Quick Blog Update and then back to my lazy Sunday

Life is flying by so quickly recently I feel like someone in a movie who's standing still while everyone moves in fast forward around them. Livi is growing up so quickly, Alex is a self-proclaimed genius who never sits still and the daily grind just never lets up.

We're sitting around today doing our taxes in our jammies (don't knock it...it takes me a bit of motivation to get around to taxes... a jammy day and a mocha latte are significant motivation in my book). I use Turbo Tax and while I'm waiting on hubby to supply the numbers I've requested I decided to flip over and update my very neglected blog. Sorry blog, there are just not enough hours in the day for everything calling my name recently.

Soccer season has started and I'm happy to say Tryant #1 is enjoying his time on the field and I'm highly enjoying the hard core serious soccer playing that gets interrupted every 5 minutes by one of the boys bringing us flowers, or pointing out a plane or just dancing in circles instead of watching the ball. It's hilarious! Tyrant #2 quite enjoys watching the chaos and I truly appreciate the 2 hours a week when I'm forced to sit outside and do nothing. Ahhh

I have so many plans and such limited implementation time! Stay tuned for upcoming blogs on free business resources, great ideas for work at home mommies to stay organized and productive and some great stress relievers like online journals.

Holiday Recap-Recipes, Pictures and More

It took me getting sick and camping out on the couch to find time to write this. Two kiddos, work, hobbies there's just not enough time in the day is there.

This year we hosted a dessert party, did a day trip to Houston and back on Christmas Eve, and managed 4 Christmas celebrations in 42 hours. Talk about controlled chaos. The new van came in super handy, the kids were fabulous and I enjoyed every minute. of course I kept thinking to myself on the road...if I had an IPad I'd be writing right now hehehe! Thanks to all the family and friends who showered me with gift cards I think there's an IPad in my near future.

The natives are restless so I'll keep this short and sweet!

My favorite holiday recipe...hands down it was the Crockpot Chocolate Pudding Cake I made for our dessert party. It was quick to prep, cooked while we were out and about and combined with the timer on our coffee pot, allowed me to arrive home minutes before our guests and have everything ready to roll!

Crock-pot Chocolate Pudding Cake (dairy free, gluten free, corn free, soy free options)

• 1 pkg (3.9oz) Jell-O Chocolate Instant Pudding Mix (or check out www.allrecipes.com for an allergy free recipe sub)
• 3 cups milk (regular, almond, coconut)
• 1 pkg (2 layer size) chocolate fudge cake mix (I use Cherrybrook Kitchen Gluten Free Chocolate Cake Mix)
• 2 squares Baker's Semi-Sweet Chocolate chopped (sprinkle Enjoy Life chocolate chips for dairy/soy free)
• 2 cups thawed cool whip or whip cream (Soy whipped cream if soy tolerant, or omit, I didn't mind the omission :))

To Make It:

• Spray your crock-pot with cooking spray, or lightly coat with shortening. (Some Pam sprays have soy so check labels). Beat pudding mix and milk in your crock-pot with a wire whisk for 2 minutes. The recipe calls for a 3 1/2 quart but I have the larger oval and it worked fine.
• In another bowl prepare the cake batter according to the boxes instructions. Slowly pour it over the pudding mixture. DO NOT STIR. Cover the crock-pot with the lid.
• Cook on low 2 1/2 - 3 hours (or on high 1 1/2 - 2 hours) until toothpick inserted comes out of cake clean. Top with chopped chocolate or chips. Turn off the cooker and let stand covered 30 minutes to allow the pudding to thicken. Serve with cool whip and dusted with cocoa powder or chocolate shavings.
  

My Must Have Kitchen Gadget for the holidays: Hands down it was my new Beka sauce pan. I whipped up quick quesidillas, chocolate sauces, you name it in there and was able to wash and reuse in minutes. The non-stick coating is amazing and a few more of these will be on my Christmas list for next year. And even better...this company has an environmental record that puts most other companies to shame. I just love them! Check them out here.

My 'Couldn't get dinner on the table without it' recipe sites: I have two favorites without question are Dinner Tool and All Recipes. Dinner Tool lets me meal plan, add my own recipes, create shopping lists and have a quick printout of my weeks plan. Allrecipes.com lets me search by ingredients so I can plug in something I'm trying to get out of the pantry or fridge and up pops a slew of choices. LOVE IT!

