The Landers' Life

He...

7/20/10

is still in England for one more week...

had plans to be at the British Open this past weekend but unfortunately did not get to go. Apparently his rental car reservation was lost...or was eaten...or they gave his car to someone else...I'm not sure. Needless to say...he was disappointed...

saw The Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, The London Bridge, Westminster Abbey, The London Eye, Big Ben, the famous guards in their red coats and black hats...and St. Paul's Cathedral this past Saturday...

ate at Hard Rock Cafe London but opted to pass on buying souvenirs when he saw the line that consisted of about 200 people just to get into the memorabilia store...

is still not used to driving on the "wrong" side of the road...

bought a calling card so we can talk on the phone for more than 10 minutes per phone call (which is definitely most exciting for me)...

played 9 holes of golf on Lakenheath AFB yesterday after work and ate Burger King for dinner...

has gotten lost twice since he's been there and has informed me that if we were ever stationed there, I would never, ever, under no circumstances be allowed to drive off base...

has watched F-15's take off, played in a flight simulator, been a chauffeur, and will have covered pretty much every area of Lakenheath by the time he leaves next week...

is counting down the days, like I am, until he comes home (Well...he hasn't exactly said it in those words, but I'm pretending he's as ready to come home as I am for him to)...

found out yesterday he is going to become a daddy for a second time after all!

And yeah...just as soon as I figure out how to explain this one, I'll post more about Baby L "2" later.

Random but True

7/16/10

1. Big Brother 12 has only been on for one week...and it's consuming my life!

2. Tomorrow, I'll have visitors. My mom, sister, and Jake's cousin, Emily, will be here for a "Family Slumber Party". Yes, they are staying overnight with me, and I.can't.wait!

3. Absence is definitely making the heart grow fonder while Jim is away. It's so different this time! Maybe it's the combination of knowing he's in another country, he's asleep while I'm awake, and we talk on the phone for no more than ten minutes a day. Yep. I think those three just about do it for me.

4. The retail world is a better shopping place with Hobby Lobby in it. I went there last night on a shopping spree for my office at work.

5. Also last night, Jake informed me that he really, really, really misses his daddy, and that he loves him very much. He also backed that statement up with the fact that if I will buy him a new train, he will feel "all better." Amazing what a new Thomas engine can do for a 3 year old, huh?

6. The sleeping arrangements in our house just aren't what they used to be. Turns out, Jim and I have what feels like is going to be a permanent pallet on the floor beside our bed. It's sole purpose in life is to keep Jake from crawling into our bed somewhere in the vicinity of 3 and 4 each morning.

7. My toenails are currently what has become one of my absolute favorite colors of nail polish...Lincoln Park After Dark by O.P.I. Love it!

8. This weekend, Jake will finally get the lunchbox of his dreams. He saw it in a magazine a couple of weeks ago, and he's been asking me every.single.day. when Spiderman will be here. Thankfully that's tomorrow when his Grandma gets here to give it to him. No, she just couldn't resist it because she had seen it too and knew he would love it almost as much as he does me. She will be his hero completely when he sees it.

9. I realized this morning that I left the light on in Jake's room all night long. This is nothing new for me, though. Stuff like this happens pretty regularly while Jim is away. Reminds me of the time when he came home to a 300 dollar water bill. It's a long story, that one. And because to this day, I'm still sticking to my guns on that scenario and say there's no way I should be held responsible for that one, I won't go into detail. Otherwise, 5 minutes of my 10-minute conversation with Jim tonight will be us going back and forth about whether or not I could have possibly noticed the puddles of water collecting in our yard for over a week. Maybe the grass was really thirsty, right?

10. My cousin Jim's wife, Christine, is one of the sweetest human beings on this planet. She sent me two boxes of clothes that her son, Ethan, has outgrown, and Jake will be able to wear them all this coming Fall!

