Full Disclosure

A lot of the blogs I read call for complete transparency. Well, here goes my attempt.

I live in a tiny house. Sometimes in this tiny house the toilet doesn't get flushed for fear of waking the barely napping baby. And yesterday was just one of those sorts of days.

Sometime just before bath time (thank goodness) I hear squeals of utter delight. I hear splashing water. I think 'oh snap.' I come running to find Cole living it up playing in the toilet. The toilet I had not flushed. The toilet that had tee tee in it.

So, how's that for my first attempt at full disclosure? Grossed out I'm sure.

Top 10

I know I've told y'all about how much I love to cook. My love of cooking also comes from watching those enjoy what I've prepared, and I must say I usually hit my mark. Well, that mark was hiding last night when I got ready to start on our meal.

Let me preface the Top 10 list (well, it's really just 7 things)...of what went wrong by telling you how special of a night I had planned for Wade. He's had a hard few weeks at work, and I wanted to do something to make him feel special and at ease on a lovely Friday evening. I cleaned the house top to bottom yesterday, I pulled out 2 fillet mignons, I even had beer mugs icing in the freezer. With all the prep work done, I decided to head over to my friend Caroline's for some much needed company. I wanted to give her a little something for helping with our paint colors for the house, and a chat sounded nice too. Just a quick visit. No need to tell anyone where I was headed or to bring along my cell phone, right. Wrong. Really, really wrong.

Caroline and I visited, and I had a delightful time. Cole watched Caroline's three adorable kids play and took a strong liking to Jack Bailey. Cole was content and I was relishing some adult conversation. After what felt like an hour, I jumped in the car to find it was already 6 pm. My heart sank, I knew what I'd created before glancing at my phone to find 8 missed calls and 2 voice messages from my sweet husband. Cole eats dinner at 5, so when Wade got off work early to surprise us and found no one home he began to worry a bit. When he started to call my phone with no luck, he got a little more worried. Then, when I missed Cole's dinner time by an hour, he panicked and pulled out the phone book to start calling hospitals.

So, my nice, easy, relaxing evening for my dear, sweet husband turned into a nightmare for him.

After all that, I tried to salvage our evening with a delicious dinner.

Then this happened. And I wanted to cry.


1. I burned our steaks. Absolutely, completely turned them into charbroiled hockey pucks.
2. Forgot to add more chicken stock to the orzo, so we had true al dente pasta
3. Let the water boil out of the steamer pot, so the artichoke burned
4. Under cooked the hard boiled eggs for the salad
5. Did not add any salt or pepper to the orzo
6. Made one of Wade's least favorite desserts, by accident...dark chocolate mousse, I mean very dark chocolate
7. Used all the milk making the mousse, so none for breakfast, which Wade has to have

To add insult to injury, Wade smashed his thumb with a hammer at work.

The Haircut

Who knew the first haircut was so traumatic...for mama. I realize it was time for the mop to be tamed, and I'd even told everyone it would be cut after his first birthday. Heck, I even received phone calls the week following Cole's big 0-1 from Big Un and Great Grannie asking if the deed had been done. So, on Saturday Wade and I loaded up and headed to Sweet & Sassy (don't judge...they do girls and boys haircuts. Plus, Cole seemed to enjoy being surrounded by a dozen little girls).

Cole was a trooper and did great...no surprise there. Me: I wanted to cry. I recognize that when Cole is 16 I'll be begging him to get his hair cut, but I just wasn't ready for what I saw; my sweet little baby turning into a little boy right before my very eyes.

Home Improvement: Part UGHHHH

the back of our house

nice, huh?

