The Moon Matters

What is it about a full moon that makes people go crazy? I mean really. There's got to be something inside of us that just can't handle the scientific things that happen with it. 

Yesterday Clayton had a bad day and by this I mean he just couldn't get his act together to get ready for school. He was whiny, cranky and so tender-hearted. He couldn't get out of bed. He couldn't get dressed. He couldn't decide on what to eat for breakfast. Finally, something clicked inside of him and he got in the car and walked into school. He came home from school and watched some wrestling with his daddy. I thought all was good. Until he walked in the kitchen and discovered we were eating something new for dinner. Apparently I make the most disgusting dinners he's ever had. (This is becoming more of an occurrence.) He cried and tried everything possible to not eat his dinner. This went on for just over 45 minutes! Yes people I said 45 minutes!!!!!! He finally gave in, once again, and ate his dinner. Originally he only had to eat one bite, but by the time 45 minutes passed he had to eat all 4 bites I had given him. 

Today.....wow! What a difficult day he had. He got to go to the office this morning. He did all he could to mess with his brother and drive him up the wall, along with everyone else in the office. He came back to the office after school......boy ate 3 fried eggs, two whole boiled eggs made into deviled eggs, grilled cheese sandwich, a 100 calorie fudge striped cookie pack, mixed berry juice AND strawberry chocolate milk!!! When it was time for gymnastics, he didn't want to leave, not without a fight anyways. Once at home, it's time for dinner....he decides his belly hurts too much and goes and lays down in bed and doesn't eat dinner, his favorite, Mac & Cheese and baked cod fillets. Man this kid doesn't feel good. Yet once bedtime comes, it's a no-go, again.......

Carson has been clingy and emotional, more than normal for an almost 21 month old. Our sitter even noticed that he cries anytime she leaves the room......

Seriously, there should be something we can put over their heads or their eyes or something to stop this ding dang reaction to the full moon!

If you have suggestions or thoughts, I'm open to just about anything. I'm currently trying a glass of wine, for myself that is :)

Menu Planning

I hate to admit this, but I completely and totally suck I'm really bad at meal planning. My family can go weeks if I'm not careful on frozen chicken strips, mac & cheese, spaghetti, and other easy to throw together at the last minute meals.

I hate that I'm this way. I certainly didn't grow up like this. My mom always planned out our meals and had an idea of what she was going to do....at least until I go into high school and then I wasn't home, so why bother planning meals for just 2! My parents were always awesome cooks. They can throw together a meal with the simplest ingredients and you'd think you were eating from a world class chef. Amazing cooks I tell you!

Then you have me....Oh crap it's 4:30, I'm at work and I have to feed these people who live in my house! Good thing there's frozen chicken nuggets and boxed mac & cheese at home! I'm so tired of that and I really want to be more like my parents were with meals when I was growing up (not like they are now because they go out almost every night and split an appetizer as their dinner!). The first step in being able to get creative in the kitchen (at least in my eyes) is to be able to plan dinner out!

So, I talked with my friends and one of them, Elizabeth, suggest a menu planning app that she used to use all the time. Menu Planner. This thing is AWESOME for me! I can import recipes from the internet, add in my own (not many there!! YET!), I can track the canned goods in my pantry, the items in my fridge etc. LOVE IT!!!! I went through last month I went through and put in all meals for every day of the month for March. This was good in theory. 

My problem.....opening and using said app. Seems like an easy concept, but when you race out the door in the mornings to get kids to school and "day care", get myself to work at a reasonable time and then work all day, it's easy to forget something as simple as laying out dinner. I have to get better at this. My friends hold me accountable....you need to get better because reminding me at 3 isn't too helpful since I'm at work! I kid, I kid....not really, but you know :P  

I made a decision over the weekend to fix new recipes this week. So far I'm 2 for 2. We'll see how the rest of the week works out :)

Here's my meal list for this week: (we do have a veggie at every meal, I'm just not listing it.)

Monday

Monterey Chicken Tortilla Casserole

Chips and Queso

Tuesday

Philly Cheese Steak Sloppy Joes

Roasted Potatoes

Wednesday

Baked Cod Fillets

Mac & Cheese

Thursday

Slow Cooker Asian Glazed Chicken

Rice

Friday

Leftovers  (I hate throwing out good food!)

Saturday

Hot Dogs with Pushcart Onion Sauce

Potato Salad or Cole Slaw

Hello Again

So we meet again blogosphere!

It's been well over a year since I last logged in. A lot can happen in a year. Last time we talked we had decided to not move and redo parts of our house. Yeah, well that changed again! Our house is currently listed for sale and we are in the middle of purchasing a home on roughly 2.5 acres.

