Adventures in Starting Over At 30
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Oh My Little Blog, How I Have Negleted you.
I have not written anything new in pushing a year and much has happened. Right now I am days away from a scary, exciting and long awaited move back to my Lone Star State. I don't have a spare moment to sit, much less decide to finally post a new blog entry, but something brought me here anyway. so here's a little hello and to whoever may care, I haven't forgotten about you. I will try my hardest to pick this back up when I am settled because I did very much enjoy it.
So long for now... : )
Monday, November 15, 2010
Gobble Gobble and Jingle Bells
I have been so pre-occupied with trying to get recipes on here that I have neglected my blogging duties. Writing a descriptive recipe is a lot harder than I foresaw it to be. I am somewhat of a perfectionist, so between my limited computer skills and being very new to cooking, it is a challenge to satisfy my "need to get it just right" tick. Over the weekend I started to get a little burned out from this thing, so I put it down and didn't allow myself to think about it for a day or so. Monday is now here, the boys are being very good and I feel like I can take a quiet moment to put a few thoughts in writing.
Well Nate's days at community college are coming to a close, 3 days and counting. As of last night he still has a 4.0, but is a little worried about the Chemistry final, but I'm not….that man can pull an A out of you know where and I have no idea how he does it. Still waiting on something to happen job wise, but we have a few back-up plans in place, just in case. Cross your fingers.
For the 1st time in my entire life, I am kind of wanting to go and experience Black Friday. The thought of a gazillion people pushing and fighting over merchandise…suffocating body heat, the deafening hum of all the voices and tight crowded spaces has always made me a little nervous. For some reason, probably the fact we have been so broke for a while, I am craving the granddaddy of all shopping fixes. So if anyone has a few hundred dollars they would like to donate to my retail therapy, by all means :). Christmas shopping in general up here has always had a special feel to it for me. Maybe it's the snow….but there is nothing like braving the weather, making the hour drive to Des Moines, fighting the crowds and finishing with a good meal at a nice restaurant. Money or not, I still want to at least go window shopping this season.
Can't wait for the holiday ball to get rolling. The boys are finally old enough to start getting excited about the approaching festivities. I remember that feeling when I was a kid. That magical feeling. I'm so glad I get to watch my kids experience that. Santa Clause and presents, special church services, family and friends, decorations and music....the whole works. I loved Christmas time then, and I love it now. Ho Ho Ho let's get this party started!
Monday, November 8, 2010
My Flower Girls
From the first time I met Gerber, I knew it was BFF’s for life. We have been through a lot together and time only brings us closer. I did the flowers for her wedding, she was there for the birth of my 2nd son. We lived together for a hot minute and have spent countless days sitting and drinking coffee on her front porch visiting. Man I miss those days.
Tonight was Daisy’s son’s birthday slumber party. This means the husbands and the sons all gather at someone’s house. The boys do boy things and the husbands have a few beers and probably play music (that’s my family). The women take the itty bitty babies and daughters and go to another house to drink wine and be a little silly. This is how I got my phone date. Knowing they would all be together, I called to crash the party. I had a nice long chitchat with each of them (minus Rose, she couldn’t make it : (
and it almost felt like I was there with them, hanging out in the backyard, sipping the wine and laughing about anything and everything.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
It's All BUSY-ness
This past weekend was no exception. Of course there were all the Halloween festivities…which btw, we will be trick or treating on a much different scale next year. 30 kids in the wind and cold getting on and off a trailer is just a little more chaos than I care to voluntarily expose myself to. I would take much more delight in watching just my 2 boys running from house to house excitedly trying to fill their bag. The neighborhood that we are in right now does a block Halloween party every year. A couple months ago, they had a neighborhood potluck. At this party we were told Halloween was off the hook and so much fun. Everyone got into it. SO...last minute my husband and I threw together cave man and women costumes, complete with ragged clothing, teased hair and dirty faces to go along with the boys dinosaur costumes. We set off up the driveway with my cute little T-Rex and Triceratops roaring a loud and constant roar behind us (yeah, that wasn’t a costume choice I regret…sarcasm. I think their roar started Wednesday when they got the costumes and didn’t stop until Sunday). We headed to the party thrown by bunch of people we don’t really know. We walk in and of course we are the only adults out of 30 or more that dressed up. Needless to say, once food was ate (I made these really cute white chocolate covered strawberries that looked like ghost and crème filled pumpkin cupcakes….yummy) and the trailer ride was done, we headed home early. It actually worked out that we didn’t have that want to stay and play, we had our biggest BBQ order to date.
When we first started, it was just the meat…but people kept asking if we had sides. So we expanded to potato salad, coleslaw, pies, sausage and my personal favorite, jalapeno poppers. I have been in such a “learning how to cook” kick, that I am even making the buns that go with the brisket from scratch. I'm still trying to nail a couple recipes to perfection, but it will come. I made my very first, from scratch pie just a month or so ago, and already they aren’t bad. We have our own seasoning rub that I make in bulk as well as a secret BBQ sauce. I’m pretty proud of how our culinary skills have blossomed.
So that’s kind of an update of our life at the moment. I’ve got to throw a few of these out every once in a while to let you know just where we stand on the path to our future.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Green, Gold, Snow and Cold.
Monday, October 25, 2010
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.
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 3rd 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:
Thursday, October 21, 2010
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 1st 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
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
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 1st 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 1st 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.