Phone Photo Fun Mondays - 03.05.12

 
So this week I did things a little different... I decided to try photo every other challenge, so this first bunch is from last Tuesday.

 Jay awoke me over the baby monitor at 9:24am wanting to get up and out of his crib.

After changing his diapey we went out to the family where mommy laid on the couch while Jay played as we waited for Sesame Street to come on PBS.

10am - We're watching Sesame Street. Elmo and Abby were up to some adventure.

11am - Jay isn't interested in WordWorld despite it being a cute show, so he played with his toys instead.

1130am - Breakfast! Yeah, that's right, we eat breakfast when you guys are eating lunch. We're on a weird schedule. Jay eats some Quaker oatmeal with fruit and cream, some yogurt and some milk.

12pm - Jay goes down for his early afternoon nap.

1230pm - Mommy takes a nap on the couch.

Jay woke up around 2pm, we watch some Sprout before mommy gets ready.

230pm - mommy's putting on some of her make-up so we can go out.

3pm - our 1st stop is Michael's.

330pm - next stop is Office Max.

400-430pm - we went to Hobby Lobby, and here's our goods - mommy got 2 cute Welcome door signs - one for spring, another for post-Easter through summer. Jay got a Thomas tin lunchbox for being such a good shopping buddy today (it was $5.99 and I had a 40% off coupon - can't pass that up, especially since the kid is crazy about Thomas these days!).

445pm - Jay's "lunch." Yes, it's a late lunch, although he usually eats lunch between 330 and 430. We had dinosaur chicken nuggets with ranch and Jay had applesauce and milk with his.

515pm - I tried putting Jay down for his 2nd nap and decided to try and read some more of Mockingjay. Key words here are "tried" and "try."

615pm - see? Didn't last long... he wasn't interested in taking his 2nd nap. Instead here he is playing again.

700pm hour - Still playing.

800pm hour - Dinner! I made us a yummy dinner that included broccoli, rigatoni pasta with marinara sauce and pan-seared salmon patties. Jay woolfed down the salmon patty piece he had but wasn't big on the broccoli or pasta so we gave him some more applesauce (I swear that kid would live on applesauce and Goldfish crackers if I let him!).

 900pm - playing with his plush Thomas trains, kid loves his Thomas trains!

915pm - he didn't like being in daddy's hoodie!

 1015pm - we put Jay to bed an hour early since he didn't take his 2nd nap and was stumbling around like a drunk and being fussy. I decided to finish the last of his 1st birthday cake since it was taking up room in the fridge and no one else was eating it.

11pm hour - hubby working on his laptop while we watch The Office on TBS and I read some more of Mockingjay. This is pretty much what we did the rest of the night since hubby was on vacation from his 3rd shift job last week.

3:21am - the time it was when I climbed in bed. And that's a typical day around here, although normally we don't run errands and some days I work.

Last week I also got a lot of the detailing done on Jay's Super Mario Bros room. I posted about it over the weekend, but here's some teaser photos:

Thursday night, since hubby was on vacation, we took our annual trip to Gameworks in Schaumburg. Every Thursday night they have $10 unlimited gaming (it's basically a 2 story arcade), plus after 9pm they kick out all the under 21 people and open up the bar so you can walk around and drink your drinks while playing. We made this a vacation tradition last summer and this was our 3rd time.

They had Bill Murray plushies in one of the machines.

We always play through a shooter since it's not like we have to keep dumping in quarters. The past 2 times we played the House of the Dead zombie shooter games. Hubby didn't feel like shooting up zombies this time though so we did Time Crisis 2, where you shoot bad guys instead. It was 3 levels, we beat it easy.

Island Adventure! Last time we played a pirate game like this one, but decided to give this one a try since it was similar - it's a shooter, but you sit in a motion car. It was pretty fun but I think I liked the pirate one better.

And of course I can't pass up DDR!

This tank game is AWESOME! Basically, you're driving a battle tank and it's a free for all with 2 computer players and the person next you. It's pretty fun!

I beat everyone, hahahaha!!!

