threesixfive, week 34

hello again, everyone!

we had a full week of family visiting and dinners with friends.

we also had an exciting discovery in our backyard!!!! but i definitely gained a bajillion pounds with all the yumminess i put into my mouth this week.

tomorrow starts a healthy eating binge. can i use healthy and binge in the same sentence?? is that an oxymoron?

sunday

ive been using the oil cleansing method on my face for about a week. that pretty much means that i rub straight up oil on my face, and then wipe it off with warm water. i was hesitant at first as well, but my face feels pretty awesome, and hasnt revolted, so im a believer. between the oil pulling (which im still doing) and not the oil cleansing, im very....oily. but in a good way. im pretty sure my face smells like a greek salad, though.

monday
i put reading lights in the kids' rooms this week, and have been letting them stay up for about ten or fifteen extra minutes to read in bed. i set a timer outin the hallway between their rooms, and when it goes off they turn their lights off and go to sleep....expect molly doesnt go to sleep. she needs a drink. and a hug. and a bathroom run.....

tuesday
we went to the brownings house for dinner, and emilie made smores dip!! WHAT?!? yeah, it was freakin awesome. pinterest will be the death of me; or at least my waistline.

wednesday
my mom and i took the kids to an educational store in austin, and i saw these crayons. really?? after close inspection, i concluded that i am toast-colored.

thursday
mimi and papa came to town for the day, and we took them to lunch at the monument cafe. colby was very happy to see them. :-)

friday
our backyard surprise; baby bunnies!!!! the kids were having popsicles on the deck out back and were able to get super close to a rabbit without her running away from them. she finally hopped a off a few feet, and i saw that she was sitting over a little burrow of bunnies. they're precious!! we've been keeping an eye on them since then.

saturday
allen made me take a picture of our toothpaste. ive mentioned on here before that he always got annoyed that i squeezed the tube in the middle, so i finally got my own tube. he decided for some reason to open my drawer last night and check on the condition of my tube, and then requested that i take a picture to prove that we do, in fact, each need our own tube due to our difference in squeezing styles. while his tube actually does say "for best result, squeeze tube form bottom," i pointed out that my tube does not give specific squeezing instructions, and can therefore be squeezed in whatever way i deem fit.

week 4 of school commences tomorrow (go us!!), and there seems to be a pretty normal schedule on the calendar. molly does start back up at swim school on thursday, but other than that, it should be business as usual around these parts.

have a good one!!!

threesixfive, week 33

i realized as i was uploading my pictures, that half of them are food-related, which means theyre not terribly exciting to look at at. so....sorry.

we have a new 'tenant' with us indefinitely. we met her thru the camp we take our youth to every summer. she's worked there for the past three years, and been a disciple now leader for us once as well. she graduated from texas a&m in may, and was supposed to go to asia long-term this fall, but after a "preview" trip, felt that was not where the Lord wanted her to be. we offered her our home to come stay and take a sabbatical, if you will, for the last few weeks of august. she feels like the Lord wants her in austin, but doesnt not what that looks like or where to start. anyway, i say all that because im sure she will be mentioned several times over the next few weeks as she lives here; her name is lindsey.

sunday

i started oil pulling. in short, you swish oil around in your mouth for 10-20 minutes and then spit it out. its supposed to pull all the toxins and impurities from your body. its been a week now, and i dont see any huge changes. i think my teeth are whiter, though. im going to add in olive oil, and see what that does. different oils affect people differently from what ive read. we'll see.....

monday
the kids love having lindsey here. she was home schooled as well, so she's been super helpful and patient with the kids, even helping them with some with their work, and letting them read to her. i'll try to get a picture of her face next time....

tuesday
there are a couple inner city churches in austin lindsey wants to visit while shes here, so we mapped them out on tuesday. we stopped at a bakery truck i'd heard about, where i had THE BEST cupcake ever. all the baked goods are vegan, organic, and made with local ingredients. i had a lavender vanilla cupcake. lindsey had a peanut butter chocolate cupcake. delish!!!!

wednesday
i took lindsey up to georgetown and showed her around up there (specifically a few trails for her to go running at; shes training for a half marathon w/obstacles), and we had dinner at the monument cafe. they have a garden in the back, and a market where you can buy fresh produce, and local fare. i bought this lavender peach butter, and we ate it on out bread at dinner! oh. my. word.
i need to be careful, or i'll be ten pounds heavier by the time lindsey leaves!

thursday
i had to borrow this wig for a thing i'm doing at church on sunday. i looked back at molly while i was driving, and this is what i saw. i dont why i found this so funny. i guess because she was just sitting there as if nothing at all was unusual about her wearing a hideous black wig.

