Smokey the Bear.

We were driving around this evening after Buddy got out of training, and we saw this HUMONGOUS Smokey the Bear on the side of the road. It was hard to get a good picture, because it was so dark outside and I didn't want to climb some strange fence in the middle of the night to get a closer one. I'm not sure how tall this thing is. At least 20 feet I would guess. The trees here are so much taller than the ones we have at home; it is strange how just another part of Texas can be so totally different looking. Chris loved looking at this bear and he wanted to get out and look. We will have to remember to check it out during the day sometime.

lighting and other adjustments.

If I'm awake, I like it bright. Occasionally it's nice to watch a movie with the lights off, but most times you can bet all the lights in my house are on. I've never been scared of the dark, I just think it's much more cheerful when the house doesn't look like a bat cave. So weird as it may be, the lighting at the hotel is the hardest part to get used to. We have these 2 little lamps and 2 more- that's it, unless you count the bathroom light. For the most part though, we are all pretty comfortable here (thanks to God for giving me such an adaptable son!) and it hasn't been hard on us. Last night Chris and I slept in one bed and Buddy slept in the other. That's just the way it ended up when we crashed out. At one point Buddy tried to crawl in with us, but he didn't really fit. I think we were too tired to care anyway. Chris and I stayed in the hotel all day today while Buddy went to training. We don't have cable at home, and I was surprised to realize that Chris doesn't know what a commercial is. When one comes on he gives me a LOOK like I turned his movie off. He already likes Pokemon and Scooby Doo. Well pretty much everything on the "Cartoon Work" (Cartoon Network) Haha! When Buddy got back, Chris and I were really glad to get out and drive around. We bought a few things to stock up our little mini-fridge and came back and hung out some more. It was an okay lazy day.

we made it.

Well, we made it safely to the hotel. Woke up early in the morning and Buddy was feeling sick. Not nervous, more like the flu. So we drove to Houston and he had meetings all day. Chris and I entertained ourselves by going to the mall. Chris normally tries to run away from me in the mall if I don't bring the stroller, so I was a little nervous about taking him in a bigger mall in a bigger city and expecting him to walk and hold my hand. He was really good though. We rode up and down the escalators, threw change in the fountains, and looked in several stores we don't have here. Then we found a little playground for kids, and he played there for a long time. Right next to the playground they have a K-B toys. (our K-B closed several years ago) I pretty much let him look at whatever he wanted in there, and he was loving it! They still had the little display up front with the walking little pigs and dogs, just like they did when I was little. He thought those were pretty cool. Finally when I thought I couldn't walk anymore we went to wait for Buddy to finish his meetings, and then we headed to the hotel. It seemed like a long day, and we are all really tired!

all packed.

I think we are finally ready to go! I'm so worried I will forget something important, even though I made my compulsive lists and all. We are leaving really early in the morning, which ought to be fun seeing as how we all hate mornings.

"two half."

Today is Chris's half birthday. I told him this morning that he was 2 1/2. I'm sure he didn't really know what I was talking about, but he has known he's 2...so he thought it was pretty cool. All day long he was telling people, "I'm two half!"

He is still really excited about going to the hotel. I'm not sure if he realizes that we'll be pretty much living in a bedroom for several weeks. He just thinks it's something exciting to do. I haven't even told him about the zoo or anything fun we might do yet. I told him he could help me pack his Lightning McQueen suitcase, and that was enough to convince him! I hope he is not begging to go home after the first few days.

flashback 2007.

Just thought I would share a pic from last January. Look how big my guy has gotten. He still has a bit of a baby look in this one. I remember he wanted to wear 'da's hat' in the car. LOL!

Today I was a cleaning machine. I scrubbed the refrigerator, and threw away nearly everything, because I don't want food sitting there while we are out of town, that's just gross. I cleaned out my closet. You would have had to see how messy it was to really appreciate my hard work. ;) I picked up Chris from my mom's house and I was kinda sad. I won't see my family for at least a couple weeks. I'm used to seeing them all the time.

almost forgot!

EEK! I almost totally forgot to take a picture today. For some reason I happened to look at the clock at 10 till midnight and think, oh #*&@! So no good pic today, just something to keep me going. LOL! I looked at my dresser and grabbed something. Hopefully I won't make a habit of this.

updating the music.

I have been updating my iTunes list. Actually redoing the whole thing. I made my original list at my mom's house so that Jared could help me and so I could use all Jodie's songs. Somewhere in between Jared making Jenni's list, and everyone moving the songs to their laptops, my entire song list was erased. I've been trying to make my new list here- putting in CDs, downloading songs, converting them all, etc. It's really time consuming. I don't want to erase my old list till I have a good one ready. I need more songs! I'm trying to get a good variety of stuff on there. I'm getting pretty tired of messing with it but I'm trying to do it before we leave so that we have something to listen to in the car all that time. How's that for some Friday night excitement?

reading.

