conversations

(setting: we have just driven by a sign that says "seasoned firewood")
me: seasoned firewood? what's that? did they sprinkle a little cinnamon and nutmeg on it?
mark: no. not even close.

(setting: i have just said something rude)
mark: wow, that's very...ubiquitous of you.
me: i don't think that word means what you think it means

denise: i do not want to write this essay.

mark: i'm sorry, i wish i could write the essay for you.

denise: well, thanks babe, but it's supposed to be brief and to-the-point and those aren't exactly your strong suits

mark: well, i may not be brief, but i'm to the point

denise: so you're long-winded and to the point?

mark: i mean, it takes me a while to say what i want to say, but i always make my point in the end

denise: you know they changed the astrology signs. you're a cancer now.

mark: cool

denise: do you even know what you were before?

mark: yeah...poseidon

denise: no

mark: no, i mean...presario

denise: presario? as in, a compaq presario? i think the word you're looking for is 'pisces'

(setting: i literally just woke up, it's like 7 am)

denise: what does "dog and pony show" mean?

mark: i don't understand how your brain works

denise: i heard it in a song and i need to know what it refers to

mark: you literally just opened your eyes, when did you have time to think about that?

denise: just tell me what it means!

our sense of humor

when mark and i were doing our premarital counseling, our pastor had us take this 100 question test that was supposed to tell us, out of 10 areas, where we differed the most. and then we were supposed to focus on those areas in our counseling. they were things like, family, money, etc. we knew we'd have some differences but we were really surprised when our #1 area of difference was "personality." i mean, what? how can our personalities be that different? but i guess in several ways they are. i am a typical virgo (meaning perfectionist, critical, nit picky) and am kind of an introvert. a night alone is like a dream to me. mark is very laid back, almost nothing bothers him. and he is an extreme extrovert - a night alone to him is like a nightmare.

so i guess our personalities are kind of different but there is one thing we have the same- and that is, our sense of humor. and the other night, this commercial made us crack up hysterically for about 5 minutes. we kept watching it over and over.

where to eat in boston

for fourth of july mark and i went with some friends up to the greater boston area for one of my best friends' weddings- i speak of kristen marvelle, now kristen kavanaugh. we went with our other dear friends from charlotte and had a really great time, AND we went without verity for almost a week. that was hard - we missed her, but we got to do a lot of fun stuff that we wouldn't have been able to do with her there.


the couple :)


at the rehearsal dinner


at the wedding!

so let me get to the point of this post - food. food can really make or break a trip. mark and i went to jacksonville, florida on vacation one year and we hated it. we had a horrible time. when someone asked me why, i was like, well for one, nowhere we ate had good food. good food at a good restaurant can make a bad trip way worse or a good trip a million times better. so i thought i'd share about the places we ate in case you are headed to boston. which i'm sure is not likely. so i guess i have no idea why i'm actually writing this post.

in plymouth, ma (where we stayed for the wedding):
t-bones roadhouse: for breakfast. the best breakfast i've ever had for this little - mark
and i ate breakfast with tip and coffees for under $10.

blue blinds: this was a really cute breakfast and sandwhich shop with homemade organic breads. i had a delicious sandwich here but i wish we could've eaten breakfast here too, it looked awesome.

ali's galley: so this was a random little "butcher shop" right near our motel that i never would have gone in, but staci and tanner did and then flagge us down. they had awesome sandwhiches with meat that they sliced right there. i had a sweet n'sour sandwich and when i ordered it on wheat bread the woman behind the counter said (in thick boston accent) "wheat bread? why don't you just order it on cardboard?"

in brookline, ma (where mark and i stayed for a few days after the wedding):
upper crust pizzeria: this was a great pizza place a la brixx in charlotte, but i thought it was better. mark thinks brixx is still better. anyway- thin crust, whole wheat and great topping options.

j.p. licks: this is an ice cream place. when tanner and staci were dropping us off in brookline we looked for a place to get coffee. instead we found this place and got giant ice cream cones. they had a lot of crazy flavors, like cucumber (which staci got) and el diablo, which had cayenne pepper in it.

boston, ma:
sam lagrassa's sandwich shop: we ate here because we tried to go to a place i read about in fodor's boston and it was closed. and the two guys in front of us who were trying to go there were like, "oh it's closed. let's go to sam's." and of course we didn't know where else to eat so we just followed them. it was HUGE sandwiches, really fresh and yummy. we had to eat in a standing room only section.