We took some time and decided we really needed to take the leap of faith now, before Clayton is with his friends for several years and has an even harder time moving away from them. If you know him, you know he doesn't like change and he needs to know what is going on every step of the way. My experience has been that you wait until you absolutely HAVE to tell a young kid what is going on with such a decision. With Clay, he needs to know what's going on. Otherwise he doesn't feel safe, he feels out of control of the situation and his anxiety kicks in and we have problems. Like getting out of the car and walking into school on his own because he worries what's going on with me or with his daddy.

Clay has lost 2 teeth since starting Kindergarten this year and Carson has gained all of his ;) We got rid of the ding dang binkie aka pacifier almost a month ago now and he's doing wonderful without it. Talking up a storm now! his most recent change is his awesome interest in the potty. He goes every time before he gets in and when he gets out of the bath. Our sitter is even helping him go during the day while she has him.

As for Wes and I, we are still working as normal.....although my longing to work from home is even greater these days. Maybe one day, just not yet. 

If been a long time, so I don't want to "over do it!" with this post :) LOL I'll be back soon, Promise!!!!

Day of ideas

Not that long ago, like a couple months ago, we had considered selling our house and moving to another area. Mainly for school purposes, but we absolutely love the Elementary School, so we will just try to transfer somewhere once we get closer to Middle School for Clayton, that's a topic for another day though. I wasn't willing to give up square footage and get a higher house payment. So, that idea is out. We thought we wanted to get some land (acre to 2 acres) but due to cost and location, we've now decided against that too. So, it looks like we will be in this house until the end of time now! It actually is great to me. I grew up in this neighborhood, our house is perfectly sized for us, if not bigger than what we really need, and the house payment doesn't go up except due to taxes and insurance!

Since we are going to be here now for.ev.er., we've decided we want our house to be the way we want it to be and not the way it has to be. We want to do lots of different things to the house and upgrade certain areas, beginning with the bathrooms. Don't get me wrong, we aren't doing it all at once, but we now have a list of things to get done!

So, today Wes and I ventured out to the Home and Garden Show. We were looking for a few specific things/ideas for our house. We need estimates on new windows, which we found a couple of companies to talk with. We need ideas for our master bath/vanity/closet area, no such luck there.

BUT we did find some stuff that we hadn't even thought about! We saw a stow away bed, aka a Murphy Bed. It would actually work out perfect for our guest bedroom. We can keep the bed stored and out of the way when no one is here, which we never do, I just can't imagine not having a spare bed just in case ;) That's how my mama raised me though! Always be prepared.....of course that was our girl scout motto too. Anyway, as I was previously saying. We can store the bed away and use the room for an office and maybe put an elliptical in there one day! I really love this idea! We've decided though that we don't want to buy one from a big company and have already found some different ways to build/make one out of IKEA products that will be much cheaper. This is what we are thinking.

The other thing we found is a better way to handle our pantry.

Pull out shelves....why did we not think of this before???? Actually, to give credit to Wes, I think he said last year at this same show that we needed to look into something like this. I'm not sure yet if we will just get a quote from a company on these or if we are going to try and once again hit up IKEA and attempt the project ourselves....or should I say, we buy the materials and have our new re-modeler/Mr. Fix It guy do it!

Baby's Got Her Blue Jeans On!

I don't know if you are aware or not, but I've been on a weight-loss mission since just before Halloween. Probably not the ideal time to start loosing weight, but what they heck! I was determined more than ever to be successful this time.

I've made up mini-goals along the way. My first was to fit into my pre-preggo jeans, which happened right about the same time as my second mini goal. The second mini goal was to break out of of the first weight decade if you will (i.e. 129 from the 130's, please don't misunderstand, I'm not there yet! That's just an example) :) So anyway, after I broke to the next weight decade, I bought a pair of boots. Then when I broke into the next weight decade I wanted to get a new pair of jeans. All my jeans had become rather baggie and did nothing for me any longer. Only problem was that I hadn't lost quit enough to be able to fit into the next size down. Well this weekend I happened to pick up a pair of jeans and I thought, "Hmm these don't look like the pants I've been wearing, but then again, I've been a little sleep deprived lately, so maybe they are." After I put them on I realized that they even felt differently. I decided to check them out. I looked at the tag. What do you know, I'm finally able to fit into that smaller pair of pants again!!!! It's been roughly 3 years since I've worn them!!! Last night I made my weekly run to Wally-World and while there, I picked up a new pair of smaller jeans! Man, they feel sooo good and so do I!!!!!!


