Minnesotan or Texan?

Over the past few weeks i have noticed several things about myself:
1. i find i say "y'all" a whole lot more than i say "ya sure"
2. i stayed awake until way past my normal bed time on a work day to watch the Rangers lose the world series...and i dont even know the name of anyone who plays for the Twins except for Joe Mauer.
3. i heard the vikes dropped mcnabb...who is the qb now? but i do know that matt schaub, andre johnson and joel dressen play for the texans.
4. i can navigate central and north austin without even thinking, but when home in mn i have to consciously plan out my route.
5. tex-mex and tea have become staples in my diet. casseroles have become a rariety.
6. instead of tricking people by asking them how to pronounce "ely" or "bemidji" i ask them to pronounce "nacogdoches" or "nueces"
7. i hear mn accents and can differentiate between texas accents
8. i havent watched a hockey game in i dont know how long.
9. i understand what it means when people say, "oh they must be from oklahoma or arkansas." and "oh bless their heart" (neither are complements, just an fyi)
10. i have taught my sons how to "hook em horns" and i am not even sure if the gophers do some sort of hand  gesture.
11. i know most of the texas fight song, and not a word of the gopher fight song.
12. "going up north" now implies that you are visiting dallas/ft worth for the weekend, not going to lake superior


do these things mean i am more texan than minnesotan?

i am a mother of 2 boys.

today i accomplished 1 out of the 6 things on my "things to do when i get home from work today" list and it was the least important one...clean out the toy box because it is overflowing with random pieces to toys that have long gone been eaten by brandi. this was a task the boys and i did together-they got to determine which toys they were done playing with and the ones they still liked. we tossed broken, mismatched and toys that were no longer age appropriate. then we discovered the box of costumes and the rest of my to-do list went out the window. for the next 2 hours we had to dress up in each of the costumes (dog, mouse, army man, cowboy, ninja turtle) and role play. H and J were usually the good guys and i was the bad guy they were trying to capture. however, as bed time came and went they turned on each other and decided it was time for them to fight each other so they could determine who was the better, stronger good guy. i think it was a toss up on who won the battle...

hilarious. i love that judah threw a lion at hunter and hunter proceeded to say "cattle in the road" and shoot it. poor judah will never live down his "injin turtle" costume and hunter's singing/dancing is awesome. and yes, h is only in his undies because the mouse costume he had on previously was made for sub-zero temperatures.

vegetable eaters

I am so thankful that my little boys love veggies like i do. I love that i can get creative with vegetarian dishes and they gleefully gobble them up (*usually). I enjoy cooking meat filled meals when our whole family is eating together, but i enjoy getting creative with veggies when its just me, hunter and judah.
recently the boys and i ate chinnese food and they discovered a love for duck sauce. i had no idea what duck sauce was...then i tasted it...wow. delicious. so since then i have bought some duck sauce and found an interesting recipe for fried quinoa (http://www.thewannabechef.net/2011/09/26/fried-quinoa/) and it was spectacular. the boys and i both cleared our plates and then enjoyed seconds. we also polished off about 400 million edamame pods :) here are some photos of the boys enjoying their veggies that most kids wouldnt even touch :)

after supper we had an equally delish dessert...kettle korn. earlier today we stopped at target to grab a few things and i asked the boys if they wanted to get kettle korn or to do regular popcorn on the air popper...h wanted kettle and j wanted air. ugh. so we went and looked at the popcorn aisle and look what we found...

the best of both worlds! we got to have air popped kettle corn! Well done target.

so, moral of the story: 1. eat your veggies. 2. try quinoa it is outstanding 3. buy the kettle corn seasoning from target. 4. GO RANGERS.

christmas catalogs

Hunter LOVES Christmas catalogs. Loves them. Adores them. Obsessed with them. He is thrilled because they have started to arrive and he has spent hours (no, i don't mean minutes i do mean hours) pouring over the toy catalogs making sure he has looked at everything at least 234 times before getting his pen and circling the ones he would like for Christmas. This year he has taken it a bit farther as he is circling literally every toy in the catalog and then putting an "E, A, J, K or H" next to it. Key: E=Evie, A=Ezra (because you cant use 2 E's, you wouldnt remember which toy was for evie and which was for ezra), J=Judah, K=Kate and H=Hunter. He takes the catalog everywhere, including the dog park where he peacefully sits on the bench and pours over the pages while other kids run around in the mud. Judah too is excited about the catalogs that have arrived. He looked at his catalog for about 5 minutes, decided he wanted the Christmas calendar, a menorah, a buzz lightyear costume and an elmo costume. These 4 items where on the first 2 pages of the catalog and then he decided it was all he needed.
Today was an extra exciting day because a new catalog came in the mail...the bass pro shop christmas catalog. he was jumping up and down in the driveway after he pulled it out of the mailbox and said he was going to read it over and over again until he had to go to bed (note:this was at about 530...he goes to bed at 830). he inspected each page with intense scrutiny and was overjoyed because this catalog had stuff for grown-ups so he could give me suggestions on what i could ask santa for for christmas. he decided i wanted some pink camo pj's, a bedspread with deer on it and a lamp/rug combo with dogs and ducks. my he knows me so well ;) He picked out a 4 wheeler for justin and a toy story fishing pole for his brother.
***tangent: santa. I have always told the boys that santa is not real (i know i am terrible), but today hunter told me..."mom, i know that santa is real no matter what you say." clearly his peers in pre-school have been influencing his opinion on santa :)

so, i apologize in advance if you receive a christmas gift from bass pro shop...pretend you're thrilled because it will have been chosen by hunter and he will be so excited to give it to you.


here is H showing his super excited face about the new catalog:

Hunter and Judah looking at the fishing poles.

Hunter can't wait to go through the magazine again and start circling the toys!

He wants the bow and arrow

Judah laid down on Brandi when i came over to take the picture-he was using her as a road with his monster truck.

We love cars. 

attempt #3

I am a terrible blogger...my last post was on july 30th. fail. Here goes attempt #3 at being consistent...mostly because i am thinking about christmas cards and i intend on putting this blog address on them so that our friends and family who are far away and not on FB can keep up with our lives :)

So, welcome to our Fall of chaos. Since returning from MN we have hit the ground running-justin has been out to the deer lease 3 times (he's a lucky man to have a wife who agrees to this), he ran GoRuck (a 14 hour adventure you will have to ask him about) and he is preparing for next weekends tough mudder race. I on the other hand made a trip out to west texas to visit family and have been consumed with a huge project going on at work. Hunter started pre-school at the end of August (AHHH! how is he old enough for real preschool?!?!) and is absolutely LOVING it. he comes home with stories about his new friends, the things he is learning and utterly exhausted :) Judah is LOVING that he has gigi days all to himself since hunter and kate have both started school. He has never had much alone time with any adults since he is the 2nd son and the 3rd grandchild, so the first couple of alone days were kind of lonely for him but now he loves having gigi (and poppi too some days) to himself :)

Fall has finally arrived in central texas-i think. we hit a record number of 92 (i think thats the most recent number) days over 100 degrees and 136 or 137 CONSECUTIVE days over 90. it has been a brutal summer. we have a deficit of over 22 inches of rain and the landscape is brown. here's to hoping we just dumped on this winter.

Perhaps i will be back in a few days to write some more, or perhaps it will be several months...