Case Lot CHAOS!!!!

7 HOURS!!!!


That's how long it took from when Jaden and I got in line to when we checked out of our Commissary's twice a year case lot sale.  It was Craziness!!!  We got there a half hour before it started thinking that would be adequate, only to find the line already 1/4th of a mile long!  At that was only to get into the tents!  Once you got into the tents, you had to wind up and down the long aisles made of food, picking up what you wanted as you went along, until you got to the end and could check out.  We got in line at 8am, made it to the tents by 11:45am, and finally packed everything into our car at 3pm.  And did I mention that it was a hot and sunny day?  Occasionally there was a breeze and cloud cover, which made it nice outside (I still got sunburned but didn't realize it until I got home) but under those tents it was sweltering!  But Jaden was a little trooper!  I knew enough to dress him in a light and cool outfit, had him sprayed with sunscreen so he didn't get burned, and I had a lot of snacks and drinks with me.  However I did not anticipate being there for SEVEN HOURS and finally he couldn't handle it anymore and just needed to sleep, so we laid him down in the cart and he slept for a good 2-2.5 hours while we were under the tents.  It really put into perspective how incredibly tiny my 15 month child is!!

I tore a piece of cardboard off some of the packaging materials and made it into a fan to keep him cool and anytime he woke up I got him to drink as much water as I could.  Still, we were both totally and completely beat by the time we got home.

Were the deals good?  For the most part.  Were they waiting for 7 hours good?  Probably not, but it was certainly an experience.  Luckily I joined up with two other ladies from my ward so I had good company the whole time.

Some of my deals:
Del Monte large can of spaghetti sauce: 12 cans for $6
Lysol wipes: 12 tubes of wipes for $9
Spray and Shout stain remover: 12 bottles for $6 (I figure we will use more of this as Jaden gets older)
12 cans of Coke (or Dr. Pepper if you're weird like my husband) for $2.25
100 pouches of Scooby Doo Fruit Snacks for $6.99
*If you have gotten better prices on these, don't let me know.  It will just make me depressed at this point!*

Just in Time for What Should Be His First Birthday

His First Steps!!!!  I never knew what to officially call his "first steps".  Was it that one half-stumble he took going from the table to the couch?  I didn't think so, but he went from half-stumbles to 4-5 steps in a row in about a day, so I never knew what to officially call the first steps.  Regardless, he is starting to really trust himself and walking a lot more!  Now, instead of immediately dropping to his hands and knees to get somewhere, he will actually walk until he looses his balance and then crawl the rest of the way!  I'll get it on video really soon I promise!

His First Word!!!  I was getting really worried because not only was he not saying any words, but we wasn't even trying to say any words.  That was the only 12 month milestone he hadn't hit yet.  And then, out of nowhere, he started saying his first word!  And it is....  (drum roll please...)  DUCKY!!!!!!  He has this little rubber ducky (that actually isn't rubber - it's a stress ball) that he is currently obsessed with.  He takes it absolutely everywhere with him!  Jake was convinced he was trying to say ducky, but I was skeptical, until today at the beach.  We went to get some sun and play in the water (I just love living 1 mile away from some of the best beaches in the world!) and Jaden saw some of the birds on the beach (like seagulls but not quite) and said, in the clearest tiny voice ever, what was unmistakably, Ducky!  Apparently all birds are duckies to him.  Love it!  He says it more like duh-dee so you think it would be a simple transition to daddy, but not yet.  It's only a matter of time though!

His First Tooth!!!  Yes, it FINALLY made it's little appearance!  Right when I had given up all hope, it poked its sharp little head through!  He doesn't like to let me look at it or feel it, but I'm the mom, so he'll just have to put up with me!  At dinner tonight I tried to get a good shot of his tooth but it's hard to see because it literally JUST broke through, so I used a little editing magic to help you out!

If you squint really hard, you can see it!  And if you are someone who REALLY cares (a.k.a. grandma's and grandpa's), you can click on the picture to make it really big!  I love being a new mom and getting so excited about Every Single Little Thing!!!

Happy National High Five Day Yesterday!

Issuing a Code White!!!

We have reason to believe that, in the next few days, we will welcome the arrival of the long-awaited for FIRST TOOTH!!!!  Stay tuned.  Will update you when needed!

Update: No new tooth yet.  However, we do have a runny nose, a tad bit more drool than normal, a slightly more grumpy baby than normal, and he no longer has the desire to bite on everything.  Our hypothesis on the last bit is because it hurts to bite down on things... (Tuesday night)

Update: I am officially cancelling the Code White.  Almost a week, and NOTHING!!!  Oh well.  We'll still keep him! :)

Easter, a Haircut, and Just General Cuteness!

I have two lower cupboards that are perfect size for Jaden to crawl in and explore so I make sure to only store Jaden approved things in there.  I think that I put everything back in the cupboards at least three times a day.  It's like he's not feeling complete until my floor is littered with strainers and cutting boards...

I think Jaden has too many toys.  And because of Florida's awesome weather, there are yard sales every weekend so his stash of toys seems to keep growing.  I need better self control.

