Tag: stay at home mom

I came, I worked out, I might die.

admin

Yesterday Wade made fun of me when I invited him to do day 2 of 21 day fix with me. He laughed at my silly workout, but he did it. 1/3 of the way through he got real quiet, 1/2 of the way through he started grunting and moaning, and by the end he was toast. I’m pretty sure he went off to the living room to cry after that. #LegDay šŸ˜‚

BUT.

He showed up today, and worked out with me again.

After leg day it was hard enough just squatting down enough to make it to the toilet seat without groaning, and now with Upper Fix and the ā€œBonus Absā€ I feel like raw meat. šŸ˜‚šŸ˜‚šŸ˜‚

Also, I went to Sprouts today and came home with a much better selection of healthier foods and produce, and rid our pantry of most of the items that would cause me to stray off-course.

I CAN do this.

Dinner tonight:

-Boneless Skinless Chicken Thighs trimmed of fat, with a citrus poultry spice blend in the air fryer (I ADORE my air fryer!!)

-Brown and Wild Rice Blend

-Avocado

-Banana for a nighttime snack. ā¤ļøā¤ļøā¤ļø

Advice from the Pros ;-)

admin

Doling out the unsolicited advice this week with Exploring Domesticity – love her blog, and I hope you’ll check it out! 23 of us mommy-folks share what made new motherhood a tad easier for us.

(Now we just need an article on how to make second-kid motherhood easier, because WHEW, it’s no joke.)

Link straight to the article here:
https://exploringdomesticity.com/new-mom-advice/

Things kids say….

admin

Me: “Wyatt, say MILK”
Wyatt: “mmkkk”
Me: “Good! Now say SISSY”
Wyatt: “Sissy”
Me: “Good boy! Now say CRACKER”
Wyatt: “COCK”
Wade (dryly): “I think we need to work on that one a little more.”

Motherhood….. all that and a bag of chips… šŸ˜‰

My really dumb (tired) moment of the day…

admin

I had headshots/PR Photos done today by the illustrious and gifted Mary Gibson Photography. I’ve known Mary for about a year now and she’s done quite a few photo shoots of the kids and the family and so I asked her if she’d be willing to do the headshots for me. =)

We’re wandering around to different areas, looking for some different backdrops and whatnot, and some of the places are still a little muddy from the rains we had this past weekend. I’m setting my purse down on the ground each location and she sweetly offers to carry my purse along with all the other stuff she has so I don’t have to set it down on the ground.

Roughly THREE minutes after she tosses my purse on crossbody style, I’m leaning up against a wall looking at her and it occurs to me that I have a purse that looks JUST LIKE THAT! I open my mouth to tell her so, and then I realize…..

It’s my purse…. that I just gave her… three minutes ago.

*sigh*

Parenting Win?

admin

Yā€™all – My 22-month old (who doesnā€™t have very many recognizable words yet) just very clearly said ā€œSTARBUCKSā€ and I donā€™t know whether to be embarrassed or proud of that. šŸ˜‚šŸ˜‚šŸ˜‚

Your mother wants you to buy this…

admin

Well, maybe not YOUR mother, but THIS mother wants you to buy this. Seriously, I’m going to be absolutely blatant with my product recommendation in this post.

This crap works.

I’ve been using Eco-88 since I very first started managing an upscale doggie daycare over 12 years ago. One of my customers told me to try it and I was skeptical, so I didn’t for over a year. I mean, I’ve used stuff like this before and it NEVER works as advertised. NEVER.

We had a stain at our old house in the guest room where our elderly dog had thrown up on the carpet about a year before. Finally I got tired of seeing it and decided to give a bottle of this stuff a go. I mean, I got an employee discount, right? Why not!

ECO-88 STAIN AND ODOR REMOVER

HOLY COW you guys, it took a YEAR OLD stain RIGHT OUT of the carpet, no scrubbing, no elbow grease, just sprayed in on and in minutes it was gone. It didn’t even bleach out the carpet. CRAZY BUSINESS.

