Applause for Victoria's Secret

So I'm not really an online clothes shopper. I love browsing online stores and looking at catalogues but I never actually buy anything, just dream. Because you just don't know how they are going to look on.

Well I was wanting some new yoga pants because mine have a hole and some new linen pants because my old ones are maternity. I usually get them at Old Navy but I am avoiding malls because I don't have money to spend and I am a spender! I know my weakness, so its better not to go there! Plus it was easier to clothes shop with one kid, not so much with 2. And I use to shop all the time when Jackson was in a stroller, he was the perfect little shopper, now he is a terror and Andrew doesn't so much like the stroller like Jackson did. Needless to say, going to the store to get pants just isn't in the cards right now.

Well I found a pair of yoga and linen pants on sale in the Victoria's Secret catalogue, looked at the sizing chart, measured myself, and bought them.

They came in and were HUGE on me. Now while it sucked that they didn't fit, I felt good because that meant I wasn't as big as I thought I was! But they were the perfect feel and cut, just wrong size. So I mailed them back to replace them for the next size down.

I got them in yesterday (in record time, I might add!) and they fit perfectly! Exactly what I wanted. So my kudos goes out to Vickies online, very impressed with their pants and return service.

Rainy Day Chocolate Chip Cookies

I made these today.... they turned out FANTASTIC!

Ingredients:
1 cup butter, softened
1 cup white sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
3 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp hot water
1/2 tsp salt
2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

Directions:

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees
• Cream together the butter, white and brown sugar until smooth.
• Beat eggs one at a time
• Stir in the vanilla
• Dissolve baking soda into the hot water and add to the batter with the salt
• Stir in flour, the chocolate chips
• Drop spoonfuls onto ungreased pans
• Bake for 10 minutes or until edges are nicely browned

I made about 12 cookies. I seperated the rest of the dough onto some plastic wrap. Wrapped it up and put it into a freezer ziplock for another day. (double wrapping prevents freezer burn and odor absorbtion) The dough will be good for up to 4 to 6 weeks, so I wrote the date on the bag.
When its time to cook some more cookies I will put the dough in the fridge for a few hours to dethaw and then I will let you know how they taste, after freezing!

Dinner Last Night: Lemon Chicken with Roasted Garlic

I made Lemon Chicken with Roasted Garlic with Oven Baked Potato Wedges. The chicken recipe called for thighs but I wanted breasts so I replaced it with 3 chicken breasts and it seemed to work out perfect.

I loved it and so did all the boys. I will definetly do the chicken recipe again. I liked the potato recipe but I think if I used a better roasting pan it would have worked better... next time!

Counting My Blessings

My hubby, Tim, has been building his collection of tools to prepare for when he gets out of school and can go to work as a mechanic. Yesterday, he was in a position to buy some really nice specialty ones. So he did and we were very excited! We sat on his tailgate as he showed me each one and what the use for it was. I think I got most of what he was saying but its kind of like me trying to explain my sewing tools to him... a foreign language. Well he had to get to a meeting, so he thought he grabbed the bag with all the tools in it (in his defense he was distracted because the meeting he was going to was something heavy on his heart) and put it in his shop. So he was left and I was trying to pile my 2 kids and my sister's daughter in the car to take them to the park, like I promised them. Well as I was driving out of my street, there in the middle of the road was the box to one of his new tools. As I stopped to pick it up, he came driving back down the street. He couldn't tell me what all he lost or where he lost it. But I have to feel like this happened to try to keep him from this much needed meeting. Well he retraces his steps to find them and they are already gone...

So he goes to his meeting, it is as important as I thought it would be. But he got home and was rightly very upset about losing his very expensive, brand new tools. He walked up and down Maybank Hwy trying to find some trace of them and only found a container in front of an Auto shop. I tried very hard to be the supportive wife but in this situation there is really only so much one woman can do. But we prayed over it and then tried to take our minds off of it until we could actually do something about it.

Well today, I went to that Auto Shop to see if they picked them up. Tim didn't think it would be worth it but I told him he underestimates the power of a crying woman with 2 kids on her hip. I went and talked to the main guy there who went to each of his employees and asked them if they saw the tools. No one had but he wrote my number down just in case. I left pretty positive we weren't ever going to see those tools again. But about an hour later, the guy from the shop called me saying one of his employees that wasn't working today did find some of them and was dropping them off.

I went there and he had a box full of the majority of tools Tim lost yesterday. I wanted to cry. How amazing is that?! And to emphasize the quality of these tools, they were apparently run over and have minimual scratches on them.

The lesson we took from this when all subsided, was that God gives us our earthly things and He can take them away, so our happiness can't be based on things of the world. We have to continue to realize that He is ultimately in control and we need to hold less tightly to the things He gives us.

Beauty Tip #2: Foundation Primer

So I have never used a foundation primer before, simply because Mary Kay didn't offer one so I never really knew about it. But this spring they came out with one.

Now I will say I love my mineral powder foundation but by the end of the day if I don't reapply it does tend to fade away. I never really paid much attention to it since I hadn't been wearing a whole lot of foundation, since my kids don't care whether I wear makeup. But its a fact of life, a mommy does go out occasionally and she does like to look pretty when she does.

So I decided to test this new primer with my foundation. I was thoroughly impressed! My makeup lasted longer than it ever has and I have been using that mineral stuff for quite some time! So my newest addition to my makeup collection is the Mary Kay Foundation Primer!

