Shower Weekend

 The kids and I headed to Weatherford again for another shower for Lindsey this past weekend.

 The hostesses

Sophie and Mimi

Helping Mom record gifts

John Curtis

Sometimes he's a fire breathing dinosaur named Tom Hottie,

sometimes he's an herbivore who will only eat salad,

sometimes he's a carnivore who must have turkey for lunch,

sometimes he prays to "God and Jesus" and hopes they both have a good day,

sometimes he doesn't cooperate,

sometimes he's silly,

sometimes he's the Incredible Hulk, pulling up the balance beam and overturning everything in the backyard,

sometimes he's grumpy,

sometimes he peels an orange during church,

sometimes he makes thing disappear around the house,

sometimes he's a platypus,

wanting to know everything he can about how they live,

always he's our quirky, funny little boy.

Ramblings...

Life's been very full, but I've had such a great weekend.  Right now I'm sitting outside on the swing while the kids play.  I just woke up from a nap.  It's been great to slow down.

The week was very busy getting back from our Spring Break trip.  In our process or trying to simplify and cut out waste and excess, I spent the week focusing on the food intake at the Sandlin house.  I don't like to brag, but I am a master grocery shopper. You didn't know that existed, did you? I find the deals and I stockpile and I stay within our grocery budget.  I stretch a meal and I make it last.  What I don't do - ever - is look at food labels.  We try to eat healthy, but I never minded my processed, convenient food because I'm all about making things easy and uncomplicated. I'm an all or nothing kind of person and if I open that can of worms, who knows where it will take me?

Well, this week I opened it up and now I can't stop reading labels. I'm obsessed with it.  I'm trying to fight my all or nothing impulse and ease into this attempt to reduce our processed food intake.  I decided to make 1 or 2 changes each week, but went a little overboard. This week I made wheat tortillas (not sure I would call this a success since my kitchen filled with smoke), my mom's pinto beans, peanut butter (easiest thing in the world and approved by JC), and smoothies for breakfast in place of those Nutrigrain bars that are so easy to pull out of the pantry.

We prepared our garden for planting in a few weekends and pulled up enough carrots from our fall planting to fill up 2 bags, one for us and one for the ministry the garden partners with that distributes food.  Since I haven't quite convinced myself to blow my grocery budget and buy organic, my plan is to plant as much as I can in our garden this year.

It was a somewhat successful week, but I was exhausted.  I spent too much time in the kitchen, hardly opened my Bible, and skipped my workout.  I think a little balance is called for this week.

All that to say my weekend away came at the perfect time.  I got to spend it with my sister, her best friend flew in, whom I happen to love too, and lots of her sweet friends. 

I drove to Fort Worth on Friday and enjoyed my drive so much with the beautiful spring flowers covering the pastures and my book on CD.  Lindsey and I had dinner and then sat in line for 2 hours to get seats together for Hunger Games.  I don't know if my sis knows how much I enjoyed those 3 hours of waiting - just sitting and talking with nothing to do and no one needing me.  Her friends joined us and the movie was great and I even enjoyed staying out until 1:30. 

Saturday was great hanging with the girls, eating lunch on the patio, and just getting ready to shower Lindsey with lots of goodies.  The shower was fun and once again I got to stay out way past my bedtime! I love seeing Lindsey so happy.  

To top the whole weekend off I got to spend the night with my Mimi last night and have breakfast with her this morning before I drove back home to my babies.  

I needed the weekend to reflect.  Taylor and I have been talking a lot about things.  There are so many ways we want to make a difference that it gets overwhelming.  We struggled with where to buy our kids' shoes this week and found that there are no easy answers.  Fair trade kids' shoes are hard to come by and trying to buy American made tennis shoes is almost impossible!  I know it sounds so silly to spend my days worrying about such things and yet I've been aware of the slavery in our world for a while and the workers who make next to nothing so we can have our cheap goods and I've done nothing.  I remember hearing that there are more slaves in the world today than there were before the Civil War, but I didn't think I could change anything so I just go along with the mainstream because it's easier.

I was watching The Help again the other night with Taylor.  I asked him what he thought we would have been like living in that time.  Would we have just gone along with everyone else because there was no way we could change the way things were, or would we have been brave and tried to make a difference?    I want to be braver than I've been before so that my life matches up more with my convictions. I know it may not make a difference in the world, but I think it might make a difference in my little family.  I'm going to give it a try anyway! 

Spring Break 2012

We had a great Spring Break.  We spent the first weekend at home watching movies, cleaning, resting, and playing with friends.  On Monday night we headed to Weatherford.  I took zero pictures there.  I have no excuse, but I'm sure you can picture it because I've posted pics of it all before.  We shopped, hung out with Mimi and DeeDee, ate and played at Central Market, and enjoyed a wonderful dinner at the Hamiltons'.

Wednesday morning we headed to Texarkana.

 We went up to Poppa's school to run off some energy after being in the car all day...

and it worked!

Promise we didn't let him sleep in there!

 G-Momma had to work on Thursday morning so we drove to Hot Springs with Poppa and went to the Mid America Museum.  It was a fun place!

Friday was shopping, playing at the park, jumping at Jumping Apes, and eating out.

 Lindsey and Uncle Erick came in from Houston on Friday night.  Saturday my picture deficiency kicked back in.  Let's blame in on my allergies.  The girls got pedicures in the morning then we all went to eat at Poppa's favorite authentic Mexican food restaurant with our friends, Todd and Brooke.  We had to show Lindsey state line since this was her first trip to Texarkana.  Then they all took the kids to play miniature golf.

 Saturday night Poppa grilled out and Aunt Jan and Uncle Terry came to visit from Marshall and Todd and Brooke came back over.  It was a full, fun house.

Thanks for having us G-Momma and Poppa!