So I started putting it on EVERYTHING. Random 14 year old stain at my parents’ house that had been there since they bought the house? GONE! That one took a little rubbing, but seriously…. FOURTEEN YEAR OLD STAIN….. GONE.

I started recommending it to ALL my customers, and NOT JUST those with dogs, ESPECIALLY those with kids. I had a “Mommy Meet-up” at my house once and one of the kids spilled a juice box on my carpet. The kid’s mom started freaking out and I told her, “don’t worry, I got this”, pulled out my little bottle of magic and it disappeared as about a dozen moms watched in awe and then asked where I got that because it was now a NEED.

Now, I don’t know what’s in this stuff… “enzymes” supposedly. To be honest, I don’t care. IT’S THAT GOOD. I will say though if you get it on your hands and don’t wash them when you’re done with your stain cleaning it will turn your fingertips white (I assume that is said enzymes eating your skin, because, you know, you’re organic and all) but I just don’t bathe in it when I use it so I don’t have that problem. Seriously. Spray, wipe/rub a little if you need to, and let it do its thing. You won’t be disappointed!

Here’s the link again, in case you missed it the first time. šŸ˜‰


Hide and Seek!

admin

There is something ā€œhiddenā€ in this photo that proves that Iā€™m a freaking awesome mom – and the first one to point it out gets….. nothing. Sorry, my kids take all my money. šŸ˜‚šŸ˜‚šŸ˜‚ #badassmom #humbletoo #freakingawesome #bloggersofinstagram #sahmlife #sahm #momblogger #momblog #familyblog #familylife #motherhood #mommyblog #instamom #momsoninstagram #bloggerlife #dailyparenting #bestofmom #momlife #livethelittlethings #motherhoodunplugged #hotmessexpress #mommyproblems #momproblems #familymoments #parenting101 #nothingisordinary #motherhoodunhinged #motherswhoblog #lifewithlittles #mindyourbiscuitstx

Meet and Greet Series – Post 1

admin

Photo by the ever talented Mary Gibson Photography

I donā€™t show my crazy mug very often (and technically Iā€™m not showing it here either) but a little series of ā€œMeet and Greetā€ is in order so here goes.

Iā€™m Jamie, married to the same wonderful dude for 12 years this fall, and we have two crazy and adorable kids, a 4.5 year old daughter and an almost 2 year old son (this photo was taken almost a year ago, I know he doesnā€™t look 2 here lol!) We have a 16 year old cat, Checkers, and a 16 month old border collie, Biscuit (the original Biscuit!)

Originally from the Blue Ridge Valley of Virginia, Iā€™ve been in Texas since 1997. More in-depth (Part 2 of who knows) tomorrow!

#texasblogger #bloggerlife #meetandgreet

DIY Landscape Design… fulfilling, yet also kind of stupid.

admin

I get motivated to complete projects in the strangest of ways. Really, my hubs decided it was time to get the driveway concrete replaced, and so the crew arrived this morning and started the daunting (and crazy noisy) task of ripping out the old one and hauling it away. We have a TON of driveway so this is a fairly large project.

I see all that crap getting torn out and for some reason it gets me excited and motivated to start a project I’ve been avoiding for a couple months now – my flower beds. A few months back I got randomly motivated and completed all the current beds in the backyard by ripping out the 10 years of mulch the previous owners left behind coated in weeds and replacing them with nice stone edging and river rock. I have potted plants and container gardens strategically placed throughout. We still have two beds yet to be made or in various stages of half-assed back there, but that’s a project for a different day.

I decided to go ahead and start the front bed, specifically the large cut in portion by our front door and in front of our living room windows. We get a lot of water there so we’re working on the drainage, and I decided to do a wavy rock garden with some of the river rock we had left from the backyard project. Keep in mind this 1.5 tons of rock is currently housed on the back of our 0.75 acre lot, they’re ripping up the driveway right beside where the rock is being stored, AND the bed I want to work on is in the front yard. I spent most of the morning stripping out all that nasty mulch and this scrubby little ground cover plant that never took off and HOLYCRAP was that a lot of material to rake up and shovel into bags.

