Winter Style

Post a picture of yourself in your favorite outfit.

Well, I don't really have a favorite outfit and this is a kind of old picture, but in the winter, this is what I wear most days...

Sweater, jeans, and boots... so comfy, so warm, so great!

And in colder weather like we have been having lately, this...

Colorful coat, jeans and some fur lined shoes... :)

This post is linked up with Project 31 at She Breathes Deeply.

A Post About Beauty

A fantastic blogger friend, Melanie at The Adorkable Life is taking part in Project 31 at She Breathes Deeply. I've enjoyed her first three posts so much that I thought I would take part too. I'm going to catch up in this post.

What does beauty mean to you?

Beauty has meant so many different things to me throughout different stages in my life, but as I grow more as a wife and mother and most of all as I grow closer to Christ, I feel as though I'm getting a truer meaning of beauty. Beauty comes from something or someone becoming what God intended - something or someone that brings Him glory. I have seen people that I wasn't all that intrigued by or drawn to become breathtaking and beautiful when they realize what God wants for their life and walk in His will. I have seen ministries that I thought would be utter failures become something amazing, something lifechanging because those involved had a heart to glorify God and call out to Him to lead them in that ministry. There is beauty in all that God touches and when he changes someone or something, it is captivating to all those who see it!

What makes you uniquely you?

People who know me would have some answers to this one that I might now want to share:) There are lots of quirky, weird, and thankfully to my husband and other family members endearing qualities about me...

I don't like ice cream. I don't like sweets at all really, but ice cream seems to be the one that others find unbelievable.

I love to travel and I'm not very picky about where I go.

I am utterly enchanted by wikipedia and spend much of my online time on this site.

I consider a day by myself with a really great book a wonderful treat.

I am a lover of all things football and all things crimson, white and houndstooth.

I am addicted to handbags and shoes.

I love words and I consider it a source of pride to use a word my husband doesn't know.

I wish Diet Coke and iced lattes were healthy for you.

I get very excited about kitchen gadgets, but rarely remember to use them.

I use Google as a tool to win arguments (with my husband) on a regular basis.

Going to the movies is one of my favorite things and the fact that my child loves it too is another great source of pride for me.

I enjoy lots of music that most people find very uncool.

I consider my house a sanctuary and want my husband and son to feel that way too.

I am excited all week by the idea of a Saturday with no plans or obligations.

I would love to wallpaper an entire room in old maps one day and I find globes inspiring somehow.

I feel very uncomfortable if I leave my home without a bag packed full of "possible needed items" no matter where I'm going or how long I will be gone.

I am a huge fan of TV on DVD and have a complete collection of about 20 shows (so far).

I believe The Office is without a doubt the most hilarious show ever created.

I feel very anxious when I'm early (not much of an issue most of the time:).

I am not a sentimental person at all - my husband would say I am also not a sympathetic person either.

So, these are a few of my unique qualities, but the thing that really makes me uniquely me is that I am creation of God and He made me for a specific mission and purpose. He has plans for my life and a hope for my future. I cannot tell you how priviledged I feel to know that - to be aware of that. My heart breaks for those who don't see it in their own lives!

Who is someone you know who inspires beauty?

I am very blessed to have LOTS of people to choose from for this question, but lately, I've been thinking a lot about my friend, Sunny.

Isn't she gorgeous?? She's always been beautiful in that WOW kind of way, but there are so many ways she INSPIRES beauty in others. Sunny was one of the first friends that God gave me who challenged me to live for Him - who held me accountable as a follower of Christ and showed me how a true friendship could be based around a relationship with Christ. I will always be thankful for that. We were roomates in college and I truly believe she is one of the only people I know who could have handled the task of being my roomate with such grace and skill. Yes, for so many reasons, it took skill to be my roomate:)

Through the years, she has continued to amaze me with her ability to stand on the promises of God and lean on His strength and mercy in difficult, sad, and overwhelming circumstances!! She inspires a beauty that comes from Christ! She is simply one of my favorite people. If you think she's beautiful in the above picture, just look at her with her girls:)

Chief

We have a new member of the Foreman family. Jack has been asking for a puppy for a while now and some friends of ours were giving them away recently. This little guy is part Collie, part Terrier, and probably part lots of other things. But, Ben and I have been the full-bred route in the past and while we loved Romeo, he was EXPENSIVE!! So far, our new addition has been great. He's staying the garage with a nice warm bed and blanket on these cold nights and he has been NO problem. Dogs don't have the best track record with us so you all may want to say a little prayer for him now:)

This is Chief... yep, he's a cutie. He's named "Chief" as in "Let's Go Chiefs" as in the Kansas City Chiefs. We like them b/c they have lots of Alabama players and Jack likes them b/c they chant and well, nothing gets done around here that isn't somehow connected to football. It is really a miracle my son somehow managed to not be named Saban or Tyde - really, those were actual possibilities:) So, Chief has made a new home and we're excited!

