Date Night: Miranda Lambert/Dierks Bentley Concert

Last week the Man and I went on an awesome date night to the Miranda Lambert/Dierks Bentley Concert in Baltimore. Thomas Rhett opened for them and he was pretty awesome as well.  The Man surprised me with tickets to the concert for Christmas. He even went as far as to book a babysitter for us too...I was even more shocked that he planned that far ahead if any of you know Josiah you know he is not a planner. My original plan was to go into a lot more detail as to our evening but the Man already blogged about it here and I think he did a great job.  So head over to his blog, follow it, love it and hear about even more about our lives you know you want to :)

Here are some photos from the night!

Miranda, Dierks & Thomas Rhett singing the last encore of the night in Raven's jerseys 

Miranda Lambert 

Miranda had a pink guitar reflected onto the stage, it matched the one she actually played 

Dierks singing one of my favorite songs "Home" 

This was one of maybe a handful of times that Jackson was left with a babysitter, so I was glad to be able to peek in on him in between performers 

This was hanging on the back of the stall door at the arena and nothing more needs to be said about this!

Family Yearbook

Every year that the Man and I have been together has been full of adventures and has been extremely fast paced. 2012 proved to follow suit with the previous ones. With all the technology happening and the digital world we find ourselves taking a million pictures but never printing them off or putting them in a photo album. Shutterfly came out with a photo book deal and I had an aah-ha moment, we should make a family yearbook! So we did...a 43 page 8 x 8 hardcover photo book. I am hoping to make this a yearly tradition.

I can't show you the entire book on here but it is pretty amazing at least I think so! But here is what the cover & spine of 2012's yearbook.

I am extremely excited for our book to arrive, hopefully next week :)

Etsy Love

Here are a few things that have been on my favorites for a while and maybe someday will be in my house!

Hippo Children's Step Stool $28.99

I would love to have this for Jackson's hippo bathroom, not that he can use it at the moment so maybe we will wait till his first birthday

Postcard Wood 6 Elephant Cards €23.50 EUR

I would love to get these and send them to some pretty awesome people in WI

Grey Marble Knit Headband with A Felt Heart $22.00

No special reason for this, just love it!!

Star Wars Mini Figures $13.50

The Man loves Star Wars and really hopes that Jackson has that same love for Star Wars...I have actually only ever seen 1 of the movies and that was earlier this year. Don't worry it is on my  goals for the year to watch the rest of the movies :)

Crochet Slippers $18.50

How cute are these!!

Personalized Wedding/Anniversary/Valentines Day Gift $25.00

If I had somewhere for this to go it would be in our house already!

Pinterest Friday

I absolutely love pinterest!! I can almost say that it has been a life changing site. I have been meaning to do weekly/monthly oh heck who am I trying to kid, every now and then pinterest recipe/idea posts. And by that I mean crap I got off of pinterest for myself to use, not stuff that people would actually want to pin & repin because I am a creative genius and can explain 100 different ways to use the cardboard from a toilet paper roll. In all reality I have very few uses for the cardboard from a toilet paper roll and am in no way a creative genius!

Anywho back to the point....tonight I was scrolling around on pinterest and came across this pin which then led me to this website which in turn took me to Amazon to buy this cookbook!

I am always looking for ways to prepare different foods for Jackson that are healthy and incorporate fruit and veggies that I wouldn't normally ever buy except for the fact that I am doing almost everything in my power to make sure my son is not a super picky eater like me. I am hoping this cookbook doesn't let me down.  It had great reviews and the recipes that I saw on the website seemed pretty easy which is fantastic since I am not an expert chef...just in case I had some of you fooled :)

Just Add Geek

As I have mentioned here the Man is good at writing.  He has again not stuck with his genius blogging idea.  So after a few chats about it he has decided to go back to his old blog.  This way he can write about more than just why he is living with an alien apparently that is a pretty narrow subject to write about!  I think he thinks that I am the only one that reads or will read his blog and since we talk every day he finds it a little pointless which I hope isn't the case since he has a completely different take on the world than I do, it's pretty clear in his writing style!

Check it out and maybe hopefully he will stick with it this time.

Just Add Geek

Changing it up

If you didn't notice already I am going to change up the look of the blog a little bit.  Right now I am just trying it out and will make some changes until I figure out a slightly new look that I like.

Point: bare with me and the different fonts/colors/looks the blog might experience in the next couple of days & weeks. Feel free to share your opinion on it if you want :)

BLW

Normally Jackson's meals don't look so pretty and organized but we just got back from the commissary so we have lots of options for him. The Man and I decided to have frozen pizza so this is what Jackson is having: banana, blueberries, grape tomatoes, carrots & leftover taco meat.

2013 Goals

I know I haven't posted about Christmas yet but I wanted to get into New Years.  I haven't ever been very good at New Year's resolutions. I am more of the goal kind of person.  Last year's goals included things like: find a place to live in MD, manage to drive across the country and not have a baby, have a happy healthy baby and so on.  This year's goals are not so focused on moving & the baby and more focused on our entire family.

Goal #1
- Save $$$$ in our savings account, so that someday we can buy a house.  whether that is here or somewhere else in the U.S.

