Monday, July 20, 2009

Need Help With Meal Planning

Calling all folks in the blogosphere, I need some help. Currently in the Dunlap household, meals are planned on the fly. This has become frustrating and totally unhealthy for my family. I am ready to make some drastic changes. That is where you come in. How do you do meal planning? How much in advance do you plan? What about grocery shopping? What works for you? If you are not able to leave comments, please email me at dunlap9499@gvtc.com

I look forward to seeing how it is done by others.

Help me make our meals go from this.......

To this......

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Annual Beach Trip

Thursday we left for the beach, and we returned home today. We had a great time! Each year, Aunt Sue takes the family on a vacation. This year we headed to Padre Island. We spent the time visiting, playing 42, swimming in the pool, and even caught a Hook's Game. It was a wonderful vacation! Thank you Aunt Sue for so many GREAT memories!

For dinner one evening we headed to Crawdaddy's. It is a great place. We enjoy the atmosphere and food. They have karaoke, which Brayden loves. He sang a few songs and then he and I sang a few together. It was great fun! He is not shy! Brayden and I sang We Go Together off of GREASE and also sang From this Moment by Shania Twain (it happens to be the song Justin and I danced to at our wedding), and then Brayden sang What a Wonderful World.

The next night, we headed into Corpus Christi to catch a Hooks Game. They are the minor league team of the Astros. It was great. We had great seats, but had to keep our eyes peeled for foul balls. Brayden was able to get a lot of autographs from the Rough Riders, which is a minor league team of the Texas Rangers. Bailee enjoyed the game too! Heck she was allowed to polish off a whole bag of cotton candy.... who wouldn't enjoy that? She danced the night away and cheered the players on. It was priceless!
During the game, daddy and Brayden went over to the bull pen to watch the pitchers warming up. A ball was hit over the fence and daddy ran like a crazy person to get it. He was able to hand it over to Brayden. The look on Brayden's face was priceless. Brayden asked the players if they needed it back and of course, they told him it was his to keep.
Well...... fast forward to about 45 minutes...... 7th inning. Apparently Brayden had talked his Opi into going to play catch with him and his new ball. Back near the bull pen is where they headed. They tossed the ball back and forth a few times. Brayden began insisting that Opi was throwing it too low and that he needed to throw higher. Opi explained to Brayden that he didn't want to hit him in the face.... yes, you can tell where this story is headed.... But Brayden insisted he throw higher. Opi's next throw landed smack dab into Brayden's mouth and knocked out his loose tooth and busted his lip! He ran back to our seats to tell daddy and I about it. His mouth was bloody and his tooth was gone! I immediately asked where his tooth was..... being that I am hugely sentimental and this was his FIRST tooth..... Guess what.... he lost it! At one point he had it in his hand and in the excitement of rushing over to tell us..... he dropped it.

You can imagine what this overly sentimental mommy did..... yep, you guessed it! I had Opi take me to the exact spot where it happened and spent the rest of the game on my hands and knees looking for his tooth. Oh yes I did! And yep, people stopped and asked if I needed help finding something. When I explained what I was looking for they kept going. Ha! It was kinda funny.

The pitchers in the bull pen were giving Brayden a hard time for not helping me look for it. The game ended and I knew that the tooth would forever be on the Whataburger Field in Corpus Christi. It took everything I had to leave it there. We talked briefly to Thomas Diamond. He was super nice.

Upon returning to our condo, Aunt Sue and Brayden wrote a letter to the tooth fairy, explaining what had happened to his tooth. When Brayden awoke this morning....... he had a $10 bill! Actually, Brayden and I had slept on the same twin bed.... he had gotten up earlier and looked under his pillow and didn't find anything but his note was gone. Well once I got up out of the bed..... we found it under my backside! Ha! Guess we moved a whole lot in the night!
So now Brayden is $10 richer and his FIRST tooth is out on Whataburger Field somewhere.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Enjoying Life

We returned from Disney World on Friday July 10th. We had an amazing time. Seeing the magic on the kids' faces was priceless. There is absolutely no other place on Earth that can bring that type of magic to a child's face, adult's too! I am filled with gratitude to my parent's for treating us to a magical vacation that we will forever remember!

The sight of Brayden dancing in the rain down Main Street will forever be etched in my mind. It was our first day there, and let me tell you, he was feeling the magic. Another favorite memory is when we were in one of the candy stores at Magic Kingdom. Being the chocoholics they are, daddy and Brayden began filling two bags with M&M's off all different colors. Of course daddy didn't pay attention to the sign that had the prices. He marched his self to the cashier with his two bags of candy and the lady rang him up. He unknowingly had bought 26.00 worth of candy. Being that he only had 12.00 cash on him, he politely told the lady he had no idea it was that much and said he would be right back. He put a bag back and had me go up and just buy the one bag since he had just been up there.

