Eventually you see yourself the way others see you...

...and you realize that you will never truly be happy in your current body....at least that's what has happened for me!  I am starting on a new journey of weight loss, healthy eating, and exercise in hopes of finally weighing less than my husband and being able to keep up with my kids!

I received the most thoughtful gift from my son (he made it at preschool with this note attached about why I was special), but there was one thing that really struck me...in the eyes of my 4-year old, my favorite thing to do was "rest"...I don't ever want him to answer the same question like that again...couldn't it have been working on the computer, gardening...anything but rest?

Next time I want him to say exercising, playing with me, or at least something more active!

I started this process a year ago and never truly took hold of who I was becoming until I saw myself in the pictures we took at Disney World!  I had been behind the camera so long that I was rarely in the pictures.  Today was the first day of the start to a whole new me!

I started my diet through Medi-Weightloss, we planted a garden, and set up training sessions with a personal trainer twice a week.  This time I will succeed and we will be changing habits as a family so it never comes back this time!  Just know that if I don't post for a couple days, its probably because I am exhausted from dieting, exercising, gardening, and trying to prove to my kids that I enjoy more than just resting....because, someday I won't need as much and I'll be able to keep up with them.

Weight has been a struggle for me, but I am determined to eat when I need to, be happy feeling a little hungry...and exercise as much as possible.  This time, I'll try to document my process of Finding Myself because I know that this time I will make it to my goal even if it finally means putting myself first over everything else!  I can now look in the mirror and see myself the way others see me and I'm not happy with it, so I know I will win at it this time...I just know I will win this time!  Fingers and toes crossed that I make it through week one without a snag, then I will be on it for the long stretch of meeting my goal of finally being healthy enough to keep up with two little boys!

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It's Okay....deep thoughts with a toddler!

The ultimate in mother's day - Deep Thoughts with a Toddler!

As I leaned across my 4-year old in the backseat to reset the anchor for my 2-year olds car seat, he said "It's okay if you squish me today mom!  It's mother's day!"  At least now I know that on other days, squishing is prohibited!

Happy Mother's Day to everyone! (One day late because blogger never posted my post yesterday)!

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Deep Thoughts with a Preschooler...

As I was getting ready this morning, my 4-year old and looked at me with a very puzzled face and said, "What is that stuff mommy?"  I was putting on make-up, and proceeded with, "make-up, but don't worry, you're a boy so you'll never have to worry about putting on make-up!"

His response:  "Good, cause that looks really hard!"

Some conversations just make you smile!

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Death-defying acts of a 2-year old...just for PlayDo

Ever wondered how a 2-year old going on 13 really thinks?  I know that questions enters my mind daily...seems like his mind is going at least a thousand times faster than his mouth can, but I am always impressed by his ability to craft a way to do just about anything we can do!  Luckily, I caught this one before he climbed up to get the PlayDo down!

So glad he didn't get to attempt this feat!

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Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Hope you have a wonderful St. Patrick's Day!  We'll be celebrating by wearing green, searching out an Irish pub to listen to great music, and telling our kids all about the little leprechauns!  Oh...and hoping to find a little pot of gold hiding somewhere (but we hope that every year)!

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Deep thoughts with a preschooler...

So we've continued our nightly discussions...and don't worry we still get questions throughout the day because our boys just want to know everything about the world and how it works and why it works...

No discussions on death and dying this week....yea for light-hearted discussions!  I much prefer questions related to why the grass is green or why flowers bloom!  I can answer those!  After tagging along on a field trip at my son's preschool I learned why there had been so many requests for a new baby sister at our house...we were wondering why there had been so many questions about where babies come from, how they are born, and why do I have a little brother...

Now I know - one of my son's classmates is expecting a little sister any day now so the whole class has been talking about his mommy having a baby soon....got it, no longer worried that I will scar him with the repeated answer of "we're done now and happy with two boys!"