My favorite photo sharing site: With all the IPads, E-readers, and smartphones out there we've become a society of digital sharing. In most cases I'm right on that bandwagon but some vestiges of society are being lost in the cyber rush. I firmly believe it teaches real values for kids to recognize the generosity of Christmas and respond with a heartfelt thank you note. However I've found that over the last few years it is tough to interest my oldest in writing them. This year I stepped up my game and we used Smilebox to create digital thank you cards we could send to family. Normally this would have gone against my edict that thank you notes are personal and it's hard to get that touch with a digital card, but Smilebox allows you to add video clips to your card. So we sat down and recorded a bunch of 10-30 second clips on our Flip with my son thanking friends and family for their gifts. Each person got an individual thank you card with a video clip of Alex thanking them. Better than forcing him to sit at the table and write his name on cards he couldn't read, this worked great. He could relate to this and I loved the message he got from working with me to put it together.

Last but not least to catch me up over the last few weeks...Livi turned 6 months. It's been an amazing time with her and we are truly blessed to have such an angel living with us.

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Working with children at home

I have to admit, 2 weeks ago as we approached the end of the school year I was very worried about how to keep my kiddo busy while I worked. Working from home is probably very tough for a toddler to understand. Mom is home, available and should be ready to play right?

Normally I would have arranged for a summer camp, but none will take a three year old, even a potty trained, articulate, just finished Pre K one. Too bad cause this little guy hums with energy and I would gladly hand over some green to find the soccer came that would wear him out! Since there were no takers on a short camp option over June, Camp at Home began.

Week One: Getting in routine. Learning the ropes took about a week. There were a few tantrums, not a lot of TV and a good bit of "but Mrs. Pack says" (his teacher and the end all authority figure in his book). Not a lot was accomplished other than my learning that Alex has a terrific memory and amazing talent and love for puzzles.

Week Two: Camp out week. We had mini sub sandwiches made from hot dog buns, turkey, cheese,and fixings. Spritzers with juice and sprite, set up a tent in the playroom and napped in it, and set up our earning system for TV and computer time. So far things are going great and without jinxing myself I find that I'm optimistically looking for additional things for him to do.

I checked out a great book called "When the Kids are Home from School" and it's filled with advice and ideas that have inspired me to plan a little ahead and ensure he has lots to do during the day.

The Art of Balance

Image by racoles via Flickr

This week has flown by, largely because I've been so blasted busy. There's a great conference here in Austin that I've been attending and it's crazy how much more time attending a conference in your home town takes, rather than attending one out of town.

I'm still making dinner each day, only now I do it at 6 am in the crockpot so the guys have something to eat!

I'm still driving home after the conference and networking sessions but that means not getting home until around 9 each night.

I have had little to no time with family except to shout instructions on what's for dinner as I'm dashing out the door.

It's amazing how much less energy an almost 8 month pregnant lady has! I'm doing some work helping the Austin Sweet Songs group pull their CD Release Party and benefit together, have my baby sprinkle next weekend, and still need to find time to sit and relax before this new little one decides to join us. That doesn't even start to take into account the regular work that must get done, house cleaning, or anything resembling fun like reading a book or studying up on the Hypnobirthing I want to do this time around. More than anything I need to revisit my own goals for balance.

This whole blog started out of my attempt to balance telecommuting, charitable work, my family, and fun. Just like New Year's resolutions, goals to be more balanced need to be revisited occasionally to keep us on track. I personally find that it takes more commitment than a new gym regimen to focus on myself and ensure some personal downtime is built into our schedule.

So I guess it's back to basics and re-evaluating how to travel the tightrope as I get closer and closer to an even busier schedule in just under 10 weeks. The count down is on!

27 weeks tomorrow

This pregnancy is flying by! I'm so excited about the upcoming "sprinkle" (a mini shower...get it! :)), getting ready for our little girl and getting Eric in pink mode after 3 years of blue.

A quick pregnancy update for those who've been asking. I'm doing pretty good, but have had a few high blood pressure readings so they are watching that closely (next appt tomorrow). I'm still having all day long, never ending, yeah right first trimester only my rear end sickness. This has led to a few unfortunate episodes in public, once again making more thankful than I can ever say that I telecommute! I recently adopted Eric's gluten free diet and am happy to say that has kept the pregnancy weight gain to a minimum, safe level since it was out of control with Alex. Alex is super excited, wants to know when Olivia is going to be here and if she is going to arrive ready to go ride bikes with him.

