Beach Bum!

Last Monday we took a real trip to the beach, with swimsuits, beach chairs, sunscreen and everything! We've gone lots of times just to walk around a little bit and dip our toes in but I wanted to go and let James crawl around and explore. He loved it!! He started to crawl right into the waves and was so fearless I almost didn't know what child I was looking at! He is usually so apprehensive and cautious with new things.

He loved walking in the waves holding on to our hands, and of course he had to sample the dirt. We would pick up seashells to show him and he would take ahold and carry them around everywhere after that. He even managed to get one entirely in his mouth when we weren't looking!

James is doing so much better with his walking, he still can't get from sitting to standing without holding on to something, but he has started letting go of things and just walking away towards something. It is so strange to watch!! He looks like such a big boy when he does that! I tried to get some video of it last night, but he was melting down and just crying the entire time :(  He is also getting his one year molars so it has been a little crazy in our house with the crying, clingyness, tantrums, endless snot, and waking up at night :( Hopefully those little suckers finish coming through soon because I miss my laid back baby!

Life is a Garden...Dig it!

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Scotts® for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

Oh, to be a good gardener... I would even settle for being an okay gardener that can only grow a few things that our family really uses, like tomatoes or squash. My mom has always told me that my grandmother Virginia who I am named after had a green thumb and I remember thinking as a little girl that it must mean that I do too, right? Wrong. I am really bad at growing things! Remember my attempt at square foot gardening a few years ago? Stuff grew and grew and grew, but never produced anything edible. I might as well have had a garden of weeds. Blagh.

I think one of my problems is that I want a zero maintenance garden, as in I don't have to check on it, water it often or fertilize it. I just want to plant it and forget it (until I harvest it of course!). Luckily, there is a new product that might just help me out with that! It is called Miracle Gro Expand ‘n Gro™ concentrated planting mix. It expands up to 3x the size when you add water to it and feeds your plants for up to 6 months! That means you could literally fertilize only twice a year! That is my kind of gardening right there :) It has these natural fibers that hold in 50% more water than regular potting soil, so it helps out in the watering department too. Plus, since it is concentrated it is much lighter than regular potting soil, which is a big bonus for me because I usually undergo gardening endeavors while Anthony is at work so it is all me when it comes to the heavy lifting.

So there you go fellow gardening warriors! Another weapon in our arsenal in the fight to grow something. Anything. :)

Walking!

James is walking! (sort of) We can convince him to walk to me or Anthony as a game, but he isn't a fan of doing it any other time. He is much more comfortable cruising when he can hold on to something for security or crawling. But it is so exciting to see that he is capable of it!

Grass isn't for everyone

Monday we took James outside with us while we were planting some tomatoes and noticed that he really doesn't like for his bare feet to touch the grass! It could be because the ground is a little cold, or it could be the texture of the grass, but it is so funny to watch. Yesterday we went out to the backyard to watch the dogs play and look at the birds and James refused to crawl off of the sheet. When we tried to stand him up in the grass or put him on it, this was the result:

 

He was trying to look at an airplane and keep as much off the grass as possible!

What a funny boy!

Fun Visit with Family

This past weekend my mom and my brother came for a visit and we had so much fun! I hadn't talked to my mom in awhile, so I didn't realize they were coming (we had talked about it before but I misunderstood the dates) until I was feeding James a bottle in the living room and I heard my front door open!! My heart was racing, I couldn't think of who would be walking into my house! Luckily, it was a great surprise and not a robber :) I was so excited that they came, before they walked in my big plan for the day was to go to walmart so this was way better.

James loved having his Uncle and Grandma there to play with him. He insisted on being the center of attention at all times and we were happy to oblige. He kept us laughing with all of his antics, like playing chase with anyone who walks by and having to investigate EVERYTHING that is happening around him.
Here he is crawling away while I was trying to get his socks and shoes on. He loves trying to put his own socks and shoes on, but after a few tries, he will hand them to me to do. So cute!

Saturday afternoon we decided to stop by the beach since it is only a few minutes away. I have vowed that we will go to the beach more often since we live so close. I don't want to have to move away someday and think "Why didn't I go when I was so close?"

James loved the waves and the birds and towards the end really wanted to get down in the sand and investigate. After the beach, it was getting close to nap time so I took him home to rest before going out to dinner with everyone. We had a belated birthday dinner that night for me at an awesome Asian restaurant and James, of course, had to flirt with everyone in the restaurant. We had a man from the booth next to us come up after about an hour and tell us how amazing James was and how good he was being. I love it when people do that, but at the same time it really is no reflection on us as parents. Truly, it is all him and his personality! There was some kind of mixup in the kitchen with my meal, so I got it a little later than everyone else (which I didn't mind at all) and they were so apologetic about it that we got a free dessert. Isn't that great? I wish all restaurants did stuff like that!