My primer is a lightweight gel, containing silica (a mineral optical diffuser) formulated to diffuse light to help reduce the appearance of fine lines, wrinkles, and pores. But it also is oil-free and has an ingredient that absorbs excess oil!

Quick tip: Always use your fingertips when applying something to your face, because your palms have a lot of oil and your fingers don't have nearly as much!

Some TV Favorites

So I have never been a big TV show watcher but there are a couple of shows here and there that have captured my attention...I will admit when I first saw this show advertised I thought it looked ridiculous and I didn't want to see it. But we were bored and it was on Netflix instant so we decided to watch the first episode. I was hooked! This pair was awesome, the love interest is entertaining, the character cast is perfect, even the theme song is classic! I love it and Jackson did too, he could sing the theme song! I can't wait for season 5 to come out. So if you like dry wit, sheer ridiculousness, and pineapples.... this show is definitely for you! and if you do decide to check it out watch for a pineapple in some form in every episode.

Basically the main guy was trained by his father as a child to be a detective but he wasn't really cut out for an actual police job. so he pretends to be a psychic and does private detective work, sometimes for the police department. My only problem with the show is after 4 seasons of him solving all these crimes for the department, they still don't trust him. But he always shows them up so its all good.

Here is another show I underestimated... it came on reruns on local TV and we watched a couple of episodes. I wasn't sold at first because we picked up in the middle, I had no idea what was going on, and the main character I didn't like from that movie, Hitch. He was a douche bag and I never wanted to see his face again. Well my hubby really liked this show so I sucked it up and we started it from season 1. I am truly enjoying it now. Another great casting job, story, and good location. So far I've been pretty impressed but I'm still on season 2.

The main guy was a spy for the US but he got burned on a job and shipped back to Miami. He is stuck there until further notice, doing private recon for people in need. I think my favorite part of this show is that he is obviously well trained and good at what he does and does it with style.

This one is definitely an all time favorite! I have been watching Law and Order: CI for years and I think its safe to say I have seen them all... well at least until they changed the cast. I stopped watching it when they took away Goren and Eames. The story line was interesting but it was nothing compared to the main character pair. I loved them, they just played it all sooooo well!

This is actually a police show, but they are so not typical police detectives. They are wounded and intellectual. They can tear apart the bad guy with their minds. Its so good! I don't really care for any of the other Law and Orders, just this one.

I never even heard of this show until I visited my in laws one weekend. It captured my heart! I can't believe it only got aired for 1 season! But then again I would hate to watch them ruin it with too many seasons if they had no more ideas. It had nice blend of sci-fi and western (very unique to say the least). I would have never thought I would like it but I did!

It was pretty much the story of a lone ship flying around the universe just trying to survive and staying off the radar of the alliance. The crew was an odd blend of people that just happened to end up on the same ship at the same time. I never knew what to expect from one episode to the next. The characters were predictibly unpredictable and so was the plot. If you haven't seen it, watch it! and then watch the movie, Serenity. But don't watch the movie first or it will make absolutely no sense.

When I went back to work for a little while, my hubby had to find something to occupy his time. This show became it. He was addicted! So when I could I watched it with him. And skeptical isn't good enough for the feeling I had about it, but it ended up being very interesting. I don't know how these people come up with the ideas for this show... it was completely outlandish but I couldn't look away!

This police officer got sent to this town in the middle of nowhere to be the sheriff. As it turns out the town was some government operation, where they stashed a lot of incredibly intelligent people, like unnaturally intellegent. And this poor guy was left to clean up the messes of intelligent people with a lot of resources at their finger tips. Needless to say, this town almost got blown off the map numerous times.

Different Personalities

I never really thought about life as a mother before I became one. I watched my mom who had 4 girls and 1 boy but I took her for granted. I think I just expected that she knew what she was doing. But as I go through each day with my 2 little boys, I find out how drastically different their personalities can be even at such a young age. Jackson, my 3 year old, is a doer. He have to always be doing something. Always need 2 toys, one for each hand. He likes to be fixing things, or he loves cutting things (I have to control those times), he loves building robots out of legos. As long as he has something in his hands he is happy. He is very easy going and is ready for anything. Even when I have to punish him, it doesnt even really phase him. He handles pain very well, which is good since he is accident prone. But Andrew, my 16 month old, he has firecracker of a personality. He is a watcher, he watches everything. His bear is his favorite thing in the whole wide world. Which is funny to me because I got that bear at Jackson's baby shower and Jack Jack wouldn't even touch it. But Jackson had his paci and his tag on his specific blanket. But the thing about the bear is, it is now a collector's item, if I were to try to buy one now I would have to pay $30. Andrew is very emotional. If he is upset about something, even something as simple as taking away something he is not suppose to be playing with, he throws a fit. And his fits are UGLY! He throws himself backwards and screams like he is being beat. Now when Jackson had a fit I could distract him with something else, Andrew will not be distracted, if he is in the middle of a fit the only thing that will calm him is Bear or "Baa Baa" and even bear doesn't always fix it. Andrew likes to be held, He would climb back into my skin if he could. Jackson wanted to be on his own and doing his own things. I am constantly learning how to deal with and teach these boys in a way that they will understand. And what works for one, doesn't necessarily work for the other. Its exhausting! And I'm only in the beginning stages of their lives!

I sit here and think about the differences in just my two boys, and I don't know how some mothers do it with more than 2 because that is a lot of personalities to keep up with. I tip my hat to those woman, you are stronger than I!