To leave you with one of my favorite preschooler quotes from these discussions..."When you have a girl baby, is that like pooping out a dirty boy name?"  Sometimes, it's so hard to keep a straight face when you know they are being completely sincere in their questions!

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Deep thoughts with a pre-schooler...

A friend mentioned that every night she had a question and answer session with her daughter at bedtime that she could ask anything she wanted and she'd answer it honestly....I brought the idea up to my 4-year old and he was super excited so last night we started...maybe parts of these conversations will become a new staple here at Two Monkeys & a Washtub!

4-year old:  "Mommy,  when you die only God and Jesus can see you in Heaven, right?"
me:  "Yes, when you lead a good life, going to heaven is your reward."
4-year old:  "But Mommy, it's not fair that only God and Jesus get to see you forever, I'm gonna miss you and Daddy too much."
me:  "You will still get to think about us and all the memories we're making and you don't need to worry about these big issues right now."

With tears streaming down his face, and me wondering how many more deep questions I will get just before bedtime...and how many more questions I will get related to us not being there for him anymore...the conversation takes a turn...

4-year old:  "Mommy, if dinosaurs were still around would their poop be big enough to cover the entire house?  You know, because they were so big!"
me:  "Depends on the dinosaur, but there poop might have been big enough to at least leave a big pile in the front yard."
4-year old:  "Okay, so how do they know how big dinosaur poop was?"
me:  "I don't know, we'll have to look that one up or take a trip to the natural history museum and ask..."  I'm guessing that the museum will love that question!

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Happy Halloween!

Have fun trick-or-treating with your kids or handing out candy and enjoying all the wonderful costumes!  We had lots of plans this weekend, but with two kids battling a stomach virus...we have spent the weekend cuddling, sleeping, and trying to feel better when they weren't getting sick! 

Hope you've had a great weekend and have fun tonight!

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What happens when your dishwasher pump and seal go at the same time...

...and this is the third set of towels. The pump and seal blew out during the rinse cycle when you can't stop it unless you trip the breaker! I was mopping water for over 45 minutes since it has a smart-sensor and it was looking for clean dishes!

This is what the inside looks like after you open the door, drown the kitchen and yourself in the water that was inside, empty the dishes that now have to be hand-washed, and move on to hand-scooping the water out (it's a banana, not mold - guess the food dispenser went too)!

Hey, at least we were able to replace it (it was just over 6 years old but I'm guessing we run it almost every day now that we have two kids) and Texas Appliance was great about getting it installed quickly, even on a holiday weekend! Yeah!  I know it could have been worse...but I would have rather been at the 4th parade than having a dishwasher installed!

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Happy 4th of July!

Hope you have a wonderful 4th celebrating with your family! We'll be at home watching the fireworks from the patio as the really big dog tries to hide between our legs!  While the kids are still young, we opt to protect the doggy on the 4th and head to see the fireworks during baseball games!  Oh, and we can't forget, we must protect the house and backyard from the neighbors shooting off the illegal fireworks....at least a firefighter lives next door!

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Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day! Terrible ties and "As Seen on TV" gifts rule the day, and lest we forget the new pairs of socks and funny t-shirts! If only we knew what dad really wanted and could afford something other than a new TV, I'm sure we would all go shopping, but alas, kids seem to pick certain things for mom and certain things for dad! Happy Father's Day to all the dads and granddads and soon to be dads out there! It's your day to celebrate everything about being a dad, so get out there and spend time with your kids!

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Friday's Kid-Tested Recipe - Pizza for Me! - Great Party Recipe too!

I hate sneaking food into my children's diets, so I thought I would share some of the recipes that I make with my kids (ages 3 & 2)!  When kids help cook, they rarely avoid the food because they helped to make it!  I'll try to note steps that even the youngest children can help with in the kitchen!

