Sick

i'm not sure if it's the allergies (there is a ton of pollen on my truck, due to the fact that it's parked right next to the oh-so-beautiful but oh-so-pollen-ridden oak tree in our front yeard) or if i'm just getting sick, but my head hurts, my joints ache, and i don't want to do anything but sit in bed and watch Friends.


sydney was also having a rough time today. she did great on most of our errands, and even was relatively happy whilst crawling around the house putting everything that is on our floor into her mouth. :) the poor thing still has her front bottom tooth slowly but surely piercing through her cute little gums though...so there was a great deal of sobbing as we got her ready for bed tonight. she was inconsolable until we sang "Little Bunny Foo-Foo." well, i sang it. i do a special voice for the "good fairy" who chastises said bunny, and this usually makes sydney grin. this time, however, we had to kick it up a notch and kirk danced around for sydney and made goofy faces. i was cracking up,  and sydney just stared at him. sometimes she began to smile...just a tad.


we also sang "Five Little Speckled Frogs" and "Five Little Ducks." {why does every kid song count down from five?}


life is going pretty well right now. i found a community band that rehearses only about 20 minutes away from me, as opposed to the band that took an hour to get to because of Houston's rush hour traffic. i'm excited to play my flute some more. i've been missing it.


kirk's doing great in school. he's studying hard and is loving his classes. he still takes time out for us though. he got sydney ready for bed tonight AND took care of me, even with my whining. i'm excited to have him home in three weeks (but who's counting?) for spring break. no idea what we're doing yet, but it'll be nice to have him home!

Cake Decorating Class

i recently took a Wilton cake decorating class at Hobby Lobby. it was awesome because now i know that i can frost a cake and do some fun things with pastry bags and tips that i'd never done before.

on the flip side, the teacher tended to hover over me and that made me nervous. and she was super talented, but english was not her first language so it made the explanations difficult to understand sometimes.

overall though, a positive experience. here are a few pics.

This was my first cake. I did not design it...everyone just copied it. Not a huge fan of the design, but maybe that's just me. And by the time I was done making this, I wanted to hurl just thinking about eating frosting. Frosting OVERLOAD at my house!

Sorry this  is blurry, but you can still see the prettiness. I think making cupcakes was my favorite project. It didn't take as long to decorate and I learned how to do the swoopy, thick frosting on top. It's all about the tip AND the thickness of the frosting. Interesting. Oh and I also loved making the leaves. So fun.

This was my final project. If you add wheels in the bottom (which I ddin't do), it's a baby carriage! Can you see the blanket, made with the yellow frosting? We learned how to do writing this day too, and my frosting was a bit too thin to really achieve optimal writing. I was originally going to put "Welcome Baby," and I opted for doing as few letters as possible. Do you notice how smooth the frosting is in comparison to my first cake??

Bananas

i guess it's ok that i just squished the banana all over me, right?

i barely got any in my mouth though.

hey mom! why are you taking pictures of me?

why don't you help me clean this off?

why are you laughing?

you're so cruel.

you should feel horrible!

i want another mom.

Guess Who Has a Tooth?

That would be Sydney-bear!

Camping at Goose Island/Going to Rockport Beach

last weekend we got to go camping for two nights at Goose Island park with these two lovely families:

Brian, Addie and Laura Evans

Brian, Nathan, Collin, Isaac and Sarah Reeder (we had a hard time getting all the kids looking at the camera at once, but this pic was the one where they did it! they're cuties for sure)

Sydney, me and Kirk in front of the "Big Tree," a Live Oak that is over 1,000 years old

Collin is so cute :)

i love Sydney's expression in this one. this was the third pic we took, but she looks so surprised/giddy in it

the "Big Tree"

this was at Rockport beach. Addie was not choking, just sticking out her tongue.

Syd and her daddy!

even though the water was freezing, she still had so much fun splashing away.

