Shutterfly 2010 Holiday Collection

Christmas is just around the corner. Every year I like to send cards to family and friends. Shutterfly offers many beautiful Christmas cards. They have everything from modern to traditional. Last year I ran out of time and ended up ordering my cards from a local store. The quality and design was lacking. This year I'm ordering my cards from Shutterfly. We took some beautiful family pictures recently and Shutterfly has great cards to compliment them.

I have ordered products from Shutterfly in the past. One year we made a photo calendar for my mother-in-law. It was a lot of fun to make and turned out beautiful. I enjoyed giving her a personalized gift that included pictures of her kids and grandkids. I have also gotten a photo mug from Shutterfly. I gave it to my dad who loved it. He drinks coffee every morning, so it was the perfect gift for him. The personalization made it extra special.

If you are looking for the perfect card or a special gift, check out Shutterfly. And if you are a blogger, you can get 50 free Holiday Cards. Just check out this link for more information.

Merry Christmas!

A new baby= time to resurrect the old blog!

I started this blog when Holden wasn't even a year old. At times I was diligent about keeping it updated. Other times life got in the way. Life has changed a lot along the way. Good changes. Bad changes. Indifferent changes. We have added to our family with another sweet baby boy. I want to do better about keeping my blog going... It's a great way to chronicle our new, expanded family. I may not have many readers, or any for that matter, but here we go...

My beautiful baby boy, Noah Andrew, was born on September 1st. It was a wonderful day and will forever be etched in my memory. Those first cries, nursing him for the first time, watching Holden meet his baby brother, frantically trying to think of a name the night before leaving the hospital, you know- memories! :P



I have loved the last 2 months of watching my boys interact. At first I was worried I'll be honest. When I was pregnant Holden was adamently against having a new baby. He did have enough interest to request a boy. And when we found out Noah was indeed a boy he proudly boasted about getting what he wanted. Even so Holden was not keen on the idea of a new baby.

Things didn't change when Noah was born. I remember waiting for Matt to bring Holden to the hospital. My mom and I talked about what Holden's reaction would be. I thought he would simply ignore the baby... and I was right. He walked right past him. He refused to give him a kiss. He would barely glance his way. It wasn't looking good! At one point a nurse came to get Noah and Holden didn't notice. A little later he realized the baby was gone and demanded to know where he had gone. I guess that little hint of caring was a sign of things to come.

The not too thrilled big brother "holding" his baby brother.

It was like a switch went off one day. I actually remember the date (what can I say, I'm very number oriented). October 11th. We were headed home from visiting family in Lubbock. Holden out of the blue said, "I love baby brother." And from then on he has been doting. He will come up and kiss him. He affectionately rubs his head. All the while warming his Mama's heart. I cherish getting to watch them grow up together. Brothers. Forever. Noah feels equally as crazy about his big brother. When he sees Holden he gets the biggest, gummy grin on his face. :)

Noah finally won him over!





I am so excited for the milestones that await us. I do get a little sad about the days going by and my baby babies growing up. It's bittersweet and I'm going to try to take in every moment.

Where do I start...

It's been a loooong time since I've been here. A lot has happened since I last posted.

Let's see...

First of all, an opening became available for Matt in Ft. Worth. We always said if that ever happened we would jump on it. Of course we didn't figure it would happen anytime soon, but it did. We decided to move!!

That was scary in it's own because we had to put our house on the market. Eek!! That didn't pan out so well. 4 months on the market and no bites.. not even one offer. In February we decided to try to rent it out. We found a renter. Yay!

On March 1st we all got in our seperate vehicles. Me in the accord with Holden and Chandler, Matt in the u-haul towing Debra's car, and Debra drove the pilot with the other 3 dogs. It was raining that day, but thank God we made safe and sound.

