Tag - I'm apparently it.

My sister Karrie blog-tagged me and I am supposed to write about 6 quirky (quirk, noun, a peculiarity of action, behavior, or personality; mannerism) things about myself and then tag 6 other bloggers. While I had to think long and hard (about 2 seconds) to come up with any quirks I possess, here goes:

1. I have a nervous habit of picking my eyelashes. No kidding - I am usually sporting at least one eyelash bald spot at all times.

2. I have to walk around the house every morning before I leave for work and say aloud as I check each socket: "Curling iron unplugged", "Iron unplugged" (whether I have used it or not that morning) to feel confident that the house will not burn down while I am away. (Nevermind the fact that both my curling iron and iron have auto shutoff features (a must-have in an OCD household)).

3. Along the same lines as #2 above, at least 3 of the 5 work days I have to turn around to go back and check that I have indeed closed the garage door - even though I know I have because I have audibly verbalized to Maggie "Garage door closed" as I watched it go down. (At 15 months, could Maggie already think her mom is a little loony? She might be right.)

4. I like corn as a whole, just not floating in my soup or hanging out in my rice as an individual kernal.

5. I prefer to write with a fine point Sharpie - perhaps this has something to do with my subconscious inner celebrity. I don't know.

6. According to my husband, I look at life through rose-colored glasses. Is this a bad thing?

7. Bonus quirk: I love to eat Macaroni and Cheese mixed with ketchup. Much yum. Try it.

So there it is - the stuff that makes me me. So now it's my turn to tag and I tag: (in no particular order)

Kylie
Jessica
Jenny
Dana
Kym
Maria
Riggins

Here are the rules: Link the person who tagged you. Mention rules on your blog. Tell about 6 quirks of yours. Tag 6 fellow bloggers to do the same. Leave a comment to let them know.

Enjoy!

Taking it Outdoors

Could it be that Maggie - at a mere 15 months old - is already addicted to TV? Noggin to be exact. No matter where she is in the house, to just hear Moose A. Moose's voice sends her in a toddle-run to the TV where she will grasp the armoire shelf with both hands and look straight up into the screen soaking it all in. As a parent, I am not proud of this, and I realize I am responsible. So measures must be taken to show our MagB that there are indeed more fascinating things than Puzzle Time and other Noggin fare. In short, we need to get out more. So on Sunday afternoon we visited the Heard Museum in McKinney. We have lived in this area for almost 4 years and had yet to visit this hidden little treasure full of nature trails and wildlife and all things out-doorsey. Including dinosaurs. Yes, dinosaurs. Lifesize dinosaurs. One of the exhibits at the Heard Museum is Dinosaurs Alive - which consists of a dozen or so lifesize, animatronic dinos along one of the nature trails there. It was pretty neat, though we only got to the 2nd dinosaur before Mags had decided that she was not thrilled with the giant moving creatures and had seen enough. So we found some tamer trails and some smaller, less-threatening caged animals that she quite enjoyed seeing. These are all the pics I got from the afternoon as in true Lisa fashion I failed to charge the camera battery and ran out of juice about 30 minutes in. Someday I'll learn. Next outdoor adventure stop: The Dallas Arboretum.

Here is Mags and daddy walking along one of the trails.

An encounter with a dinosaur. Don't ask me what kind - a realtively small one.

Exploring a small cabin along the trial.

Here is Mags in the butterfly house. She loved it in here watching all the butterflies. This is the last shot before battery failure.

Hope you all have a great week!

A Sneak Peek...

Of what's to come on Halloween!


Have a ducky day!

Just Because...

Got these at work today from Michael - just because. How sweet is that man? As hard as I tried today I just could not be in a foul mood. (Monday's and I are usually not friends.) The weather is beautimus and now these. It's been a great day.

Of course, when you have a sweet face like this greeting you every morning, how can any day be bad?

Have a great week!

Our weekend at The Oaks and Pigtails from H-E-double hockey sticks!

I just love this time of year. Fall is on its way, the weather will at some point be turning cooler and college football is in full swing! The Aggie's home opener was Labor Day weekend so we headed down for the game - excited about the start of another football season. What makes this year even more exciting is that we finally have a place to stay for football weekends. This means no more driving home in the wee hours of the morning after a game. Our dear friends, Kate and Brad, and Kate's parents have been hard at work fixing up an old family home in Pettibone, Texas, which has been nicknamed "The Oaks." This was our first weekend at The Oaks and we had such a great time just relaxing with friends. Even despite the Aggie's loss!

Here are some pics from the weekend.

The Oaks

This is our room. Notice how we just made ourselves at home and moved right in!

Riggin's (Don & Tianay's Lab) takes a swim in the tank.

Sleeping beauties.

Maggie & Daddy

Of course the place is fully equipped with satellite TV. When the TV was not tuned to football it was tuned to Noggin, much to MagB's delight

You can't really tell from this pic but Michael and Brad are hard at work assembling the grill to be used for the weekend festivities. This was a good half-day job. But their work paid off because we ate (and ate) like kings.

