Keeping in Teutsch

Wow, I can't believe it's been almost 2 weeks since I posted. I guess I've just been busy...sort of. I promise to not wait so late to post again and will just give you guys a little recap of the past 2 weeks.

Matt's parents came to visit and we had a visit full of eating! The weekend they were here, we went to dinner with Matt's cousin and her husband to a seafood restaurant, we took Matt's parents to lunch on that Saturday at LA PIZZERIA for their birthdays, and then we went to a new little Mexican place in town on that Sunday for lunch and then came back and had birthday cake.

Last Wednesday, Juliette and I headed back up to North Louisiana to spend some time with my niece and nephew at my parents' house and for me to help paint closets at the new house they just bought in Minden. Let me just say, spending two days straight with an almost 3-year-old, a 5-year-old and a 7-year-old--one day which involved a trip to a very crowded Chuck-e-Cheese--is about all I could take...talk about some natural birth control!!! :) Of course, I love the kids, but it's just craziness when they all get together and it's never a dull moment!

Matt started orientations and meetings this week at UL and will start classes on Monday, which coincidentally is Juliette's 3rd Birthday! I took Juliette to meet her preschool teacher at the UL Nursery School Lab yesterday and she is excited about starting school on the 31st. Her teacher's name is pronounced Nouse, but Juliette calls her Miss Mouse, because she has trouble pronoucing that N sound. The teacher said that all the kiddos call her Miss Mouse, though. I think it's really cute!

That's about all for now. Matt's parents will be here this weekend to help celebrate Juliette's birthday and so I'll blog more after the weekend is over and will promise to actually include pictures this time.

I will leave you with this little bit of entertainment, though! Yesterday, Matt jokingly said to Juliette, "You are crazy!" and Juliette said, "I'm not crazy...anymore!"

Wow! This week flew by and we really didn't do anything other than take the occasional walk, play outside and check out a couple of neat little grocery stores. One of them is The Fresh Market in the high-class area of River Ranch. It's pretty much a small scale version of Whole Foods Market. Matt and I were really impressed by it, but not by the prices, which we expected them to be high anyway considering the area of town. It's one place that we'll only be able to shop at occasionally for a special occassion.

The other place we checked out was Little Veron's, which is mostly a meat market. What I LOVE about this place, is that they have a lot of stuff made up that you can buy and just reheat, like Chicken Spaghetti. Matt got fish stuffed with crab dressing and said it was really good. I got a container of homemade Chicken Salad and it was just like my friend Jessica's chicken salad, which I love! She gave me the recipe for hers, but I think I might just buy it from there!

This is one of the jobs I did this week that I thought turned out pretty cute! I was a little worried when I first started working on it that it wouldn't be that cute, but once I put the ribbons on it, I breathed a sigh of relief! This is for a little girl (yes, her name is Bradley) to use for her backpack at school this year, so I hope her and her mom like it!
I have been searching all over for a cute initial garden flag that doesn't look like everyone elses (you know those fleur de lis flags that EVERYONE has)! Well, I found this one on this site by chance, really, and I couldn't resist getting it because it was a) different from everyone elses and b) really cute!

While waiting on my cute little garden flag to arrive, I've been looking for a wreath for the door that had some bright green in it. I finally just decided to try my hand at making a wreath out of nothing but ribbon (and of course, the round foam base). Basically, all I did was tie strips of ribbon in knots all the way around and then attached a ribbon on the back to hang it with. I even bought a little wooden "T" and painted it lime green, but after multiple tries I couldn't get it to stayed glued to it, so I just have to be happy for now with this. Of course, now that I've done this, I can't help but think how cute it would be to do one with Halloween ribbon, so I guess that will be my next project! (By the way, Matt says that the wreath looks "morbid" because it's black. I told him to leave me alone!)
We have a busy weekend planned. Matt's parents are coming to visit and we are going to take them out for their birthdays (Matt's dad's is Sunday and his mom's is next Friday). We also are going out to dinner with Matt's cousin tonight and I guess somewhere in there we'll have some birthday cake and maybe I'll get to sneak away and see JULIE & JULIA this weekend too, although I think Matt said he wanted to see it too, so maybe we can make it a date! I read the book BEFORE seeing the movie and before I even realized it was going to be a movie, which I really hate because now it's not going to compare to it. I'm going to be analyzing everything because I'm sure it won't follow the book all the way, which is the entire reason I never went to see MY SISTER'S KEEPER, because I read in an interview with Cameron Diaz that they changed the ending up and it wasn't like the book. Now why would you go and do that? Change the ending? That's not like changing a minor scene in the middle...it's the ending! It's what makes the book! Ok...I'll quit ranting about that, but if you saw MY SISTER'S KEEPER, but haven't read the book, I encourage you to read the book and find out how it really should have ended!

