Christmas 2012

And now, on the evening of January 18th, I shall document our Christmas. You know, the one that happened 21 days or more ago. I've just been so busy trying to blog about weight loss and decide what to blog about from Pinterest, and trying to grow my nails out, since I blogged about that, that I completely forgot to blog about my family enjoying a very lovely pre-blizzard jolly good Christmas.

Christmas #1 Qualls side. 

We traveled to Batesville to Rob's parents house, where his sister and her kids and his 2 aunts met us. One of Rob's aunts, Becky (pictured below in the black shirt standing, I apologize about the quality of the pic) moved to Equador and was back in the states for the holidays and able to spend Christmas with us. She brought us all presents. It was so sweet. 

Yes, mom, Grandma got me a super swesome Darth Vadar ornament and I'm going to show it to you, but not smile for the camera.

Rob, his sis, and his parents. His mom had surgery on her toot (that's Max speak for foot) a couple weeks before the holidays. Bless her.

Aunt Becky brought him a tiger hat and Grandma gave him a book to eat

Christmas #2 Rohr side

Mom holding Angie's dog. She doesn't love dogs. I think she looks quite natural here.

A try at a grandkids shot. Who brought the grumpy kid in the front?

Happier

Much better

Christmas isn't complete without putting the smackdown on Clay

Zoe

Maxerdoodle

Rylan's awesome pirate ship

Sister Tammy and Robert Eric McQuallster

Sister Angie and Clay (no idea what my mom is finding so funny in the back)

My parents. 42 years together and they still like each other. Crazy talk.

Our 8th Christmas together, I still like him okay

Max figured out how to take a pic. And document his pacey addiction

Cutting the prime rib. Delish.

We woke up Christmas morn to warnings of snowfalls, so we hightailed it back to Little Rock in time for freezing rain to start. We woke up the next morning to find over 8 inches of white fluff on the ground. And no electricity. We were some of the lucky ones. We lost power for 24 hours and right when we started calling hotels and phoning friends, the lights turned back on. I love electricity. I really love love it. I love a hot shower, a heater, and I really love tv.

Even though he proclaimed snow angels to be girly stuff, he still enjoyed them.

This is our last pic with Max in a crib. Before he turned all Climy Climberson and now he's in a toddler bed and he shows up in the middle of the night holding random objects from his room.

The week between Christmas and New Years, a doctor that I work with shoves about 3x the normal number of patients into 3 days. Being the idiot that I am, I had offered to work extra, to help pay off Christmas and such. Then it snowed. And the school lost power. And we had to beg a friend, pay extra for my work daycare, and slide all over Little Rock to get the kids taken care of so that their (mostly) stay at home mom could work a few extra hours. I will NEVER. EVER. offer to work extra again. EVER. Not at this job. Not at this time of year. Not with the asthma twins as my kids. 

Well, isn't that Pinteresting?

As part of my New Year, New Me, I've decided to try something off Pinterest every week and blog the results. Basically, I stay at home with my kids and I need more people to talk to, you know, other than the ones that talk about pee pee and tooting at the dinner table, so....Congratulations!!!!

Basically, Pinterest is as addictive as pizza, ice cream and booze. In that order. And just like losing weight, I am bad about reading about things and talking about things, but NOT ACTUALLY DOING THOSE THINGS. So, I pin things like a madwoman and I do a few of them, but not nearly enough. And, some things on there are really really awesome.

Because, I am in a weight loss frame of mind, I'll try to mostly post recipes that are "skinny". I also have a million things pinned to clean my house and make it beautiful.

So......here's Pinteresting Wednesday Part 1

Scrumptious Cinnamon Pecan Granola
adapted from this recipe
4 cups rolled oats (I used quick oats)
1 cup chopped pecans
1/4 cup ground flaxseed
1/4 cup brown sugar (I used Splenda brown sugar)
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup applesauce
1tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup raisins or craisins or dried blueberries

Preheat oven to 325. In a large bowl combine oats, flaxseed and pecans. Stir until combined.

In a small saucepan, combine honey, brown sugar, applesauce, salt, and cinnamon. Cook over low heat while stirring until the brown sugar is dissolved. Turn off heat and stir in vanilla.

Pour the honey mixture in with the oat mixture and stir until the oats are coated. Add raisins, stir to incoorporate.

Put entire mixture on a large cookie sheet and spread evenly. Bake for 30 minutes, stirring at least once. Granola should be browned, but watch for burning.Store up to 10 days in an air tight container. *

*10 days.....like we could make it 10 days before we ate it all.
This makes 10 servings, according to My Fitness Pal, one serving =258 calories

We like it with milk or over yogurt.

Mommy Makeover through Resolutions

Its the...eye of the tiger.....its the thrill of the fight

All of my resolutions involved things that I can do to make myself a better Sara. Losing weight, getting organized, hugging my hubs more. I'm calling it a Mommy Makeover. I promise to blog more.

