Cabin Tour - Part II

Here is installment #2 of "The Cabin Tour". Enjoy!

Hideaway Ranch & Retreat

This is the first part in my "video series" of the cabin tour. Hehe. That sounds professional. I assure you, it's not.

I would have loved to upload the entire thing, but alas, it's too large. You'll have to wait until tomorrow for the next installment - if you're not too bored already.

Our cabin was called "The Laredo", but it was formerly "The Cabana", I think the owners were in the process of remodeling. They still hadn't painted a few walls, and also had a few left over Cabana details. HA! It was 2 bedrooms and 1 1/2 baths. We loved it, it was the perfect size.

Derby Day

I happened to be in Kentucky during the Kentucky Derby. It's hilarious that my family has lived in KY so long, yet never been to a derby. We always just watch it on TV - better view.

This year was no different. Locally, they show all the races before - not just the Derby like they do here. So we got the morning paper and made our selections on who we thought would Win, Place, or Show. I'm the kind of girl who picks a horse by it's name, my Mom looks at odds, jockeys, and then the actual horse when they do the walk down to the gates, my Dad is a bit of both.

My Dad is gifted at picking horses, he won most of the ones he picked - it was crazy! Of course, he "Bet it all" on the Derby horse and lost! Hahaha. My mom did pretty well and came out on top in the end. And my pick em by name approach actually had me winning something most of the time.

While we were watching we started getting jealous that we didn't have our own crazy Derby hats (for those that never watch, it's quite the thing to go to the Derby in some huge, stylish hat), so we made our own.

I think ours were just as elegant as the celebs. HA!

Empty House...Empty Fridge

Despite giving my hubby the bulk of the grocery money over the last few weeks, we came home to a house devoid of food. We did have a few "necessities" I had requested he buy in advance, but nothing much else. The only dinner I could think to throw together was chicken fajitas, rice, and a can of beans I refried.

We had the makings of spaghetti, but not enough noodles and no side or salad.

We had frozen chicken breasts, but no veggies or yummy items to cook it with.

We had milk but no cereal.

And thanks to Amanda's wonderful post on homemade popcorn, we had popcorn.

I made steel cut oats with yogurt, honey, sliced peaches (canned) and nuts for breakfast. It was the only thing we had. It was yummy though. I think I'll eat that this week for breakfast.

Lunch today (before I went shopping) was PB&J sandwich for me, and leftover spaghetti for Mark and Hayden. Apparently, Mark decided to just make a HUGE pot of spaghetti and eat that for a week.

Which made me laugh when he told me because I had planned on making spaghetti tonight for dinner. HA!

So I decided instead to run to HEB (in the rain) to grab some groceries for the week. This week's total: 54.74!! Mark spent around $19 bucks for milk, yogurt, baby food and some other items before we got back.

What's for dinner?

Saturday: Easy Chicken Bake (a new recipe)
Sunday: Whole Roasted Chicken with mash potatoes
Monday: Beans & Rice (and leftover chicken)
Tuesday: Stovies
Wednesday: Left overs
Thursday: Chicken Enchiladas
Friday: BBQ Chicken, green pepper, and artichoke pizza
Saturday: Cook's day off!! Eat out.

Hayden also has a new love of apples. I just have to bite a piece of to get him started and he'll eat the whole apple without cutting it. So I got a bag of organic apples - they were only 2.99 which is not bad at all.

When I picked up Mark's prescription, the cash register spit out a coupon for a FREE bottle of Perrier water!

I think I'll do my homemade mac n cheese this week for some lunches. I'm started to prefer it over store bought. It just has so much more flavor!! I debated whether to buy whole grain pasta this time, but I decided not to - I thought it might turn Hayden off!

And man are sodas getting expensive. $4 for Diet Rite???!! I decided to go with the cheap HEB soda for $2.50.

Other prices that are insane right now - milk! Organic (and the central market version, not the more expensive brand) was $5.39 I think. What??!!! Makes a girl want to go buy a dairy cow, but I have a feeling my neighbors might have objections to that.

It feels good to open the fridge and pantry and actually see FOOD in there and not just empty shelves staring back at me. I tried to use up all our food before we left so it wouldn't go bad, but I think I should have left a "stocking" grocery list for Mark before we got back. HA!

Oh well.

I am glad to be back home and doing my own cooking. I really am getting anal about cooking and choosing my meals, and I didn't necessarily like having someone decide what I ate every night. Nice thing about being the cook, is that YOU decide what to make every day. I basically cook all MY favorite meals (that everyone else happens to like as well) and enjoy each meal!

