Is it a phase?

The past couple of nights baby boy has been waking up and talking to himself for an hour or more (sometimes two!).  Of course, being the light sleeper that I am I can’t sleep at all while he is awake until I know he’s back asleep.  Last night around 3:00 or 3:30 I heard him up again chatting with himself and so by 4am I had to go peak in his room to see what kind of party was going on in there.  I found him laying on his back with his hands behind his head staring at the ceiling.  What a little ham.  He saw me and started pointing at me.  I gave the little guy his paci and rocked him for a minute or two and put him back in his crib.  He of course didn’t go to sleep right away but proceeded to talk to himself.  By the time he did fall asleep I couldn’t.  It must have been 5:30 before I fell back asleep.  I woke up so tired this morning.  I don’t know if it’s just a phase, he’s super curious or if he gets too much sleep during the day but I can’t figure out why he can’t sleep at night.  He’s funny anyway.

Meal Plan Monday

I used to be so organized and I really don’t know what happened.  My new years resolution is going to be saving my family money in 2010 and I am committed to doing it by learning the coupon ropes and planning my meals before I go to the grocery store.  Surely we will save money on our food budget.  If you have any meal planning, money saving tips I would love to hear them.  Our very local grocery store is Walmart so I am going to do most of my grocery shopping there with an occasional trip to Kroger which is a little bit of a drive away. Hopefully I will quickly get in the habit of posting my meals in attempt to help others and to hold myself accountable to my commitment:

Monday: Baked Garlic Parmesan Chicken, pasta, Caesar salad

Tuesday: Slow cooker pot roast w/veggies, rolls

Wednesday: soup w/shrimp

Thursday: Cashew Chicken Casserole, canned corn

Friday: slow cooker rice and beans, apple sauce

Saturday: French Fry Casserole, green beans

Sunday: Small group dinner at Blake and Lisa’s

So here it is!  Enjoy!

Love and blessings

This is Jonathan writing.  Becky left it signed in so I thought I would write a little while she is sleeping and I am having trouble sleeping.  Life has been hard in a lot of ways for us this past year and a half.  However, we have been so blessed and our love has grown so much stronger.  Life has thrown us some curveballs and our young marriage has only grown stronger.  Caden is such a blessing and a joy to have.  And, we are waiting with delight for that little one growing in Becky’s belly.  A couple of weeks ago we heard the heartbeat for the first time.  What an amazing thing to know that not too long ago we heard Caden’s heartbeat and now he is running around.

I wanted to tell everyone who reads this blog how much I love my wife.  She is an amazing woman of God and her faith is an encouragement to me.  She has persevered through some tough times and continues to pursue the Lord with all her heart.  I pray that I can be a husband who cherishes Becky and the times we have together.  As I look around, I see so many people struggling in their marriages.  Becky and I have been married a little over 4 years and every day we grow closer together in some way.  I want to love Becky more in 50 years than I do right now.  The Lord, as He grows me, will show me ways in which I can improve and ways in which I am selfish.

These last several months have been hard.  We have cried alot but we have also laughed alot.  I could not have made it through all that has gone on without Becky by my side.  She is my best friend, my partner, and my ‘other half.’  I don’t mean that in the cheesy way it is sometimes used.  I mean that in a very real and tangible way.  My down days she has picked me up.  When my eyes have been focused on the wrong things, the Lord has used Becky to point them in the right direction.  I love you sweetie!

And Caden has brought so much laughter and joy to our home.  He is such a happy kid.  Smiling, talking a lot, and doing what boys do.  Toys are tossed to the floor, toys are over-turned in an attempt to see how they work, and so many other ways Caden is exploring the world.  Everything he picks up can become a ball to throw or an object to bang on something.  I love having a boy!  Why?  Because his sense of adventure and exploration is natural.  And through all of that he listens well.  He is understanding no more and more and not touching things we have told him not to.  What a pleasure it is to have children.

I just wanted to write from my perspective and let some of what I am thinking out.  We are definitely on an adventure and it is quite a ride.  I am such a different person than I was just 1 year ago and can’t wait to see how the Lord grows me and my family in this next year.

Dancing

I really need to figure out how to get my videos from my camera onto my computer.  I’ve been wanting to do it for months and I really have no idea how to do it.  Anyone want to give me any tips?  Caden just cracks us up and it’s so much funnier in action.  The past couple of days he has been going over to the stereo where he knows will play the music.  We must admit that his favorite genre of music is R & B and rap (yes thanks to his dad) and his favorite artist is Lecreae.  Check out Lecreae by clicking here. For awhile it has been one of my husbands favorites and of course it’s one of Caden’s favorites or at least he has the best dance move to the rap music.  I supposed that proves it.  Well, hopefully someday soon I will figure out how to get my camera to my computer.

