We got a sweet new ride

Confession: until a month ago, I was driving a ten year old Ford Escape with 190,000 miles on it. Rob? His is a 2001 Honda with 220,000 miles on it. Kind of playing the slots on that one weren't we? 

I've been kind of money savy my whole life. Ever since I started having kids, I have become a bit of an Extreme couponer, make my own babyfood and laundry detergent, and breastfed more for cost savings than belief in the health benefits.** You get my drift.  I've turned into a bit of a biter, pincher, saver, scratcher. Within the last year, I listened to Dave Ramsey and his "live like no one else, so that, someday you can live like no one else" shtick. He pretty much talked me into never having debt, ever again, ever, ever, ever. 

She's gold. She's humungo. And she's all mine. Hey Gold Minner.

 We don't plan on having more kids, so we don't NEED room for 7 people ALL the time. But, we do enjoy having family here and being able to drive into Little Rock all in one vehicle, and I keep kids for my friends some days and give rides to moms in the area without cars. Its so nice to have those options.Plus its just a pimp vehicle. Most beautiful? She's paid off!!! Yaskies!

 And, the kids LURVE the van. Like love love love love

When we get home, their first question "can we play in the van?"

I'm trying to get shades as large as my vehicle. Getting there......

**Just a disclaimer-I do believe breastfeeding has amazingly awesome health benefits for the baby and, if it goes well,  it is a wonderful way to bond with your baby. Studies show that the mom passes on immunity and many healthy benefits of breastfeeding. The boys and I? We were obviously not part of those studies. I breastfed both babies and they BOTH ended up with asthma, chronic bronchitis, chronic ear infections, surgery before one year of life, and multiple other crazy illnesses. So, after, like, 6 months, it became more of something I was doing to save us money more than provide health for my youngin. Or maybe both. Probably both. It WAS an awesome money saver and way of losing baby weight. And, in the case of Max, it was a very bonding experience. Poor Rylan and Mommy. Between his tongue tie and my emotions post bedrest and c-section-we just couldn't get it together.  

Awwww....the weekends

Here's what used to happen on weekends:
Sleep in
Sit around while drinking 3-12 cups of coffee
 Float in the pool reading a chick book
Take a HUGE nap
Watch 2 movies

 Then we had Mover and Shaker. And they don't like to sit around. And drinking cups of whatever requires action on my part. And one is phasing out of naps (he didn't ask our opinion) and the movies still go down, but they have names like Wild Animal Baby and Chipmunks. Left to their own devises, Rylan and Max would beat the ever living crap out of each other and eat 27 Popsicles all by 8:36 am. Its best to keep them entertained. Here is an example of a rainy Saturday:

My, that little doggie outfit is getting tiny. Still adorable. Me thinks its time to pass it on to Mr. Miles

We have become huge fans of the Rivermarket on Saturday morns. There are so many choices of what to do. We almost always hit the Farmer's Market. I know you are thinking, well that's healthy. But, we mostly go for this absolutely divine jelly that we are hooked on called Very Berry. It has every berry possible in it and its so good, I could eat it without a piece of toast. Just a spoon. Then we either go to storytime at the library, on a trolly ride, or to the Museum of Discovery. Last weekend we changed it up a little and went to the Splash Pad after getting our needed jelly.

I feel bad, because when Ry was my only child, I took him to the Splash Pad all the time and Max is almost 2 and he's never been. I did take him to a different splash pad a month or more ago, but it nearly gave me a heart attack and I never went back. This splash pad is easier to watch your kids and isn't directly next to scary climbable rocks with tunnels and slides. I lost Max like 7 times that day.

This day was great. It was overcast, and rain looked imminent, so it wasn't busy as usual. Max and Rylan LOVED it. So much fun to see their big smiles.

Eventually the need for food outweighed the need to run with wild abandon through sprinklers coming out of the ground. We dined at the Flying Fish.

My heart is currently smiling

I love Max's face, "mom, we are in a fish place, why are we taking photos?"

And, just in case anyone is thinking that the Flying Fish is a fantastic place to get your fried food fix, and I recently vowed to blast off 40 pounds, I took a pic of my beautiful and healthy meal. It was really good. I didn't even feel like I was giving anything up. I did kind of miss the fried shrimp poboy, but this is a close second. 

So, while things have changed slightly on the weekends, I feel like we are enjoying life a whole lot more. Enjoying this city we live in a whole lot more. Plus, I was told like 788 times today that Rylan loved me and I made two little boys fantastically happy just by letting them roam free in my car while I cleaned it out. There are a few coins stuck in my cd player and my lights, blinker, emergency lights, and radio all turned on full blast when I started the car, but they had a blast. Would not change that for a million of anything.

Blueberry Pickin Good Times

Before the 900th epidemic hit us this year I was putting this little blogpost together about our trip to the blueberry farm last week. I wanted to do this last year with Rylan, but I was SO pregnant and my body was SO mean to me about being pregnant, that it never worked out. I tried to find us some strawberries to pick earlier this spring, but most of the farms by us weren't able to have U-pick fields because of all the storms we got during spring. When I started investigating blueberry picking, I discovered that there is a U-pick berry farm less than 10 minutes from our house. This is amazing to me, since NO WHERE is a ten minute drive from our house. Not even a good gas station or grocery store. We did recently get a Daylight Donuts, cause out of everything in this world, a donut shop is EXACTLY what my giggly booty needs! They do have excellent donut holes though.

Anyway, back to berry picking. Rylan loves fruit. Especially "BERRIES". He gets so freakin excited about them everytime he sees them in the fridge. Max, well Max loves life in general. Every day is the new best day of his whole life (until you want him to sleep) and he was totally in for some blueberry picking fun.

Ry didn't so much PICK the blueberries as EAT the blueberries. In all honesty, I should have had the guy weigh Rylan before we went to pick and after and paid the difference. It took lots of effort on my part to actually have blueberries in our bucket, ahead of what Rylan was eating. Eventually he got full and quit eating. At which time he declared our adventure as DONE and said "go home, Mommy." Bossy little sucker.

I pressed on and plied him with food and drink long enough to get 3 pounds picked. He'll thank me every morning that we have blueberry pancakes, our family's very favorite blueberry food.

I finally got the picking wrapped up and was ready to leave, when lo and behold, Rylan found friends and together they climbed to the top of a mulch pile, where Rylan decided, that I am a genius and I choose all the fun places to go. This place had MULCH.


Then I made us leave because it was hot as Africa and we were low on sunscreen. I lost my new spot as genius mom and went back to mean mom. But he has no heat stroke or sunburn and we've already had blueberry pancakes twice, so phhhht.