In other news, I saw how to make a really cool cupcake holder Valentine's wreath over at Write It Down. I decided to give it a go - mine didn't turn out nearly as cute as hers, but it's good enough to hang in my living room...

Happy Friday... well, I guess it's Saturday now, but as long as it's still the weekend, I'm happy:)

Write It Down

First, I thought I would show you how my linguine with crab and BBQ shrimp turned out.

My husband declared the meal a "success" so I'm going to share my recipes with you.

Linguine with Crab, Radicchio & Garlic

Recipe from Mario Batali

2 tablespoons salt

1 lb. linguine

1/4 c. extra virgin olive oil

3 shallots, finely chopped

4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced

1 cup dry white wine

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

1/2 lb. fresh crabmeat

2 head radicchio, shredded

2 scallions, thinly sliced

1. Cook and drain pasta until just al dente, reserving a little pasta water.

2. In a saute pan, heat the oil until smoking. Add the shallots, garlic and red pepper.

Saute until golden brown, about 4-5 minutes. Add the wine and bring to a boil.

Add the butter and remove from heat.

3. Add the drained pasta to the pan with the wine mixture and return pan to heat.

Add crab, radicchio, and scallions, and toss until radicchio is wilted, about 1 minute.

Add a little reserved pasta water, if necessary, to thin the sauce.

**I left out the radicchio b/c my family is not a fan and you can substitute chicken stock for the wine.

BBQ Shrimp

Recipe from Taste of the South

1/2 cup BBQ seasoning (divided)

36 medium shrimp

1/2 cup melted butter (divided)

3 tablespoons olive oil

Lemon wedges

Fresh parsley (chopped)

1 recipe Lemon Aioli

1. Reserve 2 tablespoons BBQ seasoning. Pat shrimp dry, then dust with remaining BBQ seasoning. Refrigerate for 1 hour.

2. In a cast iron skillet, heat 1/4 cup butter and olive oil over med-high heat. Add shrimp; cook for 2-3 minutes per side, or until cooked through. Remove to a serving platter.

3. In a small bowl, combine remaining 1/4 cup butter and reserved 2 tablespoons BBQ seasoning. Brush mixture over shrimp.

4. Garnish with lemon wedges and parsley. Serve with Lemon Aioli.

Lemon Aioli:

1 cup mayo

2 teaspoons lemon zest

2 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice

1 pinch cayenne pepper

salt to taste

Mix together and refrigerate until ready to serve.

**I didn't use a cast iron skillet but I think the shrimp would have turned out better if I had.

One of my FAVORITE Christmas gifts this year was from Ben's Uncle John and his fiance, Jen. They gave me a "Write It" plate - a plate with a pretty ribbon that you can use like a dry erase board. I have had T.H.E. M.O.S.T. F.U.N. decorating it in my kitchen.

First, it looked like this.....

After Christmas and for the bowl game, it changed to this.....

After the Bama game and before the National Championship game, it changed just a tad....

:-D

And tonight, it changed to this.....

It really is unreal how much fun I've had with this new "toy!" Thanks, John and Jen!!

It's What's for Dinner

I've made a plan. Yep, a plan!! We have been eating out WAY too much lately and every time I go to the grocery store, I still feel like there's nothing to eat in my house. Do you feel me??? It drives me C.R.A.Z.Y!!! So, I decided to make a menu for the week and buy just those items from the store and see how it went. I'm not great with follow thru when I make my plans a lot of the time, but I did make a menu and I've cooked a few of the items so far.... I thought I would share it with all of you because I'm just so proud of myself:)

Saturday:

Bacon, Cheese, and Potato Chowder

Sunday:

We eat with family at lunch and with friends for dinner. I'm not even going to pretend to cook on Sundays. The upside is my mother or Ben's grandmother does cook:)

Monday:

Shepard's Pie (Foreman style)

Tuesday:

I cheated here - Jack was with his grandmother and I worked late so we got burgers.

Wednesday:

BBQ shrimp

Linguine with crab

Thursday:

Saucy Chicken Parmesean

Creamed Potatos

Corn Nuggets

Friday:

Tacos

Saturday:

Spicy Chicken Fingers

Homemade mac and cheese

Green Beans

Sounds pretty good, right? The shrimp and pasta was supposed to be for tonight but that just didn't work out. Other than that, I've stuck with it so far. We'll see if I can keep it up. The hardest part is coming up with the menu (in my opinion) so I'm proud of that at least. I've been meaning to post my recipe for cheese straws that several of you asked for and I'll do that soon so if anyone wants any of these recipes, just leave me a comment and I'll post it then as well.