friday
double date night with our friends and mentors, the welches. i saw this food trailer on diners, drive-ins, and dives monday night, and wanted to give it a try. it was pretty good, especially the cheese fries.

saturday
the kids' dentist office had a back to school party for all their patients. we hung out for about 3 hours, and had a great time! the kids got their faces painted (obviously), and it stayed on a whole ten minutes before starting to melt off from the heat. thank goodness for wet wipes.

we have dinner plans monday night, tuesday night, and friday night, as well as my mom coming for a visit wednesday, and allens mom coming thursday. looks like a very full week already!!! enjoy yours!

be blessed!

threesixfive, week 32

first week of school under our belt! it went really really well. we got everything done we needed to do, and no one cried!

it was a pretty busy week. i'll let the pictures do the talking....

sunday

allen won a free photo session and 24" print for our family at a golf tournament a few months ago. we finally got it back and i got it hung this week. i love it! thats a big picture, yall, like, bigger than their actual faces.

monday
first day of school! first day of school!

tuesday
so....i bought a new white board and was writing the months of the year on it, because somehow in the three years ive been teaching colby, we've missed learning that along the way.
i was writing them out, and i almost wrote 'janruary', because for a quick moment i seriously thought thats how it was spelled. just and kristen were over hanging out, and laughed at me, and made some joke about me being a 'homeschool mom'. hey, i didnt actually spell it rong wrong.

wednesday
april came over with the boys wednesday evening. the kids played outside for a whole ten minutes.

thursday
i decided molly needed a mani pedi for her big flower girl debut this weekend. i went ahead and got my tootsies done as well. i hadnt had a pedicure in a year and a half, and im not gonna lie, they were looking pretty rough.

friday
justin and kristens wedding was yesterday, and molly and colby got to be the flower girl and ring bearer. allen officiated the wedding, and i read scripture. it was a family affair.

saturday
the big day!!! you get several pictures....

arent they precious?!?! i was a proud momma.



i hope you have a fantastic week!!!
check out my post about mimes from thursday if you havent already. i promise its worth it. :-)

mimes; possibly the funniest people ever

as many of you know i've been to ghana, africa a couple of times over the last few years.
our friends the seatons served over there in a rafiki village for two terms.
they came back to round rock about a year ago, and started serving as house parents at the texas baptist childrens home here in town.
that required pretty much all of their time, so they didnt have a chance to get re-acclimated very well. they recently changed their assignment and have a lot more freedom, so we had them over for dinner tuesday night.
the left for africa when molly was a teeny baby and colby was two. as i said earlier, allen and i both went and served with them there in ghana, and kept in touch thru email and facebook, but they havent spent any time around the kids since they left in '07. all that to say, when they came over for dinner tuesday, it was really the first time theyve been around the kids; especially as kids, not a newborn and a toddler.
we were sitting at the table having dinner (i made beef tips w/brown gravy and homemade mashed potatoes. it was, like, slap yo' mamma good. that was free information.) and libbie was asking colby about himself; how is he like me, how is he like allen. in regards to allen he said
colby: im funny.
libbie: yeah?
colby: [nods]
libbie: so, you think your daddy is a pretty funny guy.
colby: [nods again]
libbie: is he the funniest guy you know?
colby: [thinking.....] well.....mimes are pretty funny.

and i'm all, what the....? mimes? really? what basis do you even have for that statement?
it was funny, although i'm still thoroughly confused.
today we were in the car and i brought it up again....
me: so, colby, you think mimes are funny?
colby: yeah!
me: so, its like, mimes, then daddy?
colby: no. mimes, then me, then daddy.

wow. ok.
sorry allen. maybe try painting your face white, or, i don't know, trapping yourself in an imaginary box.

threesixfive, week 31

it had been miserably hot this week, which isnt unusual in texas, and im super thankful that its already august and this is the first time ive really felt that way. typically i feel like im about 2 degrees away from melting by the third week of june or so. we went to the pool a couple times, library, had some dinner guests one night, went on a date. it was a good, normal, no one running fever week.

sunday

i bought allen a pair of underwear a few weeks back, but i think they're, like, junior size or something, because the tag said the correct size, but they definitely did not fit him. i stuck them in colbys underwear drawer for future use, and he accidentally grabbed them and put them on. he figured out quickly that something wasnt quite right.

monday
we went to the library monday afternoon, and that evening after dinner i looked into the living room and saw the kids on the couch together, looking at books. i love this. its rare that they can be this close to each other without someone feeling smothered.

tuesday
molly has felt fine this week, but i dont think she quite has all her energy back from being sick over the weekend. she got pretty whiny around 7:15 tuesday evening, and although she was adamant about not being tired, she laid down and promptly fell asleep on the carpet a good half hour before her bedtime.