The entire weekend, my family and I kept talking about how fun our vacation to North Carolina is going to be in May. It was like our weekend was a little taste of it. I can't wait until we can do stuff like that with all of our family. Only a few more months away!!

Pinterest Projects

I love pinterest! I have gotten so many good ideas from pinterest and I love that I can collect ideas and inspiration and go back at my leisure to implement them. I love doing projects and accomplishing things, but coming up with ideas is the worst part for me. Now I can just take other people's ideas! Awesome!
Here are a few of my latest pinterest projects:

All of my adult life I have kept my jewelry in a glass bowl. Everything tangled up together in it and so if I wanted to wear something, I had to spend a lot of time and energy getting it out. So I never wore jewelry. I decided that I wanted to make an effort to accessorize more, and therefore needed a different way of storing my jewelry. I started looking through pinterest and found the idea of hanging everything up on a corkboard. So easy and simple! Not only does it look pretty on the wall, but everything stays neat and untangled. Plus, I can see what I have and be more inclined to wear something. Once James gets out of the stage of pulling on my necklaces constantly :)

My next project was a way to store electronic cables. For a long time we just threw them in a basket and then had to sort them out every time we needed a specific one. I saw the idea for storing them in empty toilet paper tubes on pinterest and I was sold! I started collecting them right away and now our electronic cables are neatly stored in tubes in the basket, labeled and everything. (Picture is from the pinterest link)

My most recent project is one I am really proud of. I'm not sure exactly how it started, but I think it was one night after I spent a good amount of time picking up James' books from off the floor. I wanted him to be able to get to them and play with them to encourage reading, instead of just having them on a bookshelf, but that usually means that all of them end up all over the floor every day. I started looking for solutions on pinterest and found the idea to put up vinyl raingutters as display bookshelves on your wall. You can make them low enough that your children can get to them and put them away by themselves and I think it looks so cute! Plus, there is a theory that when kids see all the bright covers displayed, it makes them want to read more compared to a normal bookshelf. I was sold! Now we have a reading wall in our living room (that is also James' play room) and I couldn't be happier with it :)

So you see, social networks aren't always just a time waster! They can influence you for good :)

Mardi Gras!

Last night we met up with some friends from a mom's group I recently joined to go to a local Mardi Gras parade. It was so much fun! There were lots of people in costumes, and the parade itself was pretty good. They had fire engines, floats, and they even had an entire team of Clydedale horses pulling an antique fire engine. The horses were so big!!! They were really spooked by all of the noise and commotion and I just imagined them ignoring their handlers and taking off down the road. Luckily, they didn't :)

James did so well, we were so proud of him! The parade started at 7pm, which is when we are usually getting him ready for bed so we weren't sure if he would get fussy or cranky. He had so much fun! He loved looking at everything, especially all of the people. Something cool would come by in the parade and we would have to try to take his attention away from the people around him to get him to look at it. He is such a people watcher! We caught a lot of beads from people throwing them from floats and we put them all on James. He looked pretty snazzy by the end of the night :)

Fun in the Tub

Last night we realized that we had almost no pictures of James in the bathtub. Something needed to be done! So here they are :)

 I love this face!!! He had to come check out the camera and I guess sucking in his bottom lip helps him concentrate :)

Homemade Kumquat Marmalade

Last weekend I caught a homemaking bug and decided to make kumquat marmalade from the kumquats we gathered from the tree in our backyard. I had researched it a little bit a few months back, but was waiting for the kumquats to ripen. So, my mom and I trucked outside to pick the tree clean and I started googling how to slice kumquats...delicate work. because of the tininess :)

The entire process was...challenging. I tried to follow the recipe, but it definitely wasn't specific enough. I think it assumed that you already knew about how to make marmalade and didn't give enough beginner information. My pot boiled over multiple times, burning a syrupy mess onto different burners of my oven and causing me to go through almost every pot in my house. After burning my finger pretty badly, I was ready to just quit and through it all away. But I persevered :) Finally I deemed the mixture at the "gel stage" and put it into containers. I am keeping it in the fridge right now and although it looks good, it does get a little too hard in there. I'm not sure how to fix it since I am pretty sure I can't keep it in the pantry. Right now we are settling for just letting it sit out and soften a little bit before using.