Chris has only recently taken an interest in being still long enough to read books. I have tried to read to him a million times, and he looks at the first couple pages then runs off to play basketball or cars or something. I think my parents must have read to me constantly from the time they brought me home from the hospital, because I learned how to read when I was 2 1/2 years old. (No, I was not a nerd.) I loved to read books all the time when I was young, so I pretty much assumed that my kid would love to read as much as I did when I was a kid. So I am happy to say that he has found several books that he totally LOVES and will even read over and over again. His favorites at the moment are the classic Green Eggs and Ham and one I had never seen before called I Stink. I bet everyone all knows about Green Eggs and Ham. It's awesome. But read it to a 2 year old a few times a night for a week, and you will almost understand why moms try to "accidentally" skip pages. It's a lot longer than I remember it. Haha! I Stink is about a garbage truck who drives around the city eating yucky trash all night. Chris thinks it is so funny!

As for an update on the rest of us, we are getting ready to leave for Buddy's training. Yesterday we found out that we may be going to a different city than we originally planned. It's only a couple months but I'm still pretty disappointed. I hope we are not too bored. I'm starting to get nervous about being in a hotel in a place I don't know. Not scared, I just know it is going to be weird. At the same time though I'm not going to be ready to come back because that means I will have to work again. I better enjoy this weekend at home with no job while I can! My time as a stay-at-home mom is going by too fast!

Oscar Trash

Chris LOVES Sesame Street, probably about as much as he loves Cars. Ever since he started watching, his favorite has been Oscar the Grouch. He calls him "Oscar Trash" though. He has a stuffed Oscar that he likes to sleep with. For his 2nd birthday he had cupcakes that looked like the faces of Elmo, Cookie Monster, and Oscar Trash.
Well a new thing Chris likes to play, is to pretend he is Oscar Trash. He gets in the hamper and tells me "I'm Oscar Trash! Scram!" And then he wants me to be the trash truck, and come pick up the hamper and dump him onto my bed. He thinks it is so funny!

organizing.

Buddy worked this morning because he had a conference call. I kinda felt like a real stay at home mom today...it was definitely better than him working at night even though I know it won't happen too often. This afternoon Chris and I sorted through all the clothes in his dresser and closet, and packed up all the things that were too small. There is lots of room in there now (check out those empty hangers!) but it was still kinda sad that he can't wear some of the stuff anymore. Another bittersweet mommy moment I guess.

wheeee!

We went to the mall today just to look around. When we went to Macy's we had to ride the escalators as usual. Chris LOVES to ride them up and down, up and down, over and over again. He thinks it is so fun to stand up, to let us hold him, to sit down...he wants to do something different each time.

I bet the Macy's employees think we are very strange. Unless of course they have kids...then maybe they get it.

lessons.

Today the only pictures I took were the ones for my photography lesson on shutterbugs. Chris was gone with my mom most of the day so I just cleaned house and did my lesson. This is a vase my mom gave me last year. The assignment was to take pictures of things from different angles. I enjoyed it, and I think they came out okay. I hope I learn a lot from these lessons!

date night.

We had been planning on going to the movies tonight. My mom said she would keep Chris. She called this morning and said that I would have to bring Chris early, Jared's basketball team ended up winning the game at a tournament and were going to play again. So I took Chris to her house around 3:00 and came home. Buddy and I just hung out and watched TV for a while and then decided to go eat. We are both notoriously indecisive about picking somewhere to go, so we played the whole "I don't care, wherever" bit for a while and finally decided on Cheddars. Restaurants here are always crowded, no matter what the parking lot is full and there are people outside. But we've never had to wait more than like 10 minutes when there are just 2 or 3 of us. So we find a place to park and go in. The hostess tells us there is about a 50 minute wait. For 2 people?!? So we go back outside. It's 34 degrees outside and windy. We think maybe we will just walk over to Texas Roadhouse and see if they have a shorter wait. The girl there tells us an hour and a half! We were nice to her of course but we left like WHAT?!? That is just crazy! So we ended up back at Casa Ole...we just ate there, but we got our food and finished it in less time than we would have waited at a table. I had a good strawberry margarita too. After we ate, we went to the movie theater. There was nowhere to park there either. We ended up parking behind the building and walking around. Then we weren't really sure what to see- there were not too many that we actually knew anything about. We decided (with slightly less trouble than the food) on I am Legend. It was pretty good, and I like Will Smith. I wasn't crazy about the ending though. Overall it was a pretty good date night. It's going to be hard to fall asleep without Chris here though. It's only like the third time he's slept away from home.

Friday already?

When you are writing something every day and actually paying attention to what day it is, a week seems to go by really fast! Of course it may have something to do with the fact that I don't have a sucky job to slow things down. Today it was really cold- probably the coldest day we have had all winter-but not quite freezing. It rained off and on all day too. Buddy is off today and tomorrow, which is really strange. He rarely has either one off and I don't think he's had both off in well over a year, other than requesting off for Chris's birthday weekend. We went to eat at Casa Ole tonight and Chris was being rotten. He wanted to get up, and we wouldn't let him. He "dropped" his sprite on the floor, he told us "no"...so he didn't get to go slide at the mall playground afterwards. He got over it when we got home but he was still acting like a terrible two year old most of the evening. We rented a movie and he finally fell asleep. Hopefully in the morning my sweet boy will be back.