January 26, 2012

Clare Quotes (3 Years Old)

While eating green chile talapia and spanish rice:
Clare: Mommy, Mommy, I got one more thing to tell you..... Sometime's I'm very difficult.
Me: (start laughing hard)
Clare: These things are sweet.
Me: (looking confused at the spicy fish) Sweet like candy?
Clare: Sweet like special candy

Bathroom Re-Do

After living in our beautiful house for over a year, we decided to spruce things up by repainting our master bathroom.  This is by far my favorite room in the house.  Mostly due to the almost nightly hot baths I like to take in the huge tub.  Here are some photos of the redo!





Who puts a towel bar completely across the room from the shower?  We took that sucker down. The drapey window treatment was left over from the previous owner that happened to match our green towels at the time, but it collected dust more than it ever added to the decor.



Kevin and I are very lazy and refuse to fold a towel onto a rod every time we take a shower. 
 So you can imagine how excited we were to find these "robe hooks".







We have extremely tall ceilings in our bathroom, and Kevin decided to accent it with the metal work seen here.  We've had that piece for years hanging from over our bed to over the mantle, but I'm really enjoying it here now.

January 20, 2012

The Looten's



40 Looten's under one roof = 2 Grandparents, 13 Aunts & Uncles, 17 Grandchildren, Married to 5 in laws, and 3 Great Grandchildren

When we all get together, you can’t hear yourself think. But smaller gathering just feel out of sync. 

We eat pickles of every variety with olives to match.  Brisket, tacos, lasagna, and fish fries by the batch.  Be careful if eating a jar of canned peaches, they may be pickled and leave you quite speechless.  Desserts are always never hard to find, with cookies and cakes and pies of every kind.

Card games of hand and foot and canasta are sure to arise, with plenty of dominoes and Mexican train that some despise. Scores and totals are kept tallied by name, but we sometimes loose energy to finish the game.

There are people that can fix any machine you can find, and thinkers that tinker with electronic devices of any kind.  We’re teachers and nurses; students and retirees. Sewers, photographers, cooks, artists, singers, and don’t forget our babies.  Our ages range from 87 to 1, with 7 kids the family was sure to get bigger in the long run.

We don’t always agree, as anyone can see.  Longhorns, Red Raiders, and Aggies at war.  Staunch republicans and democrats argue hardcore. Even though family is not something you choose, they are an amazing group of people that I would never want to loose.  My family is large, but still very close knit.  We all fit together as luck would have it.