Alex is doing great, although we are having daily meltdowns over next to nothing. Today has been a great day with no volcano like eruptions so I was not surprised at all to find that he actually napped today. Although as I type this he's going into whiny toddler who needs a nap mode. It really stinks that by the time his neighborhood friends are home to play he's not in any condition to be a good friend since 5-7 is the witching hour in our house. On a good note though he is sleeping through the night much better. So good in fact that when we wake him up at 10 to go potty he generally falls back asleep on the toilet. One of these days I'm going to get a good video of his "sleep talking" during this. :)

I am really looking forward this upcoming weekend. It's hard to believe it will be our 5 year anniversary. :) Now if only I knew what to get Eric to celebrate!

A bit of this and a bit of that

So I've been pretty MIA here on TTT lately unless you count my HVAC rant and a couple of random latte postings :).  Life's been crazy. Between the early pregnancy symptoms, my favorite little tyrant toddler and general daily life there just hasn't been the time I want to escape into cyberspace.

So to catch up a little here we go!

I'm roughly 17 weeks pregnant and finally starting to feel good instead of sick constantly! Thank the good Lord for small mercies!

I've rediscovered my love of the crockpot! :) There is nothing like complete five o'clock exhaustion to make you so proud and happy that you made dinner at 8am. (Tonight was Pork chops and potatoes with a side of broccoli-delish and took all of 15 minutes to put together!)

I've fallen in love with a few new blogs that do both gluten and corn free baking, discovered a great GF/Corn Free pound cake recipe that seems to be on the menu every week, and am still experimenting to try and find that perfect bread recipe.

When I have time I like to take my favorite new Christmas present (an external flash for my Olympus E 410) out for a test drive. Here's a few of my favorite pictures from today's impromtu photo shoot of Alex.















Enjoy!!! More to come soon! I promise.

You've Heard of Angie's List... This is Traci's List of The Worst HVAC Contractors in Austin

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I love my house, I love my house, I love my house...I have to keep telling myself that because recently I haven't liked my house very much. We've had ongoing drama with HVAC issues, no heat, a short evacuation due to safety concerns and more than our share of inept HVAC contractors. Oh and not to be forgotten frozen pipes once we finally got heat back.

Angie's List is a database of contractors with high approval ratings from customers, great track records and successful jobs. Traci's List is the exact opposite. With the exception of Bluebonnet HVAC, this list reads like a Who's Who of the Worst contractors in Austin.

Let's see if I can summarize quickly:
So for a few weeks we've had colder weather. That doesn't generally hit Austin to any real degree until the middle of December. From the moment we switched our energy-efficient programmable thermostats to heat it was Game On. We would sit downstairs bundled up (ok just me) in a snuggie, while upstairs would quickly reach sauna levels. I'm talk 83 or 84 degrees upstairs and 67 downstairs. We have a warranty company who takes our money, sends crappy contractors and doesn't believe a word we say so we hesitated to throw more service call fees their way until it truly got unbearable. Then I placed my call to Allied Home Warranty and the games began. I'm not sure what their screening process is for contractors but it needs to be re-evaluated. I won't even get into the 6 visits in two months we had back in the summer on this post but suffice it to say they would send one group out to install something and another to fix the problems that one caused, over and over and over. But back to our current dilemna...it all started when the temperatures dropped, a pregnant wife put her foot down and refused to be cold anymore, and we began to fight over the one and only snuggie in the house.

12/29/09: All Texas Air Conditioning's first visit. They spent over an hour trying to find the issue, determined nothing was wrong and bailed when it started to rain hard since he needed to get his company truck out of the dangerous weather. Not sure if he's from the desert but rain isn't generally considered worth hazard pay here in central Texas. Funny enough I continued to have a 15 degree temperature difference between upstairs and down, a weird clicking in my furnace and needed my snuggie at all times downstairs.

12/31/09: All Texas Air Conditioning---where do I even start. The contractor arrived with his son and grandson in tow. I'm not sure if either one is in the business (especially since the grandson was all of 10), but since they spent several hours here and all they managed to do is replace a thermostat that was working fine, break a suction valve on my outdoor unit while replacing 2 lbs of freon, get stuck in my attic for 1/2 an hour (still not sure how that happened but he was starting to sound panicky), and then left telling me everything was fine, I'm just going to chalk them up to incompetence and recommend that you NEVER call them!

