Virtual Coffee

Good morning!!! I've made a lovely pot of coffee for us, so come on over. And, no worries if you're still in your pajamas cause I am too!

I have to run to Walmart today. I hate going to Walmart. It's too big, too crowded (no matter what time I go!) and I always end up buying more than what's on my list. But, I need things that the regular grocery store doesn't sell (like hangers and rubbermaid containers for endless amounts of girls' clothes my daughters are growing out of), so I need to go.

Yes, I could run to Super Target, which is nicer but is also more expensive and I still end up leaving with more than I intended. Sigh.

I love these pictures of the girls walking their babies up and down our sidewalk. It was super cute to watch.

Elisabeth's last day of school is the 27th. The next day is Evan and I's wedding anniversary. I know this because I double checked the calendar. I don't know what it is about our anniversary that I can not remember the date to save my soul. I always want to say it's the 25th and not the 28th. Anyway, we're thinking of going to the top of Pikes Peak to celebrate. We haven't been to the top since we moved here in 2009 and it's something I want to do before we move in July. Plus, Julia keeps talking about how she's going to go to the top of the BIIIIIIIG mountain and I will take her picture. She might even remember going since she's almost to the age of remembering things.
It has been 2 weeks since I've been to the Y to exercise. I am a slacker. Granted, one entire week I was too sick to go, but I've been better for almost a week now. It is most discouraging when you are the one to blame for your own exercising demise. But, I am trying not to guilt myself because it just doesn't work with me. Instead of motivating me, it does the opposite. I'm one of those people--negative/criticism comments do not make me want to prove you wrong, they just discourage me more.

I am so fun. I don't understand why there weren't more suitors trying to win my hand in marriage!!
So, today's a new day and I'm going to log in more miles on the treadmill and possibly start trying to conquer that stupid stairmaster again. (grumblegrumble stupid stairmaster grumble)

Thank you for stopping by today! Maybe next week we'll spice it up and have coffee at your place!!!! :)

A Zoo Overnight

This past Friday night, Elisabeth and I went to an overnight at Cheyenne Mtn Zoo with her Girl Scout troop. Now, you all know how much I love zoos, so when they said that parents were welcome to attend if they paid for themselves, I immediately said YES!

We arrived at the zoo at 5:45. The gates closed at 6:00PM and would not be re-opening until the next morning. We stayed at this cabin:

I didn't even realize the zoo had cabins! This cabin is hidden behind the sky line entrance, so I've walked by it a dozen times and never really seen it. The zoo has overnights for anyone who is willing to pay. You could have a family reunion there and rent out the cabins if you so wished. They provide dinner and breakfast the next day!
I brought sleeping bags, but the other moms were all way smarter and brought blow up beds. I was pretty irritated that I hadn't thought of that myself (a mistake I shan't make again!). I'm too spoiled to sleep on the floor, I tells you.

After a dinner of pizza, the girls were ready for their night time tour.
We started with the hippos. We got to watch the hippo keeper feed the hippos their last meal of the day--about 20lbs of grass/hay.
I've never seen a hippo move so fast. As soon as they saw their keeper, those two giantesses booked it out of the water and straight to the grub! Watching them eat was both mesmerizing and kind of icky. Ever played Hungry, Hungry Hippos? Yeah, that's exactly how they eat! Just with grass drool. We hung out there for a while, asking questions, visiting the other animals also in that building and watching the hippos play with a giant green ball in the water after they had eaten every last piece of grass/hay.

The evening views from the zoo were breathtaking. Look, it's downtown Colorado Springs:
Here's the view from the Primate House:
We kind of hurried through the Primate House because the orangutans and the gorillas are used to having their lights out at 7:30 and most of them were all snuggled down for the night when we showed up. Here's an interesting tidbit--babies and mommy primates cuddle together at night until the babies are about 4 or 5 years old. We watched the mommy gorilla cuddle her 2 year old baby; lovingly petting his head and kissing his ears. It was sweet and the girls made lots of comments about how their mommies used to cuddle them like that.

We also went to the Giraffe House to say goodnight to them. This giraffe was so excited to have Ebeth feed him crackers, that after I took this picture, he promptly sneezed on her. She was completely grossed out.

The giraffes are one of the best things about this zoo. They love to be fed their crackers and are very gentle.

