Has anyone watched the new show "On the Road with Austin & Santino"? It's on Lifetime after Project Runway. Austin Scarlett and Santino Rice are designers from previous seasons of Project Runway and are going to small towns to give someone a new outfit for an event. It is hilarious, but I'm not sure that it's supposed to be.
Austin is a total whackadoodle but oh so loveable. My friend Judee says that he looks like the love child from Flock of Seagulls and Marilyn Monroe - such a hoot!
I can't stop laughing when I watch this show!
Friday, August 6, 2010
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Total Slacker
I feel like a total slacker! The last time I posted anything was right after seeing New Moon. And here we are in the middle of the summer and Eclipse is out and I have yet to post anything since. I guess I was delusional when I thought I had so many things to say that required a blog.
From here on out, I am going to make a better effort. That will be the test to see if I am a total slacker or not.
Summer has been really fun so far. We have been spending most of our time at the pool and Spencer may have grown gills. He is like a fish. He never wants to get out. He loves diving for stuff and jumping in the deep end. He and his best friend Quinn are thick as thieves still and they have a ball playing at the pool. Those two can play together for hours - it's like they are in their own little world. It's amazing that they never argue, or if they do, we don't know about it; they just work it out.
Our vacation this summer was to Hilton Head Island, South Carolina with our friends Lynn and Kend and their daughter Mary. We had a great time, but boy was it hot! 125 degrees with the heat index.
Other than that, we are just living a great life with a great kid, a great family and some super awesome great friends.
I'll post updated pictures soon.
From here on out, I am going to make a better effort. That will be the test to see if I am a total slacker or not.
Summer has been really fun so far. We have been spending most of our time at the pool and Spencer may have grown gills. He is like a fish. He never wants to get out. He loves diving for stuff and jumping in the deep end. He and his best friend Quinn are thick as thieves still and they have a ball playing at the pool. Those two can play together for hours - it's like they are in their own little world. It's amazing that they never argue, or if they do, we don't know about it; they just work it out.
Our vacation this summer was to Hilton Head Island, South Carolina with our friends Lynn and Kend and their daughter Mary. We had a great time, but boy was it hot! 125 degrees with the heat index.
Other than that, we are just living a great life with a great kid, a great family and some super awesome great friends.
I'll post updated pictures soon.
Friday, November 20, 2009
New Moon, Oh Edward!
So, we went and saw New Moon tonight. A group of us. I think we may have bought the tickets in September. We sat in line, on the dirty theater floor, for about 2 hours so we could get 5 seats together. We almost got trampled. People were acting crazy.
I have read the entire Twilight Saga, have seen a multitude of trailers and have talked to friends who saw it at the midnight showing. After all of this, knowing what to expect, I still cannot believe what a killer body Jacob has :) Especially since Twilight. Something tells me that this is a little "cougarish" of me - I don't even know how old Taylor Lautner is in real life. Even so, I am still, without a doubt, definitely Team Edward.
Speaking of Edward. Oh, Edward. I literally got chills in his first "real" scene of the movie as he is strutting across the school parking lot towards Bella. There is something so exquisite about him. He has an aura of beauty. Let's face it, he's just plain H-O-T. Such a fine specimen. But here's my only issue; I love, love, love him as Edward. But Robert Pattinson as himself, not so much. Don't get me wrong, he is very easy on the eyes, but only really sparks my interest when he's in character as Edward.
I don't really have anything nice to say about Kristen Stewart, so I will refrain. However, Sweet Pea's mommy made a good point in that maybe she will be better once she is "turned".
New Moon was awesome. This is a rare case where I think the movie was actually better than the book. For some reason, I cried through most of the book. I was so heartbroken for Bella. I only got a little weepy a few times during the movie. I must be getting soft in my old age. I'm looking forward to June 2010 for Eclipse. Has anyone heard when filming starts on Breaking Dawn?
I have read the entire Twilight Saga, have seen a multitude of trailers and have talked to friends who saw it at the midnight showing. After all of this, knowing what to expect, I still cannot believe what a killer body Jacob has :) Especially since Twilight. Something tells me that this is a little "cougarish" of me - I don't even know how old Taylor Lautner is in real life. Even so, I am still, without a doubt, definitely Team Edward.