wednesday
austin is famous for its bat population, and while we arent in austin, we're close enough that we get them, too. they come out from under a bridge on the highway every night at dusk.

thursday
this is the money shot. another picture of the kids brushing their teeth for the contest at the dentist office. hopefully we'll win with this one; brushing their teeth on the field with a player for the round rock express (the rangers triple a team).

friday
our trampoline was past the point of saving after it blew over the fence during a storm last month. we finally got around to taking it apart this week.

saturday
hooray! i got to visit the new minor emergency center that just opened by our house. i was making dinner and sliced right into the tip of my finger byway of a lemon (lemon juice in a fresh cut...um, ouch). allen sent me to the minor emergency and they glued and taped me back together again. like humpty dumpty, except they couldnt put him back together so maybe thats not the best example. and i didnt fall off a wall. although ive probably done that, too. the finger brace is to protect it as i am certain to bang it into stuff. plus, it looks cool and gets me sympathy....why is my wedding ring crooked? i hate that.

side note: i took the brace off when i started trying to type. it was not conducive to blogging. so now im brace free. 

we're starting school tomorrow, however i wasnt planning on officially starting until next week, so we'll see how much we actually get done. i do like being ahead of the game a little.

have a great week!!

mom and dads new house

prepare yourself for a lot of pictures of my parents' new house. my parents are professional movers in that they do it every 3 or 4 years. they've been married for almost 33 years, and this is the.......(this is me doing math)......13 house they've lived in. i could be off by one or two, but i remember at least that many. they're really good at packing and unpacking again, and making the house look like they've lived in it for several months even thought its actually only been, like, 2 weeks (they've actually been there 6 weeks, now, i think). mom had all the rooms repainted within 24 hours, before the moving truck got their with their stuff they had to bring up from austin. by the end of the second week, dad had pulled the dog pee carpet out of three of the rooms, and laid new flooring down, as well as ripped up all the surplus foliage and little lawn statues that were filling the already teeny tiny backyard.
also, my mom loves antiques, but not the old heavy antique furniture kind of antiques; antique knick knacks and the whole shabby chic look. their former homes (the last one especially) looked like all the really cutesy booths in the antique mall got together and threw up in my moms house, and i mean that in a very complimentary way. i've said that on here before, i believe. its not quite so much in this house, but i think thats because this house is much bigger than the last one they were in, so she has the same stuff, just more spread out.
anyway, i say all that just to explain what it is you're looking at, i guess, for those of you who either don't know my mom (props to you for still being here reading my ramblings) or know her but have never been to their house....es.
i'll do my best to give you a tour via the photos. it might just be a hot mess.


this is the front of the house. obviously. something i love about "dallas" (and i use quotes because a)they're not actually in dallas, and b) because i don't know if everywhere in "dallas" is like this; all the parts i've seen are) is that everyones driveways are in the back of the house, accessed by an alley. it makes the front yards all run together, and the neighborhood looks so much nicer.

this room is immediately to the left when you walk in the front door. its technically a formal dining, but theres nothing formal about my parents. they're turning it into a saloon. :-) that back wall is bead board my dad put up, framed out, and painted. this room got new flooring as well.

this room is immediately to the right when you walk in, except that i took it from the other side of the room, standing in a doorway that leads into the hall. this is the playroom/game room/emergency guest bedroom (emergency because they have two others, so this would be like the last option guest bedroom).on the wall parallel to me that you cant see, mom hung a bunch of antique (ah, theres that word) sports magazines. super cool. i should've taken a picture....

the master bedroom from the doorway. thats the bathroom on the left.

master bedroom standing in the doorway of the bathroom

master bathroom; the "curtain" over the window is actually a collection of antique handkerchiefs.

one of the guest bedrooms. shes not done with this one yet. i think shes waiting to get some of my grandpas old model airplanes for the shelves.

the other guest bedroom, or the peacock room as she calls it. this view is from the door....

and this is from the door as well, but the other wall.

this view is looking down the (extremely wide) hallway from the peacock room.

the kitchen. love it. i have serious kitchen envy.

sorry this one is so dark. kitchen on the left. breakfast area straight ahead, living room to the right.

theres the living room. that little extra room you see in the back behind the fireplace is called a 'garden room'...i guess cause you can see the garden in theory. mom set it up as an office.

living room again. garden office to the left. :-)

this is the view from the breakfast area. you can see the hallway that dead ends into the peacock room, then turns right and takes you back to the other guest bedroom and the master.

and there you have it, the parentals new abode.
hopefully it wasnt thoroughly confusing.

see you in a few days for 365!!