It’s more fun to Christmas Shop when you can SAVE MONEY!!!!

So far I’ve bought several gifts at brand new Kodak Gallery website. They are still giving away free $15 towards gifts if you sign up with a new account!  Any kind of photo gifts are great for us with Caden around.  Family just love pictures of him, especially multiple photos!  You can sign up per member of your household so you can use the $15 perk more than once.  This has worked very nice for us towards Christmas.

 

Target has some fabulous toy coupons that you can get from clicking here. We bought Caden a Little People Airport Discovery set that is usually $40.00 for 1/2 price.  So after the fabulous $20.00 Coupon we got it for only $20.00.  I was so excited.  I also purchased a tag Jr. the reading system for 2-4 year olds.  It was on sale for $28.99.  It is usually priced at $31.99.  Target let’s you use a combo of target coupons and manufacturer coupons if you can find them.  They let me use the $10.00 off tag coupon on the Tag Jr. and then I found a $10.00 off manufacturer coupon so I got the Tag Jr. for only $8.99 after coupons.  Go here to find those coupons from tag.

So far that’s the major Christmas shopping that I’ve done.  Hopefully I’ll find some more good stuff but I was so excited to save $40.00 at target after my coupons.  Yay!

 

What you all have been waiting for…

So we have been residents of Tennessee since the very beginning of September.  And I just know that you have all been dying to see our cute Tennessee house.  So here it is…

Isn’t it super cute?  It’s on a corner lot.  And we are now full time residents of Milan, Tennessee.  It’s a town of about 7,000.  Which is quite an adjustment for me.  But I do enjoy being close to family.  I really can’t argue with having several full time babysitters that are within minutes of our house.  Jonathan’s parents, sisters, brother, and of course all their kiddos Caden’s cousins are just loving having him around.  Since the next oldest grandchild is about a 13 year difference it’s easy to have hands to have babysitters.  Lots of fun!  Also, we are very thankful that it hasn’t snowed here yet and that there is no brutal wind that blows through us.  However, we are still praying for our home to sell in Nebraska.  It’s still sitting there waiting for us to come back and we keep telling it that we are so sorry but it needs a new owner.  So hopefully the Lord will provide very soon for yet another resident to enjoy our very comfy townhome that is in Nebraska.

Here’s what else you missed…

The big FIRST BIRTHDAY BASH!!!!!!!

Doesn’t he look great!  We have a fabulously fun Elmo party!

This is the super cute cake (and it was super tasty) that I had been dreaming about for well over a year.  I so wanted to throw him a Elmo party before he was even born!

And the most recent adventure that you missed…da da da daaa!  The cutest scarecrow in the entire world!

And trick-or-treating for the first time!!!

I must say how proud I am of my $6 very cute scarecrow find at a garage sale plus a very cute costume that is coming next year so you will have to stay tuned.  I think those are all the biggies, we did visit the Memphis zoo where I of course forgot my camera (how could I forget it for the first trip to the zoo?).  My mother-in-law however did have a camera and we took some very cute photos with the animals in the back ground.  I still need to get those from her camera so you can see too.  Well, I hope you enjoyed the short update of our move to Tennessee!

FINALLY!

AH!!!!  You have no idea how good it feels to have the macbook finally resurrected.  Before we moved to Tennessee our hard drive fizzled out and since then I have been trying to communicate from our ancient computer that my husband got for himself when he got out of college which was only…um, like more than 10 years ago.  I think the booger has done him well but it is really time for it to go.  I have so missed the speed and time saver of the macbook.  I have hardly been able to post pictures, surf the internet, and of course update my blog!  I’ll HAVE to take some new photos of our new pad as well as post the precious photos of our little guy.  He is doing so well and we are excited to announce that baby #2 is on the way here!  I am about 14 weeks preggers and we are so excited that we will have another little one in the house at the end of April or the beginning of May, Lord willing!  We are very excited to be so blessed!  So for real this time more updates to come!

ahh, the slow computer

I plan in the future to continue my blog but my computer is so slow it would take me all day to make a post.  Please forgive me as we look for a new hard drive and hopefully a inexpensive desk top in order to continue my blog.  Many blessings!

Finally Internet!

Alright!  Finally, today we do have internet in our home!  So future posts are to come very soon!  There are so many updates I can’t wait to share with you! 

Lots of Love from Tennessee!

Just Moved!

Well, we’ve made it to Tennessee.  I will try to post some photos soon!  We can’t get an internet connection to our new house yet so it might be a little challenging.  Stay tuned!