11. Speaking of clothes, Jake has a shirt that says, "My Dad Has Super Powers!" He wore it last week. I just hung it up in his closet. The one I didn't hang up was the one he was wearing when I took him to TCBY. Unfortunately, the chocolate yogurt stains have not completely come out.

12. I've consumed more water in the last week than I have in probably 6 months. Obviously, this is something I need to work on. So I am.

13. If you've been planning a trip to the Hallmark store in the McFarland Mall...don't plan anymore. It's closed for remodeling. As you can tell, I've been there. Yeah, that went to Plan B.

14. In case you were wondering, I still have photos to share from our camping trip we went on the weekend of July 4th. Thank goodness because seriously, I'm not sure how many posts to this blog I can do without uploading an image or 2...or 20. They'll also keep me from convulsing on the floor because I still really, really, really (as Jake puts it) miss my camera.

Back to Me

7/14/10

I am sooooo ready to get back to the "me" I knew...oh about two months ago...pre miscarriage days. (Repeat 50 times).

And honestly, it's not as bad as it was. I felt like I had totally lost the "old" me up until about a week ago. My emotions were still running high, and I felt like one raging PMS cycle that would.not.end. But finally now (and if Jim or Jake were typing this, they would probably include things like: Thank God!, We can come out from hiding in our closets now!, Hallelujah!, and Cindi, Mommy, where have you have been? Oh you're home! We thought you'd never come back!), that has subsided, but I in no way, shape, form, or fashion, do I have my body back. I still look like I did when I was twelve weeks pregnant with Jake, and I just don't think my body has really "gotten it" that it doesn't need to keep growing to house another human being for 6 more months. And if I keep going like this, I'll try on another pair of pants this morning when I decide it's time to get ready for work like I did yesterday, and they won't fit either! I'm just not feeling it anymore. I'm over it. (Repeat 50 times).

So today, it's for blood work that I go. I called my doctor's office yesterday, and they've formed a game plan to start there and see where my blood pregnancy levels are just to make sure they dropped to rock bottom or are at least in the process of going down.

In other news, I'm having major camera withdrawals. It's because I've let Jim take every single lens that I own to England with him. He'll be there for two and a half weeks teaching cadets, seeing the countryside every chance he gets, and watching the British Open this Saturday in Scotland. I think this all went down after I got my "feel good" back on last week, and I started comprising and loving my family again. As I type this, I can hear myself saying, Oh no, Sweetie, I won't need them. You take them. After all, you're going to Europe for two weeks. And you really may need my zoom lens while you're watching the Open. You may see Tiger Woods or Phil Mickelson, and you'll want to get as close up as you can. Jim kept asking and asking if I was sure. But I insisted, and now I feel like I've given up caffeine completely.

I mean, just in the last two days, I've missed out on showing you things like the lizard that Jim caught and left in an empty garbage can in our garage for Jake to see when I brought him home from school on Monday - and yesterday, the mountain of stickers he had stuck to his face when I picked him up and made him remove before we went to the mall to shop for birthday gifts for my dad and sister (I figured the spaghetti on his shirt and mysterious brown spots all over the front of it were enough to get the stares from people going, much less a pile of dinosaur stickers stuck to his right cheek).

Thank goodness I didn't bother changing his shirt, though (My fashion sense said Yes! Change his dirty shirt!, but my conscience said, No! Don't do it!) because after the trip through the drive-thru to redeem the "Free Kiddie Cup" coupon at TCBY that he got from his pediatrician's office (Yeah, I think we have two more of those laying around since we've made so many trips here lately.), he managed to add chocolate yogurt to the list of items that are currently under the stain-removing power of Oxy Clean.

Okay, time to go to work...and see if I can find something to wear that fits!

Camping 102:

7/10/10

Search for Food from Your Environment and Explore Your Surroundings

With fishing poles, tackle box, and squiggly worms in hand, we set out to see just how many fish Jim and Jake could catch.

Or maybe...just maybe...we would catch the shark that Jake was still certain was out there waiting for him to reel in.

And oh yeah...this net was going to hold him when he caught him.