Oh and my kitchen is 99.999% done. Right now I'm cooking dinner and enjoying having my laptop in my kitchen!

How To Survive in the Airport Jungle

It's inevitable - flying with children. Flying with two young children ... alone ... is just plain crazy.

Here's what I learned:

1. Bring a "helper". If you ask at the ticket counter you can get a special pass for anyone who wants to help you get the kid(s) through security. All they need is their driver's license and they can go through security and down to the gate with you.

Mark helped me on the way there, and they let both of my parents go down with me when flying home.

2. If you have a child that eats non-perishable finger goods (i.e. goldfish, pretzels, puffs) bring lots of them! Get about 4-5 ziplock bags (sandwich size) and fill them with different snacks. When Hayden started to get grumpy, Tada! I'd throw some snacks his way to distract him.

This works best if they are favorite snacks that they haven't eaten recently.

3. Buy some new cheap toys. I scoured HEB for toys before I left. Toys Hayden had never seen before. I got little plastic dinosaurs, a special coloring pad and markers that only colored on the special paper, a chalk board, a toy cell phone, and a tiger/panther set of animals with moveable limbs. All these were very compact toys, easily tucked away in a diaper bag.

I put the different toys in separate plastic bags and pulled each out as he started to get fussy.

4. Don't participate in the in-flight beverage. You're just asking to get a drink spilled on you or your innocent neighbor.

5. Do look pathetic while waiting for everyone to board - maybe no one will sit with you. Chances are with 1 or more small children no one will anyway. Sitting closer to the back of the plane will most likely ensure this unless the flight is full.

6. You may just have to wait on that dirty diaper. Casually imply that your baby is just farting. There's no way you'll be able to wrangle a toddler while changing a diaper in the airplane bathroom.

7. Laugh off rude passengers. After flight attendant stupidly offers an "aisle" seat next to you and rude old man says - Kids? Oh no...I've raised my kids, try to laugh it off by saying - I wouldn't sit by me either - no worries.

8. Sit close to "grandma" types. They may just offer to trade up their seat to sit with you in hopes of getting some baby time. Which means "free" time for you, er, well distract Hayden time for me.

9. Bring your own baby food. You won't be able to find it at the airport. But they do have diapers. I ended up feeding Corbin a yogurt parfait.

10. You can survive anything for 2 hours. At least that's what I tell myself. Be sure to limit your travel to short intervals. By 1 hour 30 minutes Hayden was about to jump out of his seat. It was all I had to keep him entertained that last 30 minutes.

11. Bring a portable DVD/movie player. I brought my iPod and downloaded Happy Feet before I left. Unfortunately, I didn't check if the headphones were working before I left. If Happy Feet with no sound kept Hayden entertained, think what the full experience could have done!

12. Breathe...just keep breathing.




Photo credit: Ma1974

Home At Last

First, I have to say... I missed you!!! Yeah you. I missed having my random dribble I call a blog to write on and being able to hear back from you even if I'm totally boring that day. I also missed reading all my favorite blogs, although I did sneak in a few here and there.

Have you ever had SO much to write about that you don't know where to begin? And that each topic could easily be it's own post? And you're not really sure anyone cares anyway? Yeah, that's about where I'm at right now.

I have whole rantings on:

• Airport Security
• Airports in general
• Crabby, rude passengers on airplanes
• Antsy toddlers
• Bored kids
• Wiggly babies
• Small towns
• Satellite TV
• Outings with kids
• Chuck E Cheese
• Sleeping with your kid
  
• Growing/Climbing kids
• Amazing speech developments
• Amazing physical developments
• Coffee
• Full flights
• Early mornings
• Kentucky Derby watching (on TV of course)
• My own homemade derby hat
  

Just to name a few....

ACK! Where to begin? How about you tell me what you'd like to hear? Cause I've got lots of stories!!!

Coming back soooooon!!!

I fly home today!! So I'll have lots of stories coming soon. We get in late tonight so I'll see you all tomorrow.

Love ya!

Posts to Come

So I've been thinking about my 2 1/2 week trip to KY. I think it will be a wonderful break from all things "technical". A lot of reading, relaxing, and coffee drinking are in my future (my parents are big time coffee drinkers).

Plenty of one on one time with the kiddos. Lots of movie renting to be had.

And little or no blog reading, email reading, or just plain blogging.

But thanks to the wonder of schedule posting, I'll leave you with some fun posts to keep you company while I'm away.

Think of my today as I board my 6:45am flight and travel to Nashville with the two kiddos. I hope they are sleepy enough to be "chill" during the flight. I bought lots of toys and some snacks to get us through.