Goal #2
- Go to New York City for Jackson's 1st birthday. Living so far away from our friends and family means that Jackson doesn't really get a birthday party. We thought this would be a way to make his day/birthday week more special than every other day of the year.  We will also get to do something special for our anniversary since it is 3 days before Jack's birthday. This isn't going to be a long trip just a night or two but none the less it's still a trip.

Goal #3
- Make it back to Wisconsin as a family at least once.  The Man doesn't get much vacation and has school and reserves so this will actually be a little more difficult than people may think.  It is very important to us that Jackson knows his family and our friends.

Goal #4
- Go camping in Ohio (half way between our friends & us) with a bunch of our friends this June. We have been talking about doing a group trip or something for a couple years now.  This year I am really hoping that it actually happens.

Goal #5
- Save an additional $6,000 - $7,000 for a trip to Switzerland in January 2014.  The Man is half Swiss and a Swiss citizen.  He has always wanted to visit Switzerland. Since we don't live near family that would be able to watch Jackson for a week or longer and we do not know when/if we will be living closer to family in the next years to come.  So I proposed to the Man that we try and go in a year since Jackson will be under 2 and will fly for free. If we save up all this extra $$$$ the only way we will not be going is if I am pregnant or just had a baby...which neither is being planned since both of us really want to go to Switzerland!  If we don't go next January it could be another 5-10 years before we will be able to go again, so we look at it as we have to seize this opportunity to take Jackson and make a memory we will tell him about.

So there are our BIG goals for 2013. We also have other goals that probably don't seem so big but are just as important like: raise a super happy healthy little boy, love each other every day more than the day before, be better people and so on.

Ikea Needs Wants

Today Jackson and I took an impromptu trip to Ikea for some wooden spice racks that we paint and use as bookshelves in his room.  They have been out of stock for quite some time now so when I saw online that they had 86 available I wasn't willing to risk waiting till later this week to go. I ended up buying 8 of them...I don't think we are going to put them all up right now but this way we hopefully won't run into the same situation with us in need of more and Ikea out of stock for months!  I didn't get anything there but I did spot a lot of things that I would love to have in my home for Jackson. I'm hoping that by posting them on here I will remember them for his 1st birthday and maybe a couple them will actually end up in our house :)

EKORRE Rocking moose, red, rubberwood, $39.99

EKORRE Toddler wagon/walker, light blue, birch, $19.99

LEKA CIRKUS Play book, elephant, $7.99

MULA 24 building blocks with wagon, $7.99

MULA Crane with blocks, multicolor, beech, $14.99

POÄNG Children's armchair, birch veneer, Almås natural, $29.99

SUNDVIK Children's chair, white, $19.99

MÅLA Easel, softwood, white, $14.99

DUKTIG Mini-kitchen, birch plywood, white, $99.99

DUKTIG 14-piece vegetables set, $7.99

 DUKTIG 9-piece fruit basket set, $7.99

VIRRE Slide with ladder and guard rail, red, beech, $149.00

So there were a few more things that I liked but I figured you already got the picture. I love wooden toys for Jackson and Ikea now has a few nice ones. A couple of the things might be a little more on the girl side but maybe someday we will have another baby and be blessed to have a little girl.

9 months!!

I probably say this every time but Holy Cow Jackson is already 9 months old!!  I really do not know where the time as gone.  Everyday I am so thankful to have this little guy in my life.  He makes bad days good and good days great.

We haven't had his 9 month well check yet I actually haven't even scheduled it oops! so I don't have an accurate weight & height. Jack currently has 3 teeth sticking through, the 3rd popped through Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. He has mastered walking around the furniture and going from the coffee table to the couch.  He even gets brave and stands for a split second without holding anything before falling or grabbing something. For Christmas he received a wooden push walker and he has pretty much mastered that.  He does get a little confused when he runs into a wall or something and it no longer moves...he usually stands there and looks around like "Hey people I think this thing is broke or something" and then falls down and crawls to a different toy.  He is way more verbal than I think he has ever been before and somethings are actually sounding like words.  We are pretty sure he has been saying Hi for a few months not that he knows when to say it or what it means. He loves to 'help' with whatever we are doing, whether its laundry, dishes, taking out the trash or putting groceries away....and let me tell you he is a BIG help already ;) He loves to read books! We let him pick out what book or books to be read at bedtime and every night he gets so excited about it.  He gets on these kicks where he chooses the same book every single day, multiple times a day for weeks and then he will all of sudden just pick a different one.  Right now we read "Pat the Bunny" and "Moo, Baa, LaLaLa" multiple times a day. One of his other favorite things is boxes...this kid goes crazy for boxes. Lucky for him I get a lot of packages sent to me for work so there is usually no shortage of boxes at this house!

Here are a few lot of pictures from the past month!

New tooth! 

 His 1st bubble bath

Helping Dad by reading the instructions to him 

I'm so smart I can read this book upside down :) 

He has NO fear! 

 Me: "Jackson give me big smiles" This is the look he gave me!

So the Man and I are attempting to take Jackson's 9 month pictures ourselves.  Here is a preview that I took with my phone.