Hot Air Balloons!

The Plano Balloon Festival was going on this weekend. Jeff and I have discussed going multiple times over the years, but never found the time to actually go. Well, now that we have Andrew, we made it a priority. We figured he may be too young to enjoy the hot air balloons, but we wanted him to see them anyway.

The key to actually enjoying this festival is to get there at the crack of dawn to watch all of the hot air balloons airing up and taking off for the morning. We dragged ourselves out of bed at about 5:30am and I woke up Andrew at 5:45 am. Now, keep in mind, Andrew is not an "early riser" like many babies. He usually sleeps till about 8:30am, so 5:45am was waaaayyyy early for him (notice the pictures).

We made it out while it was still dark and set up our chairs along the field. We watched as tons of balloons got ready, aired up and took off in to the rising sun. It was pretty neat and I'm glad we got to see it.  We left after about an hour and brought Andrew home for a nap.

 He does not look tired at all. :-) (Notice the Cowboys Jersey - 
Another Sunday of wearing it - another Sunday 
of the Cowboys losing - a change may be in order). 

Jeff was making the faces and noises that Andrew was

making right before we decided it was time to go. Needless to say, he was

not very entertained by the balloons...Andrew, that is.

I'm glad that I can say we finally went, but there are not many things in life that warrant rising before the sun does. So, chances are good - we will not be venturing to see the balloons next year. But, maybe when he is a little bit older and can truly enjoy it, we will go again.

Just a cute picture

Here is a recent picture of my boys. Aren't they cute!!

1st Cowboy Game Of 2010

Sunday was the first game of the 2010 Season and the entire family was in Cowboys Attire. I would like to think that I looked the cutest, but I doubt that. Here is our fella ready to cheer on the Cowboys. Now, unfortunately, we lost the first game AND Andrew was asleep before it even started...but I figure our hearts were in the right place.

Crock Pot Crazy

I was checking out a friend of mine's blog (thanks Andrea!) and noticed that she linked to a site called A Year Of SlowCooking. It immediately caught my attention and I had a light-bulb moment. That was going to be the key to solving all of my current "issues"...

Here were my "Issues" - at least the ones that I'm willing to deal with...
1. I eat way too late at night because I end up working and then dealing with Andrew to put him to bed and then I look up and it's 8:30 or 9pm and I'm famished.
2. Because I'm famished - all thoughts of healthy eating go right out the window. I don't have time to cook, don't have the desire to cook and will eat just about anything you put in front of my face.
3. Once I eat, I'm ready to go to bed - so I actually go to sleep with a full stomach and almost everyone knows not to do that if you ever want to lose weight.
4. By the end of the month, I've lost no weight and spent WAY too much money on stupid drive through and fast food.

So, this brings me back to my light-bulb moment. I decided that this woman was on to something. Now, I'm not interested in cooking anything, anywhere for 365 days in a row, but I figured I could dedicate myself to use my slow cooker for 5 dinners a week for a month. This would give us 5 nights of healthy eating that would be cheap and complete by 6:30pm. I started to peruse her site for healthy options in the slow cooker. My plan was to start with 5 recipes and shop for those so I would be completely ready as I "prepared" dinner each morning at 7:30am. I ended up on her site (crockpot365.blogspot.com), the FoodNetwork.com and AllRecipes.com in the slow cooker area (http://allrecipes.com/Recipes/Main-Dish/Slow-Cooker/Top.aspx). I found my 5 to begin this project. Once that week was over, I found 5 more and I've listed below the ones we have tried:

Meal 1 : Slow Cooker Shrimp Creole - Compliments of Ms. Paula Deen - IT WAS GOOD!!
Meal 2: Chicken With Potatoes - Very good too - but would not use a full chicken the next time because it fell apart and we had to pick the bones out.
Meal 3: Taco Soup - Super! Was very good and had so much extra that I did not need to cook anything the next day.
Meal 4: Pork Roast - Another big winner - Going in to the normal rotation.
Meal 5: Buffalo Chicken Sandwiches - Bit too much "buffalo wing" taste for me - but Jeff loved it.
Meal 6: Sour Cream Pork Chops - WHOA - Very good.
Meal 7: Chicken Pot Pie Stew - Cooking right now - so we shall see...

