Weekending!

Wow. What a week.  My hours at work have been pushed up to 60+ so I've been trying to get into the office each day earlier and earlier.  Even so, I had to work most of the day on Saturday, so I feel like I have to guard every moment of Kate-time that I get. Here's a little re-cap of the past few days...

On Friday, Kevin and I went to Bertolo's for dinner.  We fed Kate when we got there, before our food came out.  Apparently that wasn't enough for her because she was reaching for my Chicken Parmesan, with her mouth wide open, for the entire dinner.  We ordered a small chocolate chip pizza for dessert, as we do every time we go to Bertolo's.  Kevin decided to let Kate "try" a little bit and gave her the tiniest taste of a chocolate chip.  Somehow it ended up more on her face than in her mouth.  Don't let this picture fool you.  You'd think she didn't like the chocolate chip, but she's actually just upset that we wouldn't give her more!

I spent most of the day Saturday at work, but definitely got to spend some quality family time once I got home.  I also spent some time doing this...

Have I mentioned that I love our Baby Bullet? Haha. I stocked up the freezer on some sweet potatoes, and my intentions were to make a batch of green beans tonight but that didn't quite work out.

Kate's gotten pretty good at holding her bottle herself, but she likes to be lazy.  If she can get YOU to hold her bottle for her, she'd rather do that.  She's also been quite inventive on finding ways to prop her bottle.  While I was cooking and pureeing the sweet potatoes, she was doing this with her bottle...

And here are some more cute pictures from this weekend....

Monday Monday

Ahhh. Things are finally getting back to normal around here and we're finally recovering from all of this sickness.  Kate has just about gotten over her first cold.  We're lucky that it was a very mild one and she really wasn't too fussy with it.  Kevin and I have both pretty much gotten over our bout with food poisoning.  My case was definitely a bit worse than his, and I ended up resting most of Saturday and Sunday.

And because I was out of work a few days, things were pretty hectic today.  I think I'll be playing catch-up all week. :)  But this little girl makes it so much fun to come home in the evenings.  Here are a couple of pictures from Sunday night, right after her bath.

She's gotten her first tooth and it looks like her second is about to pop through too!  How exciting!  Maybe it's because of the teething, but she's decided that she would much rather have her bottle than eat solids.  Before this week, she LOVED eating solids and would say "mmmmm" after and in-between every bite.  Now she just pushes the spoon away and looks over to where we keep her bottles.

And now here are a few other pictures from tonight. Check out her new "skill"...

Yes! She's standing!  She does have her back against the couch, but she's definitely standing up on her own.  She can't pull up yet but if you stand her up against something, she'll pull her hands away so she's doing it all on her own.  Can you tell in the first picture how excited she was that she was standing all by herself? 

And, here she is enjoying her new books...

And then it was bedtime.  Yes, my child is under all those blankets.  One of the first things she does when she is sleepy is pull a blanket over her head, and she's done this for as long as we can remember.

'Night everyone!  Hope you all had a wonderful Monday.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Kate got her very FIRST Valentine in the mail last week from her Nana in Indiana.  And the first thing she did with it was stick it in her mouth.  Her first Valentine was followed quickly by her first Valentine from a BOY (baby Bennett).  Wish I'd thought to send out Valentines but I guess I'm not that on-top of things!

Here is Kate enjoying her first Valentine.  Forget the dollar, she wants to eat the card!

I took a few quick pictures of my little Valentine tonight because I wasn't sure if I'd get a chance tomorrow.  So since I didn't actually print out and send Valentines, here is OUR Valentine to YOU!

After our mini photo-shoot, Kate enjoyed a little Daddy quality time. You know, jumping on the couch, getting thrown up in the air, and then reading bedtime stories.

This post is a bit picture heavy and lacking in the words, but I'll catch up tomorrow on what we've been up to.  Mostly though, it's just been the same old same old.  Life is busy, but life is good!  Happy Valentines Day to you all!  Hope tomorrow is GREAT!

Last Home Visit

Last week, Kevin and I had our LAST home visit with Bethany.  Even though all of our paperwork has been sent off to NC sometime in December, and we're just waiting on everything to get processed so the adoption is finalized, Bethany likes to follow up with their adoptive families for 6 months after placement.  So, last week we had our last follow-up visit with our Bethany adoption worker.