Got that finished and laid down the weed cloth, then started putting the rocks in. I puzzled over how to move them basically around the house crossing basically 3 sides of a 0.75 acre square and settled on small buckets pulled by a utility wagon. Smart, yet stupid.

That’s a lot of rocks. A LOT OF ROCKS. I made trip after trip after trip, dumping and spreading my rocks, then heading back the long way around the house for more rocks. Halfway through I start muttering to myself, and 3/4 of the way through I’m downright flat out bitching to myself. “WHAT stupid moron decided that an effing rock garden in the front beds would look good? Eh, Jamie? Oh yeah, it was YOU, you crazy delirious heifer. WHAT WERE YOU THINKING”

Luckily we have no neighbors within earshot on all three sides of the house that I was traveling so there was no one around to pass judgement on my sanity. My hubby made some sort of comment and I responded with something about my soft squishy mom body. I’m not even sure now what I was talking about, pretty sure I was delirious.

My whole day in painful photos.

I FINALLY got it all done, after modifying my “design” a little on the fly to accommodate some issues I didn’t think through or map out before I started. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out, and VERY happy I probably won’t have to do this much work on the rest of the beds. (Not doing NEAR the rock work in those) – my current plans for this space call for some really large, low, round “dish” containers/pots to do some succulent container gardens in, a few small potted plants, and most likely a garden bench with flagstone stepping stones across to it.

What do you think? Do you love DIY garden or home projects! I’d love to see some of your work! Leave a comment and let me know what you’ve done!!!

Today, I almost died… or at the least almost lost my mind

admin

For realz guys, my life flashed before my eyes.

We had a great morning, a play date with friends, lunch at the roadside burger stand we love so much (well, that was so very close to being a disaster with a kiddo face full of barbed wire, but we narrowly avoided that little catastrophe…), and then on my way home I had to drop a check/contract by our utility district for a deposit on some concrete work we’re having done at the house tomorrow.

The SLUD, as it’s kind of affectionately named, is on the second story of a two story fancy-schmancy office building. I wonder if they’re spending so much on rent that they’re unable to afford repairs to our main roads, but hey, that’s a complaint for another day. I have both kids in tow, and it’s bordering on nap time, especially for the littlest. We go in, a baby on my hip and a sassy 4 year old by the hand, and I look around for the steps. Climb the steps to the second story, make it into the office, hand over the check while dealing with two kids annoying each other and squawking, and then head back out the office door. This is where it started to go downhill.

These kiddos are starting to get on my last nerve. Don’t judge my mom skills, y’all, I KNOW you’ve been in my shoes. Tatum (the four year old) insists on taking the elevator back down to the 1st floor….. from the second floor. I’m too annoyed/tired to argue, and even though I have this nagging fear of elevators I give in.

She pushes the button, the doors open, we get in. She pushes the number 1. The elevator starts to move….. ever….. so….. slowly.

DING! We make it to floor one…….

….. and nothing happens. Seconds start to tick by, and at first it’s ok, but after about 5-10 seconds (which seems like an eternity at this point) Mama starts to panic internally. Holy shit, I’m gonna get stuck on an elevator with two kids 4 and under who are overdue for their naps. I start to hyperventilate, I’m internally losing my shit, my life’s memories flash before my eyes. THIS IS NOT HAPPENING. Probably about 60 seconds in I become crazed and desperate. I start smacking the “Door Open” button repeatedly. The doors open up almost instantly like there was never any problem.

And mommy walks out, cool as a cucumber on the outside, baby on my hip, and a sassy 4 year old by the hand, and nobody is the wiser to my minute and a half of complete internal meltdown.

Living the dream, y’all…… Living…… The…… Dream……. šŸ˜‰