A wrap up...

2011 was the best year of my life so far. I can't even seem to remember what life was like before April 25 of this year, but that's just fine by me. God has worked on both Kris and my heart's so much this year. I've seen such a shift in priorities, and it's exciting. I pray that God can continue to work on our hearts, and help us to properly prioritize over 2012.

I know He has so many blessings in store, not only for our little family, but so many people around me. There are so many friends and family member's being lifted up in prayer, and I'm confident that God has big plans for 2012, and I can't wait.

This has not been the type of New Years Eve that I would have planned on, though.

Two nights ago I woke up most of the night and was super sick. I didn't go into work, but I still took Keegan Michael to daycare so that he could stay away from his sick momma, and so I could go to the doctor and come home and sleep until Kris picked him up from school. I went to the doctor, they gave me a prescription, ordered some blood tests, and I came home to sleep. An hour later, a phone call came through from Keegan's school. He had a temperature of nearly 102 degrees. I felt like such a bad momma for sending him to school with a temp, but honestly, I was so focused on NOT having him around his sick mom, that I didn't even realize that he already had a fever!

We went to the pediatrician and they gave him a Z-Pack, so he shouldn't be contagious within 24 hours. However, to be safe, we cancelled our dinner reservations for tonight at a fancy restaurant here in town. While at the doctor's, Keegan was weighed and had only gained a few ounces in the past month. Ugh! He eats SO much! So now we're busy loading him up with calories to try and beef him up and hopefully take him out of the 9th percentile... or at least help him to continue growing at a steady pace rather than continuing to slow his gaining (he had dropped from the 18th to the 9th in one month). Skinny little boy!

Yesterday afternoon Keegan came home and went down for a nap. Would you believe that baby slept from 4:00PM-6:00AM?! 14 HOURS! I did give him a bottle at 6:00PM, though, while he continued to sleep. He seems like he might be feeling slightly better, but he's still a little out of it. Here's hoping he's back to his normal self in time for church tomorrow!

So for tonight, Kris and I are getting carry out sushi and splitting a bottle of champagne and will probably fall asleep before midnight. Life is good.

Here's to a fabulous 2012.

Cheers from the Karolkiewicz'!

One of our favorite dinners in a while...

Last night I perfected one of our favorite easy dinners. So much so, that I feel the need to document it so I can refer back to it. I'm not quite sure what fancy name I want to give this made up recipe, so I'll keep it simple and call it...

Black beans and Corn Bread:

Ingredients:
1 lb of ground turkey (or beef, I prefer turkey, though)
2/3 a cup of sweet red peppers (cut up)
1 tbs of cilantro
1 tsp of lemon pepper
1 package of Jiffy corn bread mix
1 large egg
1 can of corn
1/2 cup of skim milk
1 can of black beans
1/3 a cup of shredded mexican cheese

Directions:
Brown the ground turkey with the cilantro and lemon pepper. Remove from heat and throw in the sweet red peppers. Mix in the can of black beans. In a separate bowl, mix the milk, corn bread mix, egg, and the strained can of corn. In a pyrex dish, spread the turkey and been mixture on the bottom. Top with the corn bread mixture. Bake at 375 degrees for about 30-35 minutes until the cornbread is cooked. Top with shredded cheese and bake another 5 minutes or so until it's melted. Serve with sour cream and hot sauce.

Mmmm. We LOVE this. It's so darn quick too. And makes quite a bit, so we always have leftovers, which is always a favorite over here!

Along with this, I made my own little "Avocado Salad."

For it, all I did was slice the avocado, and drizzle with lemon juice, a tiny bit of honey, and then sprinkle with sea salt. It was the perfect side dish and so yum.

Anyway, nice job, Mandy. Now you have this documented so you can never wonder why it's not as good as that one time you made it in December. HA.

Merry Christmas and Happy Eight Month Birthdayyy (sung to NSync's Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays) Ha!

Keegan Michael: You turned EIGHT months old on your first Christmas! I cannot believe it. You are growing right up, and we keep meeting milestone after milestone- and it never loses it's excitement! I am just as excited for you doing something new as I was when you were a brand new baby.

