When I got in bed last night I thought to myself “Man, that was a busy weekend.” Yet it wasn’t super busy per se but rather just full. We didn’t have a list of things we HAD to do. Instead we just did things we wanted to do and took advantage of the warm winter we’re having.

Liv and I went to the park alone for a little date. The Man and Hannah had a birthday party to go to so we had a little fun of our own.

She wanted to go in the baby swing but I convinced her she can sit in the big girl swing. She was so scared at first and didn’t even want me to push her but then she got brave.

She swang for a while and let me push her higher and higher each time.

The slide has always been her favorite thing though and after a while of swinging she told me “I done. I wanna slide.” She went up and down that slide, each time yelling “I’M GONNA DO IT AGAIN!”

That evening Hannah came running in asking if she could help our neighbor with her bake sale. I looked outside and sure enough the little girl next door that Hannah plays with a lot was having a bake sale in her driveway.

I mean, really? How cute is that?

Yesterday morning the girls had breakfast like they always do on the weekends at the little table in our living room while watching Spongebob.

I saw the sun shining through that window so perfectly and it was then that I decided we were going to go feed the ducks at the pond. The last time they didn’t care at all about the bread and while I knew they probably wouldn’t again this time, it was the point behind it that mattered.

By the time I got Livie out of her carseat the big girls had already thrown the hotdog buns in the water. Whole. I got there just in time to see the last bun sinking in the water. Livie didn’t even get to throw any. I kind of got upset for a second because I had this whole image in my mind of getting pictures of the girls playfully throwing pieces of bread in the water and MAYBE even ducks coming to eat it.

If I know anything about parenting it’s improvising. So many things happen that aren’t planned and you just have to go with it and change the plans. So I told the girls to just go run around and have fun doing what they wanna do.

What I learned? They don’t really care so much about feeding the ducks there. Actually, they don’t even care about the ducks at all. They cared about running around doing what they wanted to do….

Like finding seashells…

Or picking flowers…

Or jumping around on a hill.

The day turned out to be pretty good even if the ducks didn’t care about the bread…and the girls didn’t care about the ducks.

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By the way, OCD Livie is still around.

I find more and more toys lined up by each other perfectly and facing the same direction.

If I move anything and she sees me she freaks out and tells me to not touch her stuff. It takes everything in me to not laugh when she does it. She’s highly disturbed by me moving any of her things she’s lined up. So I leave them and take pictures instead.

Monday Instagram:

I’m @TheBecksB if you want to follow my addiction.

Today was a good Monday to follow suit from the weekend. Enjoy your week.

I was born 30 years ago today. Today is my 30th birthday. For me, 30 is huge. I know that when I wake up tomorrow my life isn’t going to drastically change. Instead, the drastic changes happed throughout my 20s and now I get to build on all of that through my 30s.

I was 20 years old when I got married. Exactly 3 months after my 20th birthday I walked down the aisle and told The Man that I promised to be with him through thick and thin. We said our vows in front of God and our families and 3 hours later we were on the road to move to Houston. I never expected to have 10 days to plan a wedding but in life you should always expect the unexpected and when The Man got the call about being hired for the police department down here we quickly decided to get married and start our lives together down here.

That was THE BEST decision I ever made in my whole life.

I was 20 years old and made such a huge, life changing decision that ended up making my life as amazing as it is now. It makes me tear up to think of NOT making that choice. When I think about how different my life would have been had I not said yes to marrying The Man and moving…well I can’t even stomach it. I have the best in laws anyone could ever ask for. The Man is a fantastic husband and father. I have 2 beautiful girls because of that choice. And now? I’m not even working anymore because of that choice. I was 20. I started my 20s with a bang, that’s for sure. And now 10 years later, I reflect.

I was 21 when I had Hannah. I was 27 when I had Livie. My babies, my pride and joys, my LIFE, were born in my 20s. Everything that matters to me came about in my 20s. Seems so young sometimes for such big things to happen and yet, I can’t imagine it any other way.

I overcame things I never thought I could in my 20s. Marital problems…struggles with raising my girls…losing friends…problems at work…having a sick mother that lives so far away…losing my dad.

I can’t even type that without tearing up. It took me a long time to get here too. When my dad was alive, we barely spoke. I was so angry. I talked about it last year on my birthday. Last year a couple months before my birthday I finally forgave my dad and with that forgiveness came a deep emptiness. I suddenly really, REALLY missed him and craved his presence. I would have given anything to see him again…to hug him and tell him face to face that I miss him dearly and that I’m willing now to give him another chance. Except he’s not here anymore. There will never be that opportunity to give him another chance. That? Kills me. And so in my 20s I hated my dad, lost my dad, forgave my dad and loved my dad.