Remember when I said I didn't like home improvement projects. Let me rephrase. I hate home improvement projects. Living in an old home, there is bound to be an unexpected and unwelcome surprise with any project you tackle. So, it shouldn't come as a shock when we got exactly that this week. My dear husband was under the assumption that we had some minor water damage around our kitchen door, and that we would need to simply have the gutters pinned back up, and some tile removed to make way for a small section of rot in the subfloor to be replaced. Easy as pie. Can't wait. Only, I could have waited. One week and a few hundred dollars later, we have the gutters secured, that piece of subfloor installed and new (non-matching) tile and grout at our back door...not to mention a brand spankin' new support beam for the back of our house. You see, the majority of our house was being held up by what appeared to be a mixture of sawdust and mulch. Yep. The whole thing was rotten to the core. Our wonderful handyman jumped right in and fixed the whole thing, which also included removing and replacing part of the back deck and railings, adding new siding and painting (again), new tile. Oh, not to mention that whole 12-foot support beam.

(I know you want one...caramel, wedding cake, over the moon, chocolate high, strawberry and curious george, anyone? Yum! Yum! Yum! Thank you Dreamcakes.)

The other reason I hate home renovation projects is because you get stuck at home. Cole and I were cooped up in our tiny house for almost two weeks. To add insult to injury, the renovations were completed yesterday, but we were trapped inside the house. Why? The torrential down pour for one and the fact that our front door had been painted just prior to the rain. It seems when you paint something with that much water in the atmosphere, it takes a really long time to dry. Like 5 hours, and even then it's still sorta tacky to the touch. So, we couldn't do anything because I didn't relish the idea of leaving my front door wide open while we merely went to indulge in some cupcakes from Dreamcakes.

Almost forgot. We had a place in our living room ceiling that just needed a quick touch-up. Boy were we wrong there too. Once the hole was cut in the ceiling, drops of water pelted me and the handyman. A call to the air conditioner man, and all's well now. Oh, and the hole's closed up.

Today, Cole and I finally got out of the house. We've never had such a ball at the grocery store. Pathetic, I know. But we'll take what we can get after all this.

Amazing Amanda

It's so nice to be connected. I have a friend that also happens to be a great photographer. I like to call her Amazing Amanda because she's that cool. Above is just one of the beautiful photographs she took at Cole's party. Please visit her site to see a sweet slideshow she put together showcasing Cole's big day. When you see the video, you'll be calling her amazing too.

Happy Birthday Baby!

Our baby boy is ONE! Can you believe it? Neither can I. This year has flown by. I can say that only because I'm caught up with my sleep now. Cole has been such a wonderful gift to our lives.

To celebrate this milestone, we hosted a birthday party for Cole in the park. Lots of family and friends joined us, and some drove from out of town to wish Cole a very happy birthday. In true Douthit style, Cole loved his cake. My friend Amanda came out to take pictures. That explains why I have so few photos from the day.

Thanks to everyone that came to celebrate with us. We are blessed in so many ways.

Home Improvement

Don't you just love home improvement projects? Well, I don't. Probably because I don't like to spend money, and I especially don't like spending any more money on our 'starter' home that we've been in for almost 6 six years. That would explain why we are just now painting over the faded blue on our house. I had my gracious and talented friend pick out colors, and her choices were fabulous. Too bad the paint store didn't think so. They made me pick out new colors from their line. You can see my first attempt around the window. Not a good one. So, another trip to the paint store and another 5 samples later, I got the choices on the post. Much better. I had Wade pick his favorite combination, then I had another stylish friend give her opinion. I won't share the final choices until the house is done.

Cole was a big help pointing to his favorite colors. Please excuse the weeds in the monkey grass. Those are gone now.

Hard to Handle

There she is in all her glory. My dad's dream finally come true: A boat. A rather intimidating boat. I was witness the day she made her way into the slip. We cheered, took pictures and made video. It was an exciting day seeing my dad's big wish unfold. But, like the old saying, "what's that dog gonna do with the car when he catches it?" That is my dad's dilemma. Bless him, for it took 9 days to get up the courage (and enough experienced boating friends to feel sorry for him) before the boat moved from the dock. And, on that faithful day, daddy put a ding in his beautiful boat.

For now, I think he'll be happy swabbing the decks, tying knots and dreaming of that big blue marlin he's sure to catch on his boat.