Okay, I know...all kids love pizza, but it's even more fun when they get to make it themselves and pick out the toppings! We really don't have time to make pizza dough from scratch (although this is my husband's specialty) and I haven't found an easy way to cut dough into perfect little circles from canned pizza dough...In order to make perfect little pizzas, we keep canned biscuits in the fridge. I'm not talking the Grand's super flaky but the canned biscuits that are fairly cheap and normally sold in a 4-pack at the bottom of the refrigerator case by the rest of the canned dough!

Pizza For Me

Ingredients:
Canned Biscuit Dough (# of cans depends on how many pizzas you are making)
Some type of sauce (canned spaghetti sauce, plain tomato sauce, ranch dressing, italian dressing, buffalo sauce, etc...get creative)
Shredded Cheese (Mozzarella, Italian Blend, Mexican Blend, etc...get creative)
Pizza toppings (pepperoni, veggies, pineapple chunks, chicken chunks, spinach, etc...get creative)

You can also opt for dessert toppings and use chocolate sauce and marshmallows, etc....try a variation on the recipe with leftover pizza rounds!

How we make it!:
Preheat the oven to the temperature recommended on your brand of biscuit dough and get a cookie sheet or multiple cookie sheets ready for your pizza creations!

In your hands (or if you're picky, you can lay them on the counter or a cutting board and roll them out with a rolling pin), pat each biscuit flat until it is about double it's original diameter making a pizza round!

(Note:  Kid's can help make the pizza rounds, younger kids can roll with a rolling pin, older kids can pat them flat)

Place each pizza round on the pan about an inch or so apart and spread a thin layer of sauce on top of each pizza round.

(Note:  Depending on your patience, even really young kids can spread sauce, but avoid getting toomuch on your pan or the burned taste will carry-through to your individual pizzas - I think I would leave this step for the older kids or adults)

Once each pizza round has sauce, let each person pick their topping(s) and load up their pizzas before sticking them in the oven!

Bake for the temperature stated on the biscuit can!  If this time has elapsed and the cheese is not bubbly yet, continue cooking until the cheese in the middle of the pizza starts to bubble!  Let cool a couple minutes after removing from the oven before kids bite into the pizza because the toppings will be hot!

Some of our favorite variations:

Buffalo Chicken:  Ranch Dressing for the sauce with chicken chunks and mozzarella cheese, lightly sprinkle Frank's Red Hot Sauce over the top
Italian Supreme:  Italian Dressing for the sauce with Pepperoni, veggies, and Italian four cheese blend lightly sprinkled with Italian seasoning
Kid Fave:  Four Cheese Spaghetti Sauce with Mexican Cheese Blend, Pepperoni and Pineapple Chunks
Southwestern Flair:  Four Cheese Spaghetti Sauce with Mexican Cheese Blend, Pepperoni, Pineapple Chunks, and Hatch Green Chile
Dessert Pizza:  Cook the dough with a little butter and cinnamon and sugar, once the dough is done, drizzle with chocolate sauce or leftover cake icing

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The doggy who gets no love...

You all met Logan last week but I thought he needed a little bit more of a regular spot here so I thought I would let you all shower him with love since he says he gets none at home!

I returned home from work today and he ran to me with reckless abandon wanting/needing some love (after spending the day with the boys surely trapseing over him continuously)! I think he barely missed knocking me on my butt, although that might have been the ultimate goal he had in mind, just to get a few extra head pats before the evening got too busy!  I guess it's a hard life when you spend it curled up in a tiny ball on the couch trying to avoid being spotted by two playful toddlers when you would rather lead the life of a sleepy cat!

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What happens to me when I don't watch the weather forecast...

I live in North Texas, so in the Spring and Summer I am normally always checking the weather, but this weekend we were so busy that I never bothered to check and a freak thunderstorm showed up this morning and dumped a boatload of rain on us!

Bounce house looking into the garage

(it doesn't actually fit with all the crap piled on the side -

please ignore the piles unless you are garage sale shopping late this summer!)

Garage looking out to the street

(This one is going to be hard to explain to the kids & the nosy neighbors!)

