With a capital S

I grew up in the for-real South, but apparently two summers in a place with reasonable temperatures and low humidity is all it takes to make me soft.  The fam and I have been in Louisville this week (yes, we're our of town - go rob our house!!), and from the moment we stepped off the plane, I've been pretty convinced I'm going to die at any moment.  I feel like I'm in the rainforest.  

Despite the inhumane weather conditions -- and sharing a room with Ben, who is two time zones off his schedule and has to nap in the car most days and has grown 1.1 new teeth this week -- we've had a really great trip.  Our adventures have included walking in a park by the Ohio river (with shaved ice to ward off my imminent death) and petting painted metal chickens:

And taking a picture on the bench where Daniel asked me to marry him:

We also had a playdate with some friends we know via the worldwide web, but I failed to push the memory card all the way into my camera, so I can't figure out if I actually have any pictures from that evening.  Sadly, that was not even close to being the stupidest thing I've done on this trip.  Today I did something truly Stupid.

Ben and I drove down to Nashville yesterday (more on the good parts of that trip later), just for one night.  We were two hours into the three-hour return trip today when I realized we were driving on a few tablespoons of gas.  So I pulled over into the next gas station I saw and reached for my wallet.  Which wasn't there.  Or anywhere else in the car.  That's right.  I left my wallet in Nashville.  That meant I had no cash, no cards, not even a driver's license.  My closest ally was Daniel, who was in class an hour away and didn't have a car anyway.  Pretty Stupid of me, right?

I felt like a con artist when I told Debra at the counter my sob story and asked if I could pay for gas by just giving her my credit card number.  Nope.  Ben's cuteness came in handy, though, and she felt sorry enough to buy me $10 of gas. 

The whole situation got me all flustered, and I made the Stupid decision that it would be rude to nurse Ben at a table in the air-conditioned gas station since I wasn't exactly a paying customer.  No, no.  I should instead sit outside in the car, in which I couldn't run the air conditioning and risk not having enough gas to get to Louisville.  Have I mentioned the heat yet?  I had the windows and a door open, but that doesn't do a lot when the heat index is 103.  

Bless Debra's sweet heart, she came to my rescue again.  She saw me in the car during her cigarette break and ordered me to go inside.  I have never been so happy in the dining area of a gas station before.

The rest of the day has passed without incident, and my wallet will get here before I need my ID to fly home (theoretically).  Really, as far as colossally Stupid moves go, this one didn't turn out so badly.  It definitely reminded me, though, that I am sometimes a total idiot, and I need to pay better attention to what I'm doing.  Or maybe I need to slow down?  I don't know what the lesson should be here.  The one thing I know for sure?  Debra from the BP station off I-65 in Elizabethtown, if you're reading this:  I love you.

Another predictable post. But with a great many pictures.

My former colleague Elly wrote recently about making her blog a place for something more creative than just a recap of her life.  I have no such aspirations.  Thus, I give you another week-in-review post, in two parts.  But to take my blogging laziness to the max, I'm not even going to write anything except headings and captions.  

Part I:  Micah's Aunt Cheri and Uncle Brent Come to Visit, and We Do Fun Tourist Stuff

P

Palmer Park, the best place to take out-of-towners

Glen Eyrie castle

 Dinner at Flying W Ranch

R

Riding the cograil up Pikes Peak

Full of mischief on the cograil (ohhh, man) 

G

 Giving Cheri some good lovin' on the cograil

Top of Pikes Peak

 This is what we got on the 4th instead of fireworks: giant hail.

Part II:  Cheri and Brent Leave, But We Try to Do Fun Stuff Anyway

F

Fountain at America the Beautiful Park 

 Standing at the coffee table (aren't you glad I captioned this one?)

D

Duet with our buddy Nathan

More fun than you can shake a stick at

I know some of you who read this blog do really exciting things with your time.  Things that involve getting dressed and leaving your house.  So when I say that Ben and I have done something fun every day for the last week, you might laugh at me.  But by my standards, Ben and I have done something fun every day for the last week!  


Last Friday, my friend Jenna (really our friend because she and Ben like each other an awful lot) came over for dinner and some hanging out.  Ben pulled himself up to standing for the first time ever, while Jenna and I watched and cheered.  And we ate yummy spinach quiche.


On Saturday, we went to a cookout for a friend who retired from the Air Force.

This picture isn't from the cookout, but it's from the same day, and I think he looks really cute and big.

On Sunday, we had a cookout at our house for some wonderful Sunday School teachers who are retiring from their teaching gig.  I don't have any pictures from that either, but I made this yummy chocolate chip pound cake and would recommend that you make it ASAP.

