Chuck

So what's this about Chuck maybe being cancelled? I am being sabotaged by TV!!!!
It's like the television networks are conspiring to get me off my lazy butt in the evenings.
First it was Pushing Daisies, now Chuck.
I am so mad. If the Office or the Soup ever get cancelled, George and I are flat out of ideas for date night.

Losing weight is easier if you're too poor to buy food

George has lost 10 pounds over the last two weeks or so. I'm proud of him. It's hard to lose weight when there is so much good stuff around to eat. We tortured ourselves by watching this program about Barbecue today. NC was featured in it. It made me miss eating at Bill's Barbecue. When Bart was teething, I would give him a cornbread stick from Bill's to chew on.
Don't get me wrong. We have plenty of food in our house. It's just that I don't want any of it.
Week 2 on Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover. It's hard, but not impossible. The hardest part is cutting out all the little things we do for our own convenience (like getting a biscuit at Bojangles instead of having a bowl of cereal when we're running short on time). It's also a pain to not blow money on stupid stuff, like a cute pair of shoes I don't really need. We're also having to limit the amount of birthday parties we let the kids go to. Sometimes they're invited to three in a weekend! We're just going to have to anticipate things like that in our budget as we go along.
I guess it's all about changing your attitude. We live in a culture that tells us at every opportunity "Yes, we can" (ha ha), and "you deserve it". After awhile, you really start to believe you do deserve it, even if you can't really afford it. It's a real problem. What I guess we have to remember is that anything worth having is going to take some hard work. Well, this is hard work!!!! But we are going to succeed.

Desperation is setting in

Help!
George is on a diet (and therefore I kind of am too) and there is no junk food in the house!
Plus, we're doing Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover, and there is no budget for me to run out and buy junk food.
I do not want grapes or apples or carrots or yogurt. I want cruncy, messy, bad-for-you Doritos or potato chips. I would like some high fructose corn syrup, please. I'm getting pretty desperate here.

The Yellow Cloud

A few weeks ago, the Little Two and I stepped outside our house to find that everything was covered in a blanket of yellow. No, not peed-on snow. Pollen, which is much worse.
If you live in the south, you get used to the yellow stuff, although I don't think you ever come to LIKE it. I've been sneezing nonstop since then and I find the stuff on just about any surface that goes too long without dusting. Yuck.
So anyway, we tried to tiptoe across the back porch and get in the car without getting a lot of pollen on our shoes. Of course, the first thing that happens is that Drake slips on the steps and sits his butt smack in the middle of the pollen. I debate even letting him get in the car after that, but there's nothing I can do.
When we get to the end of our driveway, all of a sudden a big gust of wind comes along and the big pine tree across the street EXPLODES into the biggest cloud of pollen I have ever in my life seen - and I have seen a lot of pollen. It is so crazy, I fumble for my phone and try to get a photo of it, but by the time I snap it, the wind has mostly scattered the cloud. However, as we drive around town, I notice that everything has a sickly yellow tinge to it. You can especially see the haze of pollen up against the trees in the distance.



Hey cool, I accidentally got a picture of the Terminix Bug truck.

Sweet Tooth

During the time George was home recovering from his little surgery (at the beginning of April), we decided to up and go to Greenville one Thursday afternoon for the express and single purpose of buying a dozen hot and fresh Krispy Kreme donuts.



Unfortunately, they only make them hot and fresh at specific times in the a.m and p.m and we were in the middle of those two times. Still, the donuts were sweet and yummy and we got to watch them being made.



Oh, and we all got cool hats.

Papa & Nanny's

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We went to Papa and Nanny's house over General Conference weekend. It was so nice to see them again and have a really good home-cooked meal (that I didn't have to cook)! Skylar requested Diane's famous sweet potato casserole.

For some reason George was so tired that right after dinner, he basically passed out on the sofa.



I'm really late getting all these pictures up, but the point of this whole blog is to be kind of like my photo journal.

Standing Up For Something

On Tax Day, April 15, I took the kids to the Tax Day Tea Party here in town. It began at the Admin building downtown and paraded through the downtown area to Union Point Park. However, because of Skylar's annoying dance photo session, we missed the parade. We made it for the rally at the park, though. There were hundreds of people there, despite the blustery and chilly weather.
We had made signs at home and even Lucy sported hers. The boys quickly ditched their signs in favor of playing on the swings, but we girls stood our ground.

She's pretty intimidating, isn't she?

I think it was a really good opportunity to educate the children about American history and American history-in-the-making. We saw a good number of other kids there. The cutest was a set of little boys dressed in colonial garb.

Sunburn

Here are pictures of Drake's first sunburn I forgot to include in my post about our beach trip. This is why you always put sunscreen on kids, even if they somehow get covered in sand the SECOND you arrive at the beach.

Drake Learns a Lesson

One evening when I was hurrying to make dinner before having to dash out of the house, Bart alerted me to the fact that Drake was very quiet, which is always reason for suspicion. We found him drawing with a pencil on the linoleum at the edge of the kitchen floor. It was one of those moments where I knew I could either cry or laugh (that hysterical near-crying laugh). So I just took the pencil away from Drake and told him we would talk about it when Dad got home. The result was we decided Drake would clean up his own mess with....ta-da: a magic eraser!
Lo and behold, it got up every mark and Drake learned how to clean up after himself.

Watch out, Mommy

Lucy got her first tooth!!!!
I just reached in and felt the little point sticking up tonight.
I laughed and laughed so hard it made Lucy laugh, too.
I suspect she was laughing because she knows that I know I'm getting a bite soon. Probably in the dead of night while I'm half-asleep nursing her.
Watch out, Mommy.

Spring Break

I have barely even looked at my computer over the last week or so. I've been studying like crazy for a test (which I took Thursday and aced - 105!!!!) and trying to do a bunch of fun stuff while the kids are on spring break.

Let's see:

We went to Union Point Park on Monday to eat pizza in the gazebo and feed the birds. It was a monsoon! We nearly got blown away, so we had to make a mad dash back to the car to finish our pizza & crazy bread. The storm blew away after a while and we were able to get out to feed the birds. Drake (predictibly) fell in seagull poo.





















Afterward, we went to the library. Bart got four new books and proceeded to read three of them (chapter books) in less than twenty-four hours. Honestly, he was GLUED to the books. He was pulling a Skylar and walking from place to place without looking up from the book. While Drake napped, the Big Two retired to their favorite place to read and daydream....




Tuesday, Mom and Mimi came to visit. I had a dentist appointment. Bart and I had karate. We were told that there would be a belt test in May and that we were both eligible to be promoted to yellow belt (Bart is a jr. yellow belt right now) if we practiced hard enough. Yippee!!

Wednesday, we met Vanessa and the kids at Kidsville & then proceeded to crash her house because the wind was kind of chilly outside at the park.

Thursday we went with Vanessa and the kids to the Fossil Museum in Aurora. We've been once before, but how many times do you think a kid can dig for rocks in a dirt pile before they get tired of it? We found some really cool shark teeth and coral.




And then Good Friday - we hit the beach with George, who hates the beach "like you hate onions" (this is how George explained his dislike of the beach to Bart, who was incredulous that anyone could not like sand, sun, and water).
















And Saturday? An egg hunt at church and a trip to the bookstore, courtesy of Mom's Easter gift to the Big Two. Bart is ready to keep on reading.





So there are a LOT of pictures on this post.

P.S. Thanks to lugging the world's most adorable baby around, my back is toast. Thanks, Lu.