Ooh I forgot to mention another important life change that happened inbetween all of the above. On December 21st I found out I was pregnant!! After 9 months of trying we were very excited to finally see those 2 lines. It happened just in time too because I had scheduled an appointment with a fertility specialist for January. Matt didn't really want to go but he was going to do it for me.......... but luckily for him we got pregnant!

The first part of this pregnancy has been a little more difficult than Holden's pregnancy. I felt more sick to my stomach and was EXHAUSTED. Most nights I would go to bed at 8. Even now at 21 weeks I still feel nauseated.

At the beginning I had a strong feeling that the baby was a girl. Then around 16 weeks my intuition changed and I thought boy. I couldn't wait any longer so I scheduled an elective ultrasound on March 26th. We found out that baby is a..................................................................................................................................................
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BOY!!!!! Holden was thrilled to find out he was getting a brother. That's what he had wanted all along. We still haven't decided on a name for him, but luckily we have 19 more weeks.

Life has been crazy and I have been very overwhelmed at times these last couple months. I have never done well with change. I think life will be really good for us here. I'm planning on going back to school in January. Then after I graduate and get a job we want to buy a house here. We've already been driving through neighborhoods trying to get an idea about cost and see what we like. We know one thing: we definitely don't want a house where we are living right now. We are renting right now and the house is a little too far out of the way.

That is my long due update. I can't believe how much life has changed since June when I last posted. It's crazy!

Holden got a haircut...

I don't have a picture to share. Matt did take one on his phone, but I'll have to get him to upload it for me later. It's a first for Holden. We usually get his hair cut the same way. It grows so fast that we decided to buy some clippers. Since we aren't that talented with the clippers (that's an understatement!) we decided to buzz his hair off. It looks SO different. It will be nice to have short hair for the summer. It's hard to get used to, but I'm sure before long he will be our little hippie boy again. :-)

Mr. Independent

My boy is getting to be so independent. He wants to do everything himself. All in the last week he has been putting on his own underwear, pants, shoes, wiping after using the potty, ect. Isn't that cool?

Tomorrow we are going to my doctor's appointment. It's going to be a long day because we are driving there, going to my appointment, and coming straight back home- approx. 10 hours of driving. Yay, fun... NOT!

Oh my camera is STILL missing. It makes me really mad because I am missing so many memories. I just know it's here in the house somewhere. It's always the last place you look, right? LOL. Hopefully it shows up soon or I'm going to have to break down and buy a used one off of craigslist or something.

My camera is MISSING!

Aghhh!!!! Why, oh why, did it have to get lost??? I've lost my camera twice since we got back from our Chicago vacation. The first time it turned out that it had just fallen behind the desk. Now this time I have NO CLUE here it is. Me and Matt turned over the house looking for it and it's NOWHERE. I'm sure it will show up in some obvious place that we've looked at a million bajillion times. That's what happened when I lost my cell phone. We had looked in every part of the car over and over. Then one day I looked in the side part of the door and there was my phone.

Well other than my camera being mia nothing much has been going on. Pretty boring aroudn here... but I kind of like boring sometimes, so I'll enjoy it for now. Holden, Matt, and his Mom are at Auto Zone right now. (Their favorite place to go these days.) Matt's Mom bought and '89 Firebird and they are trying to fix it up. Holden went for the ride the other day and got to ride in the front seat (it doesn't have an air bag). He loved being able to ride in the front.

I better go and try to enjoy my me time before they get back.

Yay for May!

I love May. I love the weather. I love the flowers. I love pretty much everything about it.

Here are some of my favorite May pictures from the last few years.

2005




2006


2007

Frugal Friday- Happy May Day!

Yay, I have made it to two Frugal Friday's. I wasn't sure if I would remember!

Well last week's Breakfast for Dinner was delicious. I figured for the whole meal it cost right around $5. Not too shabby to feed 4 people! I'm not going to do that every Friday, but going to try to one night every week.

