Our Favorite Children’s Books

A week ago I posted about 2 of our favorite Fall books.  Today I want to post about some of our favorite ‘every day’ books.  I chose 16 to talk about, but you should see our book shelves – jam packed full of amazing books!  We love books at our house.  These 16 are the ones we go back to over and over again. 

These first 2 are board books we read over and over and over again when the boys were really little.  Big Red Barn is by the same author as ‘Good Night Moon’, so that should tell you it’s a great story!  And ‘Bear Wants More’, super cute.

‘The Giant Of Seville’ is based on a true story about a ‘giant’ named Martin Van Buren Bates.  I like the illustrations.

This one rhymes, kids love that!

‘Luke Goes To Bat’ was given to us as a baby gift for our first son.  It is such a neat story and has a great message to never give up.

Jamie Lee Curtis writes really neat books, I’ve loved everyone of them we’ve read.  This one I love because it’s all about how awesome Mom is. :)  What Mom wouldn’t love that? It’s like sending subliminal messages to your kids. Hee hee. Sneaky!

‘Aliens Love Underpants’, perfect for silly preschoolers!  Both boys laugh and laugh and laugh when listening to this one.  It’s pretty silly, great for gloomy days when you need a good chuckle.

‘Jumanji’ is a classic, and a Caldecott Medal winner, so you know it’s a good book.  This is definitely for older kids, lots of words compared to pictures. 

This book we got for Aiden for Christmas one year.  He used to love puppies, so we found this book that is a collection of stories in one book.  It follows the same dog through out the book and is just a nice book for littles.  The pictures are ‘soft’, kind of ‘dreamy’.  Not sure if you’ll know what I mean unless you check it out yourself.  It’s calming.  IDK, I just really love it.

‘Owl Moon’, wow.  Such a neat story.  Def a preschool and up aged book.  But another Caldecott Medal winner, so a great story.  It’s really neat.

The Magic Tree House books are great for Kindergarten and up.  They are chapter books with a few black and white pictures scattered throughout, but they are great for introducing your kids to longer books.  Andy would read a chapter a night to Aiden before bedtime.  Basically the kids go to their tree house and go on all kinds of adventures.  It’s a whole series, I think they are up to book #50 or higher at this point.

Any and all Berenstain Bears books are good.  Every single one has a great message and lesson for kids, some on behavior, others on manners, others on friendship.  I loved these as a kid and read my collection of 20 or more to my kids today.  Love them.

Some bozo was selling this amazing book at their garage sale for 25cents!!!  It’s worth WAY more than that.  This is an outstanding book! Aiden loved it from about age 3 on.  He and Andy would read it 3 or more times a night the entire winter he was 3 1/2, he just loved it!  I haven’t pulled it out for Brennan yet, but definitely think he’s ready to enjoy the neat story now too.

“Let It Fall’ is a neat book.  We also have ‘Let It Snow’, we really like that one too.

“Pout-Pout” is a good book about being afraid of the dark and conquering your fears. 

And this last book, it’s a tear jerker.  You can read this to your newborn or your kid going away to college.  It’s just a nice book about how your love will be wherever you child is.  Tear. Sniffle.  Hold on while I go sniff my baby’s blankies.

Ok, friends.  Time to get moving for the day. I’ve done nothing but sit in front of the tv to watch the coverage of Hurricane Sandy.  It’s so devastating!  I hope you are all safe out there!

Heading to Brennie’s preschool this afternoon for their Halloween party. Can’t wait to see all those cuties dressed up!

Have a great one!

Erin

Weekend Rewind

 

Happy Monday to all!  How was your weekend?  We were busy on Saturday, will recap that in a bit.

First I have to say, the death of Stephanie Forrester on The Bold and The Beautiful is going to be the death of me.  This is the saddest few weeks I’ve ever experienced on a soap opera.  There’s always a few days here and there, but this has been every single day, continuously, for the last 2 weeks.  I’m not sure when ‘the big day’ is but I don’t know if I can take it!  It’s making me think about death waaaayyyy too much.  I cry from 12:30 to 1:00 every afternoon.  It’s just too darn sad to say goodbye to someone this way.  In real life or on a soap.  I hope none of you have ever had to experience this.

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How are my peeps out on the East Coast?  I’m thinking of you all!  Stay safe!!!