Speaking of Edward. Oh, Edward. I literally got chills in his first "real" scene of the movie as he is strutting across the school parking lot towards Bella. There is something so exquisite about him. He has an aura of beauty. Let's face it, he's just plain H-O-T. Such a fine specimen. But here's my only issue; I love, love, love him as Edward. But Robert Pattinson as himself, not so much. Don't get me wrong, he is very easy on the eyes, but only really sparks my interest when he's in character as Edward.
I don't really have anything nice to say about Kristen Stewart, so I will refrain. However, Sweet Pea's mommy made a good point in that maybe she will be better once she is "turned".
New Moon was awesome. This is a rare case where I think the movie was actually better than the book. For some reason, I cried through most of the book. I was so heartbroken for Bella. I only got a little weepy a few times during the movie. I must be getting soft in my old age. I'm looking forward to June 2010 for Eclipse. Has anyone heard when filming starts on Breaking Dawn?
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
I Met The Pioneer Woman, Ree Drummond!
So, I have been following the Pioneer Woman's blog, it is actually a full blown website now, for about a year and a half. I stumbled upon her site while searching for scrapbook fonts of all things. I was instantly hooked and could not stop reading. I tried tons of her recipes, all with raves from my family, took her advice on photography and photoshop, and laughed at all of her stories of life on a cattle ranch. I read her entire series on how she met her husband, Marlboro Man, and their dating life and wedding. I feel like I know her. She's someone I could hang out with. She could be my new BFF. My husband calls me a stalker.
I couldn't wait for her cookbook to come out. I was checking the site a while back and saw that she released the dates for her cookbook tour and sure enough, she was coming to St. Louis! I ran out and bought the cookbook the day it was released and patiently waited for the day to come for me to meet her. In the meantime, I tried about 15 recipes from the book, all successful. See the picture below of the signed page - it has a food stain on it :)
I drug my friend Anna down to the signing with me. We got there 2 hours before it started to make sure we got a good seat. I read that in previous cities people waited 4-5 hours to meet her and have their book signed. They even moved the event from it's original location at Left Bank Books to Christ Church Cathedral in order to have more space due to the popularity of this event in other cities. We got to the signing and were in the second row! So we waited. And waited.
Finally, she came out. And she was just as delightful in person as she is on her site and as she was on the Bonnie Hunt Show. Marlboro Man and 2 of her punks (adorable sons) were with her and they were quite entertaining, did I mention they were super adorably cute? She did a question and answer session (even did her Ethel Merman impersonation) for about and hour then started signing books. She signed my book, I had my picture taken with her, then Marlboro Man signed my book and was kind enough to take a picture too. Bryce, her older son who is 7, even asked if he could sign the book - so cute! To top it all off, she gave a t-shirt to everyone. Anna and I had a blast. I am so excited I got to meet the Pioneer Woman.
If you have never been to her site, go there now. If you don't have her cookbook, get it now. You can thank me later :)
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Background
So, in my first post I made it sound like I am a single mother, which I'm not. My husband hasn't seen the blog yet, but if he had, he surely would have made a comment about not being mentioned.
Like I said, I have a husband. I like to call him Steebe. Don't ask me why. I started it one day and it stuck. We have been married 11 happy years. When we got married we said we were definitely NOT having children. To pacify all of the naysayers, we started telling everyone that we would talk about it in 5 years. So we went about our married life, traveling, eating out just about every night of the week, hanging out with our friends and pretty much everything else people without the responsibility of children do. Then we decided we needed a new house. We had a cute little (and by little, I mean about 850 square feet) bungalow in the city that was perfect for the 2 of us when we were newly married. But after accumulating the amount of "stuff" that we did after about 4 years, we decided we were out of space and needed something bigger. Now, I need to clarify that after about 3 years I started planting the seeds regarding moving in Steebe's head. I was much more patient back then. It took a year for him to "realize" that I was right and we did indeed need more space. We knew that we wanted to build a house. Clarification, have a house built. We have no business doing anything with a hammer that goes beyond hanging a picture, and sometimes that doesn't even come out right. Anyway, we looked and looked and looked for a builder in the right area and in the right price range. We finally decided on a location and put the deposit down on the lot. It was the floor plan we wanted, in the location we wanted, in the price range we wanted. But, it turned out that they weren't starting our phase of the subdivision for about another 8-12 months! So, back to the drawing board. We decided we needed some help, so we recruited a real estate agent. She suggested changing our target area to a little town about 8 miles from our original choice. We took her advice, found a lot, found a builder and started the process. We got lucky and our little bungalow sold before we even put the sign in the yard and our house was built 2 months since the weather cooperated.