Our last stop of the night tour was to The Loft. The Loft hold things like snakes, spiders, mice, parrots, turtles, bats and this de-scented skunk. (Turns out some college kids thought having a skunk as a pet would be a great idea. They had the stink glands taken out, but quickly learned that wild animals do not care about carpet or furniture. They donated Lily the Skunk to the zoo where she happily lives in a blanketed hollow log in The Loft and is sweet and friendly even at 9:30PM on a Friday night.)
We headed back to our cabin around 10:00PM. The girls had a snack, got in their jammers and played card games till 11. Our tour guide was going to be back at 6:00AM for a very early morning tour before our time at the zoo was done.
After drinking about 4 cups of coffee and eating a bagel, I was human enough to start the morning tour with everyone else.

We visited all the big cats, but made a stop at one of my favorite animals at the zoo--the Pallas Cats. These guys are the oldest type of cats (pre-tigers, lions and leopards) and originate in Asia. These guys are NEVER out when we visit the zoo, but because there were no crowds and it was super early in the morning, they made an appearance. I was quite excited.
Elisabeth was thrilled when the bears woke up and came by to start fishing for their breakfast.
The whole thing was an amazing experience. I know I'm a bit biased with my extreme love of zoos and all, but getting a private tour was so interesting. After our tour guide said good-bye, we were free to roam the zoo for the rest of the day if we liked. We stuck around for a little bit, but by 9:30, both Elisabeth and I were starving and I was going to need another round of caffeine if I was expected to drive home.

When I asked Elisabeth what her favorite part of the overnight had been, she said eating lunch with her friends and playing on a giant rock by our cabin.

Scavenger Hunt Sunday

I completely forgot to post this yesterday, but here's my finds for Scavenger Hunt Sunday!

1. GIVE ME FLOWERS

2. VISUAL CONTRAST

3. FRIENDSHIP

4. BEFORE AND AFTER

5. DARK

Virtual Coffee

Hello! It's our Virtual Coffee date day!

So, how have you been lately? We've been sick. Stupid spring colds. It just seems cruel that once the weather warms up and you actually want to go out and frolic in it, that a virus should enter your home and knock you out for a week. It's just mother nature's weird sense of humor.

If you were really here having coffee with me today...I'd show you the new blender Evan and the girls bought me for Mother's Day! I super love it. We've only ever had hand-me-down blenders and the last one's motor burned out months ago. This one is super powerful and I have lots of recipes I'm itching to try with it.

I also received yarn! And this yarn is just for me to make whatever I want. Can you believe that my yarn supply had dwindled down to nothing?! I guess if you didn't see the 2 large canvas bags I used to have full of yarn, you wouldn't know how shocking that statement actually is.

Sitting in my house at my kitchen table...I'd offer you some cookies I baked last night. They are a soft chocolate chip cookie; a recipe I'd never used before. They actually turned out soft! I am so excited. I'll have to make them again and share them on Virginia Cooks later this month. I love soft cookies and have never found a recipe where they actually stay soft a day after baking them. Elisabeth has only 13 days of school left. I'm kind of excited about summer. Julia's bigger now and since she doesn't nap, we'll be able to do more this summer where we can be gone all day without a major melt down from missing nap time. Plus, we'll be spending over half the summer trying to squeeze in everything we love here in Colorado before we move to Texas. There, we'll be spending the rest of the summer exploring our new city. It's hard to believe we'll be moving in a little over 2 months. It just hasn't really sunk in yet.
As we finished off our coffee...I'd send you with some cookies so they aren't around the house tempting me. It's one of the tiny negatives to my love of cooking and baking--I always have food around. I try to share as much of it as possible so I'm not tempted to nosh on it all day long.
Thanks for stopping by! I'll see you next week!

Butter

Some days it's like butter. Smooth, easy, sweet. I'm the mom I want to be--I'm patient, involved, present. I'm the wife I want to be--supportive, loving, fully doing my half in this marriage. Sometimes I'm even the person I want to be--responsible, caring, making a difference in my little corner of life.

Most days, I struggle. I snap. I'm impatient. I'm lazy. I find myself reverting to old habits and characteristics that I'm trying to either rid myself of or at least stifle. And I'm frustrated. Frustrated that I can't just find the "will power" to kick all those bad qualities I have that I struggle with daily.
Lately, I have had a lot of butter days. The house has been cleaner, the tv's been on less, the girls aren't arguing as much. I've been feeling very blessed!
Then, one day, despite my oncoming illness I can feel building up in sinuses, we need a couple things for dinner, so I throw the girls in the car to go to the store. As I'm backing out, I forget that Evan was the last one to drive the car and he'd pulled my car closer to the left of the garage than normal because I'd complained that he'd parked too close to his own car for me to open my door and carry the stuff in my lap out of the car. So, I back the car out like I normally do, looking for children on bikes and pedestrians with dogs that might be walking across out driveway. That's when I hear the crunch and see my driver side mirror shattered and hanging from the car. I hadn't checked to see if the side mirror would clear the garage wall...