quincy market: this is like a mall's food court basically. it was my least favorite place we ate, but it was still good. i had a lobster roll from one of the vendors. it was yummy. but it was also a greasy $14 sandwich on white bread. there was tons of other options though and you could get fresh lobster. and giant cookies and giant slices of watermelon. giant a lot of things.

so if you're ever in the plymouth, brookline or boston, these are my recommendations :)

verity's favorite game

v's first steps!

my favorite part of church

well, ONE of my favorite parts of church, is the "kids corner." I know a lot of churches don't do this anymore, but during our service, before the message, our pastor asks all the kids to come up front. and then you know, he has a microphone and asks the kids a question and lets them say their answer into the microphone. i already have a little anxiety about what verity might say into a MICROPHONE in front of our whole church someday.

i've heard some funny stuff in the past few years. (yes i record these right along side my sermon notes) here's a taste:

pastor: what is a toy that you have that you used to really like to play with but now you're kind of bored with?
kid: my sister.

pastor: what are some things your mom doesn't like?
kid: my mom doesn't like coming to church

pastor: do you know of any sports that are in the bible? (he was looking for fishing by the way)
kid: golf
kid #2: lacrosse

pastor: (the week of Christmas) what's going on right now that you're probably excited about?
kids silent.
pastor: come on, what season is it? what time of year?
kid: winter!

but there are also some really good kid answers that make you realize kids are listening and they're understanding important concepts. like these:

pastor: what was the deal with the pharisees?
kid: they were hypocrites because they said they loved god but on the inside they really didn't. they were just pretending. (this was a 4-yr old).

pastor: when you sin, does god punish you?
kid: no, because he already punished us in jesus for all our sins (again, a 3 or 4-year old).

so "kids korner" is my favorite part of service b/c 1) it's funny, but because 2) it reminds me what a serious task we have in parenting and what sponges our kids are at ages 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. it reminds me that god has entrusts a child to me to shepherd, raise, parent and guide, and that it starts now.

FINAL thing- related to this, Mark and I are doing a parenting small group now, watching a video series and doing curriculum called "Getting to the Heart of Parenting" by Paul Tripp and it's really good. We recommend it. :)

verity in the tub

yikes, it's been like a year or something since i've updated our blog. what have we been busy or something? here's a new video of the bebe:

she's 13 months now and a ton of fun. she is on the brink of a lot of things. she can take a couple steps, but isn't quite walking. she can say a lot of mumbo-jumbo but no actually words. except for "no," "uh-oh," and "yeah."

daddy's girl

verity is teething. maybe. she drools like crazy and is OBSESSED with chewing things, particularly this frozen teether (pictured above) in the shape of a foot. but we have yet to see any teeth.

also hilarious: she is obsessed with cups and drinks. as soon as she sees one of us pick up a drink, she tries to pounce on it. her eyes get really wide and she starts reaching out for the drink and opening her mouth. i have some video of this i need to share with you. i've tried to get her interested in a sippy cup so she stops trying to grab my coffee cup but she gets frustrated because she can't figure out how to get the liquid to come out of the sippy cup.

so we're having a lot of fun with her these days. she smiles a lot and laughs a ton and she is such a great, chill baby. and mark is still his funny self. here's one of our latest funny conversations:

me: guess what size pants verity is wearing
mark: um, i don't know...small? medium? large? how fun can this game be?
me: no. baby sizes are by AGE. guess what size her pants are.
mark: 10 months? 11 and a half months?
me: do you honestly think they sell clothes in size "11 and a half month olds"?

(by the way, she is 5 months old but was wearing 18 month pants. it's the cloth diapers- they make her bum huge.)

video of verity

well it's about time i bring you a video of verity. she IS over four months old now. so this is her. warning - this video may be boring to those of you who are not family or those who are not in the mood to watch a swinging infant talking to herself. also. it may give you a little motion sickness. i had to tape her in her swing because the time she talks the most is in the swing. and if she sees the video camera, it's all over. she gets quiet b/c she's so entranced with the camera. hence, the poor angle this is taken from. but maybe you'll like it anyway :)



and here's one with her face :)

goodbye house, we love you.

in case you somehow missed my massive facebook mailing, we are selling our house. we love our house and we love our neighborhood and we have enjoyed our time there. but times, they are a changin'. (we are staying in Charlotte. just looking for something different, something closer to my parents.) so, if you're looking for a new house, visit our blog and check it out: http://www.8300bristolford.blogspot.com/.