Not too bad for a first try!

Prescription costs can be a pill (Get it?!!)

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Walgreens for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

Insurance can really stink sometimes. Of course, I only realized this recently since Anthony's new job is the first one he has had that didn't offer great group insurance (one of the benefits of having worked for a hospital or the state up until now). So I am always on the lookout for ways to save on medical expenses that don't involve insurance, because that is good information to have! With the economy the way it is, you never know what could happen to your insurance coverage. With that in mind, I just wanted to remind you guys about the Walgreens Prescription Savings Club. For $35 a year, a family membership covers everyone in your immediate family included your spouse, dependents under 22 and pets. Individual memberships are only $20! Membership provides savings on more than 8,000 medications, discounts on flu shots, pet prescriptions, nebulizers and diabetic supplies, and discounts when you buy Walgreens brand products and photo services.

If you are interested, there is a list of most medications covered and how much it costs for 30 and 90 day supplies. Anthony sees so many patients that struggle with how much their prescriptions cost, that I think he is going to start suggesting this to his patients as another option for being able to afford their prescriptions. (Isn't he thoughtful?? Once, after coming home from work, he realized that he had prescribed a pretty expensive prescription for a patient who didn't have insurance and he made a note to himself to call them back later to see if they wanted him to prescribe them something different. He's the best!)

If you want to support Walgreens and stay up to date on all of the current discounts, go ahead and like Walgreens on Facebook and follow Walgreens on Twitter  You don't want to miss out on any bargains!

1 Year Old!!!

James is 1 year old today!!!! I have been singing "Happy Birthday" at him all day and he thinks it's pretty funny :) We got him an inflatable ball pit for his birthday and Anthony blew it up for him after he got home from work. The picture on the box showed a lot more balls... in reality there were only a few which was kind of a disappointment for us. I don't think James minded!

He tried to crawl out and the entire thing flipped with him. He wasn't hurt, but he didn't appreciate the surprise!

On Sunday we celebrated his birthday with Anthony's parents and James got to dig into his very own cake! He was really cautious about it, poking and proding it and slowly sampling it until he felt more comfortable. He got a few really good bites out of the cake and then played with the icing the rest of the time. He looked like a little smurf in the end!

I can't believe that it has been a year already! It seems like it has gone by so fast, but at the same time we can't imagine life without our little guy. He brings us so much joy and we love having him in our family!

I *heart* Walgreens

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Walgreens for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

I never realized how wonderful drive through windows are until I had a baby. Before James, a drive through was just slightly more convenient than just parking and walking in. Now, with the logistics involved with unstrapping him out of his car seat, making sure you have a burp cloth and a diaper bag with entertainment, and finding a sanitary place for him to sit in a shopping cart or losing the use of an arm so you can carry him around, drive through windows seem like magic. The drive through we use the most? The drive through pharmacy window at Walgreens. I have been using Walgreens for my prescriptions all of my adult life and I love it! Such friendly pharmacists and great convenience.

Recently, Walgreens tried very hard to renew their contract with Express Scripts, a company that pays Walgreens and other pharmacies to fill prescriptions, so that they can continue to be a pharmacy network provider but were unable to. Possibly because Express Scripts has its own mail order prescription business that it doesn’t want conflicting with a retail pharmacy…Which is kind of a scary prospect to me because I have seen how inconvenient and inefficient being forced to get your prescriptions by mail can be.  So, if your pharmacy benefits are offered through Express Scripts, you will no longer be able to use Walgreens and their beautiful drive through window and extended hours. This means driving out of your way to a different pharmacy, and having to transfer all of your information and fill out new paperwork. So not cool. If you want to see the official press release on what is happening, check it out here: Walgreens and Express Script

Luckily, since Walgreens is awesome, they are doing their best to find ways to keep Express Scripts customers. They are offering discounted rates to join their Walgreens Prescription Savings Club. For $10 a year, a family membership covers everyone in your immediate family included your spouse, dependents under 22 and pets. Individual memberships are only $5! Membership provides savings on more than 8,000 medications, discounts on flu shots, pet prescriptions, nebulizers and diabetic supplies, and discounts when you buy Walgreens brand products and photo services. The savings could allow you to stay with Walgreens, even if you no longer have coverage because you are an Express Scripts customer. Shoot, at those membership prices, I’m thinking of joining just for all the discounts!

If you want to support Walgreens and show them that you appreciate their efforts, go ahead and like Walgreens on Facebook and follow Walgreens on Twitter and show that drive through window some love!