Fortunately for all of us (and everyone else in the park come to think of it), this net never scooped up a shark.

But what it did hold was many, bright, plastic lures that Jake managed to hold onto the rest of the day. Nope! He never even lost one. In fact, I think two of the neon green ones that match the shirt he's wearing are hanging out on our garage floor right now.

Of course the attempt to catch regular, edible, non-dangerous types of fish continued for...

quite...

a...

while.

And even when one nothing was biting in one area of the lake, it didn't stop Jim from searching out a much farther and quieter place to try and catch at least one fish.

No...discouragement didn't get this one down. He kept moving all around the lake, going where no man should go...literally. I think he could have gotten in trouble for doing this...or at least hurt.

Sadly for Jim and Jake, I think this next photo says it all when it comes to what we was on our dinner plates that night...not that we would have eaten anything different anyway (Who am I kidding?). But the look on Jake's face would have been priceless if they had managed to pull at least one fish out of the water. Sniff, sniff.

Oh, well. Better luck next time, right?

And at least we got to see this while we waited for Jim ever so patiently to fish (And believe me, it wasn't a hard thing to do...wait for Jim. Not with scenery like this...and of course a million puddles of water to splash in and rocks to climb on.).

The next morning, we got up, ate a hearty breakfast (McDonald's hot cakes and sausage...so much for roughing in on that meal), and went to Little River Canyon.

It was just up the road...about 7 miles from Desoto State Park.

And it was equally another great place to explore...

get our feet wet...

and smile lots and lots.

Camping 102: ....A+ for the Landers Family!

Camping 101:

7/8/10

Pick Out Your Campsite of Choice and Set Up the Campsite

Okay.

Sounds like a plan to me!

So that's exactly what we did this past Saturday when we arrived at Desoto State Park at around 10am.

We scouted out every single spot that was available to us, and at last...

Number 9 it was!

Ahhh...Number 9. No, it's not necessarily a "lucky" number. There's really nothing special about it per se'. But it was level...and available...and was really quite large compared to the majority of our choices.

So we snagged it and got super busy immediately unloading an entire truck bed full of equipment, food, first aid supplies, wet ones (like those were going to do any good when every inch of square footage around us was a little thing called dirt), and most importantly, the 3 containers of OFF! I figured we were going to need just to survive (and also keep me from zipping myself into our tent and refusing to come out).

Speaking of the tent...

that was next on our list of "Things to Do".

Jim whipped out the directions and got right down to it.

And of course, Jake was there waiting to help.

He mostly stood with his arms folded asking over and over again if he could help. Great thing for him (and all of us for that matter...after hearing him ask at least 30 times), Jim was able to give him several "jobs" to do.

And before we both knew it (and after I had put my camera down a few times to lend my helping hands)...

Voila!

The tent was up and ready to house 3 sleepy people when the time came (which wasn't very long because we all ended up taking a good nap later that afternoon).

And so began our first and extremely fun and exciting 24 hours of camping, a true roughing-it, outdoors experience that we've been waiting for the opportunity to do for months now.

The repeated reminders to Jake that there is to be absolutely No running! also began, literally within the first hour we were there.

Actually, I think the tent was up completely for no more than 10 minutes when this happened...

Oh yes! My baby took a flying leap when his camo croc hit part of a tree's trunk that was sticking up out of the ground.

The sad part about all of this was the fact I wasn't trying capture this moment on camera - it honestly just happened - I was truly trying just to get a picture of our tent in all its completed glory - but I admittedly laughed until I cried when I realized that I got this shot. I just couldn't help but think of the stuffed flying squirrels we had just seen at the Country Store when we checked in.

I mean really.

Look at him!

Both his arms and feet are completely off the ground and in the air like he's doing a take off or something. I just couldn't help myself!

Of course, I wasn't laughing when I was helping him up, and I definitely wasn't laughing when I was dragging out the neosporin and bandaids I had brought with us (At that point, I was patting myself on the back in my mind for being so smart to think of it and giving myself serious brownie points on that one.).