My dad died on my birthday 4 years ago. Every year my birthday is bittersweet. I love birthdays and any time I get a chance to celebrate someone’s birthday I get so excited. I used to get excited for my birthday ever year. I still do but not like before. There’s always a sting when I think about my birthday because I’ll get excited and then I think, oh yeah….Dad.

But with this birthday I feel some sort of renewal. It’s a new decade of life. I’m established. I’m settled. When I turned 20 there was so much unknown. I knew I ‘d marry The Man but I didn’t know when and I sure as heck had no idea when we would have kids or if we’d ever move. And now I look back at all that has happened in my life in the past 10 years and I smile. I think about the young, immature 20 year old me and all that that girl didn’t know…all that that girl dreamt of.

She got all of those dreams. I got all of those dreams. Me. Got them all. Every single thing I wanted to accomplish by the time I was 30? I did. How blessed I am. So, so grateful.

Today I turned 30.

I am happy.

Most of the days that I’ve been home since I quit work I’ve been so busy. I knew my days would feel busier than when I worked because Liv keeps me busy and I knew housework would be nagging me til I did it. Like I said on Monday, I’m playing major catch up this week so that next week I only have little bits to do daily and not huge multiple hour long projects like I do this week.

Enter Livie’s room. Livie still sleeps with us so her room is a guest room…although for us, lately it’s been a storage room because we never have guests. Some time after Christmas I decided I was sick of putting away laundry. It took too much time out from my weekends which were my only free time. So, eventually, Livie’s bed looked like this.

I know. Most of you cringe and wonder how in the heck I lived so long with our clothes like this. I’m not one to let things pile up and I’m definitely not one for chaos BUT suprisingly I was able to ignore this pretty well as I only went in there once a day to get clothes for us to wear. I hated digging through the piles but you know, it was better than spending time putting away our clothes when I could be doing other things like hanging with my family. Finally last week I vowed to tackle this craziness. I figured it’d take an hour tops and I’d be good to go for the rest of the day.

Wrong. I noticed that all of the clothes in Livie’s closet that WERE hanging up were all 2 sizes too small. Same with Hannah’s closet. This called for a major spring cleaning. I cleaned out their closets. I bagged clothes for goodwill. I put away all of those clothes that were on the bed. It took me 2 and a 1/2 hours to do this all. I filled up 8 goodwill bags and got it all done and when I was finished, it looked like this.

Kicking ass and taking names. Oh yeah baby.

While I was feeling all domestic I decided that I’d make a nice dinner. I was craving meatloaf so that’s what I made. I had to lighten it up though to be Weight Watchers friendly and since so many of you are into eating better too, I decided to share my recipe with you! I also made a lighter version of roasted potatoes too, by the way.

So I started with 1 pound of ground beef. I used 1/2 a pound 96% lean and 1/2 a pound of 93% lean so it’d be a bit juicier. I then added 1 packet of Lipton beefy onion soup mix, 10 low fat Saltine crackers, a couple cloves of garlic, 1 egg, and about 5 to 7 tablespoons of ketchup or however much you want to add to make it pretty moist. I seasoned with salt and pepper too. I mixed it all together and formed it into a loaf and put it in my loaf pan.

Now this is the part that makes this bad boy so awesome. In a separate bowl, take 3-4 tablespoons of brown sugar and add ketchup to that (around 5 or so tablespoons)…enough to make it smooth and not gritty anymore. It’ll act as a paste and you pour it on top of the meatloaf in a pretty thick layer.

Cover with foil and bake at 350 for 1 hour. Remove the foil the last 10 minutes to make that glaze super delish.

For the potatoes I just used the little fingerling red potatoes and cut them into small pieces. I sprayed a foil lined cookie sheet with cooking spray and laid the potatoes on top. I then sprayed cooking spray on top of the potatoes so they’d brown nicely. I seasoned them with salt, pepper, garlic powder, and Italian seasoning (comes in a little jar like the garlic or pepper does). I put those in the oven with my meatloaf at 350 as well for 45 minutes.

The finished product was so amazingly delish. Yes, I’m tooting my own horn.

The meatloaf served exactly how I described here is 6 to 7 points for 1/4 of the loaf…or 1/4 pound. The potatoes are 3 points for 5 of the little red potatoes so I usually grab 10 and cut those up so I know half of the baked results is 3 points. Not bad for a 9 to 10 point meal, right?