I think the pictures speak for themselves (it's not shadows, it's water, and yes this is a fabric bounce house for residential use), but if you can't tell what it is...we were lazy and had left the deflated bounce house in the backyard leftover from the weekend birthday party so the kid's could play in it again today! Obviously this was not a good idea since it is supposed to now rain all week!

As you can tell by the pictures, the bounce house is now crammed in the garage that was already stuffed with things for a garage sale that we have yet to schedule so that it can dry before it is rolled up "to the size of a sleeping bag" for storage! I am guessing that with all the humidity, we will have a few days of bounce house garage and our house geckos will likely have a bounce or two themselves!

Here's to an extra margarita and hoping it's not covered in mildew by next weekend because that would totally suck!  We bought ours from Kohl's during one of the extra 30% off sales when it was already marked down (so it was cheaper than renting one twice for our two summer birthday boys), and of course they don't carry it anymore!  Bummer, you can buy your own Blast Zone Misty Kingdom Inflatable Bouncer - Water Park with Slide by Blast Zone at Amazon for $699 right now!  I know it says okay for water use, but that is only if you can store it dry!

By the way, if you are in the market for a residential bounce house, Blast Zone Bounce Houses are really well constructed and seem to hold up really well to the abuse of at least small children (since I don't have much else to go on) and they make a wide variety that come in a wide range of prices!

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Mommy, you can eat dinner tomorrow!

"Mommy, you can eat dinner tomorrow! It's still messy in there, you didn't get much done while we were gone!" I can say that I never imagined hearing those words in my lifetime, but I heard them tonight. Whoever thought that a good deed could go unpunished never had a three-year old!

While I was cleaning out their playroom so they could actually find their toys, daddy took them to pick up Whataburger for a special weekend treat! Ten minutes later they returned with dinner and I get a peek over the baby gate into the playroom - obviously in the time compression of a three-year old, ten minutes is enough time to clean up from a tornado that swept through the playroom and completely destroyed everything in its path!

I took a break for dinner but as soon as I finished eating (and of course before everyone else was done), I hear, "Mommy, you can be excused from the table to get back to cleaning now!" - I keep telling myself that someday they will be grateful! someday...and then I am snapped back to reality when I head up to give him his inhaler and he asks if I'm done yet because well he has "plans for tomorrow and really, he needs to know where to find things and I messed it all up!" someday...

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Giants of the Savanna at the Dallas Zoo Opens May 28 - Sneak Preview!

As members of the Dallas Zoo, we got a special sneak preview this weekend to see the new Giants of the Savanna exhibit that will open to the public on May 28th! The Dallas Zoo has 95 acres to explore, thousands of animals to visit, and a huge variety of family activities but we went to see the new exhibit. The Dallas Zoo is enormously entertaining at a great price and starting Memorial Day weekend, the biggest new exhibit to open at the Zoo in 20 years will open to the public!

The 11-acre Giants of the Savanna will let you experience an African safari right in your backyard!  You'll see elephants, giraffes, impalas, zebras, and ostriches in the savanna areas. In addition, there is a separate predator area, which is home to the Zoo’s five new lions and three cheetahs. There are also plenty of places for photo ops with great views of the animals in the backdrop and even a safari land rover (if you're lucky, we weren't, you might even catch a predatory cat in your background)!

Click here to take a virtual tour of the new exhibit! Yes, it really does look like the tour, except there were a few hundred people when we walked through! The exhibits are beautiful and the animals seem genuinely happy in their new locations! The elephants have room to roam, and you can even hand feed the giraffes (although by 10:30AM (it opened at 10:00AM) they seemed full from so many eager participants)!

My kids loved being able to get so close to the elephants and giraffes!  You could actually reach out and pet the giraffes if you were feeding them and their heads were at the height of our kids so instead of looking up they could look right in their eyes!  They thought that was really neat!  There is plenty of room, even for double strollers, to make the path, a great educational center with jaw bones of elephants you can actually touch and feel!  In addition to all the great new animal exhibits, there is also an additional restaurant in this exhibit which is great since the one near the monorail is more a grab and go quick-serve station!

