Green, Gold, Snow and Cold.

The air feels different here.  I’m not sure how to explain it.  I know it can probably be broken down scientifically to humidity and what knot, but to me it’s something that is more of a feeling than an equation of meteorology of some sort.  I snuck outside for a bit tonight to just sit and enjoy a really beautiful night.  The wind is blowing through the trees making all sorts of spooky noises, getting me excited for this weekend.  I’m definitely in a Halloweenie kind of mood.  It is surprisingly warm for late October.  With all of my cold weather climate expectations, I halfway thought there would be 2 feet of snow on the ground by now.  Certainly didn’t think I would be kicking back outside in short pajama bottoms and a T-shirt at 10pm.  

Watching the seasons actually change has been something I have really enjoyed this year.  I’ve been in Iowa for a full calendar year before, but now I think I am finally stopping to appreciate it.  Don’t get me wrong, I am definitely going to miss my 50 degree Texas Januarys, but to witness nature as it is intended to be is something really special.  I have watched the green slowly change to all sorts of reds, yellows, oranges, tans and browns.  The vast acres of tall kelly green corn and carpets of rich emerald green soy beans have all been harvested and the fields are left in shades of tans and browns as far as you can see.  The trees now have either lost their leaves or are hanging on to vibrant mixes of warm colors.  I’m sure after tonight’s gustiness, the majority of the trees clothing will be left on the ground for some poor kid to earn his allowance.  I’m mad at myself for putting off taking pictures around town…it has been so pretty for the last couple of weeks.  We still have flowers here and there and that makes me happy, I need those as long as I can to get me through till spring.  One good frost and they are history, which I’m sure is only days away.

The squirrels (that could eat Texas ones for lunch, they are hefty and huge) and the chipmunks are all very busy scurrying and burying for the long cold months ahead.   We have had all sorts of migratory birds hanging around in massive flocks.  There was some sort of beautiful white crane in the hundreds that called the treetops behind the house home for a while.  It was so strange to walk outside around 6pm and it sounding a lot like a tropical island.   Now it’s mostly small black birds swooping and diving in swarms.  Soon they will all be gone as well, leaving deer the only wildlife to really watch for. 

The approaching cold is something I am bracing for.  I think there is nothing more beautiful and picturesque than fresh fallen snow. The way it collects on bare tree branches and rooftops, outlining in clean lines of white is stunning.  One of my favorite things during winter is when a gentle snow begins to fall during the dark hours…everything is relatively still except the large flakes finding their individual paths to the ground.  If you stand really still and listen really hard, you can actually hear them resting on the surface of the Earth…it’s kind of a tinkling sound.  Along with the visual majesty, there is also all the fun things you can do when it’s not toooo cold that make snow worth experiencing.  Sledding and snowman building are my 2 of my favorites.  I cannot wait to take the boys out this winter to do all those things with them for the first time.  I was here for 2 winters before someone (my husband) took me out and showed me how a snowman was built.

 The cold however, after a few months wears on you.  The endless days of heavy skies battle with the surreal sunny days that fool the mind and spirit.  Those are the worst.  You just want to finally get outside…the sun is blinding bright, but when you step out, the snot freezes on your nose and your chin goes numb (which is a very strange feeling).  That’s when you run back inside and curse the 2 more months of below freezing temperatures.  

Everything however is a cycle and I’m sure I will take comfort in those long winter months that spring has to eventually show her face once again, and spring is absolutely breathtaking up here.  With the melting snow, budding trees, thunderstorms, and don’t forget all those amazing tulips…that’s when I will; once again take delight in the fact that the air feels different here.  If you have to struggle through something, you appreciate the change all that much more.  This is my way of having a positive twist on something that I am not all together looking forward to.  I’m sure that my friend homesickness will come knocking a little more while I am holed up with the boys listening to the wind howl and the temperatures drop.  I am determined to stay positive and not sink into a dark place. 

Everything is a cycle and everything is ever changing.  I will take comfort in that.

Beer in a Cup

So I have come to the conclusion I CANNOT drink beer in a cup…or shouldn't anyway, it's an automatic death sentence for the following day of my life. What's beer in a cup? Beer in a cup is more commonly known as keg beer.

 My husband and I decided to go out and celebrate his membership to the Dirty 30 club a little early. It was supposed to just be a couple games of pool and a pitcher of beer to split between us. The night quickly escalated to 3 pitchers plus a few glasses of beer in a cup that I scored from my first ever round of beer pong, which I am completely awesome at.  Our simple night out ended up being 4 hours of way too much beer in a cup.

After finally making it home and sleeping it off for a few hours, my husband asks how I am. I grab my head and reply, "It was the beer in a cup." Then I roll over wanting to just end it all. Approximately 12 hours later, I am finally human again, almost.