1/2/10: We have roaring heat upstairs, no heat downstairs and our HVAC is literally running 24/7 shutting off every 10 mins for about 30 seconds. So I call our not so beloved warranty company again. They tell me to call Texas Heating and Air. I do but get a "there's nothing more we can do for you, everything works fine" response. They call the warranty company and ask that I (probably as a troublesome client making crap up) get assigned to a different contractor. The warranty company sets me up with Dave's Heating and Air. I call them to confirm they can come out, but upon mentioning my warranty company, am told that my warranty company sucks, they don't pay their bills and Dave's Heating and Air really doesn't like to deal with them. But since I'm in a pickle they connect me to Dave himself, who reassures me he'll have a guy who's very familiar with my type of systems out first thing Monday. Monday arrives but no contractor and when I call to verify what time they'll be here I'm told that they no longer work with my warranty company. GREAT! Based on that unprofessional bit alone, I'm no longer recommending Dave's Heating and Air, even if I can sympathize with the fact that Allied Home Warranty sucks.  Back to the warranty company, who is surprised when I inform them that they've been fired by a contractor and finally by fate, luck of the draw or God watching over my shivering self, they set me up with a decent contractor - Bluebonnet, who is onsite within a few hours.

1/4/10: Bluebonnet HVAC discovers several disturbing things. One-a suction valve on the outdoor unit has been tightened so far it busted allowing all the freon in my entire system, along with a good bit of oil, to leak out. Hmmm that must be the same valve son or grandson tightened when adding my 2 lbs of freon. (No wonder my heat pump wasn't working at all). Then when I called him inside to check out the click click click we kept hearing for the last month, he spent all of 10 minutes upstairs before coming down and telling me the furnace circuit board is bad and the safety cut off for the gas is not working. He had to shut the entire system down since gas blowing but not igniting is a MAJOR safety concern.  Can you imagine how happy I was that my family was sleeping in a house that could have concievably blown up anytime in the last few weeks.  Nope mama was not happy at all!  Best yet, during Austin's first freak freezing cold 12 degree spell in years, we're not going to have any heat. Better prepare to invade the in-laws again.

1/7/10: Bluebonnet HVAC puts my original downstairs thermostat back on the wall since the new thermostat ( installed in October by an inept, rude, cursing, blame the client for everything contractor -- Southern Comfort H.V.A.C. Inc --another who makes Traci's Worst List but is recommended by Allied Home Warranty) was continually calling for the Heater to come on. They replaced the suction valve on my outdoor unit which, for those of us who steer clear of HVAC training and education, apparently keeps all your freon from leaking out causing your unit to not work. We lost 10 lbs of freon after the former inept contractor added 2 lbs and then tightened the valve to the point it busted and fell apart...and then they just left it.  Seriously thank goodness for Bluebonnet. Jeremy Cook knew what he was doing, was responsive and didn't ever bail in the middle of a job due to the big bad rain storm or a tricky problem. And finally after weeks of wondering if it would be easier to sell our home and move into an apartment...we have decent, normal, safe heat!

• Bluebonnet HVAC: THUMBS UP!!! You can't go wrong with these guys!

• Austin Air Rescue:  Undecided. They seemed good and identified the problem but then refused to fix it since an incompetent contractor had messed it up. Allied ended up sending in Bluebonnet to save the day. (anyone seeing a pattern here...)

• All Texas Air Conditioning: THUMBS DOWN!!!  DO NOT CALL.
• Southern Comfort H.V.A.C. Inc: THUMBS DOWN...ridiculous, even cursed me, called me a liar, slammed my door and lied to the warranty company...too bad I take a crap load of pictures and had proof they were wrong. Not to mention they made three visits here and fixed nothing, broke a fan motor, fried a defrost board and eventually Allied Home Warranty sent in Bluebonnet (yep same Bluebonnet) to fix things.
  
• Dave's Heating and Air: THUMBS DOWN...these guys are good, but they make my do not call list do to the unprofessional approach of dropping a client in need after promising service. That's just bad business in my book.
  

Ok that was no where near as short as I intended but it was seriously two weeks in chaos and that's kind of hard to summarize....LOL.  

Goodbye 2009

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2009 was a FANTASTIC year for us. Alex is growing by leaps and bounds and never fails to amaze me with his questions, insights and imagination. He loves Phineas and Ferb, a cartoon funny enough to entertain Eric and I too, and of course Cars, the movie. He's constantly quoting his favorite characters and starting to make up his own songs. All in all a joy to be around...now if only we could FINALLY teach him to sleep!

