My 100th Post!

My 100th post! How exciting! Here’s a little Valentine’s Day, zoo, and an addition to my face for your reading enjoyment.

We had a delicious dinner for Valentine’s Day! Brandon cooked up some delicious filet mignon, gourmet salad, and I helped make some garlic and lemon frites.

The boys are getting ready to dig in. Gavin may have already started eating his steak at this point. He loves steak!

Brandon and I had some vanilla ice cream and chocolate covered strawberries for dessert. I covered the strawberries myself. They were very good. Gavin didn’t participate in dessert because he had been put to bed for a disgusting offense that I won’t mix with the topic of delicious food.

Gavin opened his Valentine’s Day card; this is pre disgusting offense we aren’t mentioning.

Abby enjoyed her Valentine from big brother.

We gave the kids teddy bears that talk when they are hugged. Abby wasn’t all that interested.


Overall it was a great Valentine’s Day with wonderful food. (Minus of course the offense we aren’t mentioning. :) )

We had some beautiful weather about a week and a half ago so Brandon took the opportunity to take the kids to the zoo on one of his days off.

Abby was more awake than she’s ever been at the zoo. She quite enjoyed it from what Brandon told me. Gavin had to walk the entire time because the double stroller was in my van at work. He got some much needed exercise and burned off some of that excess energy.

Abby had her picture taken with the baby elephant for the first time. I can’t believe how much Gavin has grown. He used to be only as tall as the elephant!

They saw some of the elephants that day.  The elephants have always been a particular favorite of Gavin's.

Gavin told me about their trip to the zoo and was particularly interested in sharing the bowel habits of one of the elephants.

Abby and Gavin enjoyed watching the fish.

He’s such a cute kid!

By the time they left, she was out! She’d had so much excitement she needed to get some beauty sleep.

And finally…

…the addition to my face. I only need them when I’m on the computer. Apparently I have an issue with a muscle in my eyes that stays contracted all of the time and causes a lot of strain and over-focusing at intermediate distances. The issue causes my focal point to be at that intermediate distance making it impossible to read signs at far distances. It’s brought on by lack of rest and stress. I’m shocked, really (insert sarcasm here). So with any luck the muscles will relax with the use of glasses at the computer, my distance vision will be restored, and maybe I won’t have to wear them anymore after that. I guess we’ll see (no pun intended)!

Have a great week!

Meeting The Pioneer Woman!

Yesterday, I met Ree Drummond, The Pioneer Woman! I’ve been reading her blog since some co-workers of mine turned me on to it back in 2007. In the last few months I’ve gotten my mom and sister into checking out her blog too. I’ve made many of her recipes and they've all been delicious. Her site has so many of these recipes, photography tutorials, stories of her life on the ranch in Oklahoma, and so much more. I encourage you to check it out, if you’re into that sort of thing.


Meeting her was a bit surreal. I was most certainly star struck and I had no idea what to say to her. I think I managed to say something about reading her blog for a long time and it was nice to meet her. I just couldn’t believe I was finally meeting the woman behind the blog and the two New York Times bestsellers, The Pioneer Woman Cooks and Black Heels to Tractor Wheels. She was very sweet and very pretty. I was particularly happy that she was everything I expected, meaning that she isn’t one person online and someone else in person.

Her signing was held at one of the Barnes and Noble stores here. The store was handing out tickets to assign a place in line. Brandon works nearby and drove past around 9am. He told me there was quite the line outside. I had planned to leave work early so that we could get down there. I expected a crowd but the presence of a line before the store even opened made it seem even more ominous. I wasn’t getting off of work until noon and the signing was to start at 2pm. Brandon went back a while later and the line was gone. He ran in and picked up the two tickets they’d let him have. The tickets were pale yellow. We were in group three with an estimated number of 30 tickets per group. However, as it turned out, an entire party of people could get in line on the one ticket. My friend and co-worker, Barbi, called me around 10:30am and was headed down there already. She arrived to get a yellow ticket also and settled in for the morning. She secured a nice table with a couple chairs in the café area. The store handed out so many tickets that they went through every color of the rainbow, then a variety of neon colors, and then letters. It was crazy!