we are also offering a referral fee to any friend or family member who refers the person who ultimately buys our house. 300 smackers. so if you KNOW anyone looking for a house, send them our way. and then take a vacation (okay, a small vacation) on us.

it truly is a very pretty place :-)

homeade popcorn

soooo you were expecting a baby update. but no. what brought me back to the blog was the best popcorn i've ever tasted. and we made it home-ade. HA. why did we do this? a couple weeks ago i decided to get rid of my microwave. because "anything that gets that hot without fire must be from the devil." (ellen) haha, i don't know, maybe cooking food in the microwave is bad for you, maybe it's not. i mainly did it for the counter space. and i honestly haven't even missed it. hello, you can reheat everything on the stove or in the toaster oven. my only issue with no microwave was popcorn. we love popcorn. and we could no longer press our 'popcorn' button and have it ready in 2 mins and 30 seconds. so. last night at the store we bought some organic popping corn and tonight i used this recipe to make it on the stove top. the only thing i changed was that i used coconut oil instead of canola oil like she has in the recipe. it was AMAZING. (and by the way, i am loving coconut oil right now to cook with. it's delicious and allegedly really good for you. read about it here.)

okay, enough about the popcorn. here's some pics of the babe. :-)

and here are her 2 new achievements:
this week, we were sitting together and she was staring at her hand which was balled up in a fist. then she opened it up wide like she was giving someone a high five, and then she put it back in a fist. she did this a couple times. i watched her discover her hand! #2 is that yesterday i was holding my cell phone up to take a picture of her and she wouldn't take her eyes off of it. wherever i moved it, her eyes followed it. and that was the first time i'v seen her be able to follow something with her eyes. it's crazy watching a person do things for the first time.

verity at four weeks

now that i have a child, i am amazed at people who have children and still manage to blog. who has the time? not me. right now i often feel like i'm sleepwalking through my day. a LOT of days i find myself sitting on the couch in my sweatpants, having just made my coffee and eggs and it is noon. and i feel like i have not done anything yet. except fed and changed a baby of course.

anyway, i'd like to write more but i'm simply too tired. here are some pics of our sweet daughter with her grandma and great grandma. enjoy.

she's here

so on wednesday, my due date, i wrote a little prematurely that there was going to be no baby that day. i think i wrote that post about 7 am. and at 1:30 pm, my water broke. at 4 pm i started having contractions. and at 12:30 am on thursday morning, our baby daughter, verity pearl flanders was born. wow. here she is:



we got to the birth center at about 6:30 pm and my midwife lisa gave me some unfortunate news- no i was not as far along as i thought and no, i was not gonna have the baby in the next hour. she suggested we go walk around and get something to eat. so we went and walked through a nice neighborhood close to the birth center. it must have looked hilarious to people to see a very pregnant women having contractions on the sidewalk in front of your house. not to mention all the joggers that passed by us and a nine year old boy on a skateboard who i must have terrified. i mean, i was really having contractions. i threw up in front of someone's house. good thing we don't live in that neighborhood. then we went to food lion to get some snacks. had a few contractions in there. again, must have looked hilarious to people shopping in the store. i felt like i was about to die. but little did i know it was just the beginning.

we got back and a couple hours later, lisa checked me again and said i was complete and whenever i felt like pushing i should push. YES. this was music to my ears. and i felt like pushing. i pushed for about 2 hours. which felt like an extremely long time. with the help of mark, the most encouraging and amazing husband i know, and three excellent midwives, and god's grace and strength, i delivered her at 12:35 am thursday morning without any pain medication or epidural. it was thrilling.

today

so today is a big day. it's our 3 year anniversary. and also, i am due today. although i am pretty sure there is not going to be any baby action today. pearl seems to be taking her time. so we will probably go out to dinner at mama ricotta's to celebrate 3 yrs of marriage and i will order a salad and an entree AND a dessert and people will ask me, "when are you due?" and i'll say, "today," and they'll give me a wide-eyed look like, "wow, shouldn't you be at home in bed waiting for that baby to pop out?" i've been getting that look for the past week. people are so funny. as if being really pregnant means you shouldn't go to parties or to the grocery store.

i will also probably go to harris teeter today. twice. i mean it's super doubles week, and if i miss out today, i might lose my chance.

when i call people (i.e. my mom) i've started opening the conversation with, "hi, don't worry i'm not in labor." last week i called mark at work and he was with a customer but he answered and said, "are you okay?" and i was like, "yeah, i'm fine, you don't have to answer your phone when you're busy, i can leave a message." and he says, "uh, denise, you're 9 months pregnant. i have to answer my phone."

