easy recipe: cucumber salad

Cucumber Salad

1 cucumber, peeled & cubed
1 package Pictsweet Seasoning Blend (in the frozen veggie aisle; it has onions, bell peppers, etc in it)
Newman's Own Family Recipe Italian Dressing (you will use however much you prefer, to get your desired consistency)
1 tbsp. olive oil

Prepare Pictsweet with olive oil as directed on package. Let cool, then rinse in a strainer and drain as well as you can. Mix Pictsweet with cubed cucumber & Newman's Own. Refrigerate. Tastes best when allowed to marinate in fridge for at least 30 minutes prior to eating. Enjoy!

favorite things

Maybelline Baby Lips lip balm in Peach Kiss

Mr. Clean multi-purpose cleaner in Gain scent. 

Seriously y'all: GAIN SCENT.

White House Fruitastics applesauce. It has veggies in it! And no added sugar! 

Natalie loves it. Ok, ok...I like it too. :-)

My Kindle Fire. Duh.

Mossimo gauze shorts in brown. Best shorts EVER.

Have a blessed week!!

new every morning

I yelled at my daughter yesterday.

Yep, that's right. This cutie:

And the worst part is, that's not the first time it's happened.

I used to frown upon parents who yelled at their children. "You should NEVER yell at a child! Discipline should come in the form of a firm but calm voice! They need to learn that yelling is NOT ok!" And then I brought this precious baby into my home. And in those first few months, I went through this time that most new mommies attribute to postpartum depression. Except that I didn't give birth to this sweet angel. Which makes me feel that much more sympathetic toward mommies who did give birth. Because if I'd had the hormonal craziness on top of my own craziness, I'm not sure I could have handled it. There were really a few dark moments for me when Natalie was a baby: and she was a GOOD baby. {Yeah. I'm a wimp. I practically had it made, and I still struggled. I digress.} As my teeny baby grew into a 1-year-old, her personality showed up. And it was so cute! And then she hit about 18 months, and her opinions showed up. That's when my patience was really tested. And that's when I found myself starting to lose my temper at times.

If you've raised a toddler before, you probably know what I'm talking about. Deliberate disobedience. Stubbornness. Whining. Oh, the whining. Is that just a girl thing? I'm not even sure where she learned that from, but it grates on my last nerve. Anyway, I realized at some point that I needed some Divine Guidance to help me gain some self-control. Because I don't want to teach my child that it's ok to raise your voice when you're frustrated. But that was what I was doing. So I looked, and I found this:

...His compassions never fail. They are new every morning...

~Lamentations 3:22-23~

OH!! Praise the Lord!! His compassions are new every morning!! Y'all, that means that even though I screwed up yesterday, I get to start over! What an amazing gift from God this verse has been for me the past several months. It's not up to me to control my temper. It's up to me to let HIM control it FOR ME. And when I fail to do that, to let HIM take over, guess what? His compassions never fail. When I mess up & say "crap" in front of my toddler who repeats EVERYTHING...His compassions never fail. When all I want to do is sit down & check my facebook, and my 2-year-old is nagging me to just come BE with her, and I brush her off for "just another minute"...His compassions never fail. When I am lazy and decide to play around or lie on the couch or go shopping, when I should be doing housework or something productive...His compassions never fail. When I constantly think of myself instead of the simple desires of my daughter to just hang out with her mommy...His compassions never fail. 

I need this so much, because on my own, I would fail as a mommy. I fail to remember that she just wants to be with me. Every day, I fail to slow down to her pace. My compassions constantly fail. But His compassions NEVER fail. NEVER. 

They are new every morning. 

What a breath of fresh air for my soul.

Natalie is TWO!!