Lets start with losing weight

I'm so tired of being......jumbo Sara. Despite being open about trying to lose weight, I'm not ready to share with all my blog readers what my fatty girl weight is. I imagine AFTER I weigh 20 pounds or so less, I'll be strong enough to say "I used to weigh ____." Right this minute? Not so much.

I AM happy to give you a number of pounds GONE! 2.5 pounds. I have never been happier to see the gigantic number I saw on the scale this morn. Because it was 2.5lbs less than the even more gigantic number I saw 2 weeks ago. And, if I lose 2.5 lbs in 15 days, then I can lose 4-5 lbs a month and be feeling pretty fly come summer!

I have worked out 3-6 times a week. I have walked, done Zumba, and danced with the Wii (kids included). I really need to buckle down and do some longer workout sessions, but my first goal was to get into the mindset of trying to workout daily. Even the days I didn't work out, I have tried my darndest to be more physically active throughout the day. Running around the yard with the kids, cleaning really hard, playing ring around the rosie. I think it all combines and counts. I know for a fact that my eating last week was sooooooo much better than the week before.

That's a good thing. Cause this pic is soooooo wrong.

This is my roomate this past weekend at a scrapbooking retreat. She told me in her old age she's learned to hide behind friends and you look skinnier. I'm the big boobed one that got hid behind. I'm egging her house later.

And a new before picture has been born. I didn't even plan this one!!!!

Fröhliche weihnachten und ein gutes neues jahr

Anybody who ever knew my beloved Grandpa Gene knew that saying this to him during the Christmas season (correctly!!!!) earns you a dollar.  It means Merry Christmas and a Good New Year. In German. I'm a gigantic German. Like, my great-great-grandparents came here from Germany, gave birth to Germans, who married Germans, who gave birth to my parents, who gave birth to me. Little fun facts on a Tuesday. Gosh I miss Grandpa Gene.

I'll backtrack to our Christmas in a day or two (or 10). I'm on a roll with blogging and I want to get my New Years Resolution post done so I can get to the business of breaking them. Or maybe not?

1. Lose the 40 pounds that I vowed to lose last September but decided to hang on to for a couple extra months.

2. Kiss and hug on my husband more. We've been in baby mode and survival mode for so long, its easy to forget where we started. We actually like each other.

3. Organize our lives. They are crazy and chaotic right now. I'm working so hard on this already. But, I am a naturally unorganized person with a hint of ADD, and but going back to work part time, plus adding 2 different therapies and at-home preschool, plus being a table leader at MOPS and remembering to check on and plan playdates for the 7 girls at my table have almost made me crazy. And I've taken on blogging for MOPS. And I'm helping organize a gigantic yard sale fundraiser in April. Crazyness. There have been days that I have taken Rylan to speech therapy at 8am, gone to Max's 2 year check up, gone to a playdate, gone to Rob's work to drop something off, back home and then back to town because we had some MOPS event. I overbook. Because I forget to write things down. So, a good organizer, keeping up with checkbook, writing down what I ate, make a schedule and stick to it. Planning ahead. That sort of thing.

4. Did I mention lose 40 pounds? 40? How bout 45. Christmas and Thanksgiving weren't very good to the scale. Getting a schedule and being accountable for myself will help me be accountable and schedule workouts and write down my eating.

5. Stop biting my nails. I'm better about biting my actual nails, but have become horrible about picking the skin around my nails. It looks awful, feel worse, and I'm scared my kids are going to do it too. Plus, I work at a hospital and then put my fingers in my mouth. GROSS

So, happy new year to all my favorite blog readers. I wish you all an amazing 2013.

Bye Bye baby

For 4.4 years, we have been in baby mode. We have had diapers, wipes, onesies, footies, nose suckers, cribs, and bottles coming out our eyeballs. For most of this time I have felt like I have been in survival mode because we've had a lot of illnesses during the last 4.4 years. I think that made it go by extra fast.

At one time we had a newborn and a one year old. Yikes.

At time we had a crib in Rylan's room, a crib in Max's room, a bassinet in our room, and a pack and play in the living room. So we could lay a baby down or change a diaper in any area of the house. Somehow with all those beds, we got very little sleep.

Rylan had to move out of the crib a little after his second birthday because he weighed 36 pounds and I was post c-section, post Death fever, and MAH BACK HURT!!!! Max, on the other hand, weighs 26 pounds, dripping wet, at 2 years old. Plus, I haven't recently been invaded by tick fever OR given birth. I vowed to keep Max in his crib until he went to college.

Until Saturday.

I put him down for a nap and went out to the kitchen. Where Max joined me 5 minutes later. And gave me a heart attack. I thought it was a fluke and put him back in bed. I checked on him a couple minutes after and caught him perched on his crib rail with all four limbs like he was fixing to stand up and do a tight-rope walk. 

No more crib. Bye bye baby.  This dad gum kid is bound and determined to grow up! Its so rude! So, here is a trip down memory lane. From sweet baby to Mickey Mouse loving, sassypants, running 80mph little piece of crazy.