In May 2002, we moved from the city to a little German farming town. Sounds drastic, huh? It isn't. It's about 25 minutes from our house in the city. But once you get out of the city and head the direction of our house, it starts feeling like small town USA. The closer you get to our house, the more you feel like you are smack in the middle of the town Footloose was filmed in. But it's not. It's a community with a small town feel but close to all of the city amenities and our family.
So we have moved into our brand new house, which is over double the size of our little city bungalow and we are feeling like we are in a mansion - okay, not really, but the extra space was great. We spent the next few months decorating, arranging furniture and getting the house exactly the way we wanted it. Now what?
Here we are almost to our 5 year anniversary. Our mothers and grandmothers are reminding us that we said we were going to discuss children after 5 years. So we have the conversation. Sounds dramatic, but it was about a 10 minute discussion that led to the conclusion that we would not try to prevent anything and if it happened, then it was meant to be. 3 weeks later it happened. And I know exactly when it happened. September 21, 2003. We were going to see the Lion King Musical that evening. We had reservations at our favorite restaurant for dinner. We were late for our reservation. Why? Because we were busy getting me pregnant. I never imagined it would happen that fast, so you can imagine my surprise a few weeks later when I didn't start my period and a pregnancy test came back positive. We were in such disbelief that we immediately went to the drug store and spent a small fortune on 3 more boxes, all different brands, of pregnancy tests all of which came back positive.
I mentioned my paranoia in my first post. I have never been the paranoid, worry wart kind of person. Until I found out I was pregnant. I didn't feel pregnant. My boobs weren't sore. I wasn't nauseous. I wasn't having cravings. I wasn't tired. I immediately started to worry. My doctor took away all of my pregnancy books. If he could have, he would have prohibited all Internet access for the duration of my pregnancy. But, here's where the paranoia really snowballed into turning me into a full on psycho freak. We booked a 7 night Caribbean cruise before I found out I was pregnant. When we left for the cruise I was only 8 weeks pregnant and was feeling great. About the 3rd night into the cruise we were partaking in the same activity that got me pregnant and I noticed some spotting. We are in the middle of the ocean heading to Grand Cayman from Jamaica. Cell phone reception is non-existent at this point so we head down to the ship's doctor. He was a very nice Swedish man. But he was not helpful. Apparently the word "miscarriage" is not used in Europe or Scandinavia. They refer to a miscarriage as an "abortion". All he kept saying was "I don't think you are having an abortion." It was scary. It made my blood pressure rise. He only made me worry more. Finally in the morning we had cell phone reception and I got through to my doctor's office. The spotting had stopped. They told me to keep an eye on it. But, if it started again and got worse or had clots, I would need to go to a hospital. Our next port of call was Cozumel and I had horrific images of me in some Mexican hospital. But it was fine. It never happened again. But I still worried for the rest of the vacation.
The day after we returned from the cruise I went to the doctor. Had an ultrasound and the little peanut was perfectly fine. But the chain of events on the cruise set something off in me that is still somewhat a part of me today.
