Four by Four

Howdy! So my bloggy friend Abby tagged me in a four by four (four questions, four answers each) and since I'm putting off doing some property tax forms, this seemed like the perfect activity! Here are mine, read on to see if I tagged you at the end (this is a group participation activity kids)!

01. Four Places I Go
- work
- church
- lake/river trails to run
- TARGET!!!!

02. Four Favorite Smells
- freshly bathed baby Milo (really baby Milo any time)
- waffles and bacon cooking at Mema's house
- the fresh smell of ozone right after a rainstorm (Abby - I stole this one but it's ALWAYS on my list)
- Christmas trees (real ones, not the smell of dust off of the one that just got dragged out of the attic/basement)

03. Four Favorite Movies/Shows
- Big Bang Theory
- NCIS
- How I Met Your Mother
- The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise (love all the movies but saying it this way it only counts as one entry - see how I did that?)

04. Four Recommendations
- Spend a weekend (or a week if it takes that long) and clean out your closets and anywhere else you have extra stuff stashed. We just did this (five carloads to Goodwill!) and I cannot tell you how good it feels!
- Get up early sometimes. Especially in the spring/early summer (you can often catch smell #3 mentioned above), and even if you aren't a morning person. You don't have to go run five miles, just get up and sit on the porch with your morning beverage of choice and enjoy the quiet.
- Go check out my friend Erick's new album here. He's awesome. His wife is crazy talented too. They're like a musical power couple.
- Go read my sister's blog here. She's a riot. You'll laugh til you cry, I promise. If you don't, you're taking yourself way too seriously.

And now, (drumroll please) I tag:

Audrey (the aforementioned sister) @ Goodbye Dignity, Hello Motherhood

Miranda @ A Tale of Tractors and Tiaras

Elise @ Millers on the Move

Shannon @ Meet Me In St. Louis

Annnnnddddd.....GO! :)

Checking In

Nothing new to report here. Tax season is getting into full swing so if I'm not working at the office I'm either working at home or spending time with my sweet boy so if I happen to not post for a while, you'll know why. I just went through FIFTY-TWO new posts on my RSS feed...not a lot of computer time right now, and that's OK!

Now that I've explained myself to anyone that cares, I'm going to go to bed (yes, at 9:30, I was actually ready an hour and a half ago but forced myself to stay up for some reason). I'll leave you with two pics. Sorry for the lighting in this first one - awful but I had to take a picture. I usually feed Milo right before we go to bed and he always snuggles with me after he eats (well, really he passes smooth out and I make him snuggle with me because it's the only time of day he's still and not trying to go places!) He did put that arm up around my neck though - isn't he sweet!

In this one he's playing with Daddy - N was tickling him and he'd laugh and laugh and then look at me, then laugh and look at Daddy out of the corner of his eye like this...

And now, because I will be attempting to run 11 miles in the morning, I am going to bed! Happy weekend!

MFT: Easter Edition

I'm linking up with Abby at "graduate extraordinaire" for My Favorite Things Monday!

First of all, I know I'm a day early with this but if I'm not early, I'll be late. :) Second, I know it's not Easter yet but bear with me. Every year, I can't wait for Valentine's Day to be over with. Even though I'm married and Nathan always does something sweet, the end of Valentine's Day means.....it's CADBURY EGG season!!!! This is beyond exciting to me. So much so that on the day after Valentine's Day this year when Nathan and I went on our date night, we went by Walgreen's on the way home to see if they had the Cadburys out yet and I nearly tackled a clerk and forced them to open a case of these delectable treats because they were just getting around to putting out the Easter candy. Slackers!

See? There's one hiding in my purse...

So get out there and enjoy some sugary goodness while it lasts. And as my Grandpa, the late great Joe Clay would say (regardless of what holiday it actually was), "Happy Easter Eggs"!