As I was paying, the kind lady said, sweetie, your husband had two bags, go get the other bag and just take it because we are going to have to throw it out anyway. I blushed and told her thank you. We still have the two bags of M&M's. Ha!

We ended up renting a scooter for my mother. I just knew she would enjoy it more if she wasn't in so much pain. Her hips are in horrible shape and constantly hurt. If you have ever been to Disney World, you know the amount of walking that you do. Now looking back, that dang scooter gave us a few laughs.

One evening at Magic Kingdom, she almost plowed over two small kids. She thought she was going forward and in fact pressed the wrong lever and lurched backwards. I yelled out at her and pushed the two little girls out of the way. Another scooter incident was when my mother got stuck on the railroad type tracks that span Main Street. The tracks are for the parade floats. They do not mix well with scooters. We caused a backlog behind us from being stuck. After a bit, this large man came walking up and lifted the entire front of the scooter off the track with my mom on it. We were all laughing like crazy.

We visited Monster's Inc. Laugh Floor. It was hilarious. The best part was..... they picked my dad out of the audience to be "That Guy". So during the whole show they would make jokes about "That Guy" and put his face up on the big screen. Then as we were leaving there were kids pulling at their parents clothes saying..... "hey mommy, there's that guy." Oh, it was priceless.

All of us were exhausted and are just now getting back on schedule. We slept like crazy people upon our return. I felt as though I would never get enough sleep, of course that is coming from someone who is obsessed with sleeping.

Bailee is crazy about Snow White. For about 6 months, Snow White is the book that she consistently chooses for me to read her at bedtime. She would light up whenever she saw her.

Brayden loved it all. His favorite was Splash Mountain though. I lost count of how many times he and his daddy rode it! He was even able to talk Grammy into riding it with him.

Here are a few pics of our wonderful time! Enjoy!

Saturday, July 4, 2009

The Wedding

Yesterday evening, my brother was married. His wife's name is Crissy. We love her. It is so funny because I wear my brother out..... and he married someone very much like me! Ha!

It is so refreshing seeing him so happy. Crissy brings out the best in him and is a go getter. She pushes him to achieve his wishes and dreams and that is just what he needs.

I photographed the wedding and wanted to share some pictures of the happy couple.

Here they are with Granny Ruth. She is 87 and can still
run circles around all of us! She is a nut! Can't you tell from the picture!
Oh, how I LOVE that lady!
My mom and a want to give them a canvas wrap of either the first or second picture posted. We can't decide which one though. Any suggestions?

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

A Successful Day!

Today was a great day thanks to Craigslist! I sold a bunk bed set of Brayden's AND my Nikon D40! And, being that we are leaving for Disney World on Monday, the extra cash is going to come in handy! Oh, I can't wait to go! There are a whole lot of us going, like 16 people! My parents decided that for their 40 wedding anniversary they wanted to take the family to Disney World. What a treat! In the mid 80's my dad was stationed in South Florida, so we were able to go to Disney World a few times when family from Texas would come and visit. To this day, I remember the exhilaration of being there. It is such a happy place.

Back to my successful day...... Since I now use my D90 I didn't need the D40 camera any longer and since Brayden doesn't EVER sleep in his bed, I decided to sell them both, and get a double bed that I can lay in with him while I read him a book, etc. Hopefully by the time school starts he will be booted out of our room! That boy is growing like a weed and it is no fun having him in our bed. There have been a few nights this Summer, that all four of us were in one bed. Talk about not getting ANY sleep!

About three days ago I started on organizing our playroom and going through toys. Well being my ADD self..... as I was dealing with the toys and telling Brayden that new toys are a thing of the past and that he will not be getting new things until he turns 20, I noticed that the wallpaper was peeling so I pulled it a little to see how easy it would come off, and before I new it, half of the wall was naked! ..... needless to say, I ended up NOT organizing the playroom and instead stripped the wall, primed it, and I am now in the process of painting. Ugh, my attention span is the pits! Justin came home and saw the mess and had the "we didn't discuss this" look on his face. Surprise honey!

My plan for the playroom is to finish painting the playroom white, and then blow up some great shots of the kids that I have taken and having them printed on a canvas wrap! I can't wait! I will share the final product when I am done. I had intended to take a before shot.... didn't get there. Imagine that!

Who Knew? Update Version..... Please pass it on.