The rest of the pregnancy was fine. I had about a 48 hour period where I was nauseous and that was it. I felt great, besides having a hard time getting comfortable in bed towards the end. Then at 34 weeks, all of my greatest fears came to fruition. I was having a premature baby. I developed pre-eclampsia. The pre-cursor to eclampsia, which you want to avoid at all costs. My blood pressure was sky high, I had protein in my urine (apparently that's bad) and my doctor was afraid I was going to have a heart attack or stroke. I spent some time in the perinatal center having some high tech ultrasounds to check on the growth of the baby. He was fine. I wasn't. After 24 hours of tests, we were told that in order for me to get better, the baby had to be delivered. 6 weeks early. His room wasn't done. The crib still needed to be put together. I didn't have my "hospital bag" packed. I didn't have a chance to buy my cute after delivery pajamas. And we were scared to death. We didn't know what to expect. And we didn't really have a chance to think about it. Everything happened pretty fast. They broke my water, started the pitosin (that's probably misspelled), I got the epidural and the next thing I know, it's time to push. 4 pushes was all it took. He was only 4 pounds 11 ounces. He cried immediately. He was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I held him - for about 1 minute - and they took him. Whisked him away to the NICU. I didn't see him again for a few hours. I didn't hold him for 3 days. That was the longest, most excruciating 3 days of my life. I was scared. Steebe wasn't. He knew everything would be fine. But I was a freak. I blamed myself. If I hadn't gotten pre-eclampsia, this wouldn't have happened. If something went wrong, I would never forgive myself.
More later.
Like I said, I have a husband. I like to call him Steebe. Don't ask me why. I started it one day and it stuck. We have been married 11 happy years. When we got married we said we were definitely NOT having children. To pacify all of the naysayers, we started telling everyone that we would talk about it in 5 years. So we went about our married life, traveling, eating out just about every night of the week, hanging out with our friends and pretty much everything else people without the responsibility of children do. Then we decided we needed a new house. We had a cute little (and by little, I mean about 850 square feet) bungalow in the city that was perfect for the 2 of us when we were newly married. But after accumulating the amount of "stuff" that we did after about 4 years, we decided we were out of space and needed something bigger. Now, I need to clarify that after about 3 years I started planting the seeds regarding moving in Steebe's head. I was much more patient back then. It took a year for him to "realize" that I was right and we did indeed need more space. We knew that we wanted to build a house. Clarification, have a house built. We have no business doing anything with a hammer that goes beyond hanging a picture, and sometimes that doesn't even come out right. Anyway, we looked and looked and looked for a builder in the right area and in the right price range. We finally decided on a location and put the deposit down on the lot. It was the floor plan we wanted, in the location we wanted, in the price range we wanted. But, it turned out that they weren't starting our phase of the subdivision for about another 8-12 months! So, back to the drawing board. We decided we needed some help, so we recruited a real estate agent. She suggested changing our target area to a little town about 8 miles from our original choice. We took her advice, found a lot, found a builder and started the process. We got lucky and our little bungalow sold before we even put the sign in the yard and our house was built 2 months since the weather cooperated.
In May 2002, we moved from the city to a little German farming town. Sounds drastic, huh? It isn't. It's about 25 minutes from our house in the city. But once you get out of the city and head the direction of our house, it starts feeling like small town USA. The closer you get to our house, the more you feel like you are smack in the middle of the town Footloose was filmed in. But it's not. It's a community with a small town feel but close to all of the city amenities and our family.
So we have moved into our brand new house, which is over double the size of our little city bungalow and we are feeling like we are in a mansion - okay, not really, but the extra space was great. We spent the next few months decorating, arranging furniture and getting the house exactly the way we wanted it. Now what?
Here we are almost to our 5 year anniversary. Our mothers and grandmothers are reminding us that we said we were going to discuss children after 5 years. So we have the conversation. Sounds dramatic, but it was about a 10 minute discussion that led to the conclusion that we would not try to prevent anything and if it happened, then it was meant to be. 3 weeks later it happened. And I know exactly when it happened. September 21, 2003. We were going to see the Lion King Musical that evening. We had reservations at our favorite restaurant for dinner. We were late for our reservation. Why? Because we were busy getting me pregnant. I never imagined it would happen that fast, so you can imagine my surprise a few weeks later when I didn't start my period and a pregnancy test came back positive. We were in such disbelief that we immediately went to the drug store and spent a small fortune on 3 more boxes, all different brands, of pregnancy tests all of which came back positive.