I have known for a while that I cannot handle keg beer. I have only acquired the taste for beer in the last 2 years, so I am still as new and experienced as most people were in high school. Until a wonderful trip to Mexico I thought it tasted like camel urine (and no, I don't ACTUALLY know what camel urine taste like, but I thought for sure it had to be close…why camel, I have no idea) and smelled worse. I choked down my first Corona in Cozumel and have slowly come to really like the stuff. However it wasn't till this last summer I had my first experience with beer in a cup. We went to ZacFest, a party thrown in my late brother-in-laws honor every May. The beer in a cup was plentiful and everyone was having a great time. It was our first weekend back in Iowa so not only was it a great time to remember a great guy (who LOVED beer in a cup), it was also a reunion for my husband and I and a bunch of great friends. The next day was the worst day of my life. Have you ever had food poisoning? That's what this was like…only worse. I still think there might be a slight chance it was food poisoning (I vaguely remember making a pulled pork sandwich before we left and who knows how long it sat out), but after my last experience with beer in a cup, I'm not so sure.

If you are thinking, why the hell would you drink beer in a cup again at the bar, good question.  I thought, "I can do a pitcher of beer…it's on tap, a lot of people prefer that right?  It MUST be better than in the bottle."  Wrong.  It's keg beer, AKA beer in a cup.  I didn't find this out until about halfway through the night.  I went up to order our 3^rd and last pitcher, the keg ran out and they had to switch it.  When I saw them wheeling that large silver barrel to the back room, the realization slowly set in and I knew I was doomed.

So I now have a golden rule about the golden brew:

Unless I am the one pouring the beer from the bottle or can into a wonderfully frosted mug, I will, under no circumstances, ever drink beer in a cup again...even if it's free.

It’s ALL About the Hair.

Before too much time passes and it is old news, I have to tell the story of my youngest son's hair-loss….or haircut to put it a little less dramatically.

To understand this story, you have to know what beautiful hair my son had. (I will see if I can figure out how to post pictures on here, bear with me...I am still learning). It was the prettiest shade of honey blonde, highlighted from playing outside this summer, soft curls that were my own little humidity detector (the more humid, the more curl). It was about to the middle of his back and when you pulled it into a ponytail he looked like the cutest little surfer, musician……..or little girl. Yes, even I, his mother, fan of the long hair and all, could not deny any longer he looked more like a sweet little girl than the rough and tumble boy he is. It went quickly from little old ladies at the grocery store mistaking his gender, to all ages….children to grandmas telling me what a pretty little girl I had. I knew it was time, but I also knew that the curls were history the first time he got it cut.

The last straw started getting weak when I was picking my 3 year old up at preschool. I was standing in line, waiting to get my kid when another mom looked at my 2 year old and said to me, "She has the prettiest hair." I smile politely and reply as I always do, "Thank you, but that's my little boy." The poor woman looks at me very confused and says, "Oh is she a tomboy, that's so cute!" I again smile and firmly reiterate that the child at my feet is in fact an actual BOY with all the right parts and everything. She of course is very apologetic and we have a great laugh. Everyday stuff for the mother of a boy with the best locks on the block : ). Then the classroom door opens and it's our turn to step up and get my other son. It just so happens that on this particular day, I dressed my boys like they were twins down to their shoes in very boy-looking clothes. Cheesy I know, but some mornings, in a mad dash out the door, grabbing identical outfits requires a little less brain power. When the teacher sees the boys together she says to my oldest who has just been in her class, "Awe, your little sister is dressed just like you today." …………I mean, seriously?

However, this is not the day I come home thinking, "Ok, today is the day, enough is enough." Oh no, this was actually all still a very typical occurrence. The day his hair was doomed was 2 days later when I took them to a park and the SAME lady that thought my child was the cute tomboy with beautiful hair just 2 days prior made the SAME mistake when we ran into her at the playground. I thought, if my kiddo looks so much like a girl people can forget within days, maybe it's time to stop torturing the kid.

A few weeks before that, I took a trip home to see my family. I thought it would be funny to make my son a light blue shirt with dark blue letters that read 'I'm a Boy' on it. While walking through the airport, we pass an employee and I hear them say to whoever they were standing next to "That ain't no boy." I thought it was hilarious, but it didn't help the not-to-cut side of the 'To-cut or not-to-cut' debate.

The night it happened was very much not planned. We had just gotten done with dinner and my sister-in-law was cutting her fiancés hair (which my son's hair wasn't the only one on this night to suffer a tragic hair loss, but that's another story and I'm not sure if I have the right to tell it). For some reason, (and maybe a glass of white wine…I'm not used to it, I'm more of a red drinker) I get it in my head I am going to finally do it.

