Our Week in Instagram

Now that Instagram has profiles on the web, I thought it would be fun and easy to share a weeks worth of instagram photos at a time here (in a once weekly post, of course). Unfortunately, as much as I love my HTC Evo 4G, the camera has ALWAYS left something to be desired. I get a little green when I see iPhone users and their photographs (not fair!). I'm not ready to take the plunge into the land of crappy Apple products yet, however, I'm hoping my next phone has a much better camera!

So, here we are - week 1 - in Instagram!

11.23.2012

Today was one of the best Black Friday's in recent memory. I didn't set foot in one retail store. Not one! Surely I'm not alone in my disdain of the insanity of rushing out hours after sharing a wonderful meal with friends and family to buy stuff. If I'm honest with myself I really only learned to hate the day after Thanksgiving because all those crazy shoppers meant I HAD TO WORK AT THE CRACK OF DAWN. I was full of turkey. All I wanted to do was sleep. Poor teenage Kerith.

Instead, today, I lazed about with my sweet littles. We snuggled, and chomped on leftover bacon from yesterday's breakfast. We listened to Christmas music in the playroom. We watched way too many episodes of Duck Dynasty. Like 10, straight. I'm starting to notice a trend in my appreciation of backwoods rednecks from Louisiana. J and I shared the basic outline of our vision for creating our very own winter wonderland in our own home. We disagreed about lights. J is pretty into the white icicle lights we've always used, but I want to run out and buy a bunch of those retro teardrop multi-colored lights (which are of course now made in LED, and not nearly as much fun). Unfortunately, they are too expensive, and we have a whole tub full of the aforementioned icicle lights in our attic. *Shrug* I suppose we'll have to go with those so we actually have money for Christmas gifts, lol.

Aside from all that, we had a small disruption in our day in the form of a nail in my tire. Papa got our tire refilled with air so J could drive it to discount tire where they were lovely enough to patch our tire free of charge, and let us get away without buying two new tires today. Again, gotta buy those Christmas gifts! Can't afford to be spending all sorts of money on random emergencies. This is exactly why Dave Ramsey pushes so hard for that Emergency Fund!

After a quick visit with Aunt Sarah so she could get in her goodbyes to the boys (she won't be back in SC until Christmas Eve) and a tearful night time routine (why was everyone so weepy tonight?) J and I ended up finishing off our Black Friday with Pizza, Beer, the ASU football game and some time in the office.

Not a bad day at all.

Landscaping with leaves...

Gosh. A whole week has gone by since my last post! I'm sorry, but I was way more bummed about the election than I realized. I even signed a petition to have SC secede from the union - that is how butt hurt I was about the whole thing! In hindsight, that was probably dumb, but whatever, Obama, no hard feelings. I still think you might be the worst president of all time, but if 114% of registered voters in Ohio picked you, who am I to argue with voter fraud.

/bitterness off.

Thanksgiving is a week away! I'm just not ready at all. Thank goodness that Ma-in-law is running the show this year, and I'm merely part of the supporting cast. Aunt Sarah will be here on Saturday, and I can't wait to witness the reunion of her and the boys! Expect ridiculous amounts of pictures and merriment sharing to go on.

Tomorrow I'm going to try and snap a few pictures of the yard. It is CRAZY how it is just blanketed in leaves all over again. Remember when it looked like this at the beginning of November?

And then the handsome J man and Pa-in-law came through with the riding mower, and leaf blower, and got things pretty orderly again...

Anyway, after a few chilly days of rain & wind, it is worse than ever. Except I don't really care. I love these frickin' leaves. Best landscaping ever. Thank you God, for your gifts. They give the men in my life a headache and secret giddiness at having an excuse to strap on power tools.

And just because, babies!

Scared and sad...

I almost can't believe the results of yesterday's election.

I shouldn't be surprised.

I've long held the belief that people do not truly desire fairness, rather, they wish for things to be unfair to their advantage. Once the "folks" began to realize they could vote themselves benefits, the party that offered those benefits was hard to resist. Never mind the constitution, or the core values this country was founded on. It is crazy to me that it was such an even split - almost 50/50 exactly. I'm worried about what will happen when the money runs out, when the "rich" folks (and job creators) that everyone wants to tax to death finally vote with their dollars and LEAVE. I'm worried the economic situation in this country is going to become even more dire than it already is, and I'm scared for the impact this election will have directly on my family. After all  in the last 2 years, my husband and I have lost 3 jobs between the two of us.