so any day now people, any day.

my husband's quirks

i figured now's as good a time as any for updating you on some of mark's quirks.

whenever he does laundry he sorts like items together even if they don't actually go together. for example, towels. there are bath towels and kitchen towels. he puts them all together, and whichever there are more of, that's where he puts them away. so i frequently find our bath towels and washcloths in one of our kitchen drawers. and i find our kitchen towels in our linen closet with our bath towels. i have learned to be okay with this.

so he also puts all white socks together. mine AND his. everytime i go to my sock drawer and can't find my white socks, i remember, oh right, he puts all the white socks in his drawer. i cannot figure out why he does this.

he is a man of extremes. for example, somewhat recently he decided he wanted to eat healthier. i said, okay, and made some recommendations, such as not eating two bowls of ice cream every day, not ordering chicken alfredo when he's out to lunch, etc. he said, "no, i need something harder than that." so he decided to go vegetarian and went and bought a bunch of vegetables to start making "vegetable smoothies." i consider myself a healthy eater, but his "smoothies" were disgusting. they looked like puke. (by the way, this phase lasted about 2 weeks.)

another extremes example - last night he thought he was starting to get sick, had a stuffy nose, etc. I recommended nyquil. He was like, no, I'll just eat some garlic cloves. So he ate three garlic cloves. PLAIN. that was his remedy.

he surprised me the other day though at his attention to detail in one case. i recently ran out of my usual shampoo, and bought a different kind (pantene pro-v) that i used to buy all the time. literally, the first day i used it, he says to me, "did you change shampoos? you're hair smells like what it used to smell like when you lived at the fountain." and yes, he was correct. after one day of the shampoo he could remember that the last time he smelled it was FOUR years ago.

how to shop at CVS

so i have gotten completely sucked in to the world of saving money. maybe i have been influenced by my money-saving husband. i'll let you know when i come up with my own business idea; then i'll REALLY be mark flanders' wife.

anyway, i want to tell you how to shop at CVS because some of you have expressed interest. basically, you can shop at CVS for all of your household items and toiletries and get most of them for FREE or extremely discounted.

here's how it works:

CVS has a loyalty card, like a VIC card at Harris Teeter. It's called an Extra Care card. Go into CVS and get one. You have to scan your EC card when you shop.

Every week CVS puts various items on sale and offers Extra Care Bucks (ECB) back when you buy them. for example, this week, Oral B toothbrushes are on sale for $4 and when you buy one, you get $4 in ECB. This is basically store credit that prints out at the bottom of your receipt. You can then use the ECB to buy whatever you want, even another Oral B toothbrush to get you more ECB.

So you walk into CVS, pay $4 for a toothbrush. Get a receipt for 4 ECB. Walk back and get another toothbrush, use your 4 ECB to pay for it and then ANOTHER 4 ECB will print out at the bottom of your receipt.

So the idea is to combine coupons and ECBS to make things free.

Here is what my trip to CVS this week looked like:

I started with 7 ECB from the previous week.
Transaction #1
I bought:
(1) Oral B Cross Action toothbrush $4
(2) Pantene Shampoo and Conditioner $3.49 ea
Coupons I used:
-.75/1 Oral B Cross Action PG 2/21
-$3/2 Pantene Products PG 3/07
-$7 ECB
Total Due: $1.21
Get Back $6 ECB ($4 from Oral B, $2 from Pantene)

Transaction #2
I bought:
(1) Gillette Fusion Razor $8.99
(1) Tide Detergent $5.97
(1) Tide Stain Release $3.99
Coupons I used:
-$4 off Gillette PG 2/07
-$1 off Tide PG 2/07
- $3.99 (free Tide stain release when you buy Tide detergent)
-$6 ECB
Total Due: $3.96
Get Back: $5 ECB ($4 from razor, $1 from Tide)

Transaction #3:
I bought:
(2) Pantene shampoo and Conditioner $3.49 ea
(1) Dawn dish soap $0.99
Coupons I used:
-$3/2 Pantene Products PG 3/07
-$5 ECB
Total Due: $0.56
Get Back: $2 ECB (from Pantene)

After tax the amount I spent was about $6.50 and I ended up w/ 2 ECBs to use next week.
Value of the items: $37.92
That is about 80% off.

AND here's the really good part: I am still learning how to do this, so it will get even better. I want to get to the point where I don't pay for anything. I am learning how to do this through Jenny, the lady who writes www.southernsavers.com and she notes on her website that in the Spring 2008, her Current CVS savings was – $757.89. Total spent in cash for Spring 2008 - $15.68. I mean, are you kidding me?