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Our Saturday was busy.  Last week we had 2 friends have babies, so Saturday we stopped by to meet Piper (and visit her parents, Jason and Jill).  Oh is she a sweet little darling!  I love love LOVE babies!

We then went on to my cousin’s wedding.  They are big fans of Halloween so their reception was all decked out in spooky Halloween decorations.  It was really fun!  Some people dressed up in costume to celebrate.  Congratulations to Josh and Trista!  I wish you many years of happiness together!

Sunday we stayed home.  A week ago we decided that we were going NOWHERE Sunday, we were going to stay home, lay around in our comfy clothes and watch football all day. I made a bunch of snacky food that we munched on all afternoon and evening and we just laid around.  I even took a short nap!  The only time we left the house was to go out and rake the back yard for 20 minutes.  Otherwise we holed up in the house, and it felt amazing!  It was just what we needed.  A day at home to relax, decompress and just be a family.  Glad we did it.

I hope you all have a wonderful week,

Erin

Liebster Award Nominee

Hey all!  I was nominated for the Liebster award by Sonya over at Healthy Sew.  If you haven’t checked out her blog go do so please, and give her a little love.  She’s on a weight loss journey like so many of us are.  We feel your pain, Miss Sonya!  Keep on keepin’ on, we’ll get there together.

Anyway, for this award there are a few rules.  They are as follows:

• Post 11 things about yourself
• Answer the 11 questions the person who nominated you asked you
• Create 11 more questions to ask your nominees
• Choose 11 bloggers to nominate who have fewer than 200 followers
• Make sure to let these people know you nominated them!
• No tag backs, so don't nominate someone who nominated you.

Business first, my nominees. Please check these gals out and give them some lovin’.  I see this award is ‘getting around’ so some of these gals already have answered q’s from other bloggers.  So, instead of going and letting these gals know I’m just hoping they’ll see on my blog that they are nominated and if they want to answer the q’s, then they can.  Also, if you haven’t been nominated yet please feel free to post your blog name/address in the comments and then stick that award on your blog and answer the q’s.  All I ask is you link back to me somewhere on your blog post (a.k.a, share the love!).

• Miss Holly, Where We Can Live Like Jack And Sally
• Mel, 4Kottez Runs It
• Shelli, Beauty And The Baseball Coach
• Annie, Crazy-Simple Mama
• Erin, The Casual Stay At Home
• Kristen, First Name Smith
• Shelly, Shelly No Belly
• Meredith, Eat, Drink, Run & Be Mommy
• Kassie, Southern Girl Gets Fit
• Elle Noel

The 11 questions for them to answer:

1. If you could be any animal, which animal would you be and why?
2. Which dead celebrity would you like to have supper with? Explain.
3. What is your one guilty pleasure (talking food)?
4. Turkey or ham sandwich?
5. What color of polish is on your toes right now?
6. Would you rather eat 5 cockroaches or lay in a coffin with snakes slithering all over you?
7. What is your favorite time of day?  What are you usually doing then?
8. Which perfume do you wear?
9. Describe the perfect vacation.
10. Flannel or cotton sheets?
11. Who is your favorite singer or group of all time?

Ok, and now on to the questions I have to answer from Sonya.

1. What's your middle name? Yvonne, pronounced ‘E’-von, not Ya-von.
2. Last book you read?  I can’t remember. I am usually a big reader but have not picked up a book since early summer.  I have been trying to read “The Summer I Dared” by Barbara Delinsky since last spring and just keep putting it away.  So that is what is currently sitting on my end table with a bookmark in it.  It’s not a bad book, I don’t think, just haven’t felt like putting any effort into it.
3. Favorite "healthy" food. How sad is it that I’m struggling on this one? I guess I like bananas.
4. Favorite "non-healthy" food. Pagliai’s Pizza, pronounced Polly-Eyes. O! M! GGGGGG!!!!!  So super duper yummy.  My mouth is actually watering thinking about it.  Talk about a mouth-gasm! 
5. Favorite drink, other then water. Mt Dew (didn’t have to think about that one)
6. Where were you born? my hometown hospital, which is where my husband and boys were born, also. 
7. Favorite form of exercise? playing football with my boys. My goal is to say ‘running’.  Still working on that one. 
8. Favorite sport to watch? Football. Not picky, this can be high school, college or pro.
9. Favorite quote. I don’t have one.  I see a bunch on Pinterest that I think are cool and I might take a moment to think about, but I don’t have one that I live by, use or say. 
10. How would your friends & family describe you? Bold and brash.  Seriously, my husband overheard my sister describe me that way.  Not cool.  I am not a mean person, I just get my feathers ruffled quickly and like to take things into my own hands to get them moving.  They would also say I’m very loving, fiercely protective, emotional, sensitive, rambunctious, and funny.
11. Favorite tv show. IDK on this one.  There isn’t really a show that I cannot miss.  I love Young and The Restless, Nashville, Duck Dynasty (don’t knock it till you’ve tried it) and Modern Family.

