Memorial Day Weekend

Two weekends in a row you get to hear about our wild weekend- the question is....can you handle it?
Trust me, you can...

Friday night was great.....for me. I got to go out to eat with two girlfriends and Andy stayed home and put Ruby to bed. It was great for me because normally if I get to go out I have to be back by 8:30 at the latest to put Ruby to bed (stinker still refuses a bottle). But she has been terrible at naps lately (ie: not taking them) so she's been going to sleep around 7:30. That means this mama gets to get the heck outta the house for more than a few hours at a time (seriously, 8 months of not being able to do that was starting to wear on me). So we had a wonderful night and had two blissful hours of girl talk. Meanwhile, Andy spent two hours trying to get the girl to go to bed. So yeah, not the funnest night ever for him.

Saturday morning we got up, made french toast (again), and lugged around the house, switching off trying to get Ruby to take a nap. She has decided nap aren't for her and now that she can pull herself up, she just stands in her crib and screams bloody murder. Finally we decided to that she would have to stop and we were going to stop going in there and trying to comfort her, well an hour and half later she was still sobbing. Not good. I felt horrible, of course she felt horrible. We are just at a complete loss for what to do. Anyways, my friend Katherine came over and we had a yummy grilled lunch of citrus glazed prok chops, roasted corn, and quinoa salad.

Then we went to the pool and hung out a little bit.

That night we went really nuts and splurged on a red box (New Year's Eve) and a liter of Coke to share. It was just a nice little quiet evening.

Sunday we went to church and then came home and battled Ruby with naps. Not a great day.

This girl loves her some play time on the floor with her daddy

This face melts me into a puddle of love

Baby climbing obstacles- uncle bt would be proud!

Monday I got up early (6am) and made banana pudding and potato salad (I felt very Memorial Day-y). Then when Ruby and Andy got up we headed down south and did some thrifting! It's kinda become our little tradition, this is our fourth year to do it. Our favorite thrift stores do 50% clothes, so you can get some really good deals.

We spent $36 and got:

Ashley: 2 tops
Andy: 2 collared knit shirts
           1 button up dress shirt
Ruby: 2 shorts
          3 skirts
          6 pants
          5 tops
          2 dresses
          2 sleepers

Our Loot!!!!

 Then we rushed home because we had a bunch of friends coming over for lunch. We did potluck and man oh man did we have some good food. Love our friends, it's just an added bonus they are all such good cooks.

Our yummy spread

And we finally got a picture with Ruby and her future BFF- Rylee (who is a whopping three weeks old!).

Then we put Ruby to bed early (she literally only slept an hour all day and that was only because I was holding her) and lugged around and watched some tv. So, there it is- our memorial day weekend. It was nice to get Andy for an extra day and get to do some fun things. Hope everyone else had a wonderful weekend too!

Just a fun little weekend

So we had a fun but low key weekend here in the Luksys house. Our weekends are just so different these days. A few years ago I would of gone into work on Monday and spouted off restaurants we tried out, or get togethers with friends, maybe an adventure we took exploring the Hill country over the weekend. These days when people ask "What did you do this weekend?' It is always followed by a long pause on my part while I think "What DID we do this weekend?". It's not that we don't do anything, it's just that our somethings usually involved Andy, Ruby, Molly, and myself laying on the floor together playing and talking. Okay, so as I type this I'm thinking, man that sounds a little lame. But the truth is there is nowhere I would rather be. Being with my family=bliss.

So, just wanted to document this last weekend because I actually remembered to take some pictures!

Friday night we went to Recycle Reads, where they sell old materials form the library. We got there 10 minutes before they close so didn't really get to dig around much but what we saw was awesome. They had CD's for $1 each, so Andy bought Pearl Jam, Better Than Ezra, and Live. Don't worry, I made sure that Andy knew that 1996 called and they wanted their music back.

Then we were adventurous (ie: didn't eat Mexican food) and tried a new Greek restaurant. We had bought a $25 gift certificate for $1 so figured we didn't have much to lose. Hummus and baklava was uh-mazing. Entrees were "eh". I was proud of myself for not being lame and ordering a salad or a gyro, I went (pine) nuts and ordered myself a lamb shank. Who knew a lamb shank was a leg? Not this girl. Not entirely sure what I thought a shank was but was surprised when a bowl of soup with a huge (leg) bone was sticking out of it.