What a joy you are. You bring so much laughter and sunshine to Daddy and my lives- and ALL of your grandparents, aunts and uncles and extended family as well.

You wear mostly 9 to 12 month clothes right now. If I had to guess, I'd guess you're about 19 pounds. You don't have another doctor's appointment until next month, so I think my estimate will have to do! :) You also are finally in size 3 diapers. Big kid!

You sleep SO well. On the days we're home, you're very consistent with taking at least an hour nap mid morning, and at LEAST an hour and a half nap in the afternoon. Normally more like 2 to 2.5 hours. Mommy loves it because she can play with you when you're up, and know that she can get whatever she needs to get done finished while you nap.

At night you know it's about bed time around 6:45-7:00. Most of the time we stick with your "routine" but you do really well when we need to modify it to accomodate our plans. You typically sleep anywhere from 10-12 hours straight a night. Needless to say, Mommy and Daddy LOVE it and FINALLY feel rested after the hard time we had between 2-6 months when your ears hurt before you got tubes.

OH and BIG news in the past month...

YOU HAVE YOUR TWO BOTTOM TEETH! It was incredible because you were a little fussier- but it really didn't affect your sleep too much. You woke up for a couple of nights- but only at 10:00 or so while we were still up. Go, Big Boy!

I'm sure your top teeth are coming in soon- because you're still sticking EVERYTHING you get into your mouth as soon as you get your little hands on it.

You're still not crawling. We really think that you'll just skip crawling all together. You love to walk while we hold your hands, and you're starting to pull yourself up on everything. You just act like you think it's silly to crawl around on your hands and knees when you have two perfectly good feet! I will say I think you're a ways away from walking on your own. You just get too excited and wobbly! :)

You eat three meals a day, and in between have bottles every couple of hours. You are a big eater, but you must have your daddy's metabolism because it just doesn't seem to do anything! You love ALL baby foods. You eat the "meals" like Mac and Cheese (which is your favorite!) and Chicken and Turkey and Beef. You eat veggies like a champ and of course fruits. It's awesome that you're learning not to be picky. Your Dad and I made a concious effort to give you EVERYTHING and to make you eat all types of food because the last thing I would want would be to have to accomodate a picky eater! Ha!

We've just started giving you some table food cut up very small. You love kiwi, and you LOVE cheese. We like to give you some shredded cheese and you just can't get enough of it! It's so fun to see you growing into such a little boy rather than staying a baby. It used to make me a little sad, but instead, now it's just thrilling!

Santa Claus knew that you were a good boy this year. He brought you a new toy box for all of your toys that you got from him, and from ALL your Grandparents and Great Aunt's and Uncles! He also brought you a puppy armchair that you can sit in like a big boy, a dino push walker, an hour and a half long Yo Gabba Gabba DVD (which I'm sure Mommy and Daddy will be VERY thankful come our roadtrip in February!), and even brought you a fireman dress up outfit!

You absolutely LOVED unwrapping presents and having everyone watch you when you did that... You LOVE attention! What can I say, you come by it naturally :)

Mommy loves books for you, so she loved a few of the books that came home with us this year from all our Christmas celebrations: Your Auntie M is a preschool teacher and her FAVORITE children's book is Llama Llama Red Pajama- so she and Unkie gave you that, with a huge stuffed llama and red pajamas for YOU that your Unkie spend hours and hours looking for! What a great gift! You LOVE the rythm to it!

Also, your Grandma B gave a book to Daddy that I have read to you twice already. It's called I Know You Can. It's very similar to Oh the Places You'll Go by Dr. Suess. But, it's just a sweet little story about staying on your track and that it's okay if you have to find a new track to ride on, and that you should always be happy being a train and never wish that you were an airplane or a car. What a great analogy!

Keegan Michael... I say this every month, but what a JOY to be your mother. What a GIFT! Our God is SO good and has so richly blessed us with SUCH a sweet boy. We can already see His Hand working more and more in our lives, and already in yours. I pray that you follow His will for your life and that you will not have to be the type of person that has to learn your own lessons, but that you can learn from the mistakes of others. We love you, big kid.

Keegan got SO excited about EVERY gift he opened this year!