When I started I had no idea how to count calories and how to go about starting it. My wonderful group of Mommy Friends have cheered me along and encouraged me to stick with my plan. My friend Elizabeth told me to try out MyFitnessPal online and to also download the app on my phone and my iPad. This thing is awesome! I can input recipes that I make at home and it calculates my calories per serving. I can save meals that I eat on a regular basis, like breakfast. If you haven't heard of it or don't use it, you should definitely check it out. It has made me so much more conscience of what I'm eating and how much I'm eating. I don't have any exercise equipment at home, and really by the time I get the monkeys in bed, I'm spent for the night! I's like to start getting up earlier in the mornings to exercise, but we'll see how that goes! Once spring hits I'm definitely going walking around the neighborhood.

As of today, I've lost 20 pounds! I still have roughly 30 pounds to loose, but it's one pound at a time these days, and I'm okay with that. Like I said before, I've decided that I'm really going to do it this time! I'm going to make it stick. I haven't done any extreme dieting or by getting rid of all the great foods that I love. I've simply learned how to eat better.

Well that wasn't as hard as I expected!

I am a horrible terrible horrible meal planner. Every week, or every other week, I go to the store and get groceries. Then the week starts and I am in the middle of my Monday when I realize, "Great, what am I going to fix for dinner?" The I go to my friends and say, "Okay here's what I have. What can I make for dinner tonight?" They always have answers for me and for that I'm incredibly grateful! This seems to happen pretty much everyday of the week anymore!

Don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't have recipes that I could fix, because I do. It's not that I can't go online and find something, because I do this too. I even print some of them off! It's not that I don't have cookbooks, because I do, an entire cabinet full of them! I just really REALLY REALLY stink at menu/meal planning!

So, today Carson was napping, Clayton was with my parents, and Wes made a run to Home Depot to get some light fixtures. (That's for a different post). I decided since the house was quiet, and I haven't been to the store yet for the week, it was time for me to attempt this week's menu. Well, guess what? IT WAS SUPER EASY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I went to the freezer to find out what kind of frozen meat and other items I have. With a little thought, there's more there than I realized!

Sunday: Lasagna with garlic bread and green beans


Monday: Cheese and Sausage filled Tortellini Alfredo with either a veggie or salad.


Tuesday: Crock pot Swiss Steak over rice with a veggie


Wednesday: Baked Pork Tenderloin with a veggie and flavored noodles (Knor)


Thursday: Crock pot Salsa Chicken shredded and make into tacos


Friday: Leftovers or Pizza or out to eat :)


Look at me go!!

I'm Baaaaaacccckkkk :)

Well it's been a far too long since I last posted! Let me catch you up on what's been going on in the Johnson House.

The start of December brought our new Christmas tree. The big guys decided it needed to be very colorful. (Not to worry I kept the old one that is all white lights and put it in the formal dinning room!)

Carson played some dress up :) He's getting so big. He started eating more solid foods, 3 meals of cereal and either a veggie or a fruit.

Clayton is still REALLY enjoying being a big brother. I'm so surprised by how much these two boys love each other already! They absolutely always want to be with each other. There expressions are pretty funny in this picture. I think Clay ran in right before it was taken and shocked Carson :)

For Christmas Carson got the below activity bouncer. He loves this thing. Since it was his first Christmas, I really wasn't sure what to expect since he was just approaching 6 months old. He ended up obsessed with opening presents. He got upset once the present was opened and screamed for another one.

Clayton got this awesome basketball goal from Santa. We've played almost every night! It has a score board and timer too.

If you know Clay at all, you know he likes LOVES to play with "diggers". He was ecstatic to get this really big digger and dump truck from Bubba and Gii (my parents).

Clay really enjoyed his 14 days out of school, but was definitely ready to go back to "big school". I was ready for him to go back too, boy needed to get rid of that energy! I don't know how or where he stores it, but if he would be so kind as to share it with me, I'd be one happy Mama!! Speaking of school, he's doing fantastic and learning SO much. He knows how to spell several of his colors and he know writes his first and last name anytime he puts his name on things. (It's actually legible too!)

Carson like I said before, is growing so quickly. He learned how to sit up on his own in December and is only getting better at it! He's 6 months old and now wearing 12 month clothes. He seems to be right now track with his big brother, which means, I might have a couple of big ol' boys :)

I really wish time would slow down just a bit so that I can completely and totally enjoy each of the moments and milestones for both of my boys. Clayton has recently taken up gymnastics and is enjoying it a little more each time he goes. Come February he wants to sign up for t-ball so he can play ball with his friends from school. He's an active boy and apparently only going to get more active as the days go by!

My goal is to right now often.....so, who's going to make sure I do it? HA :)

I'd also like to give a great big shout out to my sweet sweet friend Elizabeth for re-designing my blog! She does awesome work, check out her design page here!