Blue Eyed Boy

I don’t know how it keeps happening, but we keep producing blue eyed boys. (and it appears Samuel’s eyes are going to be blue as well).

I admit that I’ve always kind of wanted one of our sons to be the spitting image of his father. Brown eyed. Brown haired. And drop dead gorgeous.

Okay, so my boys don’t need to be quite that good looking (I’m so not looking forward to fending off the females in the years to come!!) But still, I love the dark hair and dark eyes, and would love for my boys to follow after their daddy.

And they do.

In so many ways they are their fathers sons. The smiles. The expressions. The way they walk. Talk. Gesture.

But…

There are no brown eyes like their daddy’s here.

Oh goodness, aren’t his eyes just so blue?

 

*sure wish we’d wiped lunch off his face before snapping these beauties. Nuts.

Without a trace

It’s blueberry season down here in the South, so blueberry picking we’ve gone.

We made a wonderful family outing of it; picking and eating, and picking and eating. Thankfully, they only weigh the bucket before and after it’s been filled… and not the children (or the parents!!!) before and after they have (eaten) their fill.

Because we love blueberries. And we ate a lot.

(Yes, that is a Play-Doh bucket. It was all I could find that was Noah-size)

And then we came home from blueberry picking and ate a lot. Because we’d picked a lot.

On top of eating fresh blueberries by the handful, we had blueberry pancakes made my wonderful breakfast Chef husband. Then we had blueberry coffee cake. It didn’t last long. We concocted homemade blueberry smoothies (basically yogurt blended with frozen blueberries and strawberries) that would have done Jamba Juice proud. The following week, we made blueberry syrup to top plain made-from-scratch-pancakes.

And when we had the new First Sergeant over for dinner, I made the most amazing blueberry pie ever using my friend Rita’s recipe.

Best Ever Blueberry Pie

2 pints blueberries (4 cups), 1 unbaked pie crust, 1/4 cup butter, 1 cup sugar, 1 egg beaten, 3/4 cup flour, 1 tsp. vanilla. Wash blueberries and place in pie crust. Cream butter & sugar in bowl. Add remaining ingredients and mix well. Spread over blueberries (or use cookie scoop to dollop). Bake at 350 for about 50 minutes or until done. *I topped it with vanilla icecream and it was melt in your mouth, oh so perfect, blueberry pie. I’ve never tasted one this good.*

 

We also added fresh blueberries to every bowl of cut fruit; put them in salads and in our breakfast cereal. We brought them to church potluck in the form of blueberry cobbler. And munched on frozen blueberries as an afternoon snack.

Then my husband called while I was typing this blog post and said he’d like to bring his soldiers breakfast tomorrow. So I immediately responded, “6 dozen blueberry muffins, coming right up, Dear!!” (which means we’re both working late tonight. Haha! Such is life for a Commander and his Wife!)

So the huge bucket of blueberries we picked a few weeks ago?? It’s gone. It’s gone without a trace.

 

 

Well… almost without a trace.

There are few tell tale signs here and there.

 

 

We love our blueberries, can you tell?

Ruffles and Lace

While some of you may have read the blog post title and immediately assumed that I was announcing a pregnancy...

and a pregnancy of a baby girl at that.

This post is about just the opposite (well, not exactly the opposite-- I am NOT pregnant and NOT PREGNANT with a BOY either. So don't get excited, Mom!)


The ruffles and lace refer to the fact that almost every pregnant gal I know is having a girl. And after a brief calculation (not counting my own little Noah because he was already born when we moved to the South), I determined that our church has had 8 baby girls in a row, with the next 2 pregnant gals also expecting girls. That's a lot of baby girls.


So, last week, I went to a baby shower for a little gal due in April. Tons of pinkness, purpleness, and everything sweet.

Prior to the shower, I went shopping for a baby gift, and thought it would be so much fun to peruse the aisles and hunt for girl clothes. I was certain it would be an enjoyable experience.

But let me tell you. It wasn't.

It was SO hard.

Sigh.

I'm sure, like my husband, that you are thinking that it was so hard because I want a girl so badly. But actually, it's the opposite again.

Sure, I'd love to have a girl and a daughter. But I'm so happy and content with my boys, I don't spend (or waste!) my time longing or dreaming of girls. I love my boys. I love that God has given them to me. And I'm wholly content to trust Him in determining the gender of our baby's. Boys or girls.


Shopping for ruffles and lace was hard because I HAD NO IDEA WHAT I WAS DOING.



I've been picking blue and green onesies and overalls with matching Bob the Builder shirts for so long that the girl clothes overwhelmed me. I kept finding myself asking, "do kids really wear princess shirts? and "are all those ruffles really cute, or if I bought this would everyone frown and say, "ugh!"

Then I found the colors overwhelming. Though I am a woman who likes to look feminine, I rarely wear pink or purple. So while I shopped, I gravitated toward boy colors, or at least gender neutral colors, because pinks, purples, and mauves, just don't go. I mean, do they? Do they really?

And what's worse, you know how they always say that girl clothes are so cute? I found myself walking right past the frilly dresses and instead pulling out sweater vests and corduroy pants on the rack next to them. SO much cuter.


As I said, it was a hard shopping trip. Utterly distressing. I was completely out of my element. I had the hardest time finding good girl clothes, and even when I did finally make my purchase, I wasn't sure I'd picked the right things.


When I told my husband about it later, he just laughed at my furrowed brow. I think I completely surprised him too.

"Well," he said in an encouraging tone, "at least I know that if we do have a girl, you two won't spend hours shopping together."

Yeah. So funny, Honey.