Normally we play the Fast and the Furious racing game, but 2 people were hogging that one most of the night so we couldn't play our saved vehicles from last time. We did play the motorcycle racing game a few times, racing against another couple. We also tried virtual bowling and I played some AC/DC and Family Guy pinball too. Hubby refused to play Street Fighter or any of the Marvel vs Capcom fighter games with me - I always kick his butt and all I do is mash the buttons constantly, lol... We did play a round of Mario Kart racing and then played Pacman Battle Royale where 4 people play against each other - we played with 2 others, one of which had a very drunk friend watching. Hubby kept kicking everyone's butt though, lol... I also had at least 4 drinks, maybe 5?

Normally, you can't play any of the ticket-giving games during unlimited gaming night, but apparently I had a few "tokens" left on my timecard from my former college roomie's engagement party they had there last spring so Monkey Ball let me play and gave me 45 tickets. I got the mini-frisbee for Jay, a ninja guy for me and a green army guy for hubby that my drunken self told him to cherish forever (it's residing in his car, lol...)

On our way home, I got this craving for french fries with a massive amount of ketchup on them. So we stopped at Wendy's and they gave us several of these dip and squeeze travel ketchup things - GENIUS! I used at least 2 of these packet things on a small fry.

And that's the photos I took this past week!

Nikki Darlin': Check her out!

For this month, Nikki Darlin' was offering free sponsor spots for her blog and since the more I read about Nikki, the more we seem to have common interests and I love her blog posts, not to mention she's pretty awesome herself, so of course I volunteered to sponsor her this month!

I'll let Nikki tell you a little about herself:

Hi I'm Nikki I blog over at Southern Mama with a Bad Mouth.

I'm a 22 year old, part time working, mommy and wife. 

My husband and I have been married for 2 and a half year now. I met him when he was in the army and we got married married when he came home for R&R on September 1st 2009. 

We have a beautiful 2 year old daughter named Skylee. She's a mess on two little feet. 

We live in Georgia and we all all things country. If it comes in pink camo I'll buy it. 

I started blogging about 2 year ago and fell in love. 

I love all the new people I have met and am so proud to call them my friends. 

I blog about my life. 

I love to share pictures of my daughter and our puppy Sookie. 

I also love to vlog. my youtube channel is YouTube.com/xonikkidarlin.

I'm slowly becoming famous for my "duck face" pictures. 

I post way too many of them. 

I have a link up every Monday to share my duck face picture and I love to see everyone else too. 

You can also follow me on Twitter @xoNikkiDarlin

Jay's Super Mario Bros Room, part deux!

Awhile back I showed you Jay's Super Mario Bros room in progress, as I hadn't had the time to really hammer out the details as I surely can't work on it while Jay's around and during the day it's usually just me and him at home.

With hubby on his night job vacation this week he decided to take a couple days off from the day job as well so he'd have several full days of vacation. This was a great chance for me to work on Jay's room during the day!

And work on it I did!

Check it out:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I really wanted to do something unique for his nursery but at the same time, if I was going to put this much work into it I wanted it to be something that could last for a long time. I figure, as he grows, he'll love it when he's a little kid and hope that as he grows into a teen and a young adult (assuming we're in this house that long - who knows!) that he'll grow to still appreciate it - after posting these to my RL friends on Facebook, I had quite a few my own age that thought it was the coolest thing ever and wish they had a Mario World 1-1 room in their house! I hope Jay feels the same way when he's older!

Don't You Turn Your Back or You'll Become a Snack!

"Now we've crossed the line, fallen through time... LIVIN' IN THE LAND OF THE LOST!"

I've been meaning to make this Flashback Friday post for sometime now but knew it was going to take a bit longer to research than I've felt up to doing, but now I have 10 days straight to take easy at home and with family, so why not?

Anyways... trying to fall asleep one night, I came across TBS showing the end of the terribad Will Ferrell Land of the Lost movie that came out not too long ago (too bad it was so bad though - Pushing Daisies' Anna Friel was in it). And it got me wondering about the Land of the Lost show that I grew up watching Saturday mornings on ABC.

And no, no. Not this version:

That's an image from the original 1974 Land of the Lost with the Marshall family - that was 10 years before I was born.

THIS is the version of the show I grew up with:

Yep, that's the intro to the 1991 remake with the Porter family and the attractive jungle girl Christa.