 Like most kids, Jaden loves to have his picture taken and then look at it on the display of my digital camera.  It makes him really excited, and when he gets really excited he starts to bob up and down in happiness, so all of my pictures turn out blurry.  

This was the look on his face when he realized I had pulled the camera out:

This was the look on his face when he realized I wasn't going to let him play with the buttons on my camera:

You always hear stories and see pictures of other kids who fell asleep in funny places or doing odd things.  My kid has never been like that.  He fell asleep either in your arms or in his bed.  Period.  Until yesterday, when he fell asleep in his highchair watching Phineas and Ferb.  Love it!

Here is Jaden pre-haircut:

And here is Jaden after his haircut.  It seems like he will need his hair cut about ever two months.  It grows way too fast!

We had a really fun Easter!  We started with an egg hunt at home and Jaden took no time understanding what to do!!!

He figured out if he threw the egg on the ground, it would crack open and something shiny would fall out.  He even figured out that shiny thing was for eating.  He didn't figure out that the wrapper was supposed to come off, and we didn't tell or show him.

This is one of his new things: sticking out the tongue all the time!

Then we went to a community egg hunt where we got his face painted (which he handled just fine regardless of how tortured he looks in the picture), saw the Easter bunny, and shared a hot dog with daddy.

Every single day, without fail, I just stare at him in awe and wonder.  He is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my entire life!  He is completely amazing!  I hope I always feel that way.  I suppose you should ask me again after the terrible 2's and 3's!

P.S. As I was sitting here writing this, I heard in the background the telltale sounds of Jaden climbing in the cupboards once again.  I'm off to clean up some more strainers!  Golly I love this kid!

Lately

Lately we have been:

• Settling in to our new home
• Watching Jaden as he discovers he likes to sleep under a blanket

• Having a crawling (ALMOST walking) baby helping me put the house together

•  Going to the beach!

• Jaden signed his first word in sign language: fan.  I know.  Not Mom or Dad or Milk or Juice, but fan.... He loves to watch it go round and round and loves turning it off and on.
• Playing at the park

• Learning how to eat bark

• Playing with all of his many toys

• Getting Cheerios EVERYWHERE (and needed another haircut)

• Stalking my baby on our video monitor (Best Gift Ever if you can afford it!)

•  Finally reaching 16 pounds!!!
• And generally just being the most beautiful baby EVER!

Jake finally got his paperwork approved so he can now come live at home when he is not at school, so that has been a big relief!  It has made everyone in the family a lot happier!  

And now for a few thoughts from Jaden:

.210n..,lmkkk,uujnnnnn m ewed fcgvg,lmn b        \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\vh77hm    c\v \vgsnv c aczv xcddfgMy7hg6vbtfgv\Z BJnkj

Unreliable

Although you could think that the title of this post is about my upkeep of my blog, it is actually about my internet.  The place we live in has free wifi, but it rarely penetrates the concrete walls.  However, every now and then, I will get a signal and be able to connect.  That slim hope of connecting is what has, so far, kept me from forking over the money to have Cox come and install our own internet.  And you would think it's all about positioning in the house, but I got a signal last night while in my bed (where I am now) but this morning it couldn't find anything from the same location.  Whatever....

Florida is awesome!  We are loving the weather, our church, our neighbors, and our house!  The only thing we don't love is having tile floors throughout the first floor.  While that is really a necessity in Florida, it makes it really hard on a baby who is trying to learn how to walk.  My mom has invested in some large area rugs to help soften the blow when he inevitably takes a tumble.

I am still working on taking pictures to post, and I have some HILARIOUS videos of the little one to upload as soon as I find the right cord in the sea of boxes and as soon as I can get a constant internet connection to get them on the computer.

Also, Fox 13 featured the Alianza Academy as their "Cool School of the Week" this week, and my sister was featured in one of their segments.  Please check it out HERE!!!!  She is so poised and well spoken!  *the beginning of the segment is boring, so just be patient until you get to my gorgeous sister!*  I'm so proud of her and the good work she is doing.  Love you Nutters!!

Moving Stinks, But Moving With a Baby is Ten Times Worse!!

I have to warn you in advance that this is going to be a LONG post because a lot has happened recently!

So we moved.  Yuck.  I had no motivation to do any packing in advance so that left us not prepared when the movers (also known as the men in our church) came on Monday.  Plus, anytime I tried to get anything done, I would have to put Jaden down, and when you're moving, your house is practically a mine field for a baby.  There was nowhere safe to let him play on his own, so nothing got done.  So on the day of the move we ran around frantically throwing things in random boxes and taping them up quick.  Not the most efficient way to move, I can assure you!  Also, to keep Jaden out of the way of the movers, I strapped him into our Baby Bjorn and I carried him around all day.  This led me to hurt my back and I was completely useless for the next week or so while it healed.  Also, we had completely underestimated the amount of junk stuff we had so we ended up not getting enough U-Boxes (U-Haul's version of Pods) so we had to order an emergency third one and even then we still had to much crap!  So I went through all of the leftover stuff that had to fit in our two cars, made some drastic cuts and did a painful purge, and through some amazing Tetris skills, Jake stuffed it all in our cars.  But before that happened we had the ladies in our church come over to help clean the place, but we still had so much stuff to simply box up that they ended up just helping me box up my kitchen.  By this point in the day, Jaden was tired, hungry, and cranky, and I was tired, hungry, and cranky as well.  I got to my breaking point.  I told the ladies thank you, but they were welcome to leave, and we were just going to pay to have the landlords clean the house and the carpets.

