Wordless(ish) a lady day

Loretta and I had an unexpected "Lady Day" (and really just a Lady Morning) on Monday when her sitter came down with the flu. I loved our quiet morning and as I mentioned in a previous post, I thought we might even have an adventure, go to a thrift store, and cap it off with Starbucks. Instead, we ate a little breakfast, explored the living room (boy oh boy, yes, our wimpy fake tree is still up with all of its decorations put away, how sad), got down to business on some laundry, put a little clean laundry on Otto's bed (some of it even got put away in the drawer), and then Loretta took a long siesta. What a nice morning. By afternoon Rob was home from school so I went off to a late day at work where I locked myself in a scary parking lot at night! What a chump. I briefly considered climbing a chainlink fence and jumping some barbed wire to escape; thank goodness a coworker saved me before those desperate measures because that totally would have ended successfully... because I'm super agile and fit (lies).

our own small, strange comedian

Pic taken at Otto's little birthday party at my parents' house that we had back when we were visiting Arizona. That is an Oreo Blizzard Dairy Queen ice cream cake right there. Words cannot... And this coming weekend we'll be having his blowout extravaganza at Chuck E. Cheese. Oh boy with the birthday parties. I will be very glad to get back to boring old calm around these parts. And to systematically unspoiling my child, ha!

At four years old, Otto's command of language impresses me every single day. Less and less are we even able to spell out the things we don't want him to hear because he can figure out what we're talking about just by context clues and his new-found ability to sound out words. ::horror face:: It's a scary territory to be entering, but it also brings daily joy because the things that come out of this child's mouth make me laugh so much.

This little conversation happened between Ottobot and myself yesterday morning:

Me: Hey Otto if I made some banana bread this morning would you eat any?

Otto: Cookies or nothing.

Me: Well that is crazy talk, sir! How about this? I will make banana bread because I know I will eat it and Loretta will eat it and you can have some too, if you change your mind.

Otto: I definitely will change my mind.

Ha, he drives a hard bargain. Also, he just makes me laugh. I love the person he is growing into and love watching him test the waters of sass and even downright faking us out. He will lie for sweets. This is a fact. He will straight up tell Rob, "Mommy told me I could have M&Ms for lunch." But he folds so funnily under pressure.

If Rob said, "Are you sure Mommy said that? If we go ask her, will she remember saying that?" Otto would smile this big goofy smile and admit that he made it up. What a grifter! Do all 4 year old spins yarns so shamelessly?

You may be wondering why I am writing this on a Monday morning when I should be hours into a workday. Well, it is an unexpected lady day with Loretta. Her sitter is sick and Otto and Rob are both at school. We are enjoying the peace, doing lady things, like tidying and thinking of taking a field trip to the thrift store and maybe Starbucks as we got a gift card recently. Hope your day is just as nice and peaceful. I think this is going to be a great week! Just a feeling. Hope yours is awesome as well!

currently {link up} happy anniversaries

This week we are all about the anniversaries. Otto turned !!4!! on Tuesday ♥ Today, Rob and I are celebrating our !!15!! year wedding anniversary ♥ And then next Wednesday Loretta will be !!10!! months old ♥ Such a week of happy milestones.

Currently is a weekly link-up hosted by the lovely Randalin of Harvesting Kale and I am super excited to be co-hosting the series with her. 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. This week, around these parts, we have been...

Wishing for my same old wish and yet it never comes true. Sun (yeah, you, in the sky) why can't you please just extend the day by a couple of hours? 26 sounds about perfect. No? Whatever, fine. (jerk)

Thinking about the coming year and all of the great things it will bring. I think 2013 is going to be stellar.

Cooking just what I'm supposed to be cooking each night as per our new meal plan system that I mentioned in my previous post. What a relief it is to know you have all the ingredients for your meals of the week and know ahead of the last minute just what's for dinner! This week our meal plan went like this...

Sunday: homemade broccoli cheddar soup
Monday: baked potatoes topped with leftover soup
Tuesday: Otto turns 4! Out to dinner
Wednesday: taco night
Thursday: 15 year anniversary! Fiesta bowl and pasta at home
Friday: homemade pizza
Saturday: homemade vegetable pot pie

I made sure to mention the "homemade" stuff above because it's important to pat yourself on the back a little about these things! Even though most of my homemade stuff is more like half-homemade. Like for our pot pie I will use frozen pie crusts, but still!

Drinking peppermint tea and lots of soda pop. Our whole house caught this headcold thing that is going around and even though it's been a few weeks, I cannot seem to shake the raspy throat part of it. Peppermint tea is my old friend and always a favorite when I'm sick and then nothing sounds better when your throat is acting punk than a little fizzy soda! Coke Zero is my go-to.