One theory I've read on the purpose of Christa was that she was there for all the dad's who got up on Saturday mornings with their kids to oogle

According to Wiki, "because of the success in syndication of the cult 1974 series Land of the Lost, Sid and Marty Krofft created a remake. The new Land of the Lost saw advanced special effects and a lighter, less survivalist-oriented tone ... The series ran for 26 episodes spread over two seasons, with each season consisting of thirteen episodes. It featured the Porter family—father Tom, son Kevin and daughter Annie—trapped in a parallel universe after their Jeep Cherokee (referred to as a "truck" in the series) fell through a time portal while exploring the back country. They soon meet another human, a beautiful "jungle girl" named Christa who came from 1960s San Francisco. Christa became trapped in the Land of the Lost when she was very young and grew up alone. (An earlier concept would have featured an adult Holly Marshall as the "mystery girl" along with Cha-Ka but due to casting the characters were revisualized as Christa and Stink)."

And here's a few fun facts that kind of ties the 2 series together:
"Some fans speculate that Christa is actually Holly Marshall. That the Marshall family sailed away to find their way out of the Land of the Lost, and that Holly was left behind in the storm that took their raft out into the sea ...

 

Is Christa really a grown-up Holly? Hard to tell...

Scarface, Grumpy... he's an angry
T-Rex, so it's possible!

Some fans speculate that Scarface is actually Grumpy of the original series. In that series they often encouraged Grumpy to leave their cave by pushing a large sharpened log called the "flyswatter" out of the cave entrance and into Grumpy's open mouth. Some believe that one encounter with the "flyswatter" scarred Grumpy's eye. The Potter family, being new to the Land of the Lost, named the T-Rex for his facial feature, rather than his grumpy attitude ...

If this were true, it would make Christa and Scarface the only two characters that existed in both TV series.."

That kinda makes sense actually and is an interesting way to explain it for the older generation that grew up watching the original 1974 and got stuck watching the 1991 version with their kids on Saturday mornings.

Sadly, the show only lasted for 2 seasons with a total of 26 episodes spanning a year and a half (from September 1991 to December 1992), being replayed for awhile before being run in syndication later on Nickelodeon. I always wondered how they were going to get home, back to their normal time period.

To be honest, I wasn't big on this show until after my childhood best friend started watching it and was telling me about it. While I'm sure I've seen all the episodes, I didn't watch it religiously... but boy did that theme song get stuck in my head at times - LIVING IN THE LAND OF THE LOST!

Did you grow up watching Land of the Lost?

Kids clothing with their name on it

File this under things I just understand:
Buying your young child custom clothing with their name on it.

Since having Jay and following more mommy bloggers I've noticed a lot of them show pictures of their youngins in clothing with their names custom embroidered on it.

I don't mean to offend anyone, but I just don't understand... why?

I'll admit, I've thought about getting Jay some custom made shirts with his name on it (and with his name, unless we go with his nickname of Jay, we kind of have to custom make it as his actual name is so unique). But then two reasons not to pop into my head.

1 - did you NOT see this kids After School/Saturday Morning PSA in the late 80s and early 90s when you were a kid??



For those that didn't watch the blast from the past PSA, it basically warns you of the dangers of wearing clothing with your name on it - the big concern being that strangers can act like they know you, potentially claiming your parent told them to come get you and escort you home. Granted, in this day and age, not many parents are letting their kids roam the neighborhood or go to the playground alone as things have changed so much in the last 20 years, and obviously you're not going to leave your baby alone but still... the PSA and it's message still lurks in the back of my mind.

And 2 - you can't "hand me down" the item and reuse it for future kids, which seems like a waste to me. We're planning on having at least 1 more child, if not 2, at some point down the road so you can bet that as Jay outgrows his clothes I box them up and put them in our storage room so our future babies can wear them. Sure, he's a boy, but some of the stuff can work for both genders if we do have a girl and obviously another little boy can wear them as well. Once all our kids have outgrown them then I'll either pass the non-keepsake ones onto a relative or just donate them. Who knows - maybe some of the keepsake ones they'll pass onto their own kids. But you can't do that with clothes that have 1 child's name on it. And that just seems like a waste of money to me.

Just my 2 cents though and something to keep in mind while you consider getting that super cute personalized onesie or t-shirt!