On Monday, I finally took Ben to baby storytime at the library.  I've wanted to go for a long time, but it's always during his morning nap.  This Monday was no different, but I just decided to suck it up (it's only 30 minutes), and we both had a great time.

T

Ben slept really hard that afternoon and woke up with serious bed head.

On Tuesday, we went to playgroup with girls from my Sunday School class.  Again, something I never do because of naptime.  Apparently I was feeling very brave this week.  Ben had lots of fun, even though we stayed an hour into his normal naptime.  

Then on Tuesday night, our whole family of three participated in a 5K with a "running" club downtown.  This group meets every week, and they welcome anyone -- even out-of-shape people who walk the whole route with a stroller!  It's a really fun route, past Colorado College and fabulous old houses that I covet severely.

Please overlook the fact that Daniel and I both look ridiculous in these pictures.  We felt too silly to stop and actually pose for pictures, so this was as good as it was going to get.

On Wednesday, we had a couple of friends and their three cute kids over for dinner.  No pictures of that either.  We were just trying to keep everyone alive and the house intact. :)  We also went to Target, which I am ashamed to admit I consider a fun outing.

On Thursday, we broke in Ben's brand-new (purchased at Target the day before) baby pool.  He loves being outside, and he loves taking baths, so this was like a dream come true for him.  Plus, I'm too cheap to buy swim diapers, so his regular ol' diaper expanded to comical proportions, and he thought it was funny to play with:

 

He lasted about 30 minutes before he started trying to crawl out, and we had to call it quits.

This morning, we pulled out all the stops and went with a pair of fabulous friends to the zoo!  I never really liked the zoo when I was a kid, but what was I thinking!?  The zoo is the bomb.  Ben wasn't quite sure what to make of the whole experience, but based on his complete lack of crying (and he skipped his entire morning nap, mind you), I'd say his impressions were pretty positive.

a

I did a terrible job of taking pictures, but seriously?  Does a zoo picture get any cooler than this one?  He was nuzzled by a giraffe, and we have documentation of it.

Despite the fact that we are both tiiiiiiired, the fun isn't stopping yet.  My aunt and uncle are on there way here at this very moment, so there will certainly be more Colorado-style fun ahead of us this weekend.  And then next week, I plan on staying in my pajamas for several days at a time.  

Progress

I am on fire with this 30 Before 30 deal.  In the past few weeks, I've knocked out two more items from my list:

11. Clear the junk out of our back flower beds and replace it with something edible (tomatoes, peppers, piles of Snickers bars?  I don't know)

13. Have a bright red front door


Instead of being an overgrown mass of weeds, the garden area in our back yard is now an actual garden!  With actual produce living in it!  My apologies to those of you who hoped I would really put piles of Snickers bars back there.  

The garden runs the length of our back yard and is about two feet deep (from the fence to a brick retaining wall thing), so we had quite a bit of space available.  With the help of a very kind person who knew what he was doing, we planted strawberries, blueberries, cantaloupe, red and green bell peppers, Roma tomatoes, yellow squash, and zucchini.  Hooray!  


I thought I would wait to post about this until I could take some pictures of nice, thriving plants.  But I'm sort of scared they will never reach that point.  I've kept them alive for almost three weeks now, and that alone is a record for me, so I'm counting this as a success as far as the 30 Before 30 list is concerned.


The front door, however, is quite picture-worthy.  Even Ben is a fan:

I'm making strides toward the goal of reading 25 books in a year, too.  I'm about halfway there, but I wanted to go ahead and share my reviews for those of you who are looking for some good summer reads.  I'm too lazy to post real reviews (plus I don't think any of you would actually read them, now would you?), so I'm just giving you the advice of "READ IT," "read it," or "don't bother."  I'll elaborate if you ask nicely, but here's what you get for now:


1. The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver - read it
2. Clay's Quilt by Silas House - READ IT
3. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath - READ IT
4. The Heavenly Man by Brother Yun with Paul Hattaway - don't bother (and I feel bad for saying that because I promise I am in favor of evangelism in China, but I really did not enjoy reading this book)
5. Parenting the Fussy Baby and High-Need Child by William Sears - read it (you know, if you have a superbly clingy child and need some encouragement)
6. Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck - read it
7. Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortensen and David Oliver Relin - READ IT
8. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon - read it
9. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen - READ IT
10. Belong to Me by Marisa de los Santos - READ IT (this one was surprisingly good - don't be fooled by the cover art)
11. Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules edited by David Sedaris - don't bother (with a few notable exceptions - I loved the short story by Lorrie Moore)
12. The Help by Kathryn Stockett - READ IT

Stream of consciousness, stream of snot

Today's post is dedicated to the constant river of goo that has connected Ben's nostrils to his upper lip since Friday. Wiping said goo with a tissue is a joke, since he gets so mad that he snorts out a fresh batch of it immediately. And don't even get me started on trying to use the bulb syringe. He's handled his sort-of sickness like a champ, though. I think it's starting to drain down his throat now (which I always think is the worst part when I get sick), and that's not fun, but maybe it signals the end of this yuckiness?

