currently | rocking the rooster sauce

Currently is a weekly link-up with ♥ Randalin of Harvesting Kale ♥ and I am her happy co-host each week. I hope that you can participate by writing your own Currently post (using the provided themes or your own) and please join us by linking up. What have you been eating, loving, missing, moving, taking this week? Over here, we have been...

Eating sriracha on my sriracha. I have a headcold (or something, gah) and nothing sounds better when you've got a throat condition than hot sauce on your everything and an icy cup of cherry 7up. Mmmm ::cough cough:: mmmmm.

Loving my birthday cake. Did you see? Sweetest boy and sweetest cake ever.

Missing everyone I've known and loved my whole life. How incredibly sad is that? There is a silver lining. My parents are visiting starting tomorrow and it will be the nicest thing to have them here, kicking around with the kiddos, and they are always so good to let Rob and I have a night or two out on the town. I am hoping karaoke and a movie theater are in my near future! Then, my best friend is visiting in just a few weeks with her 5 year old. That will be an epic weekend of friends hugging friends. Then, my other best friend is visiting in July with her two small boys and husband (who is also a best friend of ours) and that will be an epic weekend of more hugging and a Portland visit to see more best friends ♥ Then, I'm going to try so hard to figure out how to get to BlogHer and see as many of you as possible. And then in September I am leaving on a jetplane to visit more best friends to celebrate a housewarming and hug away on some girls I love love love and miss like crazy. We are also going to try to fit a California trip in there somewhere to meet up with my sister-in-law and her fam and in-laws and whoever else can make it for possibly-Disney but maybe just a couple beach days. Summer Lovin around here people. Much needed as my heart misses all of these people so much.

Moving my bedroom around and using my birthday funds to decorate it for my project-per-month project. I gave up on the Anthro comforter that caught my eye; it was just way too costy. But I am hoping to find something nice and energetic at TJ Maxx or Kohl's this week. Wish me luck! I am also hoping to figure out how to DIY a pendant lamp. Wish me luck! I want to plug the chord into the overhead light socket and then run it along the ceiling to over where the chair (that I need to find at the thrift still) will be. This project is based probably too much around luck, and I've waited til the last minute like whoa, but whatever, that room can only get better. Can't wait to share the after pics!

Taking meth. Just kidding. But the government probably thinks I am cooking it, I've bought so much high dosage sinus medication lately plus a bunch of household cleaners last weekend (it's incredibly lame how excited I am to crack into the J.R. Watkins lavender dish soap). Obviously I know all the ingredients of meth; I watch Breaking Bad, yo. Loretta has been taking a break from veggies, unfortunately. Girlfriend can take a bite of soup, casserole, whatever, and manage to isolate the veggies inside her mouth and single them out for spitting. She's a spitter and a vegetable deny-er! Where did this sassy pants pain-in-the-butt child come from? I love her, but for real, eat your veggies, girl, and simmer down with the spitting.

That was this week. Here are next week's themes: 

borrowing, dancing, building, throwing, buying


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a surprise cake

The afternoon before my birthday Otto found out they would be making me a surprise cake. It was all he could think about for the next 24 hours, but he knew he needed to keep the cake a secret.

That night, when we were talking about his day, I asked him what his favorite part of the day was. "Well, when we got off the bus we didn't go anywhere. We didn't go to the store." Then he looked at me with the most excited face and rolled away from me, burying that poker face in a pillow. Then, to himself, mumbling in this excited run-on kind of way, "and it's a mix and I don't know what it is except you can make WHATEVER YOU WANT with it like maybe you can make cake, but not cake, but maybe you make pizza and you don't put anything on it, or cupcakes, or whatever you want, and it's going to be so yummy, hahahahaha!"

He had me fooled, I suspected Rob and Otto were plotting to surprise me with homemade pizza. Until the next afternoon...

Otto had an early afternoon appointment at the audiologist and afterwards we had about an hour to spare. It was my birthday and I was off work early, so I decided to take him to a local bakery for a treat. Try as he might, he gave me some clues about the cake that was waiting at home...

"We can go to the bakery, but I don't want cake how about a cookie or anything but cake."

"Too bad THIS will be our last sugar of the day!"

I was beginning to suspect. After we'd picked up Etta she was a little grumbly on the drive home.

Otto: Oh I think Etta is feeling bad because she wants to see Daddy and have cake!

Me: Cake?

Otto: What?! Oh there's no cake. Etta doesn't know that there isn't any cake ::nervous laugh::

While we waited for Rob to come home for dinner (and there was a mysterious item, covered in a cloth, on the kitchen counter) Ot mentioned, "Mommy, we'll have some more sugar soon! But nothing. We're not having anything."

Keeping the secret was burning him up. Once Rob got home the winking started. Otto and Rob winking and winking to each other, hilarious. We went out to dinner and then came home. "Just lay down on the couch Mommy and go to sleep. Your birthday is over, that's the end. Stay right there, don't come in the kitchen." He and Rob ran off to the kitchen...

My surprise cake. The best cake I've ever seen. Kept completely secret by the sweetest boy in all the world. We all gobbled cake and ice cream. The end.

thirty-five

So many blessings. Whenever a birthday rolls around it's impossible not to take stock, look back, look forward, do all the emo things...

Favorite things right now? Well, my kids. And my family. Our front walk. And this blog. And cookie butter on thick toast, twice a day. In that order.

This song, this song so much:


Growing out my hair. Window shopping for expensive baby clothes. Meal planning. Sleeping with the windows open. Cherries in season. Otto waking up early to say happy birthday and to paint blocks. Loretta giggling and rolling around in bed, letting loose for just a handful of minutes every evening. Watching Mad Men with Rob and having an apricot ale. Scouring the yard for flowers and having flowers around the house. Remembering to smile and have fun. That is not the easiest sometimes, honestly. Catching Terms of Endearment on tv.

Just feeling all around thankful for the blessings. I can sweat the little things day and night (and I do; I am the sweatiest). Yeah yeah, I am a little freaked out at the milestone-y-ness of a number like thirty-five. That's true. Thirty-four felt like thirty-one... Thirty-five feels like thirty-five. I have arrived here. Oh hey there, thirty-five, you sort-of-a-bitch of a number, you're gonna be awesome ♥