So, a month ago, my kid turned two. And I forgot to tell y'all about it! Shame on me!! Here is a little synopsis of my little firecracker of a toddler:

• She is not a super picky eater, but she won't eat just anything. She loves chicken nuggets, hot dogs, pizza, and macaroni & cheese. And of course, cookies. :-) Probably her biggest obsession though, is crackers. The girl would eat her weight in crackers! And speaking of weight...
• At her 24-month checkup, she threw me for a loop when she went ballistic over being weighed & measured! I was expecting a fit when the time came for shots {which also happened, mind you}, but I did NOT expect her to go so crazy at the scales & ruler. It wasn't an easy checkup, but we did get shots & stats: 33" tall (25th percentile) and 26lb, 9oz (50th percentile). This seems backwards to me because all of her pants are either too short or too big around the waist!
• She is a chatterbox! The girl LOVES to talk. Unless, of course, you ask her to "perform" by saying something. Then she clams up. Because she is also Miss Independent. :-) She will say a few short sentences: "No Mommy, not dat ah-sauce [applesauce] - dat one!" This week she has started saying "Wow! Awesome!" Which is funny, because neither her daddy nor her mommy say "awesome" very much. Just goes to show she will pick up on anything! So please watch your language around her, haha!
• Mom's Day Out is still tons of fun for her! Most days she comes home with dirt in her hair, and in her shoes, and under her nails, and sometimes in her eyes.......
• She loves to see babies out in public & go up & talk to them. She'll say, "Awww, baby!! Awwww, sweet." I think she will make a wonderful big sister!
• Coloring, stickers, swinging, mimicking Mommy, playing with Izzie, being outside, going to "Mah-mama's house" and "Mimi's house"...these are a few of her favorite pastimes.

There is so much more I could say about her, because she is so full of personality. But she is waking up from her nap now, so I must go. :-) I will leave you with a few pictures from her birthday party & beyond.

Have a blessed day!

an adoption update

Hi peeps!

I know, I haven't done a good job of keeping you updated. I was recently completing an online survey which asked, "Do you blog?" and I honestly felt bad answering "yes", because I do it so infrequently! I want to do better; really I do!

I have had several people ask me how the adoption process is going. Here's where we stand now:

• We have finished all of the paperwork. {I think we have; there is so much, we may have missed something. :-) }
• I've been working on our adoption profile, which is basically a snapshot of our lives. I'm doing it as a photobook, which is how we did our first one. It's almost finished; we are just getting a couple of updated photos to include, and then we'll be able to order a few copies to send to the agency to show to potential birth mothers. If you'd like to see our photobook, click here. {I think you may have to sign in with a Walmart.com account, so I apologize if it's too much hassle. And please let me know if that link doesn't work! :-) }
• Our fundraisers are going SO WELL, thanks to all you generous people! Honestly, we are so astounded at how giving everyone is! We have had a lot of people give us donations, and Baron has had several orders for his sports figures. I don't know right now how many Wild Olive Tees we have sold, but I hope it's going well! They are such cute t-shirts, and I love that they have this adoption fundraiser as an option.
• I hesitate to announce this, because I'm almost embarrassed, but I'm so excited that I just can't hide it: we had one super awesome individual donate ALL of the rest of the money we needed for our agency fees!!! People, that is a huge chunk o' change. When this person emailed me to tell me, I was completely shocked. I have known a lot of generous people in my life, but I have never been the recipient of such an amazing monetary gift. We are SO blessed!!! The individual asked to not be named, so I will respect their privacy. But I couldn't help but share the news!! We will still need to save up money for travel expenses and legal fees for the finalization, and that is where the rest of the fundraising money will go. But it is such a relief to not have to worry about the rest of the agency fees. Praise God from whom all blessings flow!!
• We are also still in the process of making room in the house for baby #2. I know once we send our first payment & our profile to the agency, I will start to get the nesting fever, as I did when we were waiting for Natalie. When we get to that point, we will have no idea how long we'll be waiting for a baby, so my OCD-ness will begin to kick in, and I'll want that space ready, like, yesterday. :-)

Thank you so much for all of your prayers! We truly feel that adopting is God's calling for us. There's no other way to explain the generosity of everyone, and the way everything just "falls into place". It seems like an impossible task in the beginning, the whole process. Then when you get into it, and everything starts to work out, you just know that it's what God wants. It really is a God thing, and He knows what He is doing!! Please continue to pray for our adoption journey; the prayers really are felt!

{ And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him; who have been called according to His purpose. ~Romans 8:28 }

{ Religion that God the Father accepts as pure and without fault is this: caring for orphans or widows who need help, and keeping yourself free from the world's evil influence. ~James 1:27 }