So Many Funny Faces

The exersaucer is our new favorite thing around here. There's a particular toy that's attached to it that for some reason Milo LOVES to take off. We put it back on, he immediately starts to work on getting it unsnapped. It's pretty entertaining stuff, especially when you watch his little face! He works SO HARD...we managed to catch some of the expressions with the camera earlier this evening:

Just enjoying my exersaucer...

...hey wait a minute...what's this thing doing back?

I'll show you who's boss!

One last pull...

Success!!!

Take that! Mom and Dad, I double dog dare you to put it back on there again!

In other exciting news, he rolled from back to front today! Let the babyproofing of the house commence! Hope you all enjoy your weekend!

7 Months!

Didn't I just post his 6 month pictures??? Our little man turned 7 months old last week. We took the monthly pictures. Here are a few of them. I tried to choose a variety of expressions - this kid is just full of funny looks!

In case any of my three followers that aren't my parents or sisters might be expecting, or know someone who is, and wish to take a monthly photo to document different stages, things I wish I'd done differently: in hindsight, I wish I had done the following two things with these monthly pictures. 1) Taken all of the pictures in the same place (e.g. his crib, or the papasan chair) rather than just wherever. Part of the inconsistency is the lighting issue though. 2) Taken his picture each month with the same stuffed animal (or other "prop"). My thinking here is that this would show how big he's getting in relation to the same object each month. Oh well, live and learn.

In the past month he's started eating "big boy food" as we call it around here. It started with cereal (see how that went here) and since then we've added prunes, bananas, sweet potatoes, squash, peas and pears. Oh, and avocados but I wonder if he has my DNA at all because he did not care for the avocados one bit. Maybe he was having an off day all the times we tried them... We've progressed from eating just a couple of bites a day to eating a full serving of cereal at least once a day plus usually about a half container (small container) of a fruit and a veggie. And let me tell you, he can put the food away when he's in the mood. I expect he'll be moving up on the weight charts at his next visit...

He's also sitting up really well all by himself, and scooting around (not crawling). He's also starting to miss us when we're gone! Each day when Nathan comes home from work we watch for him out the window and it's so fun to watch Milo's face when Nathan gets out of the car - he gets so excited to see his Daddy!

He's getting to be such a big boy!

Date Night: Round 2

Last night we had our second date night! We were celebrating Valentine's Day (which we NEVER celebrate on the actual day because crowds make me angry) and also the anniversary of our engagement (which is actually today!). It's hard to believe it's been four years. (And for those doing the math, yes, we got engaged Feb. 16 and married May 19, three months later. We didn't see any reason to wait around!) We ate at a local seafood place - the hot crab dip was YUMMY. The rest of the food was great too - it's been a while since I over ate like that. Good food and a chance to talk without having to get up and take care of a baby or hear the hum of the monitor in the background. We had a nice time but we were really glad to see our sweet boy when we got back.

And for those of you who only come here to see pictures of the cute kid (hi Mom!), here you go:

Fun Giveaway!

No, not me. I'm not giving anything away. Well, unless you want the trunk full of stuff I've been hauling around for three weeks intending to drop at the church for the garage sale but instead it's serving to weigh down the back of my car on the ice and snow. But I digress...

Emily, over at The Pilot's Wife, is giving away a $50 shop credit to Lisa Leonard Designs. I love love love Lisa's work - I have the word of the year necklace (see this post if you want to know what that's all about) and absolutely love it. You can get up to EIGHT entries in this giveaway! Seriously. I know that most of the people who follow me are snowed in AGAIN today so here's something to do - go to Emily's blog and enter the giveaway!

My Favorite Things Monday

Disclaimer: While I am linking up with Abby for My Favorite Things, this is also a very obvious opportunity for pictures of my cute kid. Don't say I didn't warn you.

I went back to work today. After being snowed in from Tuesday until Saturday last week. And I love my job so going back to the office was fun, and rewarding. BUT. My FAVORITE thing is coming home to this face:

I mean really, walking in the house and seeing him get excited because he knows is Mama is home was MY ABSOLUTE FAVORITE thing today!

