It's Suppertime!

I was thinking of what to make for dinner tonight, and decided to fall back on a P family favorite--sloppy joes. These aren't your Manwich, dinner-in-a-can sloppy joes, these are the homemade, ridiculously tasty, uber easy variety.

Recipe:
1 lb. beef
1 onion
1 green pepper
1 can tomato soup.

Easy as 1-2-3
1) brown beef and drain
2) add chopped veggies
3) add soup and heat through

Then enjoy. What could be simpler? I usually serve them on biscuits cause I tend to have a can of them in my fridge at all times.

I'm very grateful for my Young Women's leader who not only gave me a beautiful recipe card holder upon my graduation from high school, but who filled it with awesome recipes like the gem above. I've obviously held on and used and enjoyed it these long years.

Repetition is Also the Mother of Laughter

So G decided not to sleep last night, making everyone in the house REAAALLY tired today. And I get cranky when I'm tired. So after our walk around 5 this evening, I try to put G down for one last short nap so I can nap too. Because I'm so very tired.

And of course he doesn't want to sleep. So I bring him in bed with me to try to have my tiredness rub off on him. Instead, we end up laying on our sides facing each other, his sweet little face next to mine, and he reaches for my bangs, so I grab his hand and kiss it and put it in my mouth and squeeze his little triceps. He has very ticklish triceps, especially when they are squeezed. We've known this for awhile. So of course, he starts laughing. So I let go of his hand. And he reaches for my hair, so I grab his hand and tickle his arm and he laughs. And I let go . . .

And because I know G so well, we play this little game for about 5 minutes. As long as I don't move, he's going to reach for my hair because he always reaches for my hair, and he's always ticklish on his arms. So instead of taking a nap, I got to enjoy baby giggles. Did it help my headache? No, but it did wonders for my morale.

I'm so grateful for sweet bonding moments and a happy, happy boy.

A Look at How Far Technology has Come

Remember when you wanted a song on the radio you had to buy either the lame single or the whole album?
Remember when the only thing you exercised when you played video games were your thumbs?
Remember when a 215 mb hard drive was more space than you would ever need?
Remember when there was a reality tv show to find the next boy band?
Remember when TGIF on ABC had awesome shows like "Boy Meets World"?
Remember when you had to go to the library and look up words in a physical encyclopedia if you were doing a research paper?
Remember when you were waiting for someone to pick you up and you either had to be patient or call them on a pay phone?
Remember when you had to plan out family vacations using a fold-out map?
Remember when you wanted to say hi to your cousin so you wrote a letter?
Remember when the whole world's thoughts and feelings were just in personal journals?
Remember when you had to jog with a walkman and it would skip all the time?
Remember when you had to listen to the radio all day to make a mix tape?

Those were good times . . . but now is better!
I'm grateful for technology.

Roaming Gnome

We have this little gnome in our garden.It's super cute.But he got tired of living alone. So he went looking for a family.First, he went to Greece to find a dad.

Then he went to China to get a mom.

Now they are a happy family.

And the gnome has returned to our garden.

Happy Halloween! As you can see, things went well. My costume gave me a little grief, but it has a fun story behind it. When my sister went to China a few years ago to teach English, she brought me back a beautiful long, wrap-around skirt. The only problem was the fabric is really silky, which means it was a constant battle to keep the wrap-around skirt wrapped and not expose my slip and nylons. And of course, having to wear a slip didn't help anything either, but modesty demanded it. But it was so beautiful that I kept it. So when I decided to make an Asian inspired dress for Halloween, I went to JoAnn's for some fabric. I was choosing between blue and red, and I went with blue because I already had this beautiful skirt. But Johnny was sad cause he really wanted me to get the red fabric. So when he left on business a week or two later, I decided to surprise him by remaking my beautiful skirt into a smokin' hot dress. And it was a success, obviously. And I'm proud of myself because I wasted very little fabric and still managed to make it work. And I only cursed inside my head.

But because it was so challenging to make my costume, I didn't have time to make our original design for Johnny's costume--lederhosen. Oh, and we totally got tricked out of all our treats yesterday. We bough candy for trick-or-treaters, but because we haven't had many the last few years, we didn't buy a lot. And we would have been okay, but these four really greedy kids took handfuls of our candy, so we didn't have much after that and the night was still young. So we pretty much gave away everything pre-packaged in our house--granola bars, microwave popcorn, even Capri Suns. It was crazy, but next year we'll be better prepared, hopefully. And we probably won't be in Texas, so maybe the greediness will be not as big of a problem.

