Caden's Play Place

"Supermarket! Supermarket! Supermarket!" is what we hear in our local language every morning when Caden wakes up. Once his diaper is changed (and sometimes he waits until after breakfast), he runs to the mat by our door and by the shoes and says, "Ayi (our house helper)! Chaoshi ('supermarket')!" Then we sound like broken records as we say, "Ayi is coming. You need to wait." Our supermarket here has this fabulous play place where Caden loves to play with his other little buddies here. They all meet up there (with our house helpers) and spend hours playing. Usually at lunch, Caden has confession time where he tells us he hit his friends, and our house helper tells us they took his toys, so he hit them. We had a talk with her not to allow him to play for 5 minutes when he does that. Let me just say, time-out has become the best form of discipline for us right now. A 'pop' seems to do absolutely nothing for Caden, but if you mention putting him in his bed, this little extroverted boy fears solitary confinement more than anything and quickly says 'No' and obeys. I'm thankful for multiple forms of discipline...oh man, how that relates in my own life! I'm sure the Lord is saying the same thing, so things actually getting inside my brain and change! So, Caden's favorite places in the play place have been the pink castle (playing with the vanity set) and the kitchen. Gotta love that! No worries, he also loves walking across the giant piano, jumping in the bouncy house, and destroying their train sets. I wish I had a picture for my dad, but they also have a little putting green that Caden really likes but is scary to control when he's holding a club. I wonder if his favorite club will be a 'nine-ironer'...what ya think, dad?! ;-)

His favorite pink palace :o) He also like to try to climb on the roof (with the help of the owner of the play place who absolutely adores him), so I guess that makes it better, right?!



playing with the vanity set. His favorites are the hair dryer and straightener. I think Dora's hair has been brushed one too many times.

I love how much he loves the kitchen. Maybe we should get him a mini kitchen for his bday or Christmas :o) He most enjoys boiling the corn. The little friend next to Caden is exactly a year older than him. Needless to say, everyone thinks he's huge.

I wish I could bounce in there, but we don't want to have Grady too early!

There's so many other great things in this play place, but this is the most recent thing they've added...a giant whale carousel. Quite amusing. At first, Caden was scared to death of it and would say in the local language "afraid." But, like most things, he just needs some time to watch what's going on then you can't get him off. Oh, the things that entertain.

This place is awesome for the winter months when it's so cold outside...it's awesome in the summer months too when it's melting hot. I'm just thankful he has a place to play and be around people. His local language skills have gotten so good...it's way better than his English. Maybe I need to play at the supermarket everyday!

Movie Night & Food

Hmmm...it really seems like I've either already done a post on this or mentioned it in a random post. My memory escapes me. So, sorry if I've already talked about this, but it's become a fun time for our family. We don't have a particular night in the week when we have movie night, but we usually have a movie night every week or every other week. This has become quite fun for everyone. Caden puts his chair on the floor (I usually put a blanket down depending on the meal), then we eat while we watch a movie. The first time we did this, he lasted through the meal then about 10 minutes of the movie after that (Britton and I usually finish watching the movie wants Caden's in bed...if we really want to watch it). Our most recent movie night (last night), Caden sat there for 1/2 of the movie! Woah! For an almost 2 year old, I feel like that's really good for him to sit through. The meal is always easy and low key (pizza, tacos, hot dogs, etc.). It's just fun to do something a little out of the ordinary and special. I especially love it, because the clean-up is always easy.

Last night, we had pizza from Pizza Hut, but most of the time I'll just make homemade pizza. Since I have to make the dough from scratch, I usually make enough to also make 2 personal pan pizzas that I can freeze for a later 'what are we going to eat for dinner' date.

Our little set up. I love how they both have their heads turned slightly with their legs crossed. And I love that Caden's pizza is already gone.



On this particular night, we watched Aladdin :o)

Oh, how my taste buds would love to have a Ball Park all beef frank grilled on a grill, but at least I found some chicken franks here that don't have skin wrapped around them and feel like you're biting into a finger when you eat it (oh yes, we tried those, and threw them right away). These have been a good substitute, and I have thoroughly enjoyed loading the cheese, ketchup, and mustard onto them (as you can see!). The buns are homemade and Britton and Caden's favorite part.

This has nothing to do with movie night but everything to do with comfort food. I had a bunch of people over for lunch one day and decided to fix breakfast. I found this incredibly easy recipe for Peanut Butter & Banana French toast on allrecipes and decided to make that. My mouth has never been so full of sugary goodness. Yes, I love to load the powdered sugar on there too. Like I said, comfort food...absolutely nothing healthy about this...well, maybe the bananas if ya wanna feel better about it. It doesn't 'sound' great but don't knock til ya try it. And it's oober easy.

A little more food fun. These are gooey smores bars. I actually forget the name and where I found the recipe, but these too were incredibly rich and yummy. With a graham crust (mixed with sugar cookie mix & lots of butter), melted chocolate, and toasted marshmallows this is sure to delight your mouth. I was craving smores, so I improvised.

Not a lot of depth to this post but makes life seem a little easy-going for once :o)

Oh to feel good...

We've been sick. Really sick. Annoyingly sick. Sick of being sick. Are you sick of me saying sick? Well, I'm sick of being sick. It would be super easy to elaborate (more than I already have) on all the sickness we've had in the last year, but I really just want to praise the Lord for the times we have had energy and had good health. I don't know why the Lord has allowed us to be so sick, but if anything, we are more grateful for Him taking care of us. With all that said, we are feeling good now and getting back to 'normal' life (whatever that means!). The countdown has begun for leaving to have our new baby! Today, I am 33 weeks, and we will leave in 2 1/2 weeks for another country to have Grady. Since I can't fly past 36 weeks, we have to leave a little early, which is fine with me to get a little R&R with my 2 men before it becomes 3 men! So, even though I haven't blogged in forever and a day (is anyone still checking in on Carnesville?!), not a whole lot has happened. I will try to post some stuff this week of our lives from the last month.

Poor Caden. The sickness all started with him. We weren't sure what was wrong. He was vomitting and had diarrhea for a week, then some doctors wanted us to treat him with a wide-range antibiotic, specifically treating Giardia (a parasite). He was well for the next week and a half (while I was sick) then got sick again for 24 hours and we began treating him again with the antibiotic. Since then, it's been over a week and there's been no sign of sickness, although Caden will occasionally say 'tummy' all pitiful. He threw up so much that we actually 'trained' him to throw up in the trash can, so we wouldn't have to keep cleaning it up in all places...and I mean all places (even inside the refrigerator! Yum!). Pray with us that this sickness is completely gone! 

The week after Caden got sick, I was sick. By the third or fourth day, I had to go to a women's center to get some fluids since I couldn't take any medicine. Fortunately, I had an awesome friend take me, and we actually really enjoyed our time together chatting and watching some of the Olympics. The next time the sickness came back (2 days after Caden's 2nd go-around of sickness), I wasted no time going back to get fluids because nothing else seems to help and I can't get dehydrated (apparently it can cause early labor, and we don't want that!). The second time I enjoyed reading 'The Hunger Games.' Amazing how this can all cause some rest time! You know you've been sick for a long time, when you're child goes to a trash can and pretends to throw up in it because they've seen you doing it so many times. Yikes!

Oh, to be a happy and healthy family! Ironically, the family name we chose in our local language here means 'healthy.' That causes a nice laugh :o)