Then we came home and started watching the remake of Footloose. Yes, Andy watched too, and since I'm kinda of a stinker and he is out in the garage right now I will go ahead and tell you that he liked it. Shh don't tell anyone. PS. Did you know they are remaking Dirty Dancing. I think it is an absolutely terrible idea and there is no way it can even hold a candles stick to the original...yet I will most likely go opening weekend to it. I think it will be one of those love it but still cringe at how awful it is things...kinda like Glee for me (Double PS- who saw them do "Paradise by the Dashboardight"- two of my guilty pleasures- Meatloaf and Glee all in one- I watched it twice (maybe three times).

Alrighty, Saturday! Andy can cook some breakfast. Normally I request hashbrown and eggs. We had some bread and he decided to make some French toast though. Best decision of the weekend. Holy moley it was uh-mazing.

and the ginormous dollop of vanilla cool whip only had a little bit to do with it's deliciousness, okay, maybe a lot to do...

Then we hung out with Ruby Ann, Andy mowed the lawn, I cleaned up inside, we made a Target run, and worked on the yard a little together. Andy cut up a huge branch that fell in our yard a couple of weeks ago.

Thought it was funny that he took the time to put on safety glasses but yet is wearing flip flops....

Here's where it got fun- Ruby's first swimming experience! We have a pool right down the street from us and we decided our girl needed to experience how she will be spending much of her summers in the years to come. Now I will admit that at least half the fun of baby swimming really has nothing to do with the water. It's all about the baby swim suit! I couldn't wait to get her in it....

Ahhh! She is basically a grown up in this picture!

I'm holding her arms down because (sadly) she has recently discovered she can take her sunglasses off

Even her tongue is happy

:)

She did great, just took it all in, didn't seem freaked out or scared. We didn't stay long because I am terrified of getting her perfect skin burned (despite the spf 50 I slathered her up with).

Then we went next door to the pool to the park by our house where our neighborhood was having a party with free lunch, bouncehouse, a dj, and fun activities for kids. We ate our Chicago style hot dogs (um, hello, how have I gone 28 years with out one? pickle on a hot dog? genius.) and just soaked up all the fun and talked about how much we love our neighborhood.

Then it was nap time for Ruby. Andy worked in the garage and I watched the rest of Footloose...so terrible/good!

That evening we hung out with Ruby's friend Eliza while her parents went on a date. Eliza is Ruby's older (by 8 whole months) and wiser friend and although they still don't interact a ton, Ruby loved playing with all of Eliza's super cool toys.

Definitely need to get ruby one of these, she stood up and played for a good 20 minutes by herself!

Eliza is such a good sharer of all her toys

Love that Eliza has the exact same expression in both pics, a little unsure but she is still just so sweet

Sunday we went to church. Then came home and ate lentils, fish, and hot dogs (clean out the fridge meal) for lunch. When Ruby took her nap we cleaned up the garage a little more.

When she woke up we went for a walk.

This would be what we call "testing limits" and boy howdy does she little girl like to do that a lot.....

wish i had a before, this was completely full of leaves, wood, metal, and car parts before

So that was our weekend. It went by way too quickly, in fact I tried really hard to convince Andy he was sick Monday morning so we could have one more day together but his dang work ethic got in the way again ;) and can you believe he went to work anyways? The nerve.

Whew!

Ruby is a crawler now and man oh man has my world changed. There was such a distinct moment too of going from "yeaaaa! my baby is crawling!" to "what the crap have I done?". I really don't want to have to preface every truthful mom moment with "yes I love my baby and yes I'm glad she is crawling" but yeah, that's all true. However, my world got rocked the day Ruby Ann became mobile.

So this last Saturday I decided to just follow her around for a little bit and show you some of her adventures....


So there are two no-no's in the house, recycle bin and Molly's bowl....these are probably her two favorite things (of course). This morning I think I experienced my first little tantrum when I said "No" and moved her away from the recycle bin for the fifth time. Me oh My, I'm not looking forward to more of those...

Then finally she moved on and discovered she has a basket of toys

 Although none of her toys are as cool as rubbing a dvd case around on the floor

This laundry basket was a fully 15 minutes worth of fun!