Now, some of these may not sound healthy, but they actually were pretty darn good and healthy. Calories per serving was under 300. The sour cream, ground beef, etc... were all the lighter, leaner versions. I can post recipes for everything. I'll likely make all of it again and this time will take pictures to go along with my recipe.

Hopefully this sticks because I've saved money, lost 3 pounds the first week and it is super easy. Yay!!

9 Month Stats

Andrew turned 9 months on August 25th and we had his 9 month well-visit this morning. He is absolutely perfect. He is growing like a healthy baby boy should and we have no problems at all.

His height: 28.5 Inches (70th Percentile)
His weight: 21 pds, 14 oz (75th Percentile)
His Head: Off the charts - I still believe that is because his brain is huge. :-) I will always believe that.

We were heading out of the office and I stopped to make his 12 month appointment but he wanted no part of that... He decided  he was going to go ahead and start heading home. He actually crawled all the way out the door and in to the hallway. If we let him, he would have crawled all the way to the elevator. 

As a celebration of our day at the Dr's office, we went to have breakfast as a family. This morning, we went to Whataburger...my favorite. Anyone who knows anything about me and my pregnancy knows that while I was pregnant, I ate an enormous amount of Whataburger Taquitos - it was my one big craving and I indulged in that craving at least 3 times a week. We joked that Andrew was actually made of taquitos. So, I'm a very proud mom as I say that today, my child ate a taquito! Not exactly the entire thing, but he ate the eggs out of it. We were under the impression that we could not feed eggs to Andrew until he was at least 1 year old - however, the paperwork from today's visit said otherwise. So, we jumped at the chance to let him try it. And, of course - he is a huge fan of the Whataburger Taquito. Big Shocker, I know.

 He looks like a little boy to me now, not a little baby anymore. He is so much fun and such a sweet little boy. The last 9 months have been amazing and each day I learn something new about my baby boy. I'm stuck between the "can't wait for him to get bigger" and "wish he would never change" mindsets. The brightest light in my life. I love my Andrew Grayson Walker!

Scared the *&#!% Out of Us

Today, we were in the kitchen having lunch and chatting with Ms. J (our nanny). I gave Andrew a Gerber Graduate little biscuit thingy that he has had multiple times and never seemed to have any problems with. This time was different. Jeff happened to look down at Andrew who was sitting on the floor between all of us and his face had turned completely red and he had this sheer look of terror and panic on his face. He was choking - full blown, no air, food lodged kind of choking. Jeff immediately went down to Andrew and was patting his back with a good amount of force to make a difference. I think that it cleared the biscuit, but we were not sure. Next thing you know, Ms. J picked Andrew up, quickly turned him over on her forearm and with a good amount of force, hit his back. That definitely worked. He was fine at that point.

So, you may ask - what was my reaction?? All I could do was say "Shit, Shit, Shit, Shit..." Literally - that was it. They were handling him and I was bouncing from foot to foot cursing with my hands shaking. When it was all done, I stuck my hand in his mouth and cleared out the rest of the biscuit that was hanging around. That was my one small contribution.

UGH - that literally scared the bejeezus out of us. But, he is totally fine...well, until he knocked his head on the coffee table this evening. Having a boy is going to be hard. But, I'm totally looking forward to his exciting adventures as long as he stays safe.

Life Without Cable

Jeff and I have been trying to be extremely budget-conscious since he has gone back to school. It's been a challenge to go from a 2 income family to a 1 income family and sometimes we come up with things that, at the time, make tons of sense.

We had been playing around with the idea of canceling our cable. We hardly ever watch television and if it is on, it's due to a rented movie. So, we figured why continue to pay for a service that we are not using. It would save us $100 a month and that seemed like a no-brainer. We were only playing around with this idea until I came home one afternoon and Jeff had actually "pulled the plug" on our cable subscription.

Fast forward to the first day of actually not having cable. I kid you not, I've never wanted to watch television so bad in my life! It's all about want-what-you-can't-have and I realize that. We even went out and bought a high-end antenna (I think that's an oxymoron) and it gave us about 5 channels that we could watch and 25 Spanish channels that we could skip over. Needless to say, our little experiment of no cable lasted a full 2 weeks and that is because the cable company needed a week to set us back up.

The cable guy comes on Thursday. I'm sure I won't actually watch tv, but hey... at least now I know I can.