When I started this post, I had no clue what my next Frugal Friday goal was going to be. It isn't easy thinking about ways to save money.

hmmmm...tap..tap...tap...hmmmmm...

Okay, so I thought of something. We go through paper towels like crazy. Not only does that cost money but it is such a waste. I try hard in other aspects to recycle, reuse, reduce.. but for some reason paper towels are our weakness. I use reusable plastic bottles when I drink water on the go, I use canvas bags at the grocery store, I try to recycle cans (though our city isn't very recycle-riendly). So now I need to try to use less paper towels.



So from now on I'm going to make a conscious effort to use less. I already started this morning with cleaning my kitchen. Instead of using new paper towels to wipe down the counter, I used some microfiber cloths that have been sitting, unused in my laundry area for some time.

Well there you have it... that is my Frugal Friday goal. It won't save much, but every little bit counts, right?




p.s. While I was googling a paper towel picture to use, I came across someone else's Frugal Friday post about just that- paper towels.

I think I might copy her and purchase some towels. I have microfiber towels, but only a few. I know, not so much a Frugal Friday... but it will pay for itself in the end.:-)

Frugal Friday

Who doesn't want to save money? Of course for some, like me, that is not the easist task. I am not super spendy but I could stand to save more.


So with that being said every Friday, I'm going to try to come up with a way to be more frugal. Eventually, I will run out of ideas, but I'm going to see how long I can keep them coming.

Friday has always been our eating out day (and a lot of times Saturday and Sunday too and occasionally often times throughout the week.. yeah, we're bad). This week we have done good about not eating out. It's so hard because I LOVE food. However a lot of the things I love can be recreated at home.

One place I LOVE to go is IHOP. I crave their Rooty Tooty Fresh 'N Fruity pancakes. (Isn't that a great name?) MMMM... they are delish!





Okay I could show you pictures of pancakes all day long, trust me I could (LOL), but to save everyone's keyboard from the unavoidable drool I won't do that.

My first idea to be more frugal is to replace our eating out night with something else. So Friday nights are now deemed Fruity Breakfast for Dinner at the Turner house.

Breakfast is cheap and good, so it's a win-win situation!

1,200 miles later and we are HOME!

This past week we took a vacation. We had to go to Missouri for Holden's appointment. We decided why not go an extra 7 hours and visit Chicago. Yeah, I know we are crazy!

We were only in Chicago for 3 nights, 2 days but we tried to pack as much sight seeing as possible during that time. Our vacation turned out to be a little National Lapoon-ish (like my made up adjective?). But we still had a great time!

On the way to Missouri, I met up with a friend. I've been part of a message board since I was pregnant with Holden. It is a parenting message board. It started off as a birth club for January 2005 but has branched out to include other Mamas. Four years later we are still an active group. I had never met anyone in person. So we stopped off in Oklahoma and met Megan and her 2 girls: Dacey and Aliza. It was a lot of fun and a nice break from our drive.



After Holdie's appointment we headed to Chicago. On the way I looked up restaurants and we decided to eat at a burrito joint to compare their Mexican food with ours. It was called Jaimico's Burritos. It was a pretty cool place. There was a bar that lined a big window where you could look out onto the city. It was pretty cool to sit and watch all the activity going on outside.

The burritos were pretty good. I don't know if they quite compare with Texas' but that's a hard thing to do! Unfortunately though the burritos were little time bombs waiting to explode in your stomach. Okay that sounds a little gross, but seriously Matt and me both had killer stomach aches that night from those little time bombs.

Oh no, Matt, don't eat it! Don't!


The next day we got up early and were rearing to go... Here is Holden decked out in his baseball attire for the Cub's game we were going to later that day.


We headed to the Lincoln Park Zoo and since we got there a little before they opened we stopped off at the Lincoln Park Conservatory.



I took lots of pictures at the Zoo but I will spare you those since I'm sure you've all seen lions, tigers, and bears... Oh my! <-- That never gets old. Here is Holden riding the Endangered Species Carousel at the Zoo.


