Mindy's Non-Adventures

        Best Baby Ever has had a growth spurt very recently. How do I know this? He's suddenly stronger and taller. How do I know THAT? Sit back, and I will tell you how I know.  I have many examples I could cite, but I'll just give you the highlights. First, he can reach things on the counter that he couldn't reach a week or two ago such as cups filled with water, silverware, KNIVES.  Oh, and apparently he had an epiphany around the same time as his growth spurt. He's discovered that he loves to climb. He'll climb on boxes, chairs, anything with a ledge, he just likes to climb. He's learned that climbing opens up a whole new forbidden world, and he thinks it's just the best thing since chocolate milk to see what he can get into.  Anything he can't reach on his own just gives him the opportunity to try out his quickly improving climbing skills. Yay!      In fact, just today he climbed up on the stool in his bathroom, reached as far as h...

   I felt change was called for so you'll notice I have a new background for my blog. The last one was just too...happy. I needed something a little more mellow. Anyway...I made it through my week of cutting out white flour and sugar. I only had one issue: actually cutting out the white flour and sugar. The stuff is everywhere, and I unfortunately did not have the time I needed to go to the store to be prepared for battle...I mean, for a dietary change. =)  Still, I kept with the spirit of things and really tried to cut back on it all. We didn't eat out, and that's a miracle in itself. Wait, I did eat out one night. So never mind, I didn't even make that goal. Still, I'm okay with the week. I'm getting back in the habit of healthier snacks and eating at home so all in all, I count the week a success.    My second success for the week happened today. I put up all of our pictures on the walls. Every. single. one. I needed a nice frame for a painting that Mr. Incr...

It's the middle of October, and here's where we are so far. School has turned into a crawl. Whatever little momentum we had when we started the year ground to a halt pretty quickly once the whirlwind of my trip, packing, moving, unpacking, and beginning CARES at our new property hit. Although my trip to Maui was unequivocally the most peaceful and relaxing time of my life, I was thrown into a maelstrom of stress upon my return. Like that vocabulary? ;)  Anyway, stress is contagious and exhausting so I fell back on my bad habits, and we've been eating out. A lot. Like, really a lot. (Vocab genius is gone.) The kids have watched way too much TV, I've been exhausted, and even BBE  had a few rough days where he actually frowned at me. It was as if he was saying "Mom, you really need to get it together!"  I've gained 5 pounds from all the stress related restaurant eating. Then this past Thursday, my grandpa fell, broke his hip, and had to have surgery on Friday...

    I love fall. I love the way it smells, I love the colors, I love the clothes, I love the shoes...I love fall. Every year over the course of the season, our family would go to an apple farm (usually Nivens Apple Farm) to pick apples and pumpkins, take a drive through the mountains to see the colors in the trees, spend an afternoon at a corn maze, go on a hayride, bake some homemade apple pies, rake up the leaves in our yard, go to Boo in the Zoo at the Greenville Zoo, and go to Trunk or Treat at my parents' church. I especially loved Halloween because the kids would spend the night with the grandparents ;-)!      However, our new life on the coast requires some tweaking of family traditions. Charleston doesn't have apple farms. I guess the sandy soil and ocean breeze aren't conducive to apple growing so no apple farm this  year.  We bought our pumpkin at Walmart (boo, hiss!).  As for driving through the mountains, that has now become...

We're getting settled into our new home! I have to say that I really LOVE it at our new community! Our last place was very nice, and we were happy there. But I must say that this community really feels like home to me. I can see us staying here for a long time, and that is a big heart change for me. Although we were at our first place for about 8 months, it never felt permanent. Whatever we did, I just couldn't quite get settled. Anyone that visited our home knows that is never looked completely moved in. I still had boxes and clutter everywhere. I didn't even put pictures up on the walls until July! I couldn't find a homeschool group that seemed to fit what I was looking for, we had a hard time choosing and fitting into a church. Okay, we're still trying to fit into our church, but that's a different topic. I just felt a little bit misplaced. I thought it was because we were living in an apartment after having a house for so many years, or being in a new city a...