What's for your dinner this week? I'm always up for ideas to steal. Apparently, you have to start this whole process over every week....

I Know She Loves Me....

...because she gave me a "Stylish Blogger Award." That's right - laugh it up:) My sweet, funny, beautiful, caring, cool, STYLISH friend Emily at Speaking the Truth in Love and Laughter gave me a blog award and I'm just over the moon!! She really is full of style and wit and I really enjoyed reading her seven interesting things about herself so I'm going to play along too. I've shared so many weird things about myself so far on this blog, but with me, there's always more to share so here goes! :)

1. I have some really bizarre eating habits. Like, I prefer white foods; I don't eat meat unless it's cooked away from the bone; I have to eat salad using my hands a lot b/c there are only certain sections of lettuce I eat; I only eat one vegtable (lettuce); I don't eat sweets (often) and I don't eat ice cream at all; I have some texture issues with food... and on and on...

2. I don't like parades. My friends get so excited about taking their children to our Christmas parade in town, but we never go. I just don't get it... People ride by slowly and throw candy and wave. I see no fun or amusement in that, but I get that it's me cause everyone else loves it. I also do not care for tree lightings or anything where you just go stand and watch someone turn lights on or drive a car by you slowly - nothing in that family. My poor child will miss out on all that:(

3. I have discovered twitter and I gotta tell you, it was a sad day. It is almost sinful how happy I am to have found it - really! I never tweet and I only follow Alabama sports people; ESPN employees; and former or current Bama football players. I think the fact that these are the only people I follow could be a "weirdness" all its own, but I think we've established on this blog that I love Alabama football to a degree that hinges on unhealthy:)

4. I get far too excited to read Nelson DeMille's newsletter every month. If you don't know who this is and you're a reader, I would suggest starting with "Plum Island" and going from there. He's my favorite author - and honestly, it's just not right how happy I am when I get the monthly newsletter. He only releases a book every 18-24 months so it's not even worth discussing how excited I get when those come out:)

5. I greatly miss 35 mm film. I miss going to pick up my pictures and not having a clue how they turned out. And yes, I know that it still exists and technically, I could still use it, but who does that??. I guess it could be considered odd that I won't use it now simply b/c nobody does:)

6. I want very badly to be a crafty person. I am surronded by artsy, crafty people and I want to be that gal. Sadly, I'm just not!

7. I don't consider buying books to be spending money - I'm told this is odd:)

Emily, I enjoyed it... I'm not going to pass this along to anyone b/c I'm short on time. I will tell all of you that reading Emily's post and all the people she tagged showed me that I think I need a great blog name. Mine is very boring after reading all the others. I'm open to any suggestions for those of you who have been reading my blog for a while. Thanks!!

Reasons to Quack!!

Here in Alabama today, all the talk is the National Championship game tonight between the Oregon Ducks and the Auburn Tigers. There is lots of controversy over which team Alabama fans should pull for. On one hand, Auburn is an in-state team and a member of our conference. A win from them would be a fifth national title for the SEC which is a pretty good argument that we have the best conference in college football. On the other hand, Auburn is Alabama's biggest rival and most Bama fans want them to lose every game they play. I'm in the group that is pulling for the Ducks. I think Auburn will win, but I just don't pull for Auburn EVER, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE. That's the way I was raised and I don't apologize for it.

But regardless of which side of this controversy you land on or if you are one of those people that could not find many topics you care LESS about than this one (like a lot of blog readers:), there have been some pretty funny tweets today on "valid" reasons for Bama fans to pull for Oregon and I thought I'd share them.

Reasons for Alabama Fans to Pull for the Oregon Ducks:

The Goonies was my favorite movie as a kid. It's set in Astoria, Oregon. That's enough to make me a Ducks fan.

I could point out Oregon on a map faster than I could Auburn. Easy choice, Oregon.

I like to watch Ducks swim. Go Oregon!

I enjoy the ESPN commercial with the Duck Mascot. Good enough reason to pull for Oregon!

I've seen the Prefontaine movie so I'm a pretty huge Oregon fan!

We watch "Little People, Big World" and they're in Oregon. Valid enough reason to pull for the Ducks!

I visited Corvalis once ... So it's OSU's city ... I still am compelled to root for Oregon, right ... Roll Ducks!!!!

Yeah, I got a co-worker who has a brother that lives in Oregon...so obviously I gotta pull for ducks!

Another reason to pull for Oregon... Animal House was filmed in Eugene. Enough said!

Pretty good stuff!! Well, I'm not gonna lie - I would be pulling for the Ducks under any circumstance but their fans were chanting "ROLL TIDE" last night in Phoenix. Now, I'm going to assume there weren't any Auburn fans chanting that...