And now for the 11 ‘things’ about myself. Hmm, what to say without scaring you?

1. I love to make lists.  I make lists for EVERYTHING.  Gift lifts, cleaning lists, food prep lists, holiday lists, vacation packing lists.  Lists, lists, lists.
2. I would rather dust than clean the bathroom sink.  I’d rather vacuum than mop.  I’d rather scrub the toilet than the tub.
3. I was a Girl’s Basketball Cheerleader all three years in high school.  Our team mascot was/is the Demon.  No, we are not devil worshipers, just bad asses.  “We are the Demons, the mighty mighty Demons say Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!”
4. I am attracted to older men, but my husband is only 2 months older than me.  Examples:  Ed Harris, Robert Redford (15 yrs ago), Clint Eastwood (15 years ago), John Slattery (any age, any time, just call me!).  I think it might have something to do with a song I loved as a younger gal and still love.  A guy singing “Young girl get out of my mind.  My love for you is way out of line, better run girl!  YOUR MUCH TOO YOUNG GIRL!”  Mmm, just love it.
5. Places I want to visit someday: Maine, Prince Edward Island – Canada (I was a big Anne Of Green Gables fan growing up), Ireland, England, Italy, Australia and Alaska.
6. I am terrible at deciphering song lyrics. For instance, I used to think the words to Jungle Love were Tra La La.  For Ozzy’s Bark at the Moon?  I thought it was Fuckin’ the Bull.  IDK, it’s just what I heard!  Andy gets quite the kick out of that one.
7. I am the kiss of death for TV shows.  If I go on about how much I love a show it ends up getting cancelled.  Case in point:  Ed and American Dreams.  2 of my most favorite shows of all time, cancelled before their time should have been up. I would love to go about a new show I really, really like but don’t want to jinx it too, so I’ll just say it’s on ABC, Wednesday nights at 10/9C. Love!
8. I have road rage and I am not afraid to use my horn.  And I like to use my horn just because, too, so if I pull into your driveway expect some major horn honking!
9. I believe in Angels, not ghosts, and I truly believe that when babies are looking past you/over your shoulder and really staring at something they are looking at the Angels who are there.
10. When I have hard serve ice cream at home I nuke it in the microwave for 15-25 seconds to soften it up so I can stir it and make it soupy.  And I only like vanilla, although it can be vanilla with something added (Cookies And Cream, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough).
11. I’m afraid to be home by myself after dark and imagine I hear things and that people are looking in the windows at me.  I know, I’m a freak.  Thank goodness we are now in a tiny little safe town!

There you have it, the Liebster Award, and all that goes with it.  It’s a long post, I hope you made it all the way through!  And I hope you go check out the girls I nominated, they are all awesome and have great blogs!  So if you haven’t been nominated just say that I did nominate you (hee hee) and ‘link up’ through the comments section! 

Love to all,

Erin

The Runaway Pumpkin

I wanted to share one of our favorite Halloween books with you. If you have littles at your house this is a must get/must read!  It has a fun little rhyme that gets repeated a couple of times and the kids and I belt it out whenever we get to that part.  Without further adieu here’s The Runaway Pumpkin, by Kevin Lewis.

At our house I put away all holiday books when I put away that holiday’s decorations.  Who wants to read about Rudolph in July?  So I have one more week to read about Buck and Billy Baxter and their baby sister, Lil.  Seriously love this book! 

Another fall favorite is Pumpkin Soup by Helen Cooper. It is a close second on our list of favorite fall books. And this one is not about Halloween so we get extra reading time on it. 

Have a great day!

