Lent, 7, and It's a BOY!

 I am going to stop playing "catch up" for a little while so I can talk about the here and now. Otherwise, I may never get there!  So, here are some recent iPhone pictures that I got uploaded today!

And as a side note, I have given up Facebook and Instagram, which you might be here because I posted that on Facebook, and I will write more about that later in this post.

I think I mentioned that we bought a piece of land back in January that we plan to build a house on one day in the not-too-far-away-future.  Both Ben and I would like to be a little more out in the "country" and the lot has 95 acres of undeveloped land behind it.  I have a feeling that will be a fun place for little boys to play one of these days!

 We have spent a few weekends "cleaning up" the land, getting rid of dead limbs and trees and burning them in piles.  Oh and by "we" I mean Ben.  Ben has done A LOT of work making the land look really nice!  Mason loves helping Daddy work.  He would drag sticks to the burn pile and then say "more".  You might have seen him in action on the video I posted on Facebook a little while back.

The land also provides many digging opportunities and you know, that is what Mason does best.

It only takes a couple of baths to get all the dirt out from under those little fingernails.

Pinterest (surprise surprise!) inspired me to get a little crafty and I modpodged those photos onto canvases.  It is a much cheaper alternative to the gallery wrap and I was pretty pleased for how they turned out.  I hung them in the playroom and my wall could use about about 6 more!  I was just proud of myself for printing pictures, period. 

We have had some craaazzzy weather around here lately.  It's warm, then it's freezing, then it is a monsoon. I don't know how to dress, or dress Mason, from one day to the next.  When the weather was nice we enjoyed some time with friends on the playground and also hanging out with cousins out at Mimi and Pop's!

Mimi and Pop's house is every little boy's dream.  They have a lot of tractors and trucks nearby, cows across the street, and a playhouse next door.  I think Mason spends most of his time (and Mimi's) outdoors when he is there.  Doesn't he look like he could be Adalyn and Bentley's little brother? He loves his cousins so much!

As you can tell by the bare feet, we had weather in the 70's!  We definitely took advantage of this time to dig in the back yard.

Mason really likes clothes and shoes, which I did not expect.  He likes everything he wears and he has recently started putting his boots on by himself, usually on the wrong foot.  DO NOT try to help him. Boots are definitely his favorite accessory.

I hope this video works when I publish this post!  We found out the gender of Baby #2 on January 30th.  You probably know by now that it is a BOY and we are so excited!! 

At the very last minute, we decided to do a gender reveal. We invited our family and some of our close friends to come over and join us as we cut the gender-specific cake.  Ben and I found out at the same time as everyone else!  Publix didn't really grasp the whole "gender reveal cake idea" and when I went to give them the envelope that revealed the sex (so they would know what flavor to make the cake: chocolate for boy/ strawberry for girl since they don't die cakes blue) they said they had already made the cake half strawberry and half chocolate.  I was like "Ummm, no. I am having one or the other. It cannot be both."  So I re-explained the whole thing and they agreed to make me ANOTHER cake with the specified gender that only the baker and the ultrasound tech knew.  Thank goodness I had a control envelope so I could check it with the cake to make sure they did it right! So, we got the cake and you could see through the icing.  On top of that, they left the "chocolate" sticker ON THE CAKE!  Only my mom saw the sticker so everyone else was surprised when we cut it!  The whole thing really was so much fun even though it was very last minute!   Mason really has no idea what is going on, but he loved him some cake! The days following he kept asking for cake at any opportunity.

We hear "I dooo eee" about a thousand times a day around here.  That is Mason telling us that he will do it.  He wants to do everything from putting on his boots to fixing his plate to brushing his teeth to putting on his own Resinol (diaper rash cream, the best stuff ever).  I have to say, "No, Mommy do eeee." In the picture above he is feeding himself his own baby food (he still wants to eat baby food and picks it out and asks us to feed it to him) and is doing a fine job.  He is hit or miss with feeding himself.

Somehow I convinced him that hats are a lot of fun to wear and so he will agree to wear them when we go to the playground.  I love the way he looks in his little hats!  Here he is going down the big curly slide at the park.  A lot of the time he wants me and him to both go down the slide together which is pretty funny to any neighbors walking by, I am sure. 

I thought it would be fun and festive to make this little Valentine's Day Banner for the mantle. Obviously, I got the idea on Pinterest and my friend Lindsey cut the hearts out for me with her Cricut.  Ben never commented on it and when I asked him what he thought of my banner, he laughed.  He said it would be good if I was decorating our house for our 7 year old daughter. Haha!  Oh well, I like it anyway AND it is staying through February!!  Then in March I am making one with Lions and Lambs on it!! Ok, just kidding about the lions and lambs. 

