Ten Things Tuesday

After a couple of Ten Things Tuesday hiatuses, I'm back! Here we go now...

1) The taste of a nice cold REAL Dr. Pepper. Yum! We were out of diets and had this one Dr. Pepper left from my sister being here a few weeks ago. LT must've opened it at lunch and drank some of it. I gladly finished it off this afternoon as I was unloading an enormous amount of groceries from the van.

2) Cricketless nights of sleep. Saturday night, we had a cricket in our room. I woke up in the middle of the night to try and put its noise to an end and couldn't find it. LT thought it was quite funny be wakened in the middle of the night to the sight of me bent over in the corner of our room with my head to the carpet listening for the ellusive cricket. He must've disappeared and we've had good quiet nights of sleep since.

3) My new patio furniture. This isn't like my dream outdoor furniture for sure, but it works. LT and I ate our dinner under the pergola at our new table. We sat outside Sunday afternoon for a little while just chit chatting. Our Fort Mill High School Ag project adirondack chairs will be sitting on the curb soon.

4) The realization that as much as I think I'd like to be an adventurous outdoorsy person, I'm not and never will be. Saturday we got a great idea to go to a local state park - Hueco Tanks. While LT was paying our entry fee to the park, I was locked inside the truck with 2 very discontent little boys. One of whom had pooped his pants! As I was getting out to change him, I was attacked by mosquitoes. I knew that our time 'hiking' the park was going to be miserable to say the very least! I don't have any fact to prove this, but I think there will be mosquites in Hell. (glad that's not my destination) Needless to say, our hike lasted about 5 minutes and we were back in the truck heading home. It had just rained and there are large depressions where water sits in the mountains - hence the mosquitoes! We don't have mosquitoes at our house because it's much more dry.

5) Wifi a la casa. I can sit on my new, above mentioned outdoor furniture and finish this post while the boys enjoy their '$20,000 Swingset.'

6) Full cupboards. I won't mention the cost of my Commisary bill today, but we have groceries and snacks to last us a couple of weeks, hopefully. We'll run out of diet 'pop,' but that's not unusual. Hopefully we won't need too many other things. I do think I needed a couple of fresh herbs that I couldn't find. Sounds like a good excuse to go to Super Target where I know they'll have what I'm looking for.

7) Anticipating trying new recipes. LT and I have been trying to be disciplined Weight Watchers for the past 2 weeks. I did great the 1st week and not so great the 2nd week. I perused my WW cookbook last night looking for some things I can make to spice up the low point lifestyle. 2 of LT's favorite recipes - Tamale Casserole and Turkey Sausage Enchiladas - are both WW. In the next two weeks we're going to try a Greek Salad with Oregano-Feta dressing, Greek roast chicken, smoked turkey paninis, and honey mustard pork chops.I'm also going to try WW take on Classic Chicken Salad for a baby shower that's happening at our house on Thursday. Should be yummy and hopefully will help us stay on the weight loss train!

8) LT almost bought me one of these. Since he's going to Iraq in the spring, he thought I would enjoy having one of these to drive around in while he's gone. Just two small problems - Bailey and Maverick! While he's gone, I will rarely go anywhere alone so I'd have to drop the kids off at school or wherever and come home and hop in my convertible to drive wherever I'm going. It's unfortunate that there's not one parked in our garage right now, but it's not a practical buy at this point in the game. One day....He says he really went and looked at it, though. He scored a few brownie points.

9) Bailey is a social butterfly. Every child he sees, he calls them his friends. It doesn't matter if it's a random kid in the grocery store or a picture of a child on the computer that he's never met in his life. They're all his friends. I guess that's good. He doesn't seem to discriminate. As we were leaving church Sunday, a little girl in his class kept yelling his name. She's super cute and her family is originally from somewhere in Africa. I hope that means that he's friendly to the kids in his classes at church and at 'school.' The kids next door really are his friends now.

10) Hearing Bailey sing along with the VBS cd. We're still listening to Outrigger Island partly because it's the only cd in my car if you can believe that with all the other junk that collects in it! I just smile as he sings along. He usually gets a few key words. I like hearing him do the ballad the best, but that's not his favorite song. Depending on his mood, we get to listen to Wiki Wiki over and over or we get to listen to the theme song over and over! He likes it loud, too, and makes sure you don't get the volume below what is his preferred level. I'm trying to figure out how to get some footage of his singing because I know the grandparents would love it. It's hard to film and drive at the same time.