Off to check on Sleeping Beauty! She fell asleep in the chair watching THE INCREDIBLES for the gazillith time this week and she doesn't have a Pull-Up on, so I'm hoping she doesn't have an accident while sleeping. She has been doing awesome going to the potty...I just haven't been brave enough to put her to bed without Pull-Ups. I'm not quite ready for the middle of the night sheet changing! :)

Have a good weekend!

They say that every 7 years your tastes change. Maybe this is the reason I've suddenly stopped picking tomatoes out of stuff (although I still don't like them all by themselves or in really big chunks), started craving dishes with actual strawberries in them instead of just the flavoring and embraced the idea of eating or going near anything that had basil pesto in it.

This summer we've (or in some cases, just me) have been trying new dishes, so I'd thought I'd share some of my new favorites:
Have I mentioned that my 10-year high school reunion is only about 10 weeks away and I've been working on losing as much weight as I can before then? I'm thinking I should probably find some new favorite things that don't involve eating, huh?

We really haven't done a lot this week other than conduct Potty Training Boot Camp (more on that later), so this is just going to be a blog of random things.
Is this backpack not the absolute cutest thing?? I meant to add this to my blog about Baby Gap and forgot to load the picture on there, but really want to show you how adorable it is. It isn't like Juliette needs any more bags, but it's tempting to buy it because it's just so darn cute!

Look what I've been doing this week and I am SO OVERJOYED that I have gotten these done! Sure this doesn't look like a lot and it's because this isn't all of them. A lady ordered 15 custom made towel wraps as late graduation gifts. Custom made means that not only did I have to monogram them, but I also had to sew ribbon on them, so it took a little time. I thought they turned out really cute, though. (On a side note, who buys graduation gifts for ALL of their daughter's friends? I'm not complaining because it was the biggest order I've ever gotten, but I just think I'd have to draw the line at like only her very best friends or something like that if it was Juliette!)

Wanna know what Juliette has been up to this week other than potty training? Well, she's almost 3, so we thought it was about time she started doing some chores around the house, so we gave her mowing duty. Just kidding! :) This is a bubble mower, that doesn't shoot bubbles like it's suppose to. You can read more on how she got the mower and see a video on Matt's blog.

And now for the BIG news! We "think" Juliette is potty trained!!! (Knock on wood!) Here she is showing off her big girl panties. We started off Monday with just putting her in panties and taking away the Pull-Ups and she has only had two accidents this week and the last two days she's been telling us when she needed to go to the potty. We have been putting her in Pull-Ups still at nap time, night time and when we go out, but she's been doing great at going to the potty in public and not going in her Pull-Up. Now, poopin' in the potty isn't coming as easy and I thought I was about to have a constipated kiddo on my hands until she decided yesterday that her tummy just hurt too much and she broke down and went in the potty, so we are happy about that! I think she's still a little unsure of that part of it, but she definitely got the hang of peein' in the potty. She is almost 3, so it's about time, huh? Of course, I guess we did bribe her quite a bit between an array of Dollar Tree toys and candy that I put in a basket on the back of the potty as a "grab bag" for every time she went, as well as the promise that if she pooped in the potty we'd take her to the movies today to see the guinea pigs (G-FORCE movie), so I guess that might have helped a little!