Go to her CVS-ing guide here: http://www.southernsavers.com/getting-started-guides/how-to-cvs/.

get your groceries 70% off

here's how:

super double coupons at harris teeter. they are my new favorite thing/addiction. normally ht doubles coupons up to .99 but this week, during "super doubles" they double coupons up to 1.98. Thus, if you have a coupon for 1.98 off of something, you actually have a coupon for 3.96 off of something. i know.

let me share what i walked away from harris teeter with on wednesday:

soft scrub cleaner (free)

soft scrub extra strength cleaner (.99)

2 cans planters mixed nuts (2.50 ea)

quaker oats (.45)

smart start cereal (.09)

2 glade plug-ins (both free)

diced tomatoes 28oz (.99)

suave lotion (1.14)

2 suave deodorants (both free)

italian sausage (2.95)

4 bunches of asparagus (2.50 total)

3 bell peppers (1.25 total)

bag of spinach (1.99)

16oz mushrooms (1.49)

whole grain bread (1.85)

borden cheese singles (.19)

6 dannon yogurts (.33 each)

2 johnsonville summer sausage (1.27 each)

the retail value of all of this was $96.28. and i paid....drumroll please...$25.96. if you have not taken up coupon-ing, please, i beg you- join me. (see www.southernsavers.com for how to do it.)

later on in the week i also got these items completely FREE: aquafresh toothpaste, 2 wholy guacamoles, 16oz sour cream and 2 bottles hot sauce. and 3 lbs of ground chicken for 50 cents.

EVOO for 50 cents

yesterday i bought this bottle of extra virgin olive oil at harris teeter for fifty cents. i thought i'd share how, so you can do it too. it is regularly $7.15 at harris teeter, but this week it was the e-vic item. (e-vic is a weekly email from HT telling you what the basically secret item is that's on sale for e-vic members. it's not advertised in the store. if you're not signed up, go to harristeeter.com and sign up.) so for e-vic members it's on sale for $1.99 this week. sunday's paper had a red plum coupon insert w/ a coupon for 75 cents off. HT doubles coupons, so whala- grand total was 51 cents exactly.

the e-vic sale ends today though, so you'd have to go today to get the deal. also, if you're not signed up for e-vic, once you sign up, you won't get the e-vic discount until next week's item.

thanks to my dear friend amy savage who introduced me to the new world of "coupon-ing." :-)

24 weeks

some updates. every time i tell someone i am 20-something weeks along, they say, "oh, you must be feeling great then! this is like the honeymoon period of pregnancy." false. that is not exactly how i'd describe it. basically the only thing i'm comfortable in is stretch pants and a sweatshirt. so i pretty much wear yoga pants and a hoodie whenever i'm not at work. i'm hungry all the time, so i carry various snacks with me at all times (grapefruit, almonds, yogurt). but i'm kind of going back to being nauseated by some things again. last night we had fajitas and half way through, i had to give mine to mark and eat cereal for dinner before i lost it. i'm pretty tired a lot of the time. and i have trouble concentrating on people talking to me for long periods of time. i can normally carry on a several-hour long conversation, but lately, i start to zone out after someone's been talking to me for like fifteen minutes. it's not that i don't want to pay attention to what they're saying, i just can't. mark probably appreciates this actually because he doesn't have to talk as much for me to be satisfied :-)

to report some funny things he's said lately:

mark: what are we doing for the superbowl?

me: going to brian and lauren's party, remember?

mark: oh yeah, when is it? saturday?

me: nope. it's sunday, just like all the other superbowls for the last fifty years

mark: please don't tell anyone i said that. 

mark: are we eating lunch with them?

me: yeah, i'm pretty sure we are

mark: well, should we prepare for the ulterior?

me: do you mean 'alternative'?

(this is actually from a while ago, but i laugh about it almost every day)

mark: (coldplay's viva la vida comes on the radio) i love this song. i just wish i knew what it was about.

aaron ohare: oh, it's about this guy who used to be like a king or someone really important, but then he lost everything. and now he's saying he sweeping the streets he used to own. 

mark: oh, cool. did you read about that online or something?

aaron: no, i just listened to the lyrics. 

pearl's new clothes

new clothes for pearl courtesy of aunt staci. notice the bird theme :-) (also, we haven't come close to naming her yet, pearl is kind of her pre-birth name.)