Eric and I are still plugging away. We've installed new doors, upgraded a few appliances and generally just kept pace this year. I hope 2010 will be the year for us to get some gorgeous landscaping done, finally paint the guest room and get some finishing touches done on our decor.

Our Hoppin Johns are in the crockpot and we look forward to the luck they'll bring in 2010. Eric's a stick in the mud and refuses to "have" a new year's resolution, but I'm determined that we'll do more as a couple.

From our family to yours we hope 2010 brings health, wealth and happiness and sees you surrounded by family and friends.

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Southern Folks take on the Snow!

A few of my favorite pictures from our weekend playing in the snow!

We spent a few amazing days in a gorgeous winter wonderland surrounded by our wonderful family!!!!

A Fireman's Real Job

Alex was in fine form last night and was having a blast rough housing with Eric. At one point he got frustrated with Eric pinning him and told us he was going to call the police. Of course I grabbed the camcorder! :) (password to view it is alex)

Dad's Fired! from Traci Synatschk on Vimeo.

Three Years Old Today

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALEXANDER!!!!

Hard to believe that three years ago today we were in a hospital room in Dallas, anxiously waiting for Baby A to make an appearance. We didn't know if we were having a boy or a girl, how little sleep we were going to get, and I asked Eric yesterday if he could believe it had been three years and he laughed and said Yes. men are so funny that way...

Alex was 7 lbs 6 oz when he was born and 21 inches long.

Two Months

Six Months

Nine Months

One Year

By two he was thirty pounds and 34 1/2 inches

and now he's hovering right around 35 lbs and 37 inches tall.

Growing, growing, growing! We had the first of three celebrations planned last night and had a wonderful time celebrating with some golf, some pool time and some cake.


For those of you checking back in, here's a walk down memory lane and an absolute OVERLOAD of pictures from the last year. I snuck in a few sneak peaks of our family photo session for those brave enough to watch the whole montage! :)

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

What's New

I've had several people mention lately that we haven't had any family updates. :) Man has it been a busy summer.

Over the last few months we have traveled all over visiting family
Learned that Alex loves roller coasters as much as his mama
Discovered that sick or not he's going to be up at 6 am, vacation be damned, and all round just really had a wonderful time.

Hope everyone elses summer is turning out as enjoyable as ours!

In Memory

Isn't ironic how hard fate works to keep us humble? I've been so geared up for vacation, some mental break time, and some good time spent without distractions with my family. We headed off to visit my dad and two days into our 10 day vacation we got a phone call that my grandfather had passed away. Although several family members told me to stay and enjoy our vacation, it only took a few minutes running through a 10-10-10 analysis (an awesome new book by Suzy Welch) to realize that flying home was the very best decision for me. So Eric rearranged our travel plans and today we head off for my hometown to bid my grandfather a final goodbye.

I'm not usually very good with dealing with death, but surprisingly my two year old put it in the best possible perspective for me. When told that Papaw was gone he said, "then he's not sick anymore?" and in just a few little words helped me to let go of the sadness that was hanging over me. We're heading home to celebrate a wonderful man's life and I'm determined to remember the grandfather of my childhood who teased and made me laugh rather than the shadow he became as a lifetime of smoking took its toll.

Papaw, you will be missed, but always remembered.

We love you always!

The Best Laid Plans

are no match for children and dogs who conspire together to torture parents with sleep deprivation. :) I tried to get ahead of the curve last night and worked late into the night, knowing that Alex was off school today and I would be occupied keeping him busy today and wouldn't get my usual uninterrupted 8 hours in. Well by the time I was ready to call it a night, Alex began having nightmares about unfinished milk and needed to be consoled...I was cracking up at that point and reassuring him that he could finish his milk in the morning LOL. I came back downstairs to shut my computer down and the dogs started whining and causing a ruckus to go outside. By the time they decided to come back in (30 minutes later) Alex had picked up his crazy part of this tandem act and was back up crying again. This went on until a little after 2 when everyone settled down and I quickly grabbed a little under 4 hours of sleep. Poor Eric brought Alex to me at 6:30 and then tried to take his sick self back to bed but in my sleep deprivation cattiness I threw a fit that he thought he deserved more sleep since his 9 hours and a day of dozing gave my 4 hour sleep deprived self no sympathy. Cattiness ensued and by the time I finished making the tiny tyrant breakfast he had arrived downstairs to crash on the couch and keep an eye on things while I sit here and work to be both awake and coherent.