Erin

What’s On The Menu? Chicken Pasta

A couple of weeks ago I was out of ideas for supper.  I had thawed some chicken breasts out but didn’t know what to do with them.  Then genius struck.  I pulled out some spaghetti sauce and noodles and made my own version of Chicken Parmesan.  Here’s what I did.

First, I cleaned the chicken breasts.  I cut off the extra fat (that’s that nasty looking pile in the upper left hand corner) and then cut the 2 boobies in half so they weren’t so thick.  Next, pepper and salt them.

Heat a little EVOO in a skillet.  Dice up some onion and garlic and cook that for a few minutes, until the onion is transparent. 

Add the chicken and cook it until cooked through.  Doesn’t take too long since they’re thinner.  Once cooked through add your jar of spaghetti sauce and simmer until heated through, or let it simmer until your noodles are done.  Either is fine.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, boil your spaghetti noodles according to package directions.  If you really want to impress your family heat up some garlic bread, too.  Then just plate it up.

Really easy and, because it involved spaghetti sauce, my husband loved it.  Oh, and don’t mind the pickles on there.  For some reason I’ve been craving my mom’s homemade pickles lately.  Seriously gals, those things are da’ bomb!  They are dill and delicious! 

Happy Hump Day!

Erin

Dreams

Do you remember your dreams?  How often do you have dreams?  I am an active dreamer (both night time and day) and I might not remember all of my dreams or even the entire dream, but most mornings I can remember an image, a feeling or some little bit from a dream I had the night before.

Along with being a dreamer I also talk in my sleep.  I’m sure most of it is mumbling, but when I was pregnant with our first I would fall asleep before Andy almost every night.  He’d lay in bed and finish the show we were watching, and when he’d start to wiggle around it’d bring me back just enough to talk in my sleep and say “I love you sooooo much, Andy.”  Almost every night.  He tells me I’ve even had short conversations with him right after I fall asleep.

Also when we were pregnant Andy had a dream that we had a boy, he was a major chunk and when Andy put him up on his shoulder his arms would hang half-way down his back.  Enter Aiden (boy), 9lbs 1 oz. (chunk) with monkey arms (long).  Weird.  He had a dream about Brennan too, and that baby was a boy in his dream.  We never found out what we were having so it’s weird that he was dreaming they were boys.  He never had a dream that they were girls.

Do you ever wake up with the feelings you had in your dream? Anger, frustration, happiness, etc.?  I have done that quite a bit.  In one dream I had a few weeks ago my brother-in-law left my sister for a MUCH older woman.  I was so stinking mad at him in that dream!  That next day we had my nephew’s birthday party and I honestly had a hard time looking at him without feeling mad at him. 

Last night I had a terrible dream.  In it my dad decided he’d had enough of living on the farm and was moving to town and selling the farm.  I grew up on our farm so if this happened in real life it would be very upsetting.  In this dream I went ballistic.  I screamed, bawled, yelled, cried and was so angry with my dad I couldn’t even look at him.  So when I woke up this morning I felt very hurt by my dad, whom I love and adore and in my eyes he does no wrong.  So it was a cruddy feeling.  I of course called him and told him about it, he just laughed and said he had no intentions of selling the farm.  Phew, thank goodness!

That brings me to the meaning of dreams.  I wish I had one of those books that helped you decipher your dreams.  I’d love to know why I dreamed that and what it means.  Some old co-workers used to tell me I needed to go see someone about my dreams because they were always so weird and over the top.  It’d be neat to know the meaning of these crazy dreams.

So, do you dream every night?  Are they vivid?  Do you know what they mean?

Erin

Weekend Recap

Let’s just get the bad news out of the way – the Hawkeyes lost Saturday.  It was brutal and I don’t care to recap that part of my day.  So let’s just focus on the fun from 11 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.

This was our annual FFBF game, or in layman’s terms Friendly Friends Being Friendly (no, I did not coin the phrase).  All of us but 1 are Hawkeye fans (the 1 is a Nebraska fan.  Hold on while I go vomit.).  That one brought back up with her, so there were 4 Nebbie fans tailgating with us.  I think they came to see how it’s really done. Wink wink!  Here’s a pic of the group.  Andy and I are over on the left.

