Royals

Bummer.  :(  No pun intended. 

I really don't like Madison Bumgarner.

This is the life of a Kansas sports fan.  Hopes up, then dashed.  :(

Good season and post season Royals.  We're very proud!

Cute Kids

I have the cutest stinkin kids!!  :D  Enjoy!!

Cold Season

Well, it's about that time of year again.  Time to put boogie wipes on the shopping list.  If you are the parent or grandparent of a little one, let me tell you (later) how wonderful these little contraptions are!  ;)  But that's not my point now...

Connor woke up this morning with a cough and a runny nose.  :(  Normally I wouldn't think this was because of anything but the rapidly approaching cold and flu season.  However, my sweet little boy has never been sick.  And, to top it all off, he had one minor change in his routine this week...  He went to the nursery during church on Sunday, two days ago.

So I can't help but wonder...  Did Connor get his little cold from being in the nursery on Sunday?  Chances are, he did.  However, we did go to the Pumpkin Patch and had a guest at the house this week, which he could have picked something up from as well.  Who can really tell?  I just can't help but point my finger at the nursery, where there were over half a dozen babies, and Connor was laying on the floor with a toy in his mouth when I walked in.  :\  But who knows?  I suppose it's cold and flu season, and this was bound to happen eventually.

That being said, I've learned a little about myself as I look for the reason my son is dripping from the nose.  I'm much more of a "Granola Mama" with Connor than I was with Avery.  If you were around us when Avery was a baby, I didn't worry about germs much with her.  I always said they'd build up her immune system.  Being born at the beginning of fall, she hit cold and flu season at an early age.  We were in the doctor's office on Christmas Eve with her first cold (because we were still new parents and it was worth the $35 copay for the peace of mind to hear the doctor say she had a cold).  Avery had formula at less than one month old.  Most of the reason for that was that I wasn't producing enough to keep her satisfied.  I continued to nurse, but not exclusively, I gave up on that dream.  Everyone knows I use cloth diapers for our kiddos, but because of diaper rashes here and there, Avery has spent month long stints in disposables before, although I always return to the cloth in the end.  That was the story of our first child...

Then Connor came along.  Connor is the baby, and always will be, as he is our last child.  Born in the late spring/early summer, the cold and flu season took much longer to get to him.  Connor hasn't been sick until now, for the first time, at 5.5 months old.  My milk lasted longer, and I'm proud to say I'm still exclusively nursing him, and that he's never had formula before (despite a stockpile of freebies I received when I was pregnant with him).  Connor hasn't had to be in disposables much, because he's never really had any issues with diaper rash.  Once his circ healed up, he's been almost exclusively a cloth diaper baby (with the exceptions of when I haven't got diaper laundry done, when I need his diaper to fit into a smaller pair of pants, or when we're going out for the day or an extended period of time, and disposables are just going to be easier.  See what I mean??  I'm a crunchy, granola Mama!  :P  Add to that the fact that my kids don't get sugar (if I can help it) for the first year of their lives and the fact that I make their own baby food (which Connor will start in a couple of week), and the fact that I've never bought a SINGLE jar of baby food for my kids, and you'd think I was close to a full blown hippy.  And that's fine.  Because I still vaccinate, I'm going to send them to public school, I'm going to buy them new toys and clothes when I can, and we'll eat fast food on long days when I just can't stand the idea of cooking dinner.  :P

This post has turned in a different direction than I was originally anticipating.  :P 

I think the nursery made Connor sick.  :(  He's my baby.  I don't like him being sick.  :(  He doesn't seem to know or mind.  He's always such a happy baby.  He also doesn't have a fever, so that's good.  Just not fun seeing my little one under the weather.

Black Friday

Trying this Black Friday post again.  Will have to save every few minutes in case something happens.  ;)

I love going out and shopping on Black Friday.  I have tons of great memories from growing up and going Black Friday shopping.  I love getting up in the middle of the night (or staying up late) to join the crowds of crazies and look for the great sales on Christmas gifts.  I love driving through Starbucks in the middle of the night for a much needed caffeine pick-me-up.  I like planning our route and making my list on Thanksgiving day so we have a plan of where we're going the next day.  It's just a fun event!  :)

That being said, Black Friday is also getting a little disappointing.  I get emails from bfads.net.  They keep me up to date on the latest Black Friday news.  Last week I got an email from them that mentioned some of the stores had released their start times for Black Friday.  I was disappointed to read that several stores are opening to begin their sales as early as Thanksgiving morning.  :(  Now I've gone shopping on Thanksgiving before, because the sales have been leaking from Black Friday into Thanksgiving for several years, but usually that means that sales begin at 8pm, 10pm, or midnight (I know, technically midnight is Friday).

I'm disappointed in the stores opening so early on Thanksgiving for several reasons.
1- I was in the retail industry not that long ago, and it's just mean of the big corporations to make their employees, who are making minimum wage or right around there, miss this special holiday with their families because their employers are open now.  Not to mention, it encourages others to cut their Thanksgivings with their families short in order to go out shopping for the best deals.  This is not what Thanksgiving is about.
2- Black Friday is going to lose all it's meaning, because hardly any shopping will actually take place on Friday.  Now that someone has started the ball rolling and Thanksgiving is no longer off limits, it's only going to get worse.  Eventually sales will begin the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, then the week before.  Eventually we'll forget that we waited until the day after Thanksgiving for our shopping at all.
3- Great deals are not that important!!  I think it was Wal-mart last year that had a sale starting as early as 6pm on Thanksgiving.  I didn't get to Walmart until around 8pm.  Because, frankly, nothing was worth that sacrifice.  Family comes first and Thanksgiving is about family, not stuff.

So no, I won't be skipping dinner on Thanksgiving to go shop.  No, I won't be hitting a few stores before breakfast on Thanksgiving.  During the early afternoon food coma, when everyone is sitting around watching football, full, happy, and dreary, if a store has an online sale running, I may order a couple things.  But other than that, until 8pm (or later) on Thanksgiving, I won't be out shopping.  I wonder if the Walton's and the other megacorp families will be out working on Thanksgiving day like their minimum wage employees are forced to do.  Just sad.  And, because of this, when I do reach the stores this year (because let's face it, I'll still go) I'll try to smile and say Happy Thanksgiving to the employees just trying to keep their jobs, forced in on what used to be a holiday, and missing time with their own families in order to provide.  Because while Black Friday can be a little crazy, that's no reason not to be civil to one another.  We are all human, after all.

Well, I don't think that's exactly where I was going when I started this post last week, but it gets most of my points across.  I'm not as focused this morning.  No coffee yet.  ;)  Hope you have a nice day, and I hope you, too, will be an example of civility come Black Friday.  :)

October 15th

Is Infant and Pregnancy Loss Rememberence Day.  I didn't even know a day like this existed until a friend posted something on facebook this morning.  If you've been reading our blog for a while, then you know Michael and I had a miscarriage in June of 2013.  I'm not going to say a whole lot more about the day, I'm feeling a lot of different emotions.  I think she summed it up well, so I'll leave you with her words (slightly changed to fit our situation).

I am a mother of three.  One brilliant little girl, one sweet baby boy, and one too beautiful for Earth.

Ugh!!!

You ever get 2/3 of the way through a decent project, text, email, etc, only to have something happen and all your work to be gone?  Yup.  That's what just happened to me.  Ugh!  Over halfway done with a post about Black Friday when Avery crawls onto my lap, hits my phone, and loses all my work.  *sigh*  I might try to reproduce it later.  For now I'm too irritated.  Ugh.  Bye.