But that's not all I take pictures of.  Let's take a peek inside from the last few weeks, shall we?  (Forgive the randomness.)

 So here we have Jon cooking up something... I really can't recall what.  I wonder why he appears to be stirring whatever's in that pot with a spatula.  Clearly there were clean spoons available, as seen in the background.  Who stirs with a spatula?  Puzzling really.  Anyways, the real reason this picture caught my attention is because it was taken close to a month ago and I can't get over how much different he looks from then to now.  He's been doing this 90 Day Supreme workout and diet program and has lost at least 10 pounds since this picture.  If I had a recent picture, I'd show you and you'd be amazed too!  (Soon, I promise.)

Speaking of the diet, he made me take this picture after his first grocery trip to get all stocked up on healthy foods.  I think he opened the fridge five times that night declaring "it looks so healthy and fresh in here!"  It's the little things....

So I've been trying to keep up with Jon's weight loss plan, but I have to admit he's doing much better than I am.  I've kind of just improvised my own "diet" and I've missed several days of workouts.  You try doing a 45 minutes workout video with a 2 year old who does not like to be ignored, then you may judge me!  But I'm trying, to an extent.  The other night I came home from work craving a big hearty pasta dish.  Instead, I made a grilled chicken, strawberry, walnut, spinach salad.  I may or may not have had a small dessert later in the evening.

What would you like to see a picture of more than anything in the world while talking about food?  My foot?  Wish granted!  So this is the next picture I came across in my phone.  It made me laugh because I am weird enough to take a picture of my foot.  I believe I took it because I had just gotten a pedicure and wanted to show Jon.  But now that I think about it, I decided he would think I was a huge weirdo and possibly show it to his co-workers and they would all sit around laughing about it and give me some nickname like Big Foot, so I never sent it.  Full disclosure regarding the pedicure:  I went to the podiatrist earlier in the day cause that bump on my foot next to my pinkie toe has been giving me hell.  My foot was having self esteem issues and I decided it needed a pick me up.  Hence, the pedicure. 

Moving right along.  Here's Sam and Ashton last week laughing hysterically at each others soap mohawks.  Really, who can't appreciate a good soap mohawk?

Welp, that's all I got for now.  Until next time.. on the next edition of random stuff Emily takes pictures of with her camera phone!