Now to the Cub's game. This is where the trip was a little diasppointing. We were SO excited about the game. We got there about 10 minutes til the game started- we tried to get there earlier but when you have to walk it takes a little while. We didn't think it would be a problem since the seats are assigned, or so we thought. We get there and there are NO seats left. Apparently the outfield seating is first come, first serve. Booo!!! Also it was freezing that day. So after a while of sitting on the stairs, freezing out butts off, and having beer drip on us as drunk people walked by we left. It was the 6th inning and the Cubs were losing. That was $95 down the drain...

Holden was happy and excited when we first got there.


It was neat to see the historic Wrigley field..





We only stayed at the hotel in the city the first night. It was pretty pricey, so the remaining 2 nights we had reserved a hotel in a suburb. We drove to where the hotel was and when I went to check in, it turned out we didn't have a reservation there. Matt looked it up on his phone and apparently it was in a different suburb. It was weird though because we are SURE he made it for the first suburb. Never use hotels.com or any of those type sites (we also had issues with Expedia). The traffic was pretty bad so it ended up taking us an hour to get to the first place then another hour to go to the other suburb. Ugh!! We finally arrived to our hotel and found out the reservation was for only ONE double bed. Double Ugh!! Apparently that's what we had reserved but once again we are SURE that we reserved a room with 2 double beds. Anyway, after that dilemma we ordered a Chicago-style pizza. My sister-in-law's friend, who is from Chicago, recommended Giordano's. It was delicious! I think Matt thought so too.. LOL!



The next morning we all woke up so sore. I guess it was all the walking. We probably walked over 5 miles. We took the train back to Chicago for moe sight seeing.

We saw Sear's Tower.


Okay this has turned into a REALLY long post, so I'll end it here... later I'll talk about the rest of our vacation.:-)

The Randomness that is Lauren's Camera

My camera has such a wide array of pictures on it. Here is some of what I just uploaded..

#1) Me being being a dork in the car today. We drove to Hobbs, NM and back to take my mil to pick up a car. I decided to do an improptu photo shoot of yours truly. This picture is contradictory- I'm giving a peace sign, yet I look like I'm going to bite someone's head off... Okaaaay.


#2) I heart shoes very much and love love painted toe nails. Here are both of my loves together. On my feet I'm styling a pair of Simply Vera Wangs (that I scored at Kohls for 90% off, woot!) and freshly painted toes (it's the best I could do while in a moving vehicle!)


#3) The dogs playing in the snow.. (What, snow? Yeah, I told you it was random.) We got snow on Friday. Today it is a beautiful day. Go figure. I guess Mother nature wasn't finished with us yet.


#4) Holden woke up with a rash the other day. We're thinking it is a reaction to his antibiotics, so we have stopped them from now. He had a similar reaction a couple years ago to Augmentin. Poor Baby!




And lastly a cute one... Holden getting his cousin to laugh. *Swoon* Just so much cuteness!

A Quarter of a Century

My hubby turned the big 2-5 today (actually I guess yesterday, since it's already past midnight).

The day started with a breakfast of blueberry pancakes made by yours truly. Holden enjoyed them (and I think Matt did too).


I decided to make Matt a German Chocolate Chocolate cake this year. I had never made it before.. It isn't something I would want to make often- it's too much work! But I think it turned out well.




Penelope came by to wish Nuncle Matt a Happy Birthday. She brought along her Grandma and Grandpa too. Penelope is all smiles these days. I caught this picture of her. Isn't she precious?


Later Matt opened his gifts.




This evening we went out to eat at Matt's favorite place- Outback Steakhouse. I forgot to take a pic of him eating his birthday dinner but Matt took this picture of him and his Mama.


