8 months

Peyton's 8 month birthday has come and gone, and boy has it been a busy month! He is still doing a lot of this same things from last month (playing with his mama's hair, lovin' being snuggled in a towel as much as a bath, etc..) but is daily doing things that make us overflow with love for this boy.

 He is definitely mobile. We will watch him crawl around the house, sometime following us around and other times trying to get into the recycling bin, baskets or anything else he can get into. He pulls himself up on everything, and because of that we had to move the crib down a notch.

Our sweet baby still only has 2 bottom teeth, but he has been chewing on everything the past week so we are thinking more are coming!

 He is still our snuggle bug, loving to be rocked to sleep. While he loves to be held, he is in the awkward stage of facing out, and loves to stand up in our laps. Let's just say, my back hurts on a regular basis.

 My baby is getting way too big way too fast. He is in 12 - 18 mo onsies because he is so long... All of his pjs and pants look so long, but alas they fit. We know he is over 20 pounds, but that's as close as we can guess until we go for his doctor's appointment at the end of the month. Look at those overalls though - they make my heart flutter he's so cute! :)

This kiddo makes Drew's and my heart happy and we are so glad God blessed us with him! He is full of energy and life. He has never met a stranger and gives smiles to everyone he sees. He lights up with he sees his mama or daddy and giggles uncontrollably when he is tickled. We sure do love our baby Peyton!

Cowboy Take Me Away

 My cousin Ashley got married this Saturday. It was a PERFECT day for an outside wedding! Although I haven't gotten to see her a lot lately, we grew up together and I am so grateful I got to see her tie the knot! Congratulations to the Hallmarks!

Day 13 - I have a problem.

Hi. My name is Kari and I have a problem. I knew I had a probably before this month... but it's staring in my face now. Although, I like my problem - which is another problem.

I think about chocolate all the time. I am one of those people, that before I have started eating my meal (yes, breakfast included) my mind has already wandered to what sweet thing is in my kitchen that I can consume right afterwards. I even have a conversation in my head about needing to wait a while before having dessert because really, it's a little ridiculous. That conversation is won out by my sweet tooth.

Needless to say this month is a challenge. Because right now in my kitchen there are :

2 cans of icing and a chocolate cake

two containers of frozen cookie dough - both chocolate and chocolate chip

and ingredients for more yummy goodness - some of which could be consumed by themselves.

I've stayed mostly strong. (Confession - we went to Mayberry with my sister and I might have consumed ice cream from Opie's candystore. Don't judge... I regretted getting the mediocre chocolate ice cream over getting Coldstone. Cause seriously my sister has Coldstone!) I am blessed to not have headaches from the withdraw like my wonderful hubby... He loves sodas and there are approximately

this many sodas in our house right now. He's standing mostly strong too. (He chose a Dr. Pepper over ice cream) But says this is dumb at least once a day.

I found ways around getting sweets now and then while having the gestational diabetes. There is no getting around a fast though... I've tried, trust me.

I was praying after lunch today that God would be my Sustainer. That I would be grateful for the leftover roast and potatoes that I ate and not dwell on the junk that I want to eat.

Me and Jesus? We're getting pretty tight this month... He is all I need.

but I sure want some chocolate.

cause he's cute

Torture - food month

The month of food is here. And it's already no. fun. Not even a little bit. The foods we will be eating and nothing else are:

1] chicken
2]beef
3] green beans
4] corn
5] bread
6] potatoes
7] salad

We lumped anything you can put in a salad as one item. No we didn't choose eggs - we don't eat many. no we didn't choose fruit - we eat it occasionally, but we tried to pick things that would fill us up.

Drew's torture will be not drinking soda. Mine of course is the whole no chocolate thing. We may be grouchy this month. Just a warning.

We are using condiments. Anything that you wouldn't eat by itself is fair game. We thought this was a pretty good compromise until we quickly realized no cheese. :( frown face.

I'm ready. It will be difficult. But our God is sufficient. We are doing this so that we live with less. There is excess everywhere in our lives and we want less of it. We are also doing this as a fast. When we crave caffeine and sugar we look to Jesus. He is all we need... gulp.

We. Tried. Hard. - 7 style

 Drew said it was a tough/successful month because he didn't order soda at restaurants and tried things that were in our cabinet that he wouldn't have otherwise tried. It's a start.

We finish this month off with the realization that although we tried hard, we are wasters. We cooked some of the things we had in the cabinets but some of it was gross... so while we pushed through some of it, I'm ashamed to say we did throw a few things away. We had many things in the fridge that were WAY expired - such as sauces.

I am proud of our recycling. And also shaking my head of the ridiculous amounts of things we threw away before having those handy green boxes.

We only washed clothes twice, but didn't see a big difference in our water bill because I let the kids play on the slip-n-slide one afternoon. While doing it I knew it was waste, but I had told them they could go to the pool and it didn't work out. What's a girl to do??

We did succeed to empty our cabinets (to prepare for the next month - FOOD), wash dishes less, use rags instead of wipes, and stayed mostly away from ordering chick fil a cookies.

[Yes, the below cabinets are us emptying them... for those of you that know us, know that we buy in bulk when its on sale.we still could probably eat/snack for another couple of days just on that stuff. ]

We. Tried. Hard. 

And learned a lot in the process.