Here's hoping you all had more sleep than I did!

Summertime is here!

It's summertime, and that means ridiculously hot temps, time spent poolside and lots of entertaining. Well we would be entertaining if the family ever stayed well long enough! It's time for fun in the sun...YEAH! I love summer, it's my favorite time of the year. The heat is nothing a nice cold pool won't fix, and longer days means more time spent hanging out with family and friends. Eric has his 10 year reunion this year, we reconvening with my mom's group and sneaking in a trip to see my parents in Maryland! Throw in the new Harry Potter movie and it's totally my kind of summer coming up.

Alex, in celebration of the heat, just got his first true big boy hair cut, clippers and all. Stay tuned for some photos.

Oh and just for grins, check this out! http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=80e_1238603586. I now feel like I have seen just about everything.

Family Friday

So for this past Christmas one of the toys I wanted Alex to get was his very own camera. I know he's only two, brilliant but only two, but still if he had his own, my much more expensive camera might not look so attractive right...

Well Alex loves his camera, but I think we need to spend some time working on his skills! Still he's definitely having fun shooting at everything in sight.

If you ever wanted to know what the world looks like to a toddler, take a second and a walk in Alex's shoes. You can see in a few where someone stole the camera to take pictures of him and boy was he not happy about that! We also have lots of self portraits going on here before we learned to turn the camera the right way! :) Enjoy!

Thinking Thursdays

At least one day a week should be devoted to deep thoughts right? LOL! It was a crazy day at work, as anyone within shouting, distance would know. :) I am working on a training series for June and to kick off the marketing for it I have been labeling about a bazillion postcards to be mailed out. Well closer to 800 but still 800 postcards with a return address label, a mailing label, a stamp, you get the picture. They're done and I'm extremely happy with them but that kind of work leaves lots of time for thinking.

So this week I've thought a lot about where I am in my life. I have a great husband, who does far more than his fare share of the housework and doesn't even complain when 3 nights out of 5 he comes home to a wife arguing with the pantry for not giving her inspiration. I have a great job that I love to do, and even with the craziness that accompanies it I truly fell blessed to get to work from home and be here for my family. With Eric's travel schedule its so nice for me to be pretty solid.

I also had to go over to our old house today to meet a contractor work on one of the kitchen appliances (yeah extended warranties, I will mock you no more), and it was like going back to high school after college. The house felt small, and nothing was quite the way I remembered it. The kitchen felt tiny, and it truly brought home how much I really love our home that we are in now.

After the chaos of sickness, drunk drivers, and other daily nuttiness today's reflections really helped me focus on the positive, the good, the joy.

I know this is a sappy post, but what's not to love about a happy Momma?

And just for grins, here's a favorite recent picture of mine! We went to a family member's baptism over the weekend and boy did my little guy have a blast showing off for anyone and everyone! He sang, he danced, he didn't crash until the car ride home!

La Dia del Madre!

What a great weekend. I took the weekend off of work, hobbies and my to-do list and spent it having some great quality family time. Eric’s IPod is kicking the bucket so we spent some of that quality time Saturday at the Domain here in Austin getting to know our local Apple store a bit better. And since Alex isn’t able to visit the Domain without a penny pitching trip to the fountain I snuck in some photo time! Check out the mini scrapblog below!

An organization I happily support, called MomsRising.org knows all about being a Mom and the work it takes and awarded me an honorary Mom of the Year award. You can read more here and spread the fun! ☺


Then Sunday it was off to brunch to celebrate Mother’s day at one of my fave restaurants called North by Northwest, who luckily enough have a great Gluten Free menu for hubby. I’m trying to embrace his lifestyle but cheated today and had an AMAZING pork tenderloin with this fantastic bacon, spinach and cheese risotto. YUM! Then back to the Domain for more Apple store time and home for naps and mommy time.

And how did I spend Mommy time you ask? Filing ☺! I had over 1200 emails sitting in my email inbox and I’m a fanatic for filing all my emails into nice neat folders and only having a week’s worth of emails at at time. Recent craziness has not allowed me time to file and I was going nuts with my overflowing inbox! Am I nerd or what!

The Musical Stylings of Alex

Good morning everyone! Alex is what a lot of people very nicely call a verbal child. Really he is never quiet and recently the chattering has been a lot of singing. Here are a few renditions he was willing to have Mom tape! :) Enjoy and I hope you all have a great weekend.