When Jane* (our adoption worker) emailed me earlier this month, we originally scheduled the visit for Monday January 16th at 3:30.  So I went ahead and put the appointment on my calendar at work and thought that was that.  Not too long later, Jane emailed me back and asked if we could reschedule to Tuesday January 17th since that was MLK day and her office was actually closed for the holiday.  Us accountants don't get MLK day off as a holiday but it didn't matter to us if the appointment was Monday or Tuesday, so I said that it wasn't a problem to change the date.

Well- I forgot to change it on my calendar. Oops!  So last Monday I left work at 3pm and rushed home to meet Kevin and Kate.  Around 3:35, I knew something was up.  Jane is usually a few minutes early, and never late.  Then it hit me.  Our home visit wasn't supposed to be until the next day.  Oops again!

I told Kevin that he could go back to work.  Since I was already home with Kate, I took her to run some errands.  We went by my work so I could get my laptop, and I think just about everybody I work with got to hold her.  Then we went by Buy Buy Baby to get her a new car seat.  That's a post for another day, but basically she is already growing out of her infant carrier at just 5.5 months old.  And then, we headed home.

The NEXT day, I again rushed home at 3pm to meet Kevin and Kate.  This time Jane showed up right on time.  We had a GREAT meeting.  Basically, she just wanted to know how involved we wanted Bethany to be from this point forward.  We don't have any further commitment to Bethany, so if we wanted to be through with them, we could.  If we had a closed adoption, this would probably be the case.  But since we have an open adoption, Bethany is always there to be a facilitator of visits with Kate's birth parents- if we want them to.  So far, we have had 2 visits with Kate's birth parents, and we have used Bethany to coordinate the meetings although we have chosen to meet with them at restaurants and the mall.  It has worked well so far and our plan is to continue using Bethany as an intermediary until we build a further relationship with Kate's birth parents.  If at any point we decide that we don't need to use Bethany as a go-between or coordinator, we would just start scheduling our visits on our own.  Basically, Bethany's involvement from this point forward is totally up to us.

Jane stayed for about an hour, and then we were officially finished with everything!  The ironic thing is that we had our last visit with our adoption worker on January 17, 2012.  We STARTED this whole adoption with our first informational meeting on January 11, 2011.  I'm still amazed (and grateful) at how fast everything happened.  God is so good!

On a totally different note, Kate figured out how to push the buttons on her activity/bouncy station and was shocked that they would light up and play music.  It's so fun to watch her do and learn new things!

And these were taken tonight before bedtime.  Kevin was showing Kate what leg extensions and leg curls were.  I'm not really surprised.  I have a feeling that I'll be teaching her the A-B-C's and he'll be teaching her all of the major muscle groups. 

Ahhh- It's The Weekend

Yes, it's Saturday.  My last Saturday.

For those who don't know me personally, I'm a CPA with a super-regional accounting firm here in the south east.  More specifically I'm a tax accountant, which means my already pretty busy life is about to get a LOT busier.  Starting next weekend until after the April 17th tax-day deadline, I'll be spending my Saturdays at work.  This busy season will definitely be an interesting one for me since it will be the first as a wife AND a mommy.  I typically work 60-65ish hours a week (and more closer to the deadline) and I'm still trying to determine how it's all going to work out.  My PLAN is to get to work a lot earlier than normal, work through lunch, and leave not TOO much later than my normal time.  Then of course I'll be working on Saturdays.  This should be interesting....

But, since this is my last non-working Saturday for a while, I told Kevin that I would be sleeping in.  So he was on Kate-duty all by himself this morning.  Of course she's a breeze whenever that happens.  He fed her this morning around 7 (which is her typical morning bottle time) and then she went back to sleep until 11!!  So, I got to "sleep in" until about 8:30.  I guess my body is so used to getting up at 6:30 that it didn't want to sleep any longer than that.

We spent the first part of the day at home, and Kate had some fun in her activity/bouncy thingy. I have no idea what this thing is actually called.

Kate's still not quite tall enough for her feet to reach the bottom of this thing, so we had to make do.  We "cheated" with a few stacks of printer paper.  Worked like a charm.

And then we headed out to lunch.  One of our sweet friend's from church gave us a gift card to Applebee's for Christmas, so that's where we went.  Can you guess which plate is Kevin's?

He ordered the Bourbon Street Chicken and Shrimp and I ordered the Appetizer Sampler.  So good!  Spinach and Artichoke dip, boneless BBQ wings, Quesadillas, and cheese sticks.  So healthy, huh? Don't worry.  I shared with Kevin.

