50 Things To Do Before I Die

I read Buck's Blog the other day where he posted his "99 Things to do before I Die" blog and decided to do my own list.(Since I don't know how to like his post you can click on "Daddy Diaries to the right and scroll down.) While I didn't make it to 99, I did make it to 50. I figure I can add to it as I go. Some of the things on my list I stole from other people when I was researching things, others I did come up with on my own. So, here it is...

Things To Do Before I Die…

1. Travel to Australia

2. Own a Beach House

3. Get back down to the weight I was when Antonio and I met

4. Train for and complete a marathon

5. Go skydiving

6. Swim with dolphins

7. Go on a family vacation EVERY year

8. Attend the Olympics(at least to see gymnastics)

9. Go to Costa Rica (again)

10. Stop biting my nails

11. Fly first class somewhere (anywhere)

12. Learn not to say yes when I really mean no.

13. Get passionate about a cause and spend time helping it, instead of just thinking about it.

14. Accept myself for who I are.

15. Learn to make authentic, Colombian empanadas (Yummy).

16. Give a panhandler ALL the money I have on me.

17. Take an African Safari

18. Retire in a different country

19. Learn how to cut hair and actually find people that will let me do theirs

20. Write a book about my life

21. Live long enough to see all of my kids have their own kids.

22. Throw a dart into a map and travel where it lands

23. Be thought of as someone’s hero

24. Design and build my dream house

25. Visit Mt. Rushmore

26. Visit the Great Wall of China

27. Travel TO (not through) all 50 states

28. Get rid of ALL of my clothes and replace them without looking at a single price tag.

29. Float in the Dead Sea

30. Touch a Penguin

31. Hold a Koala

32. Travel somewhere via a train

33. Drive Antonio’s motorcycle by myself

34. Go snow skiing

35. Hold a monkey

36. When driving past a homeless shelter or "bad part of town", really look at the people and see their struggles, their challenges, and realize how blessed I am.

37. Learn to cook a ridiculously complicated 3 course meal and serve to at least 6 people.

38. Go to a wine tasting

39. Go on vacation with just me and Antonio (no phones, no internet, no tv)

40. Give a compliment to someone every day.

41. Buy and expensive camera and learn to take professional quality photos.

42. Learn to do a cartwheel

43. Become a NEAT FREAK!

44. Attend the OPRAH show when she has a MY FAVORITE THINGS episode.

45. Make a difference to an old person, a young person, and a peer.

46. Put on a swimming suit and feel great about how I look

47. Learn how to plan flowers (and do it) or at least put something nice to look at in my flowerbed.

48. Learn the entire THRILLER dance.

49.Write my own obituary. Full of funny things like “she was a world renown roach smasher.”

50. Mentor a child

So, what's in YOUR list of things to do in your lifetime?

New Nightly Routine...

As my pregnancy goes on, I am having cravings here and there, I figured it would be fun to blog about them. In an earlier post, I reported what food was on my mind. I think it was Jenny R. that said she craved twix bars in her pregnancy. I guess this sent off a light bulb in my head because I have been having one every night. I get the packs of 10 snack size so I get my fix without eating too much.

I have named this new craving my nightly TWIX FIX!!!

The part of my TWIX FIX that I like the most is the BOTTOM part of the twix. I don't even really care for the caramel, but I have to eat that (or cut it off) so I can get to that crunchy part and enjoy it. Does anyone know of a candy bar that is just the crunchy cookie part of the twix and chocolate? I might invent it!
While looking for a picture of a twix candy bar, I came across this picture...
It says, "Please fix the Twix! The machine thinks they don't exist and I want one." Glad that was not me that had to experience this!

As I speak, Antonio is going on a Twix Run cause we are out of them. For the record this is only the SECOND time in two total pregnancies that he has had to leave the house for a craving of mine. He is great and spoils me, but I try not to take advantage of it so he will know when I really NEED something, like my TWIX FIX!!! Yummy!

First Race...

Antonio had his first official race today. He did a Sprint Triathalon out at Shelby Farms which consisted of a 1/4 mile swim, 5 mile bike ride, and 2.5 mile run. He just got his bike about 6 weeks ago, but has been wanting to do a race since he had his 2nd ACL surgery back in Nov 2007.

Here is Antonio before the race proudly showing his number...

Tatum wanted to take a picture with Daddy before the race too.
This is a picture while we were waiting for Daddy to swim by. Can we say....FAKE CRY!?!? eeerrr

Now she is showing her belly. This is one of her things she does ALL the time now for some reason. I am guessing she was doing it so much at the race since most of the guys were walking by to go swim and were not wearing their shirts.
And then the race began. Antonio was in the second round of racers. I could not have spotted him swimming if I had wanted to, but here is a snap shot of some swimmers in the NASTY water at Shelby Farms. I don't know that you could pay me to get in that water. Tatum and I were watching the first group of swimmers coming out of the water and it was hilarious!!! They were all having trouble getting out cause it was so slippery and muddy.
After the swim, Antonio came in to his spot and put on his shirt, socks, shoes, etc and grabbed his bike.
This next picture is after he got done with his bike ride and was coming back in to drop off his bike and helmet to head out on his run.