Rascal Flatts Concert

kirk and i went to the Rascal Flatts concert last Thursday at the rodeo. it was sooo nice to go out without sydney. my friend Laura watched her for us so we could go on a date just us. :)

i hate that picture of us by the way...i think where kirk's hand is on me it looks awkward. lol.

anyway we had such a great time. i was seriously giddy to be out with kirk on a "date date" and i love Rascal Flatts anyway (i'm a country fan. don't judge).

i think we should make it a yearly thing to go to a concert at the rodeo. :)

"Nobody objects to a woman being a good writer or sculptor or geneticist if at the same time she manages to be a good wife, good mother, good-looking, good-tempered, well-groomed, and unaggressive."

--Leslie M. McIntyre

"It is within my power either to serve God or not to serve him. Serving him, I add to my own good and the good of the whole world. Not serving him, I forfeit my own good and deprive the world of that good, which was in my power to create."

--Leo Tolstoy

Houston Rodeo

What?? I just split a funnel cake that is 760 calories?? {Ok, so he was just making a goofy face for the picture. But funnel cakes are about that many calories. Yikes!}

The goat was a little TOO friendly with me...

This deer did NOT stop eating Kirk's shirt. It was funny at first, and then it got obnoxious.

we had fun going to the rodeo yesterday! two unexpected things happened:

1st, we were too cheap to pay the 10-15 bucks to pay parking, so we parked several blocks away from the tram in a med school buddy's apartment complex. we thought "oh, we're so tricky. we'll show them!" and then after the long walk, we realized we perhaps weren't tricky....just cheap. :p i don't think i'd do it again if i knew it was that far.

2nd, sydney's diaper got a tad full. as in, i was carrying her on my hip and i realized that my side was wet. and her pants were wet. yikes! i ended up wearing kirk's jacket the rest of the time, and sydney wore a shirt and a diaper. we kept trying to cover up her diaper/legs when we pushed her in the stroller, just so we didn't look TOO white trash. not sure if we pulled it off or not. but we had a great time, nonetheless!

Thrifting and Milkmaid Style

friday night, kirk and i watched the move My Girlfriend's Boyfriend. it was a cute movie with Alyssa Milano that I had never heard of. not Oscar material or anything, but a fun chick flick for a friday night.

anyway Alyssa Milano had this hairstyle in a couple scenes:

i have always thought this milkmaid style of hair was cute, so i figured i'd try it for sunday. i couldn't do the full braid across my head because you need really long hair to pull that off, but i braided one braid on each side, and placed them across as far as they would go across my head. essentially i made a braid hairband.

this was the result:

i found the video tutorial here.

on a different note, after reading about Rachel's adventures in thrifting, i was eager to go. so saturday, kirk and i spent about three hours going to thrift stores (and a video game store for Kirk, of course). i got two shirts (super cute, but i'm too lazy to take pics) and these cute shoes. i also got some stuff for syd the kid, including a baby einstein dvd for half price!

the shirts and shoes i got were $6 a piece. not too shabs! {oh yes, i meant to say that!}

Feeling glum.

isn't that an interesting word? "Glum?" Merriam Webster says it means "broodingly morose."

well maybe i'm not morose. but i am brooding.

i had a fairly productive day. took sydney to the doctor. she only had to have one shot (yay!) so there was a minimal amount of crying. i gave her some tylenol before the appointment, so hopefully that helped.

really there's no good reason to be feeling glum, i just am. and that's ok.

Fun with Cousin Bennett

the one and only sydney-bear

how can you NOT be in love with those big brown eyes??

bennett decided to come up and say hi to sydney, who was sitting his chair :)

love this picture! they both look happy to see each other.

kim and russell are trying to teach bennett to be soft. he's going to have a baby sister in may!

kirk and i want to visit kim, russell and bennett in san antonio this past weekend. we had lots of fun watching our kids interact and us being cool old fogies. we stayed up until 11 pm one night! woh! i remember staying up until 5 am when kim and i were single ladies (well, kirk and i were dating, but we weren't married).

i wish i had gotten pics of us all swimming. we took syd swimming for the first time, and she LOVED it. she giggled lots when bennett splashed in her face, and she did a good deal of splashing herself. i forgot to blow in her face the first time we dunked her, so i think she swallowed a bit of water (woops!), but she was more prepared the second time. i have to get a pic of her in her swimsuit too. i just want to gobble her up in it.