I would like you all to know that I did not say one swear word in front of my two small children. Nor did I cry when Elisabeth gasped and said, "Oh no! Daddy's going to be sooooo mad." Nope, I just calmly got out of my car and retrieved the duct tape from the house and taped it as best I could to my car. I then proceeded to try, again, to leave for the store just as Evan pulled up all smiling and happy to see us--his loving family. To say that Evan wasn't happy about the car is a very honest statement. To say I was even more unhappy is also a very honest statement.

The mirror was fixed today and my idiotic mistake was a tad expensive to say the least.

Not such a smooth as butter moment...sigh...

Scavenger Hunt Sunday

Scavenger Hunt Sunday--one of my favorite link ups!!

Here's what I found this week!

1. STRAIGHT OUT OF THE CAMERA

2. SPROUTING

3. ISN'T IT IRONIC? (I found this picture (via 1988) of me and my sister (the little brown haired swimmer) swimming at my great-aunt's house in Florida. I wanted to swim in the deep end. This is how my dad allowed me to "swim" in the deep end. Ironic, yes?)

4. LAZY

5. SMELLS LIKE SPRING

My mom and my mom's mom and my mom's mom's mom...

For most of my childhood, my Grandma (my mom's mom) lived in Iowa. She married Grandpa Bud when I was about 6 years old and moved to Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I remember the day it finally clicked with my little sister that Grandma lived in Cedar Rapids...not See the Rabbits.

Grandma is the one who taught me to crochet. I was seven. Every visit I would dutifully make sure I brought my crocheting hooks and some yarn so I could sit next to Grandma on the couch and watch her hands fly making stitches while I patiently waited for my hands to learn to move just as fast.

Grandma always made our favorite foods when we visited--homemade ice-cream, chicken salad, cookies, cucumber salad, roasted mushrooms. She also had itty-bitty cans of soda, which I was so excited about.

Grandma remembered the names of my friends, what I did as extra-curricular at school, and what books I'd been reading. She brought little gifts when she visited--yarn, newspaper clippings she thought we should read, books, pictures, treats--things that she saw and thought of us.

My Mama (Grandma's mom) lived in Florida my entire growing up. We didn't get to see her very often, but my parents made sure we made trips every 3 years or so to see her.
Mama and I were pen pals as soon as I could write sentences. Every other week I'd either be mailing or receiving a letter. When we visited, Mama made root beer floats. She'd show us quilts she was making or afghans she was crocheting. She'd bring out old pictures and tell us stories about when my mom was a baby (which was so hard to visualize!) and stories of the Papa (her husband) that we never got to meet because he died before I was born. When Mama moved to Illinois in 2003, we'd visit her at the nursing home and Elisabeth would entertain her with dancing and songs. She lived to be 94 years old. She had the softest skin and the prettiest hair.

When I was little, I wrote a story about my Mom. In it I said she was over 7 feet tall. Since she is barely over 5 feet, she must have liked feeling tall for once.

One of my first memories involving my mom was when I was three. (I think I might have shared this with you all already before) It was bath time and my little sister, Terra, was crying from our bedroom. My mom told me to take all my clothes off and wait for her before I climbed in the tub. I was almost done taking my clothes off, when my mom brought the cranky Terra into the bathroom and told me to get in the tub. I looked down at my socked feet and said, "But, Mom..." "Ginny, I said get in the tub." Ever the diligent child, I got in the tub, with my socks on. As my mom started shampooing my hair, she looked at my feet. "I tried to tell you my socks were still on." I got to take the entire bath with them on.

My mom was always the first one up (something my children do not experience often). Even if I was up earlier than normal, my mom was up with coffee in hand. She was always smiling a hello, asking how I slept--even when I refused to answer or would only growl a response. (I've never been a morning person). When my mom slept in, we all knew she was ill. Then, of course, there was panic since moms are never to be ill.

My mom was the mom who drove everyone to school--us, our friends, our cousins. She was everyone's emergency contact. She was the one who opened her house to the entire neighborhood so she didn't have to worry about where we were going or who was watching us. My mom was the disciplinarian to everyone. My ornery cousins were good at our house because they didn't want Aunt Debbie mad at them. She was the one who my aunts called when loose teeth needed to be pulled. And even though my mom was strict, my cousins knew (and still know!) that she loves them. She went not only to all of our school programs, but other kids' too. She was safe and even during the junior high and high school years when I butted heads with my mom the most, my friends sought her out to tell their problems and cry to, knowing she wouldn't make them feel stupid.
Happy Mother's Day, DebbieMom. I'm sure I speak for all your "kids" when I say how very, very loved you are.