And now we're home and Saturday is only halfway over.  I'm off to make some home made baby food for Kate.  Stay tuned tomorrow to see how that goes.  This will be her first taste of something with a little more flavor than the rice cereal and oatmeal that she's had so far.  Hope you all have a FANTASTIC Saturday.

**Note- To any of you joining me from Kelly's Korner looking for adoption fundraising ideas, scroll to the next post or click on the "Adoption Puzzle" tab above!

A Cookin Kinda Weekend

Kevin has been out of town the past few days speaking at a youth retreat, so it's just been me and Kate... and my sister and my mom.  Another girl's weekend!

Kristi said she wasn't getting enough Kate time so she decided she was going to stay with us Thursday and Friday night.  Her busy season at work is just gearing up (like mine) so we'll probably not see very much of her over the next few months.  THEN my mom decided that she wanted to come up on Friday also!  She got to my house around 1:30ish and I was able to leave work early too.  We cleaned the house from top to bottom, and then ran some errands at Target and swung by the grocery store.

One of my goals before busy season starts is to make a few (or a lot) of meals that can be put in the freezer so that when I'm working longer hours, dinner is already "ready".  I started off making 4 batches of roast/carrots/potatoes in gallon sized bags.  I'll freeze these, and then when we decide we are ready to eat them we'll just pull them out, let them thaw out for about 30 min and then stick them in the crock pot.  They're ready to go!  This was basically the first time that I've done this but I love it already.  It really didn't take any longer doing FOUR than it would normally take to get one ready.

I've got a couple of other recipes for freezer crockpot meals, and I've already bought all of the ingredients.  I'm hoping to get some of those knocked out today.  Then, I'm going to try to make a few casseroles to freeze.  Ambitious, I know.  Probably won't all happen.

Kevin got home around 11ish last night and slept in this morning.  Kristi had to go to work, and my mom had to go home, but we did cook french toast for breakfast and I showed them how to make this breakfast item...

They're so good.  Not really sure what you call them, but they're like sticky buns.  It's yet another recipe that I got from Pinterest and it's super easy.  Here's how you make it...

Ingredients:

2 small tubes refrigerator buttermilk biscuits (I just use the Ingles brand)

3 Tbsp. butter or margarine, melted

1/2 C. pancake syrup

1/3 C. packed brown sugar

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1/4 C. chopped pecans, optional

1/4 C. chopped almonds, optional

1. Spray a fluted pan with non-stick spray. Combine the melted butter and syrup in a small bowl and set aside. In another bowl, combine the brown sugar, cinnamon, and nuts (if desired).


2. Place about half of the syrup mixture in the bottom of the pan. Then sprinkle half of the brown sugar mixture on top.


3. Lay the biscuits on the bottom of the pan, overlapping edges (closely together) to form a ring.


4. Pour the other half of the syrup mixture on top of the biscuits and sprinkle with the remaining brown sugar mixture.  This is how mine looked right before I put it in the oven.  And of course I had to get my little helper in the picture!





5.  Bake at 375 for about 20 minutes. 


6. Remove from oven.  Here is what mine looked like right out of the oven.

7. Let it stand for about a minute and then flip it over onto a plate.  Enjoy!

And I had to get in one more picture of my little helper.  She had just woken up.  Look at that morning hair! :) 

Happy weekend, everyone!

Best Saturday Ever

Okay- maybe that is a bit of an overstatement, but this Saturday really was one of the best ones in a while.  Why, you ask? What did I do that was so spectacular?  What amazing things did we do on this particular Saturday?

Well, I didn't do a darn thing and it was GREAT.  I've been looking forward to this Saturday for weeks!  It was the first Saturday since I started back to work (6 weeks ago) that we haven't had to GO somewhere- and it was fantastic.  I woke up at 7:30 to feed Kate and then we both stayed in our PJ's until about 10.  Kevin spent the first part of the day working in our storage building, building shelving and organizing everything. I had already warned him that I was planning on being lazy today, and I was.

I got a quick shower and then got Kate ready for the day.  Of course I had to dress her in her Clemson colors. She loves the color orange. :)

 

Once we were both ready to go, we headed to Lowes to pick up some pansies, which I will hopefully be able to put in a few pots tomorrow.

After Lowes, we headed over to Target to pick up a few things and then swung by Chickfila to get lunch for Kevin and myself.   He had to leave about 2:30 to go do a wedding, and didn't get home until about 7ish.  While he was gone, Kate and I watched the Clemson game.  Clemson won.  It was ugly, but a win is a win.

I did a few small things around the house, but overall I was pretty true to my word.  It was a lazy day and it was GREAT.