Carrying on the legacy of his great grandpa Bernie at the Anderson Christmas Eve party!

Its the most wonderful time of the year... I think. I dont really remember...

The title of this blog is the perfect example of my scattered brain the past few weeks. I'm not joking when I say that I'm pretty sure both Kris and I were googling symptoms of a brain tumor, or whatnot, after the sudden change in my scattered-ness over the last month.

I've misplaced everything. I wish I could implant magnets under my skin and onto my phone, keys and debit card. I'm finally realizing that if I don't do something RIGHT when I think of it- it won't get done. Super irritating!

Is old age really setting in this fast?!

On Saturday we went to Kohls so I could use some Kohls Cash before it expired. We walked around until I found something to spend this free money on, and got in the 20 something person long line. I rummaged through my purse to find the coupon on, and it was gone. I remembered getting it out and carrying it around, but apparently I dropped it. Merry Christmas to someone at Kohls, then! Enjoy your free money that this crazy lost.

From there we went to Kroger. Kris drove, but I used my Kroger Plus Card on my keychain to check out. The next day I couldn't find my keys and just KNEW the cashier didn't give them back to me. I called- no keys. Kris went in- no keys. I've been using my spare all week. Last night I finally rummaged through my purse again. There they were. Sitting right in the pocket where they should have been. I looked there about eight times, though!

I LOVE Christmas. I LOVE being a mom. I LOVE my job, and I LOVE that we have two showings ON Christmas Eve day because two families are THAT interested in our home. But- I can't wait until I get the hang of all this and can balance everything without feeling like I'm losing my mind!

Oh well. We'll make it work and laugh about my crazy brain in retrospect... (Well, AFTER I find what I'm looking for :). We're gonna try to take Keegan to see Santa tonight, so we'll make sure to post pictures on the blog soon!

But to tide you over, here's my little handsome boy:

Give a Gift of Love...!

Remember that song? I know my sister, Molly, will. "So we can give the gift of love, and the give goes on, the Father gave the Son, and the Gift goes on... the Son gave the Spirit..." Southfield Christian Christmas concerts, what, what?!

Well, first of all, I want to thank everyone for their concern, thoughts and prayers for my husband after last week's post . He's doing much better, but is definitely having to monitor what he eats closely. He's headed to the doctor on Friday- and until we hear differently, we're just assuming that it is diabetes and really watching his diet.

This blog is something on a totally different note, though. I posted a while back about my dear friend, Jacque, who has sacrificed a lot to go serve with the Peace Corp in Yampil, Ukraine. I had the opportunity to catch up with her last week for a long time- it was so wonderful! She is someone who I already view as super incredible. She's fun, smart and really inspiring. It's totally awesome because as soon as I think she can't get any better, each time I talk to her, it's obvious to me that she's becoming more and more selfless. 

When she first went to Ukraine to start teaching English, the first thing she was telling me was how hard it was because the textbooks provided by the Ukrainian government were really, really bad. She decided to put in a request for a grant through the Peace Corps to raise money for new text books. In the meantime, the Ukrainian government decided to ban the old books because of their poor quality- without replacing them. So now, poor Jacque is left trying to teach English in a foreign country (if you didn't know- which I didn't, they speak Russian there... TOTALLY different), without text books.

Essentially, the "grant" is that the Peace Corps gives permission to Jacque to list this monetary need on their website so people can make donations toward that project.

Would you please consider making even a small monetary donation? Whether it be $5.00, $10.00 or $15.00 even?

What's even better is that Jacque is not just asking for money. She's trying as best as she can to try and raise the funds herself while in Yampil. On December 16th she's organizing and hosting an American Christmas Camp where the Ukrainian kids can learn about how we celebrate Christmas in the good ol' US of A... Complete with a lesson on The Grinch!

Even if you're not able to assist financially, please start to pray that Jacque can raise enough money to supply all these students with textbooks.

Here is the link to the blog that Jacque has set up about this project so you can get to know the people that you'll be helping and praying for. If you'd be interested in making a donation, there's also a link on the right:

http://beapartner.wordpress.com/

Thank you, thank you for all of your help! :)