Things To Look Forward To

As many of you know, at least I've mentioned before, I tend to gravitate towards natural cheerfulness.  That doesn't mean I'm always happy or anything, I simply am often happy and really small or silly things make me happy.  My personality allows me to see the positives easily, in fact, much more easily than the negatives.

Sometimes, though, I do get down, and this last week was a down sort of week for me.  I think it was a combination of fighting off a cold, being stuck indoors most of the week with sick kids, and being the first full week in two months with no friends or family around.  I have had a really hard time seeing the positives.

So, as an exercise in cheerfulness, I'm going to share with you a list things I have to look forward to the rest of the year.  My hope is that this snaps me out of my funk, but we'll see.

Soccer starts next week.  At the very least, I'll get some cute pictures out of it.  We're also going to the Open House at the dance school and probably signing Jubee up for ballet classes.

We're going to see the in-laws over Labor Day weekend.  I love my in-laws, they are super fun.

My sister and niece are coming to visit the first week of October, probably.  We're gonna party like it's 1999.  Well, maybe not, I think in 1999 I still referred to Katie as "Princess Lipgloss," and we generally got along like 13-year-old and 17-year-old sisters, in other words, not well.  So, instead, we'll party like it's 2012.  Only without the Mayan Apocalypse.  We'll probably go get our first Pumpkin Spice Latte of the season.  That's probably more fun than the Mayan Apocalypse anyway.

By that time, it's officially Autumn.  Autumn is probably my favorite season and I'm really looking forward to Fall/Winter here in Laramie.  Hey, I like to be snowed in, at least until about mid-January, and then I get a little bored with it.  I also love pumpkin-y, spicy flavors, so the kids and I are going to do a lot of baking, a lot of playing in the snow, and a lot of crafts.  I'm going to cook lots of stews and soups and curries, and experiment with egg nog recipes.

We are tentatively planning on visiting the in-laws for Thanksgiving, or making them come visit us, depending on how much time Cam gets off work.  Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays, like I said, I'm generally cheerful, and thanksgiving just makes sense.  Food makes sense, too.  I think that no matter what "diet" a person is on, feasting is important.  We Americans tend to overeat all the time, and then feel guilty during feasting days, but I find it much easier to maintain some semblance of self-control when I have a feast to look forward to...so I'm looking forward to it RIGHT NOW.  Haha.

And then there's December...the month of Christmas.  I already have a Lego Star Wars Advent Calendar in my closet, waiting.  I'm going to watch ABC Family and Hallmark Channel original holiday movies until my brain turns to magical elf glitter and comes out of my ears, and it's going to be awesome.

I have family coming to visit over Christmas, weather permitting.  That's going to be fun, and I get to spend Nov/Dec Christmas shopping!  I love presents, especially picking out the perfect one for each person.  I think I needed to start saving six months ago.  Uh oh. 

The Light at the End of The Tunnel

As many of you know, potty-training has been a HUGE struggle in our house.  I blame it mostly on the frequent moves; as soon as we got close to having some interest, we would have to move and it was back to diapers.  Anyway, that's my excuse for having a 3-and-a-half and 4-and-a-half year old still in pullups.

Blue Steel

Well, no more.  As of this last week, we can officially call Sammy "potty trained!"  It was like a switch flipped, and he was suddenly and voluntarily going on his own.  He's gone a week with no accidents (save one), in "big boy undies."


We spent most of the weekend celebrating Sam's achievement, though it was more for Jubee's sake than Sam's.  We thought if she saw what a big deal it was, she'd be more inclined to try it.

We went to the playground:

Yes, Jubee IS wearing soccer pads.  Soccer starts in a couple of weeks, so we got their gear, and she really wanted to wear them that day.

We went to the wading pool:

We took Sam to the video game store and let him pick out a couple of new (to him) Wii games:

We watercolored:

And we ate banana splits for dinner on Saturday (for real):

Unfortunately, it wasn't a very good weekend anyway, everyone had a cold.  So, we just laid around most of the time.  Oh well, it seemed fun on paper.