I mentioned my paranoia in my first post. I have never been the paranoid, worry wart kind of person. Until I found out I was pregnant. I didn't feel pregnant. My boobs weren't sore. I wasn't nauseous. I wasn't having cravings. I wasn't tired. I immediately started to worry. My doctor took away all of my pregnancy books. If he could have, he would have prohibited all Internet access for the duration of my pregnancy. But, here's where the paranoia really snowballed into turning me into a full on psycho freak. We booked a 7 night Caribbean cruise before I found out I was pregnant. When we left for the cruise I was only 8 weeks pregnant and was feeling great. About the 3rd night into the cruise we were partaking in the same activity that got me pregnant and I noticed some spotting. We are in the middle of the ocean heading to Grand Cayman from Jamaica. Cell phone reception is non-existent at this point so we head down to the ship's doctor. He was a very nice Swedish man. But he was not helpful. Apparently the word "miscarriage" is not used in Europe or Scandinavia. They refer to a miscarriage as an "abortion". All he kept saying was "I don't think you are having an abortion." It was scary. It made my blood pressure rise. He only made me worry more. Finally in the morning we had cell phone reception and I got through to my doctor's office. The spotting had stopped. They told me to keep an eye on it. But, if it started again and got worse or had clots, I would need to go to a hospital. Our next port of call was Cozumel and I had horrific images of me in some Mexican hospital. But it was fine. It never happened again. But I still worried for the rest of the vacation.
The day after we returned from the cruise I went to the doctor. Had an ultrasound and the little peanut was perfectly fine. But the chain of events on the cruise set something off in me that is still somewhat a part of me today.
The rest of the pregnancy was fine. I had about a 48 hour period where I was nauseous and that was it. I felt great, besides having a hard time getting comfortable in bed towards the end. Then at 34 weeks, all of my greatest fears came to fruition. I was having a premature baby. I developed pre-eclampsia. The pre-cursor to eclampsia, which you want to avoid at all costs. My blood pressure was sky high, I had protein in my urine (apparently that's bad) and my doctor was afraid I was going to have a heart attack or stroke. I spent some time in the perinatal center having some high tech ultrasounds to check on the growth of the baby. He was fine. I wasn't. After 24 hours of tests, we were told that in order for me to get better, the baby had to be delivered. 6 weeks early. His room wasn't done. The crib still needed to be put together. I didn't have my "hospital bag" packed. I didn't have a chance to buy my cute after delivery pajamas. And we were scared to death. We didn't know what to expect. And we didn't really have a chance to think about it. Everything happened pretty fast. They broke my water, started the pitosin (that's probably misspelled), I got the epidural and the next thing I know, it's time to push. 4 pushes was all it took. He was only 4 pounds 11 ounces. He cried immediately. He was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I held him - for about 1 minute - and they took him. Whisked him away to the NICU. I didn't see him again for a few hours. I didn't hold him for 3 days. That was the longest, most excruciating 3 days of my life. I was scared. Steebe wasn't. He knew everything would be fine. But I was a freak. I blamed myself. If I hadn't gotten pre-eclampsia, this wouldn't have happened. If something went wrong, I would never forgive myself.
More later.
Monday, November 9, 2009
New at this...
I have been following other blogs for a while now and always wondered if I had enough to say to have my own blog. The answer was always "no" since I figured no one would care about anything I had to say, so why bother. Then I thought, I don't care if anyone cares what I have to say, so here I am.Anyway, the point of me doing this really is to post pictures and stories about my sweet little man. The joy of my life. The reason I look forward to each new day. My five year old son. He is the sweetest, cutest, most loving, smartest, polite and every-other-positive-adjective-you-can-think-of kid in the world (but I am partial).
You see, he was a preemie. Not the 1 pound variety preemie, but still scary nonetheless. He was born at 34 weeks and 4 pounds, 11 ounces because I developed pre-eclampsia. Basically, I woke up one morning and looked like the Stay Puffed Marshmallow Man's bride. I freaked out (more than ususal, I'll talk more about my paranoia later, when we know eachother better), went to the doctor and my blood pressure was 198/129. So, obviously I was sent straight to the hospital. I'll get to the rest of the story later. But, that's why he was a preemie. So, I am a very protective, very proud mother of 1 child.
So, this blog is dedicated to the Little Man and our lives with him. I can't wait to tell you all about him.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