I tried to get a picture of me and Holden, but he wasn't having it.:-(

Three's Company Too

The 3rd demon-eyed dog in this picture is a newcomer to our family. His name is Tripp. We adopted him from the animal shelter last Thursday. We already have 2 big dogs (Max and Chandler- the 1st and 2nd dogs and the above pic). To most that would be more than enough animals, but not for us. I have always loved dogs, in particular big dogs, and had been wanting to adopt another for some time. I finally got Matt to agree so we went to the shelter and found Tripp. We were informed that he had faced euthanization twice. When he first came in they were going to put him down, but decided he was worthy of adoption. By the time we came along he had been in the adoption area for a little over a month and he didn't have much longer. We are so happy that we found him when we did! He has been deemed Holden's dog by Holden. Though I think he is more my dog- he follows me everywhere.

He loves to pull my clothes out into the living room. He doesn't chew them up, he just carries them out and leaves them on the floor. This morning he dragged out my *ahem* bra and I had to take a picture. I figured maybe his ears were cold with the freezing weather we've been having so I wrapped it around his head. LOL!



It wasn't easy finding a suitable name for Tripp. I never realized how hard it is to name a dog! We initially decided on Murphy while we were still at the shelter but when we got home we felt like the name just didn't fit him. Later while discussing names Matt mentioned Bristol, which made me think of Sarah Palin's daughter, which then made me think of Bristol's baby's name which is Tripp. Funny thing is right after we decided on the name I was walking up the stairs and was tripped by Tripp. Also the dog is a trip. A couple days after we got him, we were out running errands when we got a call. The dogs had gotten out- all 4 of them (our dogs and my mother-in-law's dog). We couldn't figure out how they did it. After getting the dogs from our neighbor, we pretended to leave again. Matt stood next to the gate. Not two seconds after we started pulling out of the driveway Tripp pulled the latch down with his mouth and pushed open the gate with his arms. I don't know what is with us adopting animals with amazing skills. We have Max, who can scale a 6ft. fence, and now Tripp who can open a gate. Luckily Tripp's ability is easily curbed with a lock.



Yesterday Tripp had to go to the vet to get neutered. Amazingly he acts as if nothing happened. We figured he would be a little sluggish, but he was just as spunky as always.

The other dogs are getting along pretty well with Tripp. I think he is a good fit for our family. Max and Chandler are like night and day. Max wants to be inside all of the time, only goes outside to potty. While Chandler loves to be outside. Tripp is somewhere in between the two. He likes to be inside more than Chandler, but enjoys being outside more than Max. Most of the time he will go outside and play with Chandler.



Tripp has already made himself at home. Yes *gasp* we let our dogs on the furniture. He is a typical Pointer and wants to do whatever people are doing. He takes the "part of the family" saying to heart.

Sweet Sleep

I mentioned last week about my sleepless nights. Thankfully all is back to normal! *knock on wood*

I've been trying to sort out my pictures (a very long process). They are organized by dates, but I wanted to have them sorted by other labels too (Holden with Daddy, Holden with Toby, Holden and Penelope, Holden Sleeping, ect.) Funny how all those titles have Holden in it. LOL!

While looking through my pictures I noticed A LOT of sleeping pictures. I never realized I took so many of him sleeping. Anyway, here are some of my favorites...


Sacked out on Daddy at not even a month old


This picture I love down to the dirty socks. Holden was 15 months and this picture captures that time in his life when he was toddling around getting into everything.


Ah, I remember the days when a car ride would put Holden to sleep. Here he is snoozing with his cousin, Jesse.


Sleeping at my Aunt's house back in October.


Sleeping in his crib, shortly before we switched him to a big boy bed.


And of course I can't forget when he would fall asleep in his high chair or booster seat.


When he was 9 months, I took pictures of him falling asleep. It was so cute seeing his eyes getting heavier and heavier until he just konked out.








Speaking of sleeping, that is where I am headed. Today was a long day and I am beat. Tomorrow we are going to garage sales so I have to get up early.

Good night,
Sleep tight