And, since my other camera still hasn't been fixed, I had to use my video camera to take the above pics and since I'm just down downloading this video, I thought I'd share it with you guys. It's a hoot! It was from this past Christmas (notice how much hair Juliette has grown in just 7 months time) and it is of Matt, Uncle Chad and Juliette playing Rock Band while my niece Madison looks on. Matt is playing drums, Uncle Chad is playing guitar and Juliette, well, she is the singer! I laugh everytime I play this video and this is the way she sings EVERYTIME Matt lets her play Rock Band with him, although recently she's been partial to playing the drums, which is cute, but not nearly as entertaining as her "singing"!

Well, we are back from our Tour of the Families, but my camera is broken right now and I can't get the pictures off of it to do a post. So I thought I'm do a little virtual shopping instead and point out some of the cute fall clothes at some of my favorite shopping spots for Juliette!

You know what is fun about this time of year when you have a small child? You get to buy them a new wardrobe! Because you know...they grow like weeds! Unless, of course, you don't like to shop, and then it's not fun to you, but I love to shop, especially for Juliette!

Matt, Juliette and I took a little excursion to the mall the other day to check it out. It's older than Pecanland Mall in Monroe and the food court wasn't nearly as big (nor did they have a carousel), but the one thing that I was thrilled to find was that they have a Baby Gap. And Baby Gap is sporting some super cute clothes for the fall. Here are some of my favorites:







I love Fall the best and can't wait for this hot summer to get over with!

As I mentioned earlier, late last week my sister, nephew and younger brother came to visit. It rained A LOT, so basically all we did was ride around and point out the highlights of Lafayette and eat out. My sister and nephew left on Saturday morning, but my younger brother is staying until tomorrow since we are going to visit our parents. We love having Uncle Chad around and he is actually looking for a job down here and is going to live with us for a little while when he first gets down here.

Aside from the almost daily rain, we have had some awesome weather temperature wise. We spent two afternoons at one of the parks here in town that is nice. Not only do they have the standard kids' playground equipment, but they've got a duck pond (with a ton of ducks), a pool, tennis courts, baseball backdrop, frisbee golf course and plenty of shade trees. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my camera with me both times, so I have no pictures of our recent trips to the park.

I'm still job searching and there are no prospects right now. I've applied to a lot of places, but it seems I'm mostly overqualified or not qualified at all for the jobs in this area. I am working on getting some of my monogramming stuff on Ebay and Etsy, though, in hopes that that will help increase sales some and have had some decent size orders recently, so I've got enough to keep me busy for now.

We are leaving tomorrow to head up to North Louisiana to spend a few days with each of our families. I've already put my request in to my mom on what I want to eat! :) I'm looking forward to being at my parents for a few days. This will be the first time all of us (including Matt) have stayed with my parents overnight. Usually, we just go for the day or Juliette and I go by ourselves, so I'm looking forward to being able to spend a longer amount of time with them! This weekend, we'll be with Matt's parents, so we are banking on them keeping Juliette (which will not be a problem) so we can go on a date. That is about the only time we get to go on dates.

House wise, I still haven't decorated the living room and the sunroom is mostly cleaned up...I just need to do a few more things before taking pics. I promise those pics will be up next week when we get back.

So you aren't left without a picture on this post, here is a recent one of Juliette from before we moved with all her "princess jewelry" on!

Have a great week and weekend everybody!

It's Thursday and that means it's time for our first Lafayette Tour of Pizza Places! (Remember in an earlier post where I said there were a ton of pizza places here and we were going to try a different, local one each Thursday night?) Anyway, well we cheated a little bit tonight, because we've been to this place before, but my brother Chad, my sister Donna and my nephew Austin came to visit and this was where Chad wanted to go. Dean-O's is great because you get to make your own pizza...from the crust up! Don't want pizza sauce? Then you can get cheese sauce instead and the list is LONG of all the things you can put on it too. Pretty much anything you can think of. And, if you aren't that creative, they also have some specialty pizzas for you to choose from...a lot of them with a Cajun twist that includes crawfish, shrimp, crab, and lots of spices! I'm not very adventuresome in the pizza department and like to keep mine simple, so the first time we ate here, I just got pepperoni. It was good, though. Chad LOVES the cheese sauce and I have to admit that it tastes great and will probably get it next time. If you are ever in the Lafayette area and looking for a good pizza place, I think this one won't disappoint!