And there he goes...
Antonio came in running with a buddy he met on the run through the woods. Antonio said the guy was walking and he passed him and then started walking. The guy, Tim, asked him why he quit running cause he was his inspiration. Anyway, they decided to run together the rest of the way to keep each other going. This was a picture of Antonio and Tim coming in to the finish line!! It was Tim's first race too.
There were around 300 total racers. Here is a picture of where the racers would come in and transition. There were many more bikes and stuff, but I didn't take this picture til long after the race was over.
Antonio decided to carry a gatorade on his bike ride. When he opened it, he hit a bump and it went everywhere. Here is a close up of his sticky bike. There were TONS of ants on it but Antonio cleaned most of them off before I could get a good picture.
Tatum and I are so proud of Antonio for his first race!!! He did great and hasn't even been training very long. I think there will be many more races in his future. i think he is trying to keep from gaining any sympathy weight with me this time? Either way, we are very proud of him and it was fun to go watch him do his first race.

Yard Sale Weekend

Last weekend, Antonio and I hosted a yard sale at our house. We, along with Tim, Jennifer, Brandy, and my mom, all had some things to get rid of, so we just all did it together.

Antonio was in charge of taking pictures and I thought he took LOTS more than 2, but apparently he felt he captured everything in these 2 pics, but I would disagree. Anyway, here is a little bit of what all was for sale. We also had 2 more clothing racks of clothes along with 2 poles full of clothes too.
Here are me, Brandy, and Jennifer working hard. We started setting up around 6am, the yard sale officially started at 7am, and we didn't close shop til 4pm!!! It was hard work getting it all together, priced, set up, etc, but all the hard work paid off...
Here are some snap shots of our earnings...


Obviously, I don't get to handle money like this everyday, so I took several pictures. As a group we made over $1000 in profits!!! This is our second yard sale to have at our house and I think we have perfected it. Our signs were much better this year, we didn't even advertise in the paper (cause it was like $30), but we were SO busy!!

We are already thinking about next year's sale!

Nothing But TATUM Update

I was looking at my recent posts and realized that I haven't posted pics of Tatum in a while. I am having trouble uploading pics to our newer computer and now our camera charger and docking station is giving us trouble.

Anyway, here are some candid pics of Tatum. One night after she got home from school she climbed up in this chair and started watching tv with us. I grabbed my camera to catch a pic...


She realized that I was watching her and taking pictures of her, so she posed for me.


This same night she was being quiet a silly thing. This is what she did with her plate after finishing her supper...

Tatum is growing up so fast these days right before our eyes. She is talking SO MUCH these days. I am going to attempt to make a list of all she is saying...

apple

baby

Mommy

Daddy

Tatum

Maggie

Nana

PawPaw

E. E. (Antonio's sister)

abby (Gabby, Tatum's cousin)

snack

milk

fish

nose

ears

eyes

belly

mouth

hair

tree

bite

ELMO(she LOVES Elmo these days)

shoe

banana

etc....

Ok this list thing is for the birds.....Pretty much, she will repeat anything we say. Some words are more understandable than others. She knows her body parts and can point to them. She is learning colors at school and doing pretty well. We also do flash cards at home that have the letters of the alphabet on them. So, we will go through them and say the letter, then she will say the letter, we will say a word starting with that letter, and she will say that word too. She does great til about M and then she loses interest I think.

She loves to color. We do that several times a week too. She has starting singing on her own more and more. We know she sings her ABCs cause we can understand "A, B, C, D" and then it gets a little more unclear from there, but she continues singing and bobbing her head for a while. When she finishes we have to clap and cheer her on and she will do it again.

One funny thing that she does now is a little bit of our fault I guess. Between school and home, Tatum learned all of her animal sounds which is GREAT. However, now when we try to get her to say CAT she says MEOW, DOG she says WOOF WOOF, TIGER she says ROAR, etc. She will NOT say cat, dog, tiger, or any other animal names.

Tatum did get bitten at school again yesterday. That is just the second time since she has been going there, but we THINK it was by the same girl both times. They don't tell us who bit her because they don't want us to retaliate against the child I guess.

Tatum has also finally moved up to a size 5 diaper. The size 4's still fit her, but she was waking up wet every morning and started getting up from nap time at school soaked, so we went up in size.

Tatum is wearing either 18-24 month clothing or 2Ts right now. It just depends on the brand. She is wearing size 4's in most shoes except for keds and she wears 5's in those. She is pretty tall for her age I think, but she has the smallest foot. All the kids in her classroom are at least 2 except for her and she is as tall (if not taller) than all of them. Not by much, but I was noticing it the other day.