An (Unexpectedly) Awesome Morning Outing

The kids and I had, as the title suggests, an awesome morning out.  It was even more awesome because it was an outing I had been dreading, indeed, putting off for days rather than drag sick kids on errands.  But, out we went, and I'm super duper glad.

First, we went to the cable company to exchange some equipment.  Sammy kept saying, "I 'ungry, mom."  I was like, whatever, you just ate before we left, kid.

Next, we went to Safeway for flour.  Sammy said, "yay, it's house of food!"  Yes, that is a building where they keep food...but nothing prepared I'm going to feed my kids for lunch.  He started crying as we walked out, this is the conversation we had:

Sam:  Mommy, mah tummy 'urts, I 'ungry (Mommy, my tummy hurts, I'm hungry).
Me:  Sam, you just ate breakfast, you can't be hungry.
Sam:  NO!  Loob-lee ATE mah jelly bu'er bread, I 'ungry (No, Jubilee ate my jelly butter bread, I'm hungry)!
Me:  Jubilee, did you eat Sammy's breakfast?
Jubilee: Okay! (her blanket affermative)
Me:  Why did you eat his breakfast?
Jubilee:  Eyez 'UNGRY, mom (I was hungry, mom).

Point in fact, it was actually a croissant with chocolate peanut butter and a banana they ate for breakfast, not jelly butter bread.  I'm not sure why he calls any sort of bread with anything at all on it "jelly butter bread," but he does.

Anyway, we were already downtown, and I really wanted to go to the hippie health food store to see if they knew where to get a scoby for my kombucha locally, so I told Sammy we'd eat as soon as we finished. By this point, my lack of food was making my tummy hurt, too, so I was sympathetic, but I wanted to get stuff DONE and get home before they melted down.  The guy at the store said he they didn't have any scobys (scobies? scobi?) and he didn't know where to get one, but to try the vegetarian restaurant a few doors down.  So, down we walked.

The vegetarian restaurant didn't have any kombucha, or scobys, or any idea what I was talking about...but they did have a falafel pita sandwich lunch special, so we stayed for lunch.  We had so much fun, we sat in a booth and chatted about legos and Mickey Mouse and whatnot, and my sandwich was yummy.  The kids got PB&J, but since that's all they wanted anyway, they were happy.

They were really good, perfect really, though Sam was starting to get a bit sleepy:

After lunch, we walked outside, and a train was going by.  We had to sit on the closest bench and watch it until it was past.  It was very, very exciting.

We stopped at a local coffee shop, because Mommy was wearing down (oddly, before the kids did).  They had homemade marshmallows there for $0.75, so I got a couple for the kids.  I tried to get a picture of those marshmallows, they were so pretty, but this is the closest I got:

So, I have this thing with iced coffee.  If it's good, well-roasted, fresh beans, and cold pressed, it's the most amazing stuff in the world, but if it's not, it's pretty gross.  I asked the lady behind the counter if their iced coffee was cold pressed.  She looked confused and said, "um, we have toddy coffee, it's like, soaked in cold water."  I said that was fine, I'll take one.  I'm being totally honest, it was the best coffee I've ever had.  I usually put a little simple syrup in my iced coffee, just to combat the bitterness of brewed and then chilled iced coffee, but I totally didn't have to in this case.  I'm sure their beans are also phenomenal, but I really want to get a Toddy System now.   The depth of flavor was just magical, I mean a strong dark chocolate undertone and not a hint of bitterness.  Ah-mazing.

Anyway, the kids did super well, we skipped and jumped down the sidewalk.

We jumped off every chair and park bench we could find.  Well, they did anyway.

I've decided we need to have an outing like this more often.  We try and schedule all of our "fun" stuff to do with Cam, which is good, but it also leaves us with 10 hours a day 5 days a week with nothing to do besides the playground.  This was perfect, he won't be jealous or upset he missed the train or eating meatless food, and we had a really good time.