Unfortunately, this was the first, and it wasn't the last of scrapes and bruises or the last time I whipped out the neosporin and bandaids. Heck, even I ended up needing them. I somehow managed to slam my finger in the truck door in the dark.

Come to think of it...maybe that was my punishment for laughing at my sweet baby boy being caught on camera as he was flying through the air about to make a crash landing on hard ground.

It was still funny, though. Sorry, Buddy! Hopefully one day you'll find it in your heart to forgive me.

Up next...

Camping 102: Search for Food from Your Environment and Explore Your Surroundings

Sage's and Scenery...

7/5/10

While I'm still sorting through all of the photos I took while on our camping trip this past weekend, I thought I should show you a few more from mine and Jim's overnight date to Callaway Gardens two weekends ago. (Otherwise, I will feel like I am "behind", and that's just not good for me. It literally makes me crazy and haunts me in my sleep. And I really do want to get some sleep tonight...especially since the last few nights have been not-so-restful...with Jake having an extremely congested chest and all. Oh, the price we've paid to go camping! More on that later too.).

This is Sage's.

It's the old-fashioned ice cream soda shop I mentioned in my first post detailing our trip.

Not only was the food great, I absolutely could not get enough of the nostalgia of this place!

The menu had items on it like a vanilla ice cream root beer float...

hot dogs, homemade chicken salad (something I got off the menu, and it was sooo goood)...

fresh squeezed lemonade...

coffee...

and something else I tried (And I reeeeeally shouldn't have because now I'm addicted!)...the best chocolate milkshake I've every had in my life!

This place just oozed with families, food, and a totally fun atmosphere, and I can't wait to go back again.

Because, believe you me, if you were to try one of those chocolate milkshakes, driving a couple of hours to get one would not be a ridiculous idea.

And last, but definitely not least, here are few more shots of the surroundings we took in during 24 of the best hours I've lived in the last two weeks...

Is this place just gorgeous or what?

Desoto State Park...

7/2/10

Here we come!

Today, Jim and I are celebrating twelve years of marriage.

Twelve!

Wow!

I still can't believe it when I say it, and I've literally been saying it all day...all week really!

But besides thinking back on this day, twelve years ago, and talking about what we were doing each hour, how crazy in love we were, how distraught my mom must have been because her little girl (the "baby" she calls me) decided to elope (Well...not really, I guess. My parents knew about us deciding about a week prior to get married at a Montgomery, Alabama courthouse...despite the fact that we had a traditional wedding planned for September - the whole nine yards as in a wedding gown, musicians, bridesmaids, groomsmen, caterers, a dj, etc.), and how we would probably kill Jake if he ever decided to do the same thing one day, we have also been preparing for a real deal, roughing it, camping trip beginning tomorrow morning.

Yep, in less than ten short hours, we will be on the road to Desoto State Park in Ft. Payne, Alabama.

Nope! No modern campsite for us! We will be pitching a tent, making a campfire, hiking until we drop, swimming under waterfalls, and helping Jake catch the "shark" he plans on reeling in with the new fishing pole Jim bought him from Academy today.

I'm literally so excited that I can't sleep.

But I best try because morning will be here before I know it, and I still have a few things to pack (like bandaids, neosporin, OFF insect repellent, more OFF insect repellent, and just for good measure, a Citronella candle to keep the bugs away).

Goodnight!

Oh! And Happy Anniversary to my wonderful, amazing, loving, hubby and best friend! I love you truly, madly, deeply...today and always!

Oh! And one more thing...well maybe two things! In case you were wondering...we definitely still had our traditional wedding in September. And when we celebrate that anniversary, I promise to share some pictures of us saying "I Do" the way my mom always dreamed I would. And just in case you were wondering how she's holding up today...she's just glad God knew what He was doing because we definitely didn't!

It's fun to say, "I told you so!", though. Love you to pieces, Mom!

He... 7/20/10

7/20/10