Thankfully on Wednesday we finally took off!  Our cars were packed so full that you couldn't see out of either one of our back windows, but we were really fortunate to miss all of the severe weather on our way down!  Wednesday was kind of discouraging because after being on the road for hours, we were still in the same state we started in when we stopped for the night.  Illinois is a lot longer than you think!  So it was crazy that on Thursday alone we went through Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee (we actually got lost in downtown Nashville looking for gas), and into Alabama.  And then on Friday we finally made the last push into Florida!  Jaden handled the drive so well!  My back did not.  Oh well.  Time will heal it.

When we got to Pensacola, we met my mom who flew here to help us with the move and finding a house.  She had rented a condo for us to all stay in until we found a place, and it is seriously a piece of paradise!  This is the view from the balcony, taken on the day after we arrived:

The weather has been up and down and at one point really cold, but I really can't complain because there is no snow!!!  The fog here can get really creepy.  It is SUPER thick and can come out of nowhere and disappear just as fast.

The search for a house was really crazy.  We have a pretty tight budget and we wanted a place that was safe and clean.  After viewing several rental properties, I felt like that wasn't going to happen.  And then we stumbled on The Perfect Place.  It's an end unit townhouse, 3 bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms, 1 car attached garage, washer/dryer in unit, on Perdido Key, has a community pool, community beach, community playground, community boat pier that you can fish off of, lots of windows with screens, 2 air conditioning units (one for upstairs and one for downstairs), a MASSIVE master walk-in closet, a corner jetted tub in the master with a separate shower, two sinks in the master, the best staff around, AND it's in our budget!  I had to be super aggressive to get it, but it's ours!  The funny part is that it's in an RV park....  But it's an upscale one and Jaden will have plenty of grandma's and grandpa's to love him!  We move in next week!

Jake reported for duty and originally we thought they were going to let him come home at night, but then they told us that until he had a lease agreement, he couldn't even apply to live at home with us!  That was another reason to be aggressive to get the lease for this place.  He was put into night classes which means he  goes to class from 2:30pm-11pm.  Ugh.  Right now he is doing the exact same schooling he already did in Great Lakes so he is super bored, but in about a month and a half he should start some new material.

Holy cow that was a lot of stuff!  I'm glad we have a place to live next week, I'm glad that we have this great weather, and I'm glad that I can sit on our balcony and watch the dolphins right off shore!  (they are the dark spot on the middle of the picture)

My Latest Obsession

I love that picture of Jaden swinging, so every time I come on to post something, I stop because I just love looking at my handsome son!  But it is time....

So what have I been doing lately?  Well, my latest obsession is this:

I got the Beaba baby food maker for my birthday from my family, and I am obsessed!  I love making his baby food!  The "recipe book", and I use that term loosely, that it comes with really wasn't as good as I wanted it to be, so I also bought this on Amazon to help out with my creativity:

I am hooked!  For dinner the other night he had a carrot and cauliflower puree and then for dessert a banana and blueberry puree.  I love that I can provide this for him, and I love that I know what he is eating is fresh and doesn't have any additives or anything.  It's honestly the best!  And SO easy!  Also, now that I am making purees, it means I can start using recipes from this book:

I really don't like the taste of vegetables, so I was always intrigued by the idea of hiding veggie purees in everyday foods.  Now that I have an easy way to make purees, I decided to try a few recipes.  Some have turned out better than others.  The author (wife of Jerry Seinfeld) is super healthy and so I usually end up tweaking the recipes to make them a little more my taste. :)  Most people will tweak a recipe to make it a little healthier.  Not me!  But that has been taking up a majority of my time.  That, and packing.  We all leave for Pensacola on the 22nd!  That is crazy close in case you were counting!

Product Review: Goody Modern Updo Pin

 Many of you remember how much I love the Spin Pins so I was excited when my mom gave me this Modern Updo one for Christmas!  Result?  I love it!  It is fast and easy and elegant and holds all day long!  In fact, here are some shots of my hair after a LONG day:

It's not exactly like the pictures on the box, but it's a twist on the traditional bun.

However, I do have some advice for those of you thinking to use this:   The directions tell you to inset pin into the base of you bun and then rotate up. DON'T!!!  If you do this you will hurt yourself greatly and possibly pull some hair out in the process.  I suggest inserting it into the middle of the bun, rotating up, and wiggling and adjusting to your comfort level.  It takes some practice to get this just right - if it's too tight, you think you'll just live with it instead of trying to fix it, but by the end of the day you'll have a pounding headache.  But overall I love this!  Also can be used with a half up ponytail and it is seriously adorable!