Exploring the place. Kate has impeccible fashion sense, don't ya think?

The following pics are from earlier this week in what I will call the unfortunate pigtail incident of September 08. Here's how it went down: Awhile back, one of the teachers at Maggie's school asked if I minded if she put a ponytail in Mags hair sometime. I said, "sure, why not," as we have often sported the Bam-Bam look at home. Fast forward a month or so and the same teacher, in passing, tells me she has been dying to put some pigtails in Maggie's hair now that she has the bangs. I tell her we have not tried that yet, but it would probably be cute. So on Monday when I pick Mags up, she is sporting pigtails - which were indeed cute - but also pulled so tightly I could not even imagine that she sat quietly while being coiffed to the point of looking like she had undergone a really bad face lift. But allegedly she did not make a peep....Until we got home that is.

As soon as we got home Mags got super-fussy and was inconsolable. She didn't want her milk, or a cookie, or her dinner, or to be held, or to be put down, or her binky, and she was crying like she was in some kind of pain. It was heart-breaking. Finally I deducted that it must be her head from the intense hair-pulling pigtails. So I try to take them out and these suckers were wrapped so tight that I don't even know where to start and I am already picturing what my sweet MagB is going to look like after we have to cut the pigtails out because I am just not sure there is any other way to undo what has been done. But I keep trying, and I am obviously hurting Mags in the process because she is just wailing, which is stressing me out because I just want to stop the hurt for her and then there is Michael, who is beside himself trying to get me to hurry. We finally managed to cut the rubber bands out, but the damage was done and poor Maggie continued to cry until she finally fell asleep. She woke up about an hour later and immediately continued her state of insolability. Michael and I were at our wits end. Surely it wasn't the pigtails if she was still crying? But what then? She couldn't tell us. At this point Michael tells me to put her in the car beause we are taking her to the ER because there is obviously something wrong with her and I'm like, O.k. but you are doing the talking because I have no idea what to tell them is wrong with her (Um, doctor, she won't quit crying and we don't know what to do!?) Anyhoo, we get her in her car set and set off to the ER and by the time we get there she is apparently over whatever it was that was distressing her so, because she is all smiles and "hey, let's play" as we pull into the parking lot. So we go home and she is completely fine the rest of the evening. Still have no idea what was wrong with her - but I'm sticking to the head hurting from the pigtails. Poor thing. Needless to say, I had to tell the teacher on Tuesday morning that, while the pigtails were cute, please no more until she is older and I can handle taking them out.

Here's Mags pre pigtail-breakdown.

Seriously I still have no idea how the teacher got these so tight? It just looks painful.

And I will leave you with this pic of Mags at dinnertime. She loves her some Chef Boyardee! Who doesn't right?

Love to all! Have a great week.

Maggie Moe?

I guess every mom does it at least once. Then they learn that some things are best left to the professionals. I'm talking about cutting hair. Which I did, on Mags, last weekend. Now usually I am not a cheap person. Just ask my husband. But for whatever reason I thought it best that I cut our MagB some bangs instead of shelling out $20 at the kid's cut place. Poor, poor dear. All day Sunday I was having to pull out the scissors to try to "undo" what I had done. In the end, it's not so bad - perhaps a little Moe-ish (think Three Stooges) - but not too bad.

Pre-bangs trim:

And After:

See. Not too bad. But next time we're paying for the salon cut.

I finally got some of the pics we had taken a few weeks ago to post. Here are just a few.

Hope you all have a great weekend!

Picture Perfect

It's around 12:30 p.m. on Sunday, Maggie is napping, and we have about an hour before we need to leave for church so I thought I would take this time to update the blog. First off, I have to admit that this will be the first Sunday in about a month that we have made it to church. I am not proud of that fact. You see, our church is remodeling the sanctuary (or auditorium as we COCers like to call it) and while the renovation is taking place we are meeting for worship at another nearby church and church does not start until 2:15 p.m. While you might think that this would make getting up and going to church easier -what with getting to sleep late and all - that has just not been the case for us. We have awakened every Sunday for the past month with great intentions of going. I mean, we need to be in church. Maggie needs to be in church. And I recently had a dream that I am pretty sure was God telling me just that. I just feel different when I have not been. I don't like it. So with all that being said, we are going this Sunday - and every other Sunday we're in town. Inconvenient time or not!

I really don't have much to update you on. We did get some family pictures and pictures of Mags taken last weekend. I don't have any yet to post, but you can take a look for yourselves (at your leisure!) by going to http://www.aravaggio.com/. Just click on the client link and enter the password "maggie". There are a lot to go through and she got some great shots of our MagB. We're still trying to decide which ones to order but will decide soon so I can post some here!

Anyhoo, off to finish getting ready for church. Love to all and have a great week!