Oh Max......we were just starting to sleep again.........

So, what do you call the mode after babies where you get woken up with a 2 year old in your face saying "mickey mouse playhouse mommy!!!!!!!!" 

Branson! Days 2-3

What???? Blogs 2 days in a row? People that have all but given up on this blog are going to have like 20 blogs to read when they finally wander back over in this blog's general direction.

The second morning of our trip to Branson, the kids tried out the indoor pool on the grounds of our house. So much fun. Well, for 3/4 of the kids. Max spent the pool time like this:

3/4 fun

"no I will not look at your camera, MOM."

Yeah, that's right. Our house came with shuffleboard.

Yep, if you guess that I spent the entire hour saying "every day I'm shuffling," you'd be right. I know for a fact I wasn't annoying.

And then? It was time for "ILVER OLLER CITY." What? You don't speak four year old? That's Rylan-ese for Silver Dollar City. Because he can't say "s?" No, he says CITY, he just doesn't have time for s's for the whole phrase.

Rylan and Zoe are somewhere in one of those butterflies

My sister Angie and her cutie Zoe

My cutie Max. Its official, they are all sick of looking at my camera.

This falls into the "sacrifice a child if you took a good picture yourself" parenting advice of yester-blog

Thank you, Zoe

Zoe is manually pushing Rylan's face to look at me. She can't control his eyes, thought

The Christmas parade.

SANTA!!!!!!!! I know him!!!!!!

Day 3 involved more shuffleboard ("everyday I'm shufflin, shufflin") and a trip to Branson landing for Texas Land and Cattle and shopping.

View from Texas Land and Cattle, wish I'd taken a pic of my steak sliders. Cause they were BOMB. (On a side note, diet and exercise regime went out the window with blogging, whoopsie)

And then this reindeer gave birth to 4  Rohr grandchildren

And then 3 of them smiled at the camera

When it was time to leave, things go really sweet

Really cute and sweet

And then Max took the sweet and cute and it turned on us!

We had two sleeping babies before we got back on the highway. Loved this long weekend and I think the kids loved it more. Our "Iller Oller City" tickets are expiring this month and I'm in mourning that weather and illness prevented a third trip before our season passes went bye-bye, but I"m so thankful for the two amazing trips we had.

Ry's Bday!

Around the time of Rylan's birthday, life became........very full. I felt very blessed because we were running our tails off, but it was a good kind of stressed. Lots of birthday plans, lots of playdates with friends, and lots of therapy appointments. Blogging had to go bye bye for a bit. I feel terrible, because I didn't blog on Rylan's birthday. I've never skipped a birthday. I am sure he's noticed.

I have a giganticly annoying minor case of OCD that isn't the kind that results in a clean house, but results in me not being able to skip 1.3 months of blogging and just say "okay, we had a good November/December-here's January." So, we're backing up. Have Fun!!!!

We had huge plans for the weekend after Rylan's birthday, so for the day of his birthday, we went to a playdate with our playgroup and took cupcakes. Then, we made whatever Rylan wanted for dinner, which was ham and pineapple pizza and applesauce and cupcakes. Kids got good taste.

Then we opened presents. I pushed this ABC puzzle on him because he needs ABC help with his Developmental therapy. Then he got a TON of legos. He loves legos*** Loves them. Really loves them.

Putting the ITTY BITTY TINY PIECES TOGETHER

For both kids birthdays, we kept it semi small (read: bought way too many presents but didn't have a party) because we had a trip to Branson planned to go to Silver Dollar City and stay at a nice house and celebrate their birthdays with their cousin, Zoe, that has a birthday in between Max and Rylan's.

Here are some pics of Max (2), Rylan (4), and Zoe (6) opening presents. No chaos. None at all.

Grammy made a dairy free cake and it was delish. All of the presents were so nice and we loved our cozy house that we rented. Loved it. Stay tuned for Day 2!

***I am not emotionally ready for legos. They are so freakin small and all really wants is the little lego men.

Tragedy in Connecticut

I apologize for the blog break. Blogger is telling me my pics are taking too much space and trying to charge me. I'm back and forth between trying to fix it and completely forgetting about it because we've all been sick.

My heart is completely broken for the parents in Connecticut that lost their babies. We've had a tough time with a bossy 4 year old and a hitting 2 year old. This morning that all seems like a benefit in life and I'm very grateful. Its 6:20am and I'm watching the news and for once in my life as a mom, I'm counting the minutes until my babies are up because their soft,  sweet cheeks are proof of all that is right in the world.

Every Wednesday and Thursday I take Rylan to therapy at the local elementary school at 8am. Every time I go, they make me sign in and get a "visitor's necklace". Every. Single. Time. I am always late for this therapy. Always. I am always pissed that they make me stop and sign in and tell them why I'm there.  It makes me later. Today? Not so pissed. I'm happy that they have their eye on who is going in and out of that school.

Praying for the family, the friends, the teachers, school nurses, and all the surviving kids whose lives are nowhere near normal and won't be for a very long time.