So, aside from being with friends, my favorite thing about tailgating is eating!  You should have seen the spread!  Wow!  Aside from all the dips, veggie trays, cookies, bars and snacks sitting out we grilled bacon wrapped pheasant (I was skeptical but it really was fine), bacon wrapped shrimp (not a big fan), chicken wings, meatballs and my contribution, bacon wrapped turkey marinated in Italian dressing.  Mmm!  The food was fantastic!

                       

Here are a few more pics.  Me and my peeps (ha ha), Amy and Staci.

And me and my main ‘peep’, Andy.  He’s so darn cute.

My one picture from the awful game.  It was the ‘Spirit Game’ so they designate every other section as either black or yellow.  It’s pretty awesome that they pull it off.  So here’s a look at how cool it is.

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Our Sunday was fun, too.  We went to the farm store to get our Christmas shopping off to a start.  I was disappointed this year, but did get my 3 year old niece a Barbie Jeep Cruiser with Ken and Barbie in it.  Yay!  It’s so super pink she is going to love it!  The best part of the day was driving there.  Honestly, Andy and I have more fun cooped up in a car together than going out to eat at a fancy restaurant.  It was a gorgeous day, temps in the mid 70’s and sunny.  So nice!  Today is warm again but rainy, so won’t be outside enjoying the warm weather.  By the time the rain has moved out it’ll be the end of the week and highs in the 40’s.  Brr!!!

Have a great Monday, friends!

Erin

It’s Getting Spoooooky Here

We finally carved our pumpkin last night.  What took us so long? 

I bought a new carving set because last year our little serrated cutter broke while carving our masterpiece.  This set came with a bunch of patterns/templates for carving fancy designs on your pumpkin so we thought, why not?  The boys picked out a witch flying on her broom.  We taped it to the pumpkin, took a deep breath and started cutting.  I can’t believe it but that darn thing turned out!  It actually looks like a witch flying on her broom!!!  Here’s some fun pics.

Once again this year Brennan wouldn’t touch the ‘goo’ and Aiden had to do most of the work.  Why does this sound so familiar to me? Oh yea, that’s right, that’s what happened with me and my sister back in the day.  She did all the hard work and I enjoyed watching her do it! Ha ha!  And why is it I forgot how bad pumpkin guts stink every year?  Eck!  Have you carved pumpkins at your house yet?

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I wanted to share a project I worked on yesterday.  We have lived in our house for over a year but I haven’t hung hardly anything on the walls yet.  I wanted different things than we had in our old house but I haven’t been very proactive about getting anything bought.  I found some ‘Pinsperation’ on Pinterest and then made it my own.  The top picture is the Pinterest find, the bottom photo is how I interpreted it.  (The blog that this top photo is from is no longer in service.)

I LOVE it!!!!  I am so darn happy with how it turned out.  It looks so great on the wall above our ugly couch.  I can’t tell you how happy I am with it!

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So, what are you gals doing this weekend?  We are heading to the Iowa game tomorrow (GO HAWKS!!!!) and will be tailgating ALL. DAY. LONG!!!!  Woot woot, can’t wait to hang with some awesome friends and have a good time.  And to eat!!!  My second favorite part of tailgating!  We are taking bacon wrapped turkey bites and deer bologna.  There’s going to be a bunch of dips, crackers, other meat on the grill and some different types of bars for the sweet tooth.  Yum yum YUM!!!

Hope you all have a great weekend!

GO HAWKS!!!!

Erin

Outside Fall Decorations

Good Thursday morning to you!

I can hardly believe that October is over half-way over and we will soon be thinking of turkey’s and pies!  Last night we received an email from Andy’s sister-in-law with the Thanksgiving menu in it, telling us what our contribution to the meal will be.  I am the pie maker so I will be taking pumpkin, apple and cherry pie, plus a relish tray.  Andy’s family is picky like him, so they like everything to be basic.  So no fancy mashed potatoes, just plain old mashed potatoes.  We will also have turkey and ham, Stove  Top stuffing (that drives me nuts!  Seriously?  We can’t make homemade stuffing at least?), noodles and a relish tray.

It’s funny how different families interpret the relish tray differently.  Andy’s family: pickles, olives, carrots and cheese.  My family: olives (passion plums as my dad calls them), cheese, cauliflower, broccoli, carrots, more cheese and more olives.  Don’t forget the ranch dip for both.