We've been Family Passport members of the Dallas Zoo for four years now, and every we are so happy that we support such a great piece of our community and get to enjoy the benefits of the zoo at the same time.  At the Passport level, you receive free monorail rides (normally $3/person) and free carousel rides (normally $2/person) plus membership in the Dallas Kid's Club which provides discounted admission at places like the Dallas Arboretum and Museum of Science and Nature!  Consider joining!  Even if you don't have kids, I think you will really enjoy yourself!

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Mommy, I'll only marry you when I grow up!

"Mommy, I'll only marry you when I grow up..."  I think those have to be the sweetest words that I have ever heard and probably ever will hear from my almost 4-year old!

He was talking to Daddy and I about when he could start dating after we had some friends watch them so Daddy and I could go on a date night - at least we figured out why he was asking about dating...otherwise, we might have had to question him a little bit more!   He was truly disappointed when we said no dating until you're 16! He then turned to his Daddy and said, "but Daddy, I only want to date Mommy"! I promptly told him that we could go on a date sometime, just the two of us! He thought that was super cool. A few minutes later, he turned to me and said, "Mommy, I'll only marry you when I grow up!" My heart almost melted...it's not fair that we have to break their hearts by letting them know we're already taken but that they will find someone special!

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Amazing how quickly they grow up! and how quickly we forget!

I was clicking through some old blog posts, realizing I missed the 1-year birthday of this blog so we'll be celebrating that soon! Promise...and I ran across some posts that made me tear up just remembering those times in my son's lives! I need to post more stories, not just so you get to know me better, but so that I remember some of the amazing journeys in future years!

My oldest son has been relatively healthy since this post...except for the daily medicine and routine doctor appointments, I don't really think about how sick he used to be on a daily basis! We still never really got an answer, but found meds that seem to work and anyone that has had stomach issues knows that really that is the best you can do if tests don't show anything major!

We are actually going on vacation this year after our staycation last year! My kids are so excited to stand on a real beach and not hanging out in a sandbox next to a kiddie pool!

We are still watching what we spend so that we can afford the extras in life, like vacations, so shopping for bargains will always be a hobby...hopefully you'll find some useful information too! Hopefully you'll hang around...there will be more giveaways soon as I get back into blogging more frequently! It's good to be back!

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Is it hearing loss, an infection or just playing a game?

Three is such an awesome age...so many things changing, but they also get smarter! I don't think a 3-year old could play hearing loss in one ear for a full week though, so he's scheduled to go to the doctor on Friday (assuming the doctor can get back from a European vacation - go figure!). Anyone else have this issue with their children this time of year? It's allergy season, could it just be swelling? could it just be earwax? He's having a hard time with it, and I think he's getting tired of us yelling so he can hear! He even asked for a speaker in his ear this afternoon so he could hear better...almost heartbreaking! Hopefully it's nothing! Let me know if you've been through it too!

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What are you doing for Earth Day?

Earth Day celebrates its 40th anniversary this year on April 22 with activities in many areas the weekends before and after! Are you doing anything special to celebrate Earth Day?  The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality launched a website with some great tips for saving time, energy, and ulitmately money in addition to conserving water and even has a countdown clock!  They also have some great activities for kids and supplemental teacher resources (not specific to Texas)!

With young kids, we thought the best way to teach them about Earth Day was reading and doing activities, so we picked up a few books at the library and ordered a few from Amazon (selling for $3.99 to $4.99 and with the buy 3, get the 4th free special it was a reasonable purchase)! Since they love Elmo, we also got them a new movie (Elmo Loves the Earth - only available at WalMart)!



There are so many simple things we can do to teach our kids about the environment and the sooner we start, the more likely it will stick!  Are you doing anything to teach your kids about Earth Day?

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