Halloween Convict

This is not G's Halloween costume, but it sure was cute (and nice of Grandma L to bring! Thanks Mom!) He wore it to lunch yesterday when we stole Daddy away from his office.

You think the cuteness is done, then *wham* it hits you right between the eyes.
Going after the balloon.
A little frustrated
Now a little worried
Now happy again.

There will be more ridiculously cute pictures on Facebook, for those who are on it.

Attack of the Tooth!

Apparently, I have given birth to a toothing fiend. 7 months old and already has 6 teeth. The last two have come in at the same time, which made the last week very difficult.

G is just about always happy. So if he isn't, he's having trouble sleeping, and he doesn't have a fever, we figure he must be teething. So we grit our teeth and weather the storm, as long as it lasts. Luckily for me, this time Johnny wasn't feeling well a few of the days, so he stayed home from work and helped me keep my sanity.

I just have to keep telling myself that those who act like they deserve love the least, need it the most and cross my fingers that my patience lasts.

Also, it's really hard to get a picture of the teeth, so here's a diagram:
As you can see, the circled teeth are already here, making G look a lot like a jack o' lantern.

The new tooth is showing just a little. And the teeth coming in are, well, coming in. Here are the best pictures I have taken thus far: (forgive my horrible handwriting, touch pads are not forgiving)

His bottom teeth as indicated by the arrows:His top teeth:
You might have to click on this one and see full size.

State Fair

We decided we couldn't be so close to the biggest state fair in the country and not go. Plus, we thought it would be a good way to celebrate our third anniversary, which is the leather year. We asked G if he wanted to go. I think you can see his opinion.It was a cold day, in the 50's so we all had our sweaters and jackets on. We brought plenty of warm fuzzy blankets and socks for G.

We didn't want to worry about parking at the fair grounds, so we took the train. G's first train ride.

Sorry the picture's fuzzy, but we had to hurry to get on the train. It turns out that personal space is also bigger in Texas, so it was a challenge to get on the multiple trains we had to take that day. Some people weren't too happy to make room for a large stroller. Oh well, at least G was happy. Nothing makes him happier than a good crowd.
Shortly after this picture was taken, a man with a bike got on the train. G decided to have a staring contest with him until he got off. G won. He has no shame and stared quite frankly.

We got to the fair and quickly gave up all hope for napping. Too many people, too much noise. So we watched a horse instead. We were just wasting time until we could go see some dancing dogs-quite lame as it turns out. Lame enough to put the boy out, if only for half and hour or so.
One of the things we really wanted to see at the fair was the livestock. So we followed our noses to the livestock pavilion. And saw goats, sheep, pigs and cows. This goat really liked G.
We didn't look at any of the dairy cows (sorry Mom), but we did enjoy plenty of "steak cows" as Johnny calls them. This one is a Brahman, a breed from Brazil.
Johnny made me take a picture in front of the Texas Longhorn, since I am now a citizen.
This was the biggest cow at the fair, Peter the Great, as the sign says. It was a little disconcerting to be that close to something that big. Though I'm told he's very friendly. Hard to tell from the picture, but his back just kept going and going.

This is a video of the pigs. I wanted to justify my claim to be a good imitator of animal noises. Unfortunately, there are lots of people around, so you have to listen very closely to hear the pig.

Those of you who watch Oprah probably know that she came to the Texas State Fair. We went a few days before her, luckily, but like her, we felt that eating fried food was an important part of the fair. So we tried a corny dog, sweet and spicy deep fried shrimp (an honorary mention), a foot long chili dog, and this, a Belgian waffle. Yum . . .
Luckily, we were walking everywhere, so we could justify eating such fatty foods. I'm sure every Texan justified it that way, though from the looks of Texas people, they probably shouldn't. I guess that's a big difference between Utah and the South. In Utah, people are all uber-conscious of how they look, there are a lot more overweight people here. Also, they have a lot more fatty foods. Whole milk costs the same as skim . . .

The only thing we missed at the fair was the produce, which is a shame because I was told at choir practice the next day that there is a butter sculpture every year. That would have made a cool picture. Maybe next time . . .