And when I’m not doing all of this stuff? I’m hanging with her all day long.

Yesterday I left my hair curly again. Livie woke up from her nap, grabbed a strand and said “Aw mama. Pretty hair.”

Best part of my day.

A day for me. A day for all of us moms. This weekend I thought about my friends who are still waiting for their babies…still waiting for their own Mother’s Day. I thought about women who have lost their babies, either through miscarriage or death after they’re born…my heart broke for them. I looked at my babies and I realized that I may not always TRULY see it but I’m probably one of the luckiest mom’s out there.

I get to wake up next to this baby every morning. Granted, weekends are the only days I can snuggle longer with her but still…it’s amazing. I’ll miss her baby smell when she gets bigger. I’ll miss her pulling clumps of my hair out while I sleep to wake me up. I’ll miss her smacking me in the face to get my attention while I’m dozing. I’ll miss her happy smiling face when I get out of bed and she realizes we’re going downstairs to get her a bottle and some cheerios.

I’m lucky..no, BLESSED to have these babies in my life. Hannah may not have her baby smell anymore, but she has other smells. The smell of freshly applied Barbie lipstick before we pull out of the driveway. As you know, a girl can’t leave the house without lipstick on. At least she can’t. I do almost everday but already at the age of 7 she cares about having some make up on before leaving. I used to think she was too young for this…but actually, I kinda like it. I caught her with her lipstick brush as I loaded stuff in the car Saturday. I finally caught it forever on my camera. My little make up diva.

Livie and Hannah. My 2 girls who although they’re 6 years apart, can still play together. We went to Hubs’ dad’s house again this weekend and they have a trampoline. I mentioned last week how much Hannah loves it. Livie saw how much she loved it and wondered what was so interesting about it. Well this weekend, she figured it out.

My girls loved it. They were both so happy.

So as we headed down to the beach yesterday for our annual pictures with Hubs family I couldn’t help but smile. And get excited.

I think about how 2 years go, it was just me, Hubs and Hannah. How last year, there was the 4 of us…and Livie was just a tiny baby…barely 3 months old. Things change so much in just a year.

Yes, even Hubs in our pictures on this blog changed from last year I love this picture…even if I have to blur his face. I may not be able to show him to y’all but he’s there everyday for us….with us. Our little family with our baby girls who are so beautiful and so happy. I hope you all truly had a fantastic Mother’s Day.

This weekend while fixing my hair I noticed a glimmering strand that I had not seen before. I got closer to the mirror and stared. And inspected.

WTF? Is that? No. It can’t be.

So I did the only logical thing I knew and pulled the strand out for further, closer investigating. Honestly, the strand looked blonde to me. Then I told myself “Becks. You are Puertorican. You do NOT have blonde hair.”

Then I threw the hair in the sink and just stared at it. Surely it wasn’t a gray hair. SURELY this can’t be happening already. My mom, aunt, and their mom all got gray hair by 30. I knew this was coming. I thought I was ready for it. I know it’s just hair and it can be dyed. But y’all don’t get it. I already spend so much time blow drying and flat ironing this hair. I have SO MUCH of it and it’s kinda high maitenance. So I don’t dye my hair. I don’t highlight my hair. I get it cut like once a year. Twice at the most. I just don’t have time for anything else than the normal weekly things I do with my hair. Occasionally I’ll curl it. That’s it. So the thought of dying my hair once  amonth is like seriously pissing me off.

Seriously.

So the next day I went to a family birthday party. The cute little 2 year old party I talked about in the previous post. I decided to pull my friend aside who is my age who has had gray hair for a few years now and has been dying it. I knew she would sympathize with me. I went to this friend for comfort. I told her about what happened. Told her I THINK I found a gray hair but I’m going to live in denial about this for a while longer until I find another one…preferably in like 10 years. Her response?

“I found a gray hair down there not too long ago. That was definitely more traumatic.”

Besides the fact that gray pubes had NEVER occurred to me, why on earth would she tell me that after I just had a minor break down about ONE gray hair on my head?

I ended our friendship that day. She obviously hates me and wanted me to have a full blown meltdown at the party.

…….

Nah. We’re still friends. I love her. But clearly, my spectrum of denial has got to expand. And it has. Along with everything else I ignore I will continue to ignore the fact that I may or may not have found a gray hair. I have no problem turning 30. Gray hair and dying my hair? Not really a fan of at the moment.