Cabin Fever

We took quite a few pics today - jut playing around. And just because I think our kid is so cute and I want to show him off, here are a few of the pics...and some of his hilarious facial expressions!

Snow Days - How We Cope

We are snowed in for our second day now. Yesterday I was supposed to make Santa Fe stew for dinner, but I forgot to put it in the crock pot until it was too late SO, then I was scrambling to figure out what to make for dinner. I had to get creative...here's what I came up with. First of all, I had seen a segment on the Early Show a couple of weeks ago about recipes that use five ingredients and there was one (that actually only used three ingredients) for oven roasted tomatoes (you can find the recipe here). I had the tomatoes and was able to scrape up a little olive oil so I made those. Here's what they look like before:

Then I had some egg noodles and goat cheese so I cooked up the pasta:

Then I topped it with the tomatoes and some crumbled goat cheese:

I think it would be even better w/some fresh basil or spinach (something green) but given what we had to work with, it was pretty tasty! My husband also whipped up some brownies from scratch and oh. my. word. They're like fudge. It's a recipe he found online (he's going to have to go back and print it and save it because they are SO GOOD) that has a frosting made of butter, cocoa, powdered sugar, and a little honey. AH. MA. ZING.

And so today, I'm trying to figure out how to work those brownies off! I was supposed to run 4.75 miles yesterday but with temps in the single digits and wind chills in the NEGATIVE DOUBLE DIGITS, going outside is just not an option. So, here's my running track for today:

At the bottom of the stairs you can see my trusty foam roller - best thing ever for after running or just anytime to help get rid of sore muscles. At the top of the stairs, you'll see my new shoes I'm trying to break in. I got some FiveFingers. After running 8 miles last Saturday my feet were KILLING me and my cousin has just raved about how she has virtually no pain now that she runs in hers. So I went and bought some. Unfortunately, you can't just take off running in them as much as you were already running in tennis shoes - you have to work up to that because the FiveFingers make you use muscles that your other shoes don't! So far, I really like them!

Anyway, I looked up online and found that 20 flights of stairs = 1 mile so I took off this morning. This is my tally sheet to help keep track of how many round trips I've made (one mark = five round trips).

I'm assuming that when they say 20 flights they mean 20 flights UP, not one up one down. Assuming that is the case, I did a mile and a quarter in about 20 minutes, including one stop to change shoes, and two to get a drink of water.

That's about it I think. Now I'm going to go try and catch up on some reading while Milo is snoozing (and maybe have another brownie) and then I'll have to get back on the stairs later this afternoon. Ugh. I will say though, that we are having lots of fun having the Daddy home for a couple of days in the middle of the week! Hope everyone is staying warm!

My Favorite Things Monday (A Day Late)

I'm joining up with Abby over at graduate "extraordinaire" for a new thing - My Favorite Things Monday. You can read about it here.

My first entry is actually a day late but better late than never, right? :) My favorite thing about yesterday was that early in the day N got an e-mail saying that his company would be closed today due to impending bad weather. (Now, I need to say right here that we get a lot of "impending bad weather" that never actually comes to fruition. But lemme tell ya, this time they were not joking. I'll take and post some pics of the damage later but suffice it to say that right now we've got around 8 inches of snow, sustained winds of 30 mph, gusts up to more than 40 mph, and a wind chill that's below zero with blowing snow and no visibility.)

Back to my favorite thing though - that e-mail meant that we get a snow day with the Daddy! It's Milo's first snow and, as you can see below, he's mesmerized. Maybe in a couple of days it'll get warm enough that we can get out and get some pics of him in it but definitely not today or tomorrow (when the high is projected to be 13*). So today we are hunkered down trying to stay warm and just enjoying an unexpected day all together!

One other note. My sister already has some pics up over on her blog - they've got more snow there than we do here (she lives about an hour and a half away). It's impressive. Also, if you're needing a giggle (or a full out belly laugh) read through some of her other posts - she's a riot!