Everyone have a good day and a good laugh! ROLL DUCKS ROLL!! :)

It Will Feel My Body Bad

I realized that I hadn't shared much about Jack's therapy in a while. We are still going to Brilliant Minds once a week and are planning to try to continue to do that until August. At that time, Jack will begin a half day preschool program in a new place (different from where he has been for 3 years now) and we are hoping that move will give us an idea of how Jack will adjust to Kindergarten the following year. So, for now, we are continuing on with Ms. Kassi and we are still loving her and Brilliant Minds.

We are focusing a lot on motor skills right now. The school board tested Jack several months ago to determine if he qualified for free occupational and physical therapy in his school. These were the results: (100 is average) Cognitive: 115 Language: 112 Social: 85 Motor: 70 Obviously, we are doing fine in cognitive and language which I already knew. I mean, he's been talking in sentences since he was 12 months old and he keeps me straight on remembering things most of the time:) He can also tell you exactly how to get to several cities that are more than 90 miles away from our home town which I think shows decent cognitive ability at three - I barely knew how to get around in my small hometown when I turned 16:)

Social was low, but he has improved SO MUCH in that area. I think this improvement is attributed to a lot of things... preschool; therapy, classes at church, and just being with our friend's children all the time. I know that every parent has to decide what works best for their child when dealing with an autism spectrum diagnosis, but I do want to say that I think one of the best decisions Ben and I have made through this whole process is not to allow Jack's diagnosis to dictate how we live our life. We have certainly made allowances for his feelings, fears, and issues, but we have not stopped doing something we would normally do just b/c it was hard for him. He used to hate going to church and would scream and fight the entire time we were getting ready, but we went and he had to go to his class anyway. He never wanted to go to our friend's homes to visit and always wanted to just stay home, but we went and he had to deal with other children anyway. And now, he normally really enjoys those things and I think has made vast improvements in his social and coping skills. Those were not always easy things to do. Most of the time, it would have been much easier to say "Forget it" and just stay home. And it definitely would have been easier to throw in the towel halfway through when he is being rude to the other children, crying uncontrollably or being extremely disrespectful to adults. But as parents, we have really felt that giving in to things that were hard on him would eventually be detrimental for him. The reality is that a lot of things ARE going to be harder for Jack - that's just the way it is. I think we are only helping him now by showing him that you just have to tough some things out and the good part is, you may even begin to enjoy it eventually:)

Back to his results, cognitive was the main problem as far as this testing and that's what we wanted to work on anyway. He's working with Ms. Kassi on that and has a great therapist from the school board that comes twice a week to help him as well. We also got him a mini trampoline with handlebars for Christmas and he has made HUGE improvements in his jumping since then. Our concerns as far as school are that Jack cannot hold a crayon or pencil accurately. He does not have the ability to trace and cannot use scissors at all. Those are the things we are trying to work towards before he starts school Overall, we are still really thrilled with all the progress we are making. We still have lots of regression but for the most part, we can continue to see progress little by little and it's a great feeling!

If you've read my blog for long, you know that with Jack's uniqueness comes an obsession with logos and advertisements. I've posted about all our characters we love in the past and a few months back, we were on a medicine kick: Prilosec, Mucinex, Advil, etc. He knew them all and couldn't wait to browse the pharmacy at Wal-mart.

Since football season started though, we've had an obsession that's been a little difficult for us. Who makes the best commercials during football games???? Yep, beer commercials are the best. Well, Jack LOVES them!! And the thing about Jack is, the love doesn't end when the commercial is over - nope, he talks about it all the time!! And we don't just know it's beer - we know the BRAND of beer. Now, it sounds like this isn't a big deal, but imagine every resturant and store you go to that sells beer and then imagine your three year old (who speaks in a very loud voice) telling you what each of them is... Coors Light, Budlight, Miller Light... you get the idea.

And telling a child like Jack not to talk about something is like saying, "Become even more intrigued by this and talk about it more and more, please." He also couldn't understand why he couldn't drink it and asked about that all the time too. So eventually, we just embraced it. No, we didn't let him drink it :), but we just started answering the questions: "Yes, that's Old Milwaukee Light" "That one looks like that b/c it's on draft and not in a bottle" "You can't drink it b/c it will hurt your body and Jesus wants us to take care of our bodies b/c He made us and He loves us"... you get the idea. And it's really pretty funny, once you get past the thought that everyone is judging you as a parent by the fact that your three year old is more educated on beer than most beer drinkers:) And it's made for some really fun times:

We were at Red Lobster the other day. Always the lucky ones, they had seated us close to the bar. The waiter comes and says, "What can I get you to drink?" Jack points and says, "I don't want any of that Boston Lager. It will feel my body bad!"

Sometimes you just gotta sit back, laugh, and enjoy life! :)