So Fall is hurrying right along.  We go to the farm store this weekend for our big shopping trip!  Yay!!!  We got the ad in the mail yesterday, was a little disappointed but I know we will still have fun and score some good toys.  I made a run to Dollar General for kleenex last night and, because I was there all. by. myself!!! I was able to stroll through the store and gawk.  So I grabbed a couple of stocking stuffers while there – bath wash with Spiderman and Cars on them for the boys and perfume for my niece (that cheap, aerosol crap that every 12 year old should own! Ha ha!).  It was fun and I definitely had Christmas music playing in my head on the ride home!  It’s amazing how much Christmas stuff is out in the stores already!

I wanted to show you my outside decorations. I had fun setting them up.

This basket was my picnic basket, but the handle broke and I couldn’t fix it.  I was bummed until I realized I could use it outside to decorate.  I grew those gourds (not the pumpkins) in my garden this year.  It was fun to see those vines take over my garden!  I think I’ll plant them again next year.

This ghost. Sigh.  At our old house it would get blown around so it never faced forward.  It drove me nuts so I haven’t used it the last couple of years.  But this year I propped it up in front of this ‘fence’ and it now proudly faces out.  I love it!  And then I just took vine I bought at the craft store and mesh ribbon and wound it around the ‘fence’. 

So tell me, what does your family’s relish tray consist of?

{{{{Hugs!}}}}

Erin

What’s On The Menu? Enchiladas

I don’t know about you, but I get so tired of my regular recipes.  I am so bored with them that I can’t even think of anything good to make for supper most days.  In the past I have made weekly menus, which do really help me so I don’t have to try to whip up something amazing when I haven’t thought of it until 4:30 that afternoon.

I had some corn tortillas sitting in my pantry just begging me to use them.  Andy doesn’t like the corn tortillas, he’s more into the not-good-for-you flour tortillas.  But I like the corn ones, they add some flavor to the recipe.  So I made up my own concoction for Monday night’s supper, and it was actually pretty darn good!  I am here today to share this most amazing made-up by Erin recipe.  (In all honesty, it’s pretty basic stuff that isn’t really a recipe and really isn’t all that made-up by Erin.)

Made-Up By Erin Enchiladas

Grill, bake, boil or whatever way you want to 1 chicken breast (cook it), then shred or cube it up.

Heat a package of Old El Paso Spanish Rice (the kind you nuke in the microwave for 60 or 90 seconds).

Mix the 2 together.  Pour about a 1/2 –3/4c. of enchilada sauce in the mixture and mix that together.  Oh, and dump a package of taco seasoning in, too.  I buy it in bulk in a container at the Amish store because I don’t like taco seasoning that much, so this way I can control how much I add.  I usually add a tablespoon or two, in case you care.

Then assemble your enchiladas: 1/2 c. of mix in middle of tortilla, a sprinkling of shredded cheese on top, roll up and place seam side down in your baking dish.

Pour another 1/2-3/4c. of enchilada sauce over top of rolled tortillas.  I’m not a huge fan of the sauce so I went with just a little.  Sprinkle some more shredded cheese over the top, pop the dish in your oven at 350 degrees for 20 minutes or so. 

You can top these babies with some shredded lettuce, tomatoes, black olives, salsa, etc., etc. Heck, you could even pop some of those things into the mix before stuffing the tortillas if you want. But I live with picky men who don’t like any of the above (except salsa) so I just add my goodies to the top.  Voilà!

I hope you give these a try, they are so darn easy.  You can pop your boneless, skinless chicken breast into a crock pot with a little water and seasonings before you leave for work in the morning and it will be cooked and ready to go when you get home, the assembly is the easy/quick part.  What seasonings? Onion flakes, cumin, garlic powder (or the real thing), black pepper.  Any q’s? Did I leave anything out?  It’s not a real recipe so I hope it wasn’t too hard to follow w/ all of my gibberish added in. (Funny, I always thought gibberish was spelled w/ a ‘j’. Thank goodness for spell check! Now I know!)

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I wanted to show you this pretty tree in my back yard.  The yellow is so bright that when I walk by my kitchen window it lights up my kitchen!  It’s just amazing and so pretty. 

Happy Hump Day,

Erin

Tattoos

Sorry folks, I’m linking up again today.  I’ll try to stop…for a few days. Wink!