I think the hardest part of all for me is that socially, my beliefs have moved more from a libertarian stand point (regarding abortion) to a more faith based belief. As I grow up, my beliefs become more conservative, at the same time the country seems to be moving to a more liberal system of beliefs.

Scared. I'm scared. I hate to feel that way. I'm trying to occupy my mind with other things, but it is hard to focus on anything else. One thing for sure - I know I need to stop focusing on the world outside my control, and turn my efforts inward to my own roof (and community). There are too many wonderful things in the life to be distraught over the goings on of DC, and it is time to concentrate on my sweet boys, my wonderful husband, and our life together.

Once Every 4 Years

Done. Voted.

I don't mind saying that I voted for Romney. I hope he wins. I said on Facebook that I would do p90x everyday for the next 4 years if Ryan becomes our VP. I think I mean it, lol.

Will be interesting to stalk Fox News tonight and watch as the results come in.

"Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble." -Matthew 6:34

Fall 2012: Continued

I should probably be sleeping right now, but I wanted to get in here before another day escaped without posting. November is NaBloPoMo or something like that, and while I didn't expect I would get in here 30 days in a row, I am really trying to post more frequently. Alas, things have been getting in the way. Good things, though. Work things! Work things are good. Also, sick husbands and babies. Not so good, but it was necessary that I care for them none-the-less. 

I pushed myself in the month of October to be more intentional with fostering family traditions around the holidays. I may have jumped the gun with Halloween, considering that by the time the 31st rolled around, I was wishing it were November already. Unfortunately (or thankfully), Thanksgiving comes MUCH sooner in the month of November this year, and I'm determined to figure out by the end of the weekend what sorts of arts/crafts I would like to work on with the kids, plus whatever movies/music I would like to expose them to. 

It appears we will be joining a large family gathering this year, which is just completely awesome. Last year we were in lock down mode at this point planning our cross country relocation and trying to get all packed up, and were grateful to be able to spend Thanksgiving with my BFF and her people. This year will be so different! Since J's folks moved to SC, our Thansgiving Holiday's have usually consisted of an amalgamation of friends AND family, and this year it will be a large herd of Gaines folk! G-ma and I are already planning tactical maneuvers for optimization of stove space and food prep between our two homesteads. With a large crowd, it will be necessary!

On Friday (the 2nd) I made myself get out of my chair and walk around to capture the most recent developments in our yard. A tree had fallen earlier in the morning (thankfully no one was hurt!) and all the wind was blowing beautiful tufts of leaves out of the trees and all over the streets. It won't be long before all of the leaves are living on the ground, and the landscape will change into the beautiful stark bareness of winter that we arrived to last year. 

Enjoy my yard!

Happy November, everyone! I'm pretty geeked for Turkey Day this year!

Happy Halloween!

We love our new neighborhood, but Halloween central it is NOT! According to the in-laws, they had more trick-or-treaters than they had in previous years. Of course, our two babies pretty much doubled the population of little tykes. At least, that is what we thought. Last night we ended up meeting two families that live down the street that have little ones ranging from 1 to 10! I've mentioned before that J and I are both a little lonely. It has been hard for us to make new friends at this stage of our life, and part of it is that we've been getting settled in, but other than that, we just haven't had much luck. Anyway - it was good to meet some other families with smallish children in the neighborhood, and here's to hoping we can strike up some new friendships!

New potential friends aside, Halloween continues to become increasingly more exciting each year the boys are older. I know that some point that will taper off and they will no longer care, but in the mean time I'm doing my best to foster family traditions that they will be able to look back on fondly. This year we obviously did trick-or-treating in costumes they picked out, but we also tried to build excitement by watching LOTS of Halloween themed movies throughout the month of October (It's The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown, Wallace & Gromit's The Curse of the Were-rabbit, The Dreamworks Spooky Stories, Thomas & Friends Halloween Adventures plus whatever Halloween Nick Jr cartoons we could find on demand), and listening to Halloween Music stations on Slacker Radio and Pandora. Mikey loved watching the Youtube clip of the home lightshow set to "This is Halloween" from the Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack.

Then, on the actual day of, Ma & Pa In Law came down (all the way from their home 2 doors up the road) to carve pumpkins on our front porch before the trick-or-treating began. Much fun was had by all (except me, because I had to spend way too much time fishing the babies out of the piles of leaves in the front yard). Here are the pictures from our evening!

Hope you all had a wonderful Halloween this year!