Weekends in Dallas

Gosh, I haven't played catch-up in a while....and I don't know if today is that day either. However, I would like to show just how much fun we have here in Dallas with our good friends and our little family. We have had the amazing opportunity to go to a couple of Dallas Mavericks games and have loved every second of it! Having a little enclosed place at the game for the kids to run around in has been absolutely wonderful and they were so well behaved! Thanks to our good friends, we were able to go a couple weeks ago and our kids watched almost the entire game. WHAT? I didn't even know what to do with such well behaved Mavs fans! For all of you Utah people, we got to see Jimmer play for about 5 whole minutes and were glad to have beaten the Kings at the end of the night! They did get ahead once, which served for some good panic time for Brian, but we pulled through.

Of course I forgot my camera, so these are taken with our super ghetto phones. 

Our kids didn't fall asleep in the car on the way home and went to bed WAY too late. Followed by three more late nights, a normal, and then another late night, I was CRAVING for them to be back on schedule and was so grateful for it to finally come.....before Jared got sick. Of course. Sigh. That's the story of parenting though. 

Last weekend we went to the Bible Museum of Art in Dallas for our Valentine's Day date. We didn't even know this place existed until Brian saw discounts on Groupon. I wasn't sure what to make of it at first, but it turned out to be pretty amazing. They had a fire 9 years ago that destroyed 98% of their work...so sad. However, what they have there is pretty cool. My favorite was the bronze casts of the Pieta and Moses (must be my inner Michelangelo fan) and their Bible exhibit. Seriously, this Bible exhibit was incredible! Not only did it make me appreciate a book that everyone owns and that I've had all my life, but it showed me how much I really take it for granted and I learned a few cool things. There was a bible published that has been nicknamed the "Wicked Bible". Baker, the publisher, accidentally published a commandment as "thou shalt commit adultery"....oops....left out the "not". I laughed at first, but then read that he went bankrupt for the accident and died in debtors prison. Sad, right? 

Did you know that there are HAND-COLORED bibles? Seriously, I'm not talking about a little color. I'm talking about a LOT of color...gorgeous! Anyway, I could go on and on, but it was pretty amazing. Crazy fact though, someone just purchased the oldest fragment of Romans 5:5 every found. One verse. It's like the size of a silver dollar. How much you ask? How about 4.5 million dollars???? Yeah...

Topped off our date with some yummy gelato and it was great. Alone time....it's precious and it doesn't matter what you do!

Anyway, Dallas is pretty cool and we have a pretty good time here. :) 

More Pictures

I have been having SO much fun taking pictures. :) I really wish I had more time to do it and less sickness going around so we could venture outside and get some really good lighting. I'm hoping that next week is better for Jared and he feels better so we can go out, enjoy the 70 degree weather, and take more pictures. :)

Claire was at a friends house yesterday, so I got to play with Jared and have him make silly faces to get some cute faces!

His train wouldn't fit through the hole. 

Then he zonked. Climbed into my lap, blinked once, and he was out; however, he never lets go of his cars.

Storytime! The lighting was too good to pass up! We never get good lighting in our apartment. I'm thanking the nice weather.

I was trying to make him smile, so I wasn't looking through my viewfinder....or else this would be more centered.... ;)

So glad she was willing to participate! She has such a sweet little face. 

We think this one is funny. :) 

AA

Addiction: The fact or condition of being addicted to a particular substance, thing, or activity.

What happens when all of these things are intertwined? Yes, all three... at once? You have what I call AA...which, in this post, will refer to Anderson Addiction.

First off, it's a good thing I'm not a smoker. I would be....well...let me introduce you to my neighbor, Linda. She's a very nice older woman. Looks like life has given her a hard blow. She has a mentally handicap son that is hospitalized. She has her daughter, niece, and her two great nieces living with her. She is also a chain smoker and has (from what I have counted and seen) 3 teeth. Those three teeth have seen a better ray of sunshine and who knows how long they'll rot before falling out. Her voice must have been something lovely when she was younger, but even her laugh has evolved into a cackle. Her little great nieces, who are Claire's age, leave the house unattended all the time. Once I found Willow in the bitter cold/freezing rain with nothing but a pair of jeans on. No socks, no shirt. Literally, just pants. I've had her brought to my door on more than one occasion because people think she's mine (it's the blonde hair) and each time Linda has not been home, been in the bathroom, or just not answering. By all means, WHERE IS HER MOTHER???? Linda is just the aunt, but she is so preoccupied with getting a light that you can tell when the poor woman needs to get a cigaratte as soon as possible. She's a much more pleasant conversationalist when she's nicotine-ified.

My point? I can't do anything half-way. I have to go in all the way....ALL THE WAY. How would I ever quit? Well, let's talk about chocolate. The lesser evil, right? RIGHT? Ugh. Chocolate. You vile, disgusting, but oh so delicious substance that I feel the need to consume on a daily basis. I have beat it before. Oh yes. I have gone so far away from it for an entire year that I thought I would never need it again. However, the fateful day came where I ate it again, felt totally disgusting....and then ate some more. Right....cause that makes sense.

Anyway, how we Anderson's get to a recovery program and what this post is really about. Weaning. I think it's the worst word in the English language. Stupid. What a concept. Let's take something you love away....but not. We'll give it to you the next day just to make you a little happy....and then slowly, slowly, we'll tear away pieces of your mind. Really, if I were to break my arm, I'd rather have it happen in a jiffy, not at a slow accustoming pace. How did I go off of chocolate? I had a baby. You see, I have to have a good enough reason to go off. A good enough reason has one important factor...

1. To have it involve someone other than myself.

That's it. A baby. I went off, cold turkey, for a month with Claire, ate some, she cried and was SUPER gassy, so I went off for a couple more months. With Jared, I went cold turkey for a year and it was pretty much the most wonderful thing to happen since the wonderful vileness was discovered.

So, this is how Jared has been with a bottle. Cursed, cursed bottles. I don't have a hard time taking away the binki. All I have to do is look at several pictures of my children without smiles and with binki's and it's gone. I like smiles. Bottles though. It's like their third arm. It's takes us forever to get them off. I feel like the worst mother when I go to the doctor and they ask me if my older-than-one-year-old is off a bottle. "Uh....yes...bottle....of course he's off. Jared.....get that bottle out of your mouth."

The reason Claire wasn't off was because she was sick for an entire year and I couldn't handle taking it away while she was so sick. Jared though.....oh the monster. It's because if any liquid is in any container other than a bottle, it goes in his mouth, he swishes it around, and spits it all over my house. ALL OVER THE PLACE! Water...I get irritated, but it's just water. Milk makes sticky white spots all over the floor and then starts to smell weird. Ugh. Anyway, it took me a while to get to the point where I could handle it.

I am happy to announce that he is now bottle free. No weaning involved. We tried that. Didn't work. He had to go cold turkey. There one minute and vanished the next. The way his mother has to do it. The only way that's effective for the Anderson Addiction. He was acting like baby Ghandi last week and all that non-eating and only drinking milk made me crazy enough to put up with milk being spit all over the house.

So far, a successful recovery program. :)

That is all. And there you have it. The longest announcement of a bottle free home you've ever read.