(When I think of March I think of a bulletin board we had in elementary school that said "In like a lion and out like a lamb". That is where the lions and lambs came from in case you were wondering.)

Oh yeah, I don't think I mentioned that I pulled everything on the mantle down on top of me including a super heavy piece of a wrought iron gate, shattering lots of odds and ins as they busted on the hearth, while I was decorating for Christmas.  We are in the process of replacing stuff and I am lacking a candle.

The other morning I woke up and looked to my left.  Laying in Ben's spot on the bed, flat on his back with his head on the pillow was Berkley, our 55 pound poodle.  I tried to get a picture, but this is all I could get since he is solid black and it was dark in there.  I was laughing so hard. You know Ben was thrilled to hear about that.

And speaking of Ben and Berkley, we made these no bake chocolate peanut butter oatmeal cookies (don't know the name of them) and Ben was so excited.  The very next morning, Berkley snuck in the kitchen while I was still asleep, drug the cookie bag off the kitchen counter, and ate most of the cookies.  Ben was furious and banned Berkley to the crate for every night for the rest of his life.  That lasted 2 nights.  (This was after the night that Berkley and Pete ate an entire bag of honey wheat bagels and then pooted for the entire day afterward.)

When I was going through my pictures I saw this picture of pizza from Marco's pizza buffet and man, it looks so good!  I took the picture to send to some of our friends because everyone I invited to come with us after church seemed very unenthused about my restaurant choice (they had never been there), but I am 6 months pregnant and I wanted Marco's pizza buffet, dang it!  So, we went by ourselves.  I sent this picture to let them know what they were missing.  We will be back there this Sunday. Thanks.

This pregnancy is going really well for the most part.  I am finally wanting to eat at home again after a stint of not wanting ANYTHING home cooked or fresh vegetable related.  I don't know if you remember that I had subscribed to a CSA (where they delivered farm grown fresh fruits and veggies every week), but I would not touch the veggie box AND I gagged when I saw the email that contained the week's menu of what would be in the boxes. I cancelled the CSA after one month. (Sorry, Grow Alabama, don't take it personal.)  I also spent Christmas Eve morning in the ER for pregnancy/urinary related issues that were a mystery to my doctor and miraculously resolved on their own after week 17 (thank goodness!).  I was having to set my alarm to wake up every 2 hours at night to go to the bathroom and the lack of sleep in combination with holiday craziness was really taking its toll.  I am now feeling more like a normal person, except I want to eat all the time.  The other night I woke up at 3 in the morning and fixed myself a BLT.  I eat at Schlotzky's about twice a week ( I get the same thing every time, a #4 combo on jalapeño cheese bread) and if I don't eat there I eat at Moe's (nachos big enough to fill up a large man).  Somehow I have only gained about 7 pounds.  I credit this to the little 21 month old that I chase.  However, my new appetite is really not jiving with our new "eating out budget."  

When we bought the lot and started planning our future home, we decided that we needed to tighten up on our budget.  Man, budget talks are THE WORST! I get in a bad mood every time and will put it off for days.  Thankfully Ben is pretty persistent because he loves to save some money.  Not that I am a big spender, but I don't like thinking about it.  Anyway, I found an amazing iPhone app that has been extremely helpful (or a massive pain depending on how you look at it) that will keep up with how much money we have for each category in our budget and how much we spend out of each category.  We can both access the same envelopes so that we can better see where our money is going.  This has been great because I hate carrying cash and it is hard for me to keep up with what I put on the credit/debit card.  The app is called EEBA and I believe that stands for "Electronic Envelope Budget App", but I could be wrong.

And last but not least, regarding Facebook and Instagram... I gave them up for Lent.  I am not Catholic, but I like to observe Lent because I think it it beneficial.  I chose those two social media outlets because I feel that they tend to suck up most of my time that I could be spending doing other, more important things.  Not that I think they are bad... I miss them already because they connect me to a lot of family and friends I wouldn't be connected with as easily otherwise.  I just find myself scrolling aimlessly through the news feed reading what someone I haven't seen in 15 years ate for breakfast when I could be doing something more productive with my minutes. So, there ya go.  I'll be back around Easter, but until then, I plan to do a much better job keeping up on here and taking care of a lot of other things I have been neglecting to accomplish lately.

Also, remember when I wrote about the book "7"? Well, they are doing a study group on the book at my church on Weds nights and Ben and I, along with my mom, are participating!  I am really looking forward to this study!  I didn't even know that the book had a study guide!  I will update how it is going as it all unfolds.  

And, thanks for reading the longest blog post of the year.