Today I am linking up with Mel over at 4Kottez. She’s the really super cool girl that everyone wants to be friends with but she doesn’t know you exist so you just sit off to the side wishing and praying that someday you could be as cool and awesome as she is.  Seriously, folks, this gal is ADORABLE!  She’s gorgeous, has an amazing family and is super fit (she’s a runner).  She says she’s on a weight loss journey, too, but I think she’s just so darn nice that she says that so others don’t feel bad that they are. 

Ok, so for the link up.  Mel wants to know about tat’s.  Sorry, Mel, I don’t have any!  I don’t really  have any desire to get one, either.  BUT!  If I did get one it’d be small and have some meaning to it.  So IF I did get one it might look like this (photo from Pinterest):

I’d hide it somewhere where most people wouldn’t see it, maybe on my side by my bra line.  Or my hip.  IDK.  And I’d use the boys’ initials or Andy’s and mine…maybe.  Again, IDK, I’d hate to jinx our marriage by tattooing him onto me.  Isn’t that how that works sometimes?

2 of my friends were recently inked for the first time, here are their tat’s:

The top one is a lily.  This gal has a daughter named Lilly, not sure if that’s why she went with that (would be the obvious reason), I should ask her.  And the bottom one, this guy is recently divorced and on a much better path now.  So he got this tat because he loves the lyric (and song, so do I!!), it means something to him and he chose this area because it would be very painful and if he could get through the pain of his divorce he could get through any pain.  Pretty cool.  And he’s a really cool guy, so any single ladies interested let me know! Ha ha!

How about you gals?  Do any of you have tat’s? Where and what?  What do they mean to you? How old were you when you got them? Would you change anything about them, why?

Thanks, Mel, for the fun link up topic!

Happy Tuesday, Friends!

Erin

Show And Tell Monday–From Mrs. To Mama Link Up

Today I am linking up with Becky over at From Mrs. To Mama.  Go check out her blog if you haven’t already, she’s super cute and a fun read! 

1. When you were 17, tell us what kind of car you drove, where you worked, and what you were usually up to on the weekends.

- I drove a Pontiac Grand Am, purple in color.  I called it the Purple Pontiac (real creative).  I worked only in the summers for a seed stock company, my job was to rogue corn.  Rogueing is when you cut out the ‘bad’ corn from the ‘good’ corn so when they combine the corn in the fall they are only getting the most consistently perfect corn seed.  Kind of like weeding the corn, but taking out corn instead of weeds.  Does that make sense?  I didn’t think so.  Anyway, working in the fields was awesome – you got an amazing tan because the girls wore bikini tops all summer, you got paid an awesome amount of money and you were basically goofing off all day with your friends.  And you made enough working 2 months in the summer so you didn’t have to have a job after school.  It was a lot of walking but that just helped keep us in shape so the guys on the crew had something to look at. Ha!  As far as what I was up to on the weekends – necking with Andy, of course!  We started dating when we were 16, by 17 we spent every waking minute together that we could.  And yes, we necked quite a bit. Sorry for sharing. Ha ha!

2. Show us a picture of you when you were 17 {roughly}.

- Sorry folks, I wanted to share a picture of me but my scanner is giving me fits so couldn’t get one in for you.  You’ll just have to use your imagination.

3. When you were 17, tell us what you wanted to be when you "grew up."

- I wanted to be a cosmetologist when I was 17, which is what I went to school for after high school, and I would still be doing now if I wasn’t a stay at home mom.

4. When you were 17, tell us the kind of boys that you dated. Did you have a type? Do you have a relationship you remember well? Tell us about it.

- I didn’t really have a ‘type’, Andy was my first real go-on-dates-talk-on-the-phone boyfriend, and it stuck.  So I remember our relationship very well.  See the last part of question 1 for more details. 

5. When you were 17, tell us where you pictured your life 10 years from then. Did it turn out the way you expected it to?

When I was 17 I figured I’d be married and have kids by the age of 27, and it turned out to be true!  Looking back I feel bad for myself that I didn’t have loftier goals and dreams.  All I wanted was to go to college, move back to my hometown and get married, and that’s pretty much what happened.  Boring!  Now I tell my nieces and nephew to reach for the stars, dream big and not to let anyone tell them they are dreaming too big.  You only get that one chance in life, take it!  You want to be a doctor, do it!!! Who cares if it’s a lot of schooling, you have the rest of your life to not be in school, do what will make you happy!

Happy Monday, all!

Erin