19 Weeks: Happy Valentine's Day!

Again...I am almost a week late blogging, but life has been busy again.  At least we are doing stuff, right?  Where to start?  Since its been almost 2 weeks since I updated I've got to really think back.

"This is my excited face!"

Happy Valentine's Day, Ladies!

This is how he starts to roll over

Almost there

I worked on a couple of projects (small) over the last week and a half/2 weeks.  The first was super simple and did not turn out as I had hoped.  You see, I recently got sucked in to the land that is called Pinterest (who hasn't, right?) and found a couple home improvement/organizational things to do.  Our lovely home that we are renting came completely without and bathroom hardware...nowhere to put hand towels or anything!  Its quite annoying. It we also do not have a lot of room between one of our sinks and the wall, which isn't a huge problem, but I generally leave my hair dryer and straightener out, plugged in, leaning against the wall.  I found an awesome little project on Pinterest to solve my space problem.  You get a magazine holder big enough to hold your hair dryer and screw it into the inside of the cabinet drawer below the sink!  Genius!  I thought that this would be a quick and easy project for me to do, so I set out looking for a wire magazine holder at Staples.  The only ones they had were either this cheapo plastic or solid ones.  The cheapo plastic ones were either way too narrow or way too wide, so I only really had one option (Lawton Fail!).  I went with the solid one...I figured that I could attach it with some of the stick on velcro...ya know, the stuff that I "fixed" the cat door with (that is another story...).  So I cut and attached the velro and stuck it on in my placement of choice.  One problem...the person who lived here before us installed baskets on rollers below my sink...and they are at a weird angle, so it wouldn't fit below my sink.  I chose to install it in the middle cabinet...attached it, closed the door...SHIT!  The door was too small!  I ended up having to move it over so that you have to open one door first and then the other because of the size of the holder vs the size of the door.  Alright...I can deal with that, we never use the middle cabinets anyways.  Well...this project was just an all around failure, because the velcro had been moved twice it lost some of its adhesiveness and within 2 hours of my genius installation it fell.  Needless to say, I will be installing a screw in curtain hook on the wall to hang my hair dryer.  We will also be purchasing hardware for the walls.

Failure of a project

Another project that I started from Pinterest (actually, I just copied it off of my friend, Christy's, blog) is a cookbook.  Since I have been working on all sorts of new recipes I figured that I may as well put together a cookbook of my successes.  I got sick of going to the saved websites and having to bring my iPad into the kitchen and constantly turning it back on because I took too long on one of the steps.  I bought a cute little binder with some cute paper and dividers.  I then went through and typed up all of my favorite recipes and printed them out.  I put then in page protectors so that they won't get ruined if I get some food on them.  I also bought some dividers...but they are smaller than the page protectors...so they don't really do any good.  I used Mod Podge to put my title and divider names on, I'm going to have to do another layer on the cover though because I seemed to have missed an edge.  I am constantly adding successful new recipes to my book.  The best part...its a TOMATO FREE cookbook!!!!

Some of my successful meals for the week were Pot roast (Del, Darin, and Brian liked it...I thought it lacked flavor), Chicken Noodle Casserole, and Chicken and Artichoke Rotini.  The chicken noodle casserole and chicken artichoke rotini were from allrecipes.com and the pot roast was from Pinterest.  Check out the recipes on my recipes page!

Pinterest Pot Roast

Finished Pot Roast

Chicken Artichoke Rotini

Finished Chicken Artichoke Rotini

In Mikey news: He spent his first Valentine's day with his sweet little girlfriend, Hartley.  She came over all day again.  When she got here he was sleeping, when he woke up we went in together to get him and he got SO excited!  She smiled, expressed his excitement vocally, and kicked his legs like it was his job.  The boy loves her!  They spent the day playing, napping, and enjoying meals together.  They drank their milk side by side and he watched her play a beautiful piece on the piano.  Love was in the air.  When Brian got home from work (which was quite early) I was able to go on an 8 mile run...more on that later.  When my run was over I showered and got cleaned up so that we could drop Mikey off to spend the evening with his lovely little Valentine and so that we could go see a movie...something we haven't done in a long time.

They weren't ready for the picture

Now they are ready

"Enough Pictures!"

So happy to have a Valentine

"Come here, honey, let me give you a big slobbery kiss!"

Hartley playing her composition for Mikey

discussing their duet options

They are absolutely adorable

Mikey experienced his first snow!  That's right...it snowed in Oklahoma.  We had gone out to dinner at our favorite Mexican restaurant and when we left it was snowing.  He wasn't too excited, it was cold and he was being precipitated upon.  After a few hours back at the house the ground was covered!  Lawton didn't suck for like 6 hours!

Mikey's food of the week was Zucchini.  Its probably my favorite vegetable, so when the doctor told us to start his with green veggies I figured that this should be his first.  It was a huge hit!  The kid loves zucchini!  He even cries when he's finished with it.

"Do I have something on my face?"

"This stuff is pretty good, Mom!"

"What do you mean 'its all gone'?!"

Its a good thing he's liking his veggies, because he got his first cold :-(  Poor little guy was all congested and couldn't sleep.  We spent all of Wednesday night and most of Thursday and Friday night awake because the poor guy couldn't breathe.  Thankfully a vaporizer helped him and he slept like a champ Saturday and Sunday night.  Unfortunately, I have also come down with this cold and now I can't sleep!  No rest for the weary!

Over the past week and a half I kinda fell off on my training...but it was mostly because of lack of sleep and I just couldn't muster the energy to do anything but nap.  Last Sunday I ran 5 miles instead of the 8 that I was supposed to do.  It was mostly because Brian and I were going to do the 8 together with Mikey, but it was so cold and windy that we didn't want him out there without a weather shield for roughly 90 minutes.  So we decided to do a tag team workout.  Brian took Mikey to get lunch while I was to run my 8 on the treadmill.  Well...I got so bored and didn't feel like I was accomplishing anything (running on the treadmill is WAY different than running outside) so I decided not to waste my time and 8 miler at the gym.  I stopped after 5 and decided to replace Tuesday's 5 with 8.  I started off really strong on Tuesday and was under my target pace, but after about 3 miles my stomach started to act up (something that has happened a lot when I run since having Mikey) and I had to stop to go to the bathroom.  It completely killed my momentum and state of mind.  For the remaining 5 miles I was about 35 seconds OVER my target pace...what a buzz kill!  But, I did get my 8 done and felt pretty good doing it.  It was the first time that I actually had confidence that I could do my half marathon.  So much so that I went ahead and signed up for the half that I will run on March 3.  I had 2 back up halves in case I wasn't going to be ready.  I still may do one of the backups because I don't think I'll make my target pace by March 3.  We shall see.  I did not do my 5 on Thursday because I was way too tired and didn't cross train on Wednesday because of a miscommunication with Brian.  Oh well...I'll be back on the horse this week.

I'll try to be a better blogger and update within a week next time!

Marianna