Help. It's the Elf.

Well, I wasn't really planning on blogging anytime in the next four years, but I feel this update is of an urgent status.

Seeing as how we were recently in the harrowing experience of a severe car crash and are recovering (if you call "recovering" wrangling a 26-pound toddler), this will be short.

Here it is.

The stupid Elf on the Shelf is not merely a new commercially-injected tradition.  It actually traces through the roots of deep Germanic Christmastime tradition!!  

SIGH.

I think I'll name ours Screwtape.

Well hello there.

Due to the fact that my beloved toddler tested gravity with my MacBook (which I did not think he could reach as it was sitting in the middle of a not-teeny dining room table), and the fact that we've been going (an albeit very happy) 90 mph, I  have lapsed a bit in the blogging realm.  Let's do an iPhone pic dump, shall we?

Here goes.  Captions underneath.

Asleep in the grocery cart.  Ear infection número dos.

Pumpkin hunt at WeePlay class!  Cutest thing ever.  Jonah loves WeePlay class.  We are starting to collect videos of him dancing there.  Howard and I may or may not have some dance moves we do called "The Jonah."

Halloween dinner.

Our little fighter pilot and his novice parents who thought marching across the whole neighborhood without a stroller would be fine.  Jonah was just relieved to realize we had a plan that night when we passed up the playground.

There's probably a God lesson there.  We whine when we don't get the playground but God's thinking, "Yeah but LOOK!  Everyone is lined up waiting to GIVE YOU CANDY."  Didn't C.S. Lewis say something to the effect of we don't even know what to ask for because we can't imagine life so good?

I love the Texas tradition of sitting out on your truck bed in the driveway with candy.  Nope.  We don't go to doors.  We go to truck beds.  Oma and Op manned the tailgate candy station and when we returned from trick or treating Jonah dived in the candy bowl.  He'd stay like that forever digging around in there and then finally pop up with a piece of candy when the trick or treaters walked away.  Crazy kiddo. :)

The night's spoils.

Asleep again in HEB.

Morning walks.  Lots to do out there.  Busy busy!

We attended Greg Abbott's victory party!  What a special night!!

On the way back we stopped at Buc-ee's for the best vanilla coke. Ever.

One of these balloons made it into the hands of...

...this little munchkin!  He had great fun at Oma and Opa's but he was excited to see us and the feeling was certainly mutual!!  I kept getting kisses and 'forehead' (Jonah's sign of affection is to touch his forehead to yours).

He slept 13 hours straight that night!  Nothing like your own bed.  Even if it's getting smaller every day.

Eating at the table like a big boy.

I took a cookie class and an working on being able to do this on my own. So far not so good but I'm having fun learning!

Jonah is obsessed with windmills and there's one across the street.  The first utterances out of Jonah's mouth each morning (the VERY first) indicate he wants to check on the windmill.  He also loves the one at the library, on one our way to school, and the one at Oma and Opa's (the original windmill love).  

It's such a pastime of Jo's that Howard and I have taken it up:

You probably can't see it that well, but driving home (and siting in stand still traffic) I cherished the chubby little face j get to check on in my rear view mirror.  PRECIOUSNESS.

Face timing with Nonni and reading the book about windmills she sent him. :)

Sleeping through a trip to the Apple Store to get aforementioned toddler tested MacBook diagnosed.

We have a windmill in our bath.  Do you?

He conked out again in HEB today after church.  I just noticed that the cart is stopped by the beer.  We should have drawn on his face.  Shoot!  Missed opportunity.  

Sometimes life just passes you by like that.

Especially when you're zonked out in a shopping cart by a bunch of beer.

Oh Jo.  

At least it wasn't chocolate milk.  I've seen you on that stuff and talk about chugging...