Just after three our color group was called to get in line. I was in my car and on my way home by 3:58pm. Thank goodness for those yellow tickets or we'd have been there all night!

Here we all are hanging out at the table. Julianne had been watching the kids at our house while B and I were at work so I picked them up and off we went. Mom and Dad both came too. Dad took Gavin back to the kid’s area to play for a bit. Poor kid had ants in his pants after awhile. B came and picked both of the kids up after he got off of work.

Abby had great fun with Grammy waving at people as they walked by. She giggled and was less than pleased when people did not wave back.

This is just a small portion of the line. The line wrapped all the way around the store. People were everywhere!

Barbi and I in line and getting so excited!

My parents, sister, and I. I think this is the only picture we’ve had taken of the four of us in quite a while.

When we made it to the front of the line I was shocked. I knew we’d eventually get there and that I’d eventually meet her. But, I realized again that I had no idea what to say. No more time to think about it though, it was time to say hello to Ree Drummond!

Barbi and I with P-Dub!

Dad was taking pictures of us with Ree. She started joking about how we convinced him to come along. It was very funny. She thanked us and Dad for coming out to the signing and off we went.

My signed books!

What an awesome experience and not one I’ll soon forget! I imagine she’s exhausted by the time she greets hundreds of people and signs even more books. But, I’m so grateful she came to Columbus!


*A few pictures borrowed from Barbi and Mom. I hope neither of you mind!
*If you are a Pioneer Woman fan you can vote for her in the 2011 Bloggies by clicking here.  She's been nominated in several categories.

The Munchkins

Here are some fun pictures of the kids we’ve recently taken:

Abby loves Mocha. There are no two ways about it. We thought Gavin loved Mo, Abby just adores her and will not leave her alone. She’s always petting, climbing, and kissing her.

Abby was playing with the curtains and I was trying to get a picture of her before she moved. Well, she moved and I ended up with this shot and it turned out blurry. Oh well, I still think it’s adorable how she’s peeking around the curtain.

Gavin loves parsley. Brandon cut some parsley for our dinner last night and Gavin insisted on having a cup of it himself.  Anytime we are cooking he will come over and see what he can snag. Usually he’ll take some onion, a piece of garlic, a little parsley, or other vegetable.

I find it simply hilarious that my three year old wants to curl up on the couch with his dog, watch a movie, and eat a bowl of parsley!

Gavin has taken to stripping off all of his clothes at night and running through the house. I know that most kids do this at some point but I figured it would be before now and was not expecting this. Imagine my surprise the other night when he held a mass of clothes in the air, yells, and I look over to see him standing stark naked in the kitchen! He did the same thing last night. He burns some energy running around though. Considering how much we’ve been stuck in the house, it’s probably not a bad thing he gets a few laps in before bed.

Big and little in the bath last night. They’re so cute together as long as big brother isn’t beating up on little sister.

Nothing else new here. Just busy as usual with work and our various schedules!

Crunchies!

Abby ate Gerber Crunchies for the first time the other day. She loved them! So far besides baby food she has eaten: toast, banana, american cheese, macaroni and cheese, chicken, puffs, and crunchies. She wasn’t a big fan of banana or chicken. We’ll keep working on it. We need to get her eating some more “big girl” foods considering she’s nearly a year old. She’s still working on the sippy cup and occasionally tries it but normally throws it on the floor.

Gavin also wanted to participate in crunchie snack time. He used to love them also and whenever his sister eats any of the snacks he used to get as a little fella, he wants to have some too. It’s a little frustrating because he has big boy snacks now and doesn’t need the baby snacks. Anyway, on this particular day I let him have a few crunchies just for old time’s sake.

Apologies for the photo quality. They were taken with my cell phone.

Brandon called me today while I was at work and informed me that Abby has learned to climb and she’s quite the dare devil. She’s managed to climb onto the top of the Little Tikes picnic table and now that she knows she can do it, she’s trying to climb on various other things. She’s been walking more and more every day. We need to get a good quality, short video up here so that everyone can see it.

Keeping busy here! Looking forward to Spring when we are done with all of this ice and snow!