Sucker in hand and watching Blue's Clues (FYI, a sucker is NOT a good idea when you're getting a haircut)…..my son is clueless he is about to lose his hair. My goal was to just cut to his shoulders and see what it looked like. Snip 1 was right on. Snip 2 however, not so much. Just as I was about to cut, something catches his attention and he jerks his head around. The 2 inches I was going for turned into like 4 or 5….so it was all over. The long hair was history. My husband, I swear, had a little mix of rage and sorrow in his eyes for a moment. Everyone else (especially my mother-in-law…the long hair I think was slowly killing her) pretended it was a great look on him. In actuality it was really, really REALLY bad. With his hair wet, be looked like a bad version on Bon Jovi, with it dry he looked like a cast member of Oliver Twist. It was kind of painful to look at. So needless to say, I took him the 1^st chance I had to a salon and he got a cute little shaggy boy hair cut.


It has slowly grown on me. I never broke down in tears. He is back to being my little rock star.

BEFORE                                                                         AFTER

     

Not Sure What I’m Doing….But Here I Go Anyway

So I have decided to jump on the blog-wagon. I've never kept up with someone's blog or even know how to get whatever I am writing on the internet, but I love to write and so here I am. My name is Jen and I am a wife, mother of 2 boys, a 2 and a 3 year old and a master of picking up random hobbies. I was a floral designer for years until motherhood, now it too is in my catalog of hobbies.

I know that these things (as far as I can tell from various movies) are supposed to have some kind of story line, goal or something like that. Well mine, I suppose, is my journey with my almost 30 year old husband as he goes back to school to complete a degree (of "unknown" as of right now)…but I'm sure unknown is going to be something on the other side of the spectrum from his 1^st degree in Marketing. This journey has taken us from my beloved Texas to his home state of Iowa. All of this came about when day after day he would come home unhappy, overworked, underpaid and unfulfilled (sounds like a lot of husbands, and hell, wives too). One day, very casually I asked, "Hypothetically, if you could do anything in the world, no matter what you would have to do to get there, what would it be….what's your dream job?" He thought about this for a couple of days and came back with response of…wait for it…"Chiropractics". Guess the 'wait for it' was a little unnecessary cause if you don't know my husband, how could that surprise you and if you do know him, well you've already heard our story. Fast forward a few spring and summer months….Iowa fall is upon us, we are snug in our (well really his parent's) basement. My 3 year old is in preschool and loving it, my 2 year old is, well 2 and my husband is a straight A student at a community college, still not 100% positive what he is going for. The Chiropractics turned into Physical Therapy (thanks to some internet research and a lot of skepticism on my part), and that now has done a 180 and we currently looking into a career in Occupational Health and Safety (like OSHA stuff). We shall see where the next fork in the road leads us.

Right now, we have managed to let me continue to stay home with the boys. It kills me to think about a daycare getting to spend more time with them than I do, but we can't live off student loans for much longer. It may do me some good to have a job again though…I haven't had consistent periods of time without children and with adults since my 1^st was born. We shall see….if Nate (my husband) does in fact go the safety route, he may be starting by getting an entry level position then working toward his certificates and degrees at night, money issue solved. I spend a big portion of my day cooking. It has become a slightly surprising passion. I have tried probably over 50 recipes since May and cannot wait to get into the kitchen every day. Everything from Mexican to desserts to comfort and soul food…I just can't get enough. So, with anyone that finds a love of food, my weight has bounced back and forth since the big move from Texas as well….which leads to my next new hobby, I love fad diets. It's silly, I know, but there is something fun about finding a new quick fix and seeing if I have the will power to not cheat for the allotted time and see how the pounds I lose compare to what they promise. Right now it's the infamous Grapefruit Diet from the 70's. It's very similar to the Atkins Diet, which I have done off and on for years. I will probably have a heart attack at a very young age, but hopefully all the red wine I drink will counter some of the damage I have done : ) . This is actually day one and yes, I have cheated...5 jelly beans, 3 saltines and 1 yummy-oh-so-worth-it Dove white chocolate. Maybe tomorrow will be day 1. Very much craving a big ole slice of the caramel apple cheesecake that was one of my projects this last weekend…it's still upstairs in the fridge sweetly calling my name. But not going to give in….not tonight. They say you can lose 10 lbs in 12 days…we shall see. If I could drop 10 from where I'm at now, I would almost be at a before babies weight…..I've always heard it, the last 10 are the hardest to lose.

 

So, with some of the back story done, now the real writing can begin.

My name is Jen, my family is my everything, I love big and try to laugh often….I probably drink too much wine and I am just trying to find happiness in this crazy world. Follow me through my days in Iowa and where ever else we may end up.