Have a good week y'all. ;)

Fall is here! (Kinda)

Listen.  I get so sick of reading blogs sometimes and getting caught up in the world of perfection.  You know how it is.  You're not going to take a picture of your dirty laundry and post it on the world wide web, so you scoot it out of the way before you snap the pic.  You're not going to do a blog post about how you can't go to the grocery store without sweating like a hog because you can't seem to follow a list with the layout of the store and so you're all over the place and your toddler is screaming because he can't play with the bananas (he'll bite through the skin and then throw them - leading me to believe an actual monkey would be a step up) and you've dropped Sophie so you have to back track down every aisle while you try and not think about curse words but sing a sweet tune of "When Ducks Get Up in the Morning" instead and find Sophie and checkout - again - only to realize you forgot the lunch meat you came for and your car keys are missing.

No.  No one would ever blog about that.  So know that before I show you my Fall decorating that it took an incredible amount of effort for me to do anything, and that while I'm trying to be a better housekeeper you're not seeing the entire picture (i.e. the smashed goldfish in the background).

I already had this chalkboard and loved this saying when I saw it on Pinterest.  Jo's and my galoshes stay there by the back door so we're ready to water the plants on the back porch.  Well...most of them stay by the back door anyway.  He likes to carry his around the house like a dog bringing his leash to ask for a walk.  Who knows where the other rain boot is.

A lot of my fall finds were from WalMart.  I really love their home goods stuff.  I got the basket on the left from there as well as those fun apple cinnamon scented pine cones with little pumpkins.  The sign on the right was a score from TJ Maxx.  And long after that style of writing is no longer popular I will still display that sign because shopping for it and checking out with it with Jonah made it an incredible conquest.

This basket and fun mugs are also from WalMart.  The mugs are owls, a fox, and a squirrel.  They were under $3 each!  And they're heavy and make my morning coffee even more of a sweet moment. :)

I already had this cake stand and added pumpkins from the dollar store to it.  The candle is the hostess gift from my friend's shower.  I got it on the 11th and look how much I've already burned!  Love it!  

This carved wooden pumpkin came from the TJ Maxx conquest.

I made this burlap wreath all from WalMart materials.  I had no idea what I was doing and didn't even use hot glue.  So that should a last long time.

Here are this season's pumpkins!!  Jonah and I made sweet memories picking  these out.  I let him choose, and he naturally picked two big and two small ones!  Perfect for each member of our family!  He wanted the uglier ones.  I think he was trying to rescue them.

I don't make a practice out of patroning  the art at WalMart, but I thought this was worth it!  It's gloppy and perfect for fall.  It inspired me to do quick little change outs in our powder bath for each season.

This is a Jan Barbaglio (omg) cake stand that Howard's aunt gave us for our wedding and I keep it on our table with the Jan Barbaglio doves his mom gave us.  Right now it's displaying a ceramic pumpkin and giant acorns I've had forever.

These chargers were a wedding present but a few years ago I scored these white ceramic leaf plates at you guessed it - WalMart - for $2 each!  

I've had a lot of fun decorating and trying to act like I'm feeling autumnal when it's 90 degrees every day.

This post was not sponsored (feel free to change that).  It was simply brought to you by a small budget and stores that match it, and my precious little pumpkin:

Life Lately

We have had a very busy start of school!  I feel like I'm always running to catch up.  Jonah has been sick a lot.  After his hand, foot, mouth disease he had allergies and then a sinus infection / double ear infection, and now he's teething and it's horribly painful for him.  Throw into that a good dose of real live tantrums and walking everywhere (!), and we have a full blown toddler on our hands.  And he's precious.

He loves watering the plants.  That's why they are all of a sudden green.  Thank you, Jonah!

A Saturday morning at our favorite bakery. 

I helped throw a shower for a dear friend's new baby girl! It was a lot of fun.  And a little dangerous. 

These were our hostess gifts - Salted Caramel Corn candles from Bath and Body Works.  Mmmmm.  Amazing.

 Jonah's learning to eat with a spoon...not so much because I am teaching him but because I guess I'm too slow so he decided to take matters into his own hands. 

Have a great week y'all!