Little girl loves her some Molly, as you can see Molly is still a little unsure about Ruby...

So, there is about an hour of Ruby's day. I absolutely love seeing her reach all these milestones and there is no cuter sight than seeing her little red head poke around a corner and bust out a big smile at you. So that's what we are up to this week, Ruby is a moving and a shakin and I'm just trying to keep up....

I love lamp

$5 to whoever names that movie....

Okay, so a lamp makeover isn't the most exciting thing on earth but it has a funny story to go along with it so I decided it was blog worthy...

While perusing Goodwill this last week I found a lamp I really liked the shape of, but it was ugly brass.  No problem, me and spray paint are BFFs so I knew we could get together and make the lamp cute. I already had a lamp shade I had bought from Ikea a while back. Easy Cheesy. I was excited because it was a project I could do completely by myself (I almost always have to drag Andy into my projects because I'm the least handy person in the world and he is the most).

 My $4.99 beauty

Well, apparently Ikea lampshades only fit Ikea lamp. Whomp whomp whomp. Enter Andy. I asked for his help to retrofit the lampshade to the lamp, he cut some metal and made a little bracket thingy to make it work. So then we plugged it in for the big reveal. It worked but then would turn off sporadically while we were messing with it. Bummer.

So we went to Lowes and bought a new light bulb kit (I clearly don't know what I'm talking about, but basically the thing you screw the light bulb into). So Andy disassembled the lamp and put the new one in.
Okay, take two- we got ready for our big reveal...yet again... It was still flickering! If you left it alone it would stay on but it when we were adjusting the lamp shade it kept turning off. What the heck?

We were baffled and frustrated. This was suppose to be a quick little project and it was turning into a big drawn out thing. I jokingly said "Well let's just let it be and pretend it is a touch lamp" (this would be an example of how I "ehh, good enough for me" just about any project we do once we run into any difficulties). Well when I said that we both looked at each other and then Andy simply touched the lamp base and boom- it turned on. WE HAVE A TOUCH LAMP! All you have to do it touch it to turn it on and off and we were inadvertently doing that while working on it. Yeah, we are smart. It only took us two days to figure it out. So we laughed and then procedded to turn our uber cool lamp on and off the rest of the night (I know, we really live it up on the weekends!)

 I really do love lamp.

7 Months

Okay, so this is part of why I haven't been bloggin much, blogger changed everything up and I can't figure out how to use it so, here's a bunch of scrambled text and pictures......

Here we are! Seven whole months. So much new stuff! Just in the past month she has started sitting on her own, crawling, babbling like crazy, eating real food (not pureed). If she keeps this up she may just turn into a real person some day.... Helping dad with laundry!

Loves to swing!

Fashionista in her outfit from MeMaw

With her pal Flora (get it?)

Red hair isn't going anywhere!

Another adorable outfit from MeMaw

Daddy's girl

Hair is calming down a little but still gets some height in the back- there's no combing it down either!

She was fighting the purees so we started doing finger foods and she loooves it. Of course now meal time is like 45 minutes and then I spend a good half an hour cleaning her and everything within a 3 foot radius around her afterward but totally worth it. Here she is chowing down on some black beans.

 Sitting up so good on her own!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sleep, yes again....

So I messed it all up. We were doing so good. Then she was teething something terrible and I didn't let her cry, picked her up as soon as she started crying, rocked her completely to sleep for bed and all naps. Guess what? She started sleeping terrible. I don't think you can spoil a baby, but for lack of a better term I spoiled her. She didn't know how to go back to sleep. she wouldn't just cry, she would scream. Then when I went in her room she would give me one of these.....

I could just see it in her eyes "haha, I won again mom". She won a lot. So this week we are getting back on track. It is so much more work (to me) to sleep train than rocking them to sleep or cry it out. I let her cry for 15 minutes then go and pat her back and shhhh her till she calms down, leave, and usually repeat this more times than I care to think about. BUT it's only Wednesday and it's getting better. She took two long naps yesterday and this morning she just hung out in her crib playing for 30 minutes before I went and got her. Hands down, figuring out the sleep thing has been the toughest part of having a baby thus far. Although I know one day I will look back at this and wonder why i got so worked up about it. right now it just seems really big.