Working on that true crime novel I was commissioned to copy edit as well as being back to my regular job as-of Wednesday (goodbye Christmas holidays, until we meet again). It's taking me longer than I'd anticipated to finish the book, but what an awesome project. I'm totally fascinated by the story and a little frustrated with myself and Miss Loretta because right around 9pm each evening she wakes up to nurse herself back to sleep and I can't seem to stay awake beyond that point. I love cuddling, but I am also a sucker for dozing off early so trying to stay up to edit the book has been a challenge. I expect to finish the editing tonight, though, so that I can send it off to the author tomorrow.

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

missing, thinking, considering, moving, playing

2013 I Look Forward to Owning You!

2013 is going to be the year to beat! I've decided. I've been wallowing in feeling overwhelmed long enough. Bye bye 2012, thanks for my awesome daughter, otherwise you were pretty much garbage. It's time to get a handle on this shiz. I've been reflecting a lot lately about all of the things that give me hives in life. Mind, body, soul, and wallet (uck uck spit blech money vom vom vom) have been a mess lately and I have a game plan to get all of them rounded up and whipped into shape. I'm really excited about all of this! This is all do-able! Here are the resolutions, I don't usually do them, so this year I am going for the gold by making several... feel free to make these same resolutions, they are good ones!

1. Get a planner. Use said planner. Be more organized. Hurray! I just got my cute little planner today at a calendar store for 50% off and I love it. It's slender, but has both full-month and weekly pages as well as areas for lists and notes. I'm using one of the bookmarks Otto made me to keep the current week marked. Rob was like, "Google Calendar, hello?" but I am the kind of girl who needs to make lists, cross things off, and write things down with a pen. My "planner" for the past year consisted of notes written to myself on old receipts, in sharpie, wadded up in the bottom of my purse. This year, I'm all fancy!

2. Meal planning. This sounds minor but it's actually major. This week has been our first of meal planning and I already feel relief, knowing what we'll have for dinner every night of the week and not worrying about what pathetic sham of a meal I'm going to scrounge up at the last minute with whatever's around the house. Yesterday I made broccoli cheddar soup from scratch and we had that with a loaf of multigrain bread from Eugene City Bakery (yum!). Tonight we had the leftover soup on baked potatoes. Meal planning is going swimmingly! And I think we'll probably save some good money this way too, because it's been a bit of a pizza delivery extravaganza around these parts lately. My meal planning will take place on Saturdays for the following Sun-Sat week and I'll make a grocery list of whatever we need for the meals. I'm hoping to try out some new recipes too! And then we'll shop on Saturday or Sunday for all the ingredients and shaBAM! we will rock dinners in 2013!

3. Rock my body. In my case, this means getting those last fifteen or so (cough, cough) pounds of baby weight shed but more importantly it means getting fit. I am using the "Lose It!" app as of yesterday and I already really love it. I'm also going to get more exercise. I want to feel great about how I feel and lately I've felt super sludgy. So on top of simply losing the weight, I am going to exercise for at least 20 minutes 3 days per week and completely cut out quite a few types of food that I've been indulging in lately... namely red meat, fried things, and sweets.

4. Nothing new. This is a change I made back in 2011 that I stuck to for almost 6 months and it made quite an impact on our bank account and our attitude towards buying things. The rules are pretty easy: don't buy anything new, but used is fine. See? With the exception of obvious stuff like food, toiletries, and if anyone needs underwear or whatever. This resolution was such a challenge but I absolutely loved it before and I'm hoping to love it again. It forces you to search hard for the things you need and to not make impulse buys that are a waste of your money anyways (like stickers, why can't I resist buying Otto stickers???). We'll see how it goes. I'm crazy stoked about it. I'll be using my sweet planner to make thrift store scavenger hunt lists. So that's neat!

5. Consolidate debt. It's hard to write anything about this that sounds interesting so I won't try. But just to say that if you have a bunch of credit card debt you should consider getting a single loan with better interest, paying all the cards down, and then cutting them up. We are doing this and basically saving hundreds a month plus paying our debt down faster. Win/Win! Credit cards are rubbish. Such a slippery slope. My amazing dad helped us out more than I can say in getting this together and I'm super excited to be debt free by 2015!

So what are your resolutions? I'm on a resolution bender! Whoohoo for taking charge of shiz and owning 2013!

ps. Today is Otto's 4th birthday! Exactly four years ago today my life got 10,000x better than I could have ever imagined. I'm so excited to try to trick him into going out for sushi with us today for a mini birthday dinner. I'll share pics soon from his AZ family birthday party last week and upcoming Chuck E Cheese party in a couple of weeks. Egad we are doing the Chuck E Cheese thing, yes we are.

Happy New Year!