She is learning to drink from a cup at school. No straw, no top, nothing....just a regular cup. We still use her sippy cups at home, but plan to phase them out as soon as her teacher says she is 100% on a regular cup maybe.

Tatum is great at following directions. Some things she does is...

*take things to the trash can and put them in when we ask

*go give Maggie a snack

*pick up (books, crayons, bears, etc)

*brush her hair

*shut doors

*go gets her shoes

When I get her ready every morning, I do her hair on her changing table after I get her dressed. She has both of her care bears in her lap while this is going on and she will "do" their hair while I do hers. It is the cutest thing. When she finishes, we head to school.

Tatum's big girl room is being worked on. I am trying to clean it all out and decluttered and then I would like to paint some of the furniture in there to make it look fresh. (I will be recruiting help for this though). I think I posted earlier, but her bedding did come in and I went and got it last week, so we will hopefully have her room done by her birthday if not sooner, but I'm not rushing it too much.

I guess that's it for the latest on Tatum. I will be better about updating with pictures as soon as I get a new docking station or something. I think Antonio will let me buy a new on since we made some extra money last week. (I will post about that later).

Why I Couldn't Sleep Last Night....

I could not get to sleep last night, but instead of getting up I tried to lay there and thought I might BORE myself to sleep. That was, until I started counting and then had a question pop into my head. I couldn't figure out the question, so I will ask you guys...

You know how when you are counting and want each number to last a second? (I hope that makes sense)...ya know, we say "1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi, 3 Mississippi...etc" Well, my question is this. Do people in other areas of the USA say "Mississippi" too or do they say something else like "California" or "North Dakota"?

I KNOW this is totally random and crazy sounding, but the more I thought about it the more I thought it was a valid question. Does anyone know the answer?

Needless to say, the counting didn't work and I got up and watched tv til 2am.

Week 20

As of today, I am HALF way to my due date! YAY!! I had my "official" 20 week check up today and Antonio went with me. We got to see Baby Boy Simpson and the ultrasound tech said that he looks "PERFECT". She also said he weighs 11 ounces which is right on track. At this point, Baby Boy Simpson measures the size of a cantaloupe.

It also says "Baby's digestive system is busy creating meconium (a tarry black substance made of swallowed amniotic fluid, digestive secretion and dead cells), which will fill the first diaper after birth. And, speaking of the diaper situation... baby's genitals are now fully formed! "

I went ahead and did TP Tuesday a day early. I am now 8 and 3/4 squares, so I am making progress.

I am still getting sick here and there, but it is still getting better and is definitely managable.

I also talked to the NP about some sharp pains I have been having in my stomach and she told me to take it easy with picking Tatum up. Easier said than done, but I am trying to do better.

I did my official weigh in today and I have gained 4-5 pounds now. The nurse didn't tell me and I forgot to ask, but it is somewhere in there. Also, for the record since I know there has been a little confusion, I gained 41 pounds with Tatum, not the 60 that seems to be floating around these days.

We met with the insurance lady today and this baby is going to cost us much less than Tatum did, which is always good news. She told us how much we had to pay upfront and when we started to write the check she told us that we had a credit on our acct, so we only owed about 2/3 the amount. Even better! She also told us that we have to have a name picked out before I deliver so she can send the paperwork up for the baby to get circumsized(I know that isn't how you spell that, but it's too late). EEEKKK!!

Needless to say, we still don't have a name or bedding picked out for the baby.

I guess that's it. I will be updating soon on our weekend and I also need to do an update on Tatum with pictures and lots of stories.

Until next time....

OOPS!

I thought I was posting a blog here, but posted it under "Baby Simpson #2" blogpage instead.

Go read it and leave comments when you get time.

Pregnancy Cravings....

Some of you out there have been wondering what Baby Boy Simpson is "craving" these days. Well, here are some of the things that I usually don't eat, but find myself eating a crazy amount of these days.

Let's start with my morning routine. I eat an apple every morning.

Sometimes I have my apple with peanut butter, and sometimes plain. I know the peanut butter is good for protein, so it helps me go longer without getting hungry.
I also fix a cup of crushed ice and grab a bottle of the G2 Gatorade since it is lower in calories. Right now, I am preferring the purple one more than the others.
I loved sushi before I got pregnant, but I still love it now. Don't worry, I only eat the rolls that are cooked, so no harm for the baby. Plus the salad with the ginger dressing was great for me while I was getting so sick all the time cause the ginger was supposed to help my nausea.
Finally, I have been eating Lenny's every other day for the past 2 weeks. I actually had it for lunch today and just picked it up for supper too.

I guess that's all I am "craving" right now. The apples have to be my #1 though for sure. I eat them ALL the time. I definitely have some in the morning and usually one at night too.

For you other pregnant ladies out there(or those of you that have ever been pregnant), what are YOU (did you) "crave" while you were pregnant???