Last week, Daniel and I helped with the 5th grade class at our church's VBS. Our group of kids was fabulous, and three of them became Christians. Woot! I have to admit that I had been dreading the week because of Ben. He had to be in the nursery for five nights in a row from 5:30-8:30. He is usually asleep by 8:30. And historically, he doesn't love being in the nursery, as being there means not being with me. He's maybe a little clingy. Just to add to the fun, he was teething. But that little man surprised me and actually had a good time. He wasn't even crying when I picked him up at the end of each night. I know that doesn't seem like a big deal, but it was a major breakthrough for us.

Ben is trying reallllly hard to crawl. He has all the individual mechanics down -- pulling with his upper half, propelling with his lower half, getting up on his knees, lifting his tush -- but can't quite figure out how to time everything. He can usually still get where he wants to go, but not always:
Oh, the perils of near-mobility.

After last month's amazing adventure into frequent cooking, I have fallen off the wagon. I've hardly cooked at all recently, yet I've still managed to deplete my grocery budget. Oops.

On Sunday night, a youth choir from Texas sang at our church. We housed two seventh-grade girls from the group, and they were hilarious. They talked a lot but never got on my nerves even a little. If you've ever spent more than a few minutes with seventh-grade girls, you understand my surprise. And they both had red hair. I think red hair is pretty cool :)

And finally, I leave you with Ben's newest trick:

The resemblance is a bit disturbing.

One down!

When I went to bed last night, I successfully completed an item on my "30 Before 30" list.  Now numero sixteen looks like this:


16. Eat out zero times for a full month

This was one of a few items on the list that Daniel was not so excited about, but certain life circumstances made it seem like a good one to tackle ASAP.  Namely, the Tax Fairy (who used to leave nice, fat refunds for us) ran off with all our money.  Apparently we weren't letting the government withhold neeeeearly enough of Daniel's paychecks (am I the only one who is clueless about this stuff?).  Between that and the fact that Daniel has recently gone back to school, the Wiginton family's budget has taken some serious hits.  


But what do you do when life hands you lemons?  You look online for a recipe that calls for lemons!



At the beginning of the month, Daniel and I had a little back-and-forth to determine what exactly constituted eating out, and the most reasonable definition I could think of was paying someone else to prepare food for us.  That still leaves room for debate -- like when nice Mrs. Mollie at church learns what you're doing and says, "What if I buy you dinner and bring it to your house?"  But since I wasn't exactly sure what "the principle of the thing" was in this little experiment, I just tried to stick to every possible principle of the thing.  If it seemed questionable to me, I didn't do it.


According to my meticulous records (weekly menus written on Post-It notes), I cooked 22 of the 31 days in May.  The other days, we ate leftovers.  And for the sake of full disclosure, I should confess that we did go to a cookout one night where we were served food from a local BBQ restaurant, and there were several different occasions when Daniel went out to lunch or dinner without Ben and me (not as cruel as it sounds -- it's just part of his job sometimes). 

All month I felt like I was spending ridiculous amounts of money at the grocery store, but we ended up saving about $160 on food, compared to previous months.  That alone is worth the hassle to me.  But there was the added benefit of having to develop more self-control.  Most of the time, I plan to cook dinner, but if I don't feel like it or don't get around to it, I send Daniel out to pick something up for us.  That wasn't an option in May, so I actually had to plan ahead and be slightly less lazy.  Probably a good thing, right?


So what's for dinner tonight?  Pizza.  I know that seems really lame, but it's the one thing I have craved all month.  I tried pretty hard, and we ate pretty well in May, so I didn't miss restaurant food for the most part.  But homemade pizza just isn't the same as the cheap, greasy stuff from a pizza chain.


Just for fun, here were a few of my favorite dishes during my month of eating in:
Pasta, Pesto, and Peas
Beef Enchiladas
Garden Vegetable Crustless Quiche
Curry Chicken Salad
Tangy Pulled Pork Sandwiches