Two little lines

Now that the cat is out of the bag I can feel free to share my adventure with everyone:)

Sorry for the absence since October but aside from being super lethargic, I'm talking "I have mono-no energy" type of tired. All I have wanted to do is share about our changing lives.

SO here is the update :
(Overview)

We moved everything into the house on Oct. 5, with 4 bakery trucks and lots of big guy help.

I found out the morning of Oct 6!!!!! With a house full of 5 grown men(not counting the hubbs) and C's parents on their way over for their Birthday cake and coffee!

(The details)

  Epiphany: No wonder I was breathing so hard going up and down the stairs! I remember thinking, " there is no way I am this out of shape! I take spin 2 days a week and body pump the other 2 days and I make mom lift weights with me!? WTH?? And why are my boobs hurting so much when I bounce up and down the stairs??" 

So since my nails we growing strangely long and I was having issues with the stairs I decided to just see if anything was out of the ordinary.

WELP Two little pink lines told me what was going on. SURPRISE!! :)

My poor hubby was then thrown soo off course when he walked into the bathroom to take care of
 man morning duties,
still in zombie mode,
 right after waking up,
to a scene of me being really, really weird.
And of course I couldn't refrain from keeping it from him- even though I wanted to be all cute and make pancakes or make a shirt for Abby- that plan just wouldn't work with a million guests staying in your house.

C 's reaction was the best!
His mouth dropped open, he looked confused but immediately came to me and gave the best hug and kisses and was actually excited.He kept saying "I'm going to be a dad?! I'm going to be a dad." I really didn't know what to expect from my macho man's man, and especially because everything was happening so fast, but,
that. was. awesome!

The hardest part was now going to be keeping it to ourselves until it was time to share.....

more to come soon.

Tschüss

City Luxuries

So we moved to the country.

Canyon Lake to be exact.
 Before you all go crazy with summertime plans and want to bring your boats and move in with us, you should know that we are not on the Lake part of Canyon Lake. 

We are in the boondocks part of Canyon Lake. 

The part where if it rains we will be flooded in because of low water crossings. (and this week this has happened)  

The part where you can shoot guns and no one cares. 

The part where you have to plan grocery shopping because HEB is not 7 min. away, Brookshire is but it has crazy expensive prices! 

Cable and internet options were Satellite. 

We have our own well and our own septic. 

 The country.

And with country territory comes "critters", of ALL kinds.

Like 

This GIANT AMAZON size  (aka Texas Giant) Centipede 

The black "antennae" at the top are not antennae at all!! Those are it's stingers.

And this LONG ribbon / garden / garner snake 

and these..... 

I get no sympathy just a "welcome to the country " answer.. 

Well there I have it. Welcome to the country. Get used to it! I can get used to it as long as these things are NOT  in my house. 

No country life is complete with out other animal adventures. Well let me re-phrase that to no Haltermann day is complete with out an animal adventure. 

I had to keep the cats in the garage for a few days to get used to the new house and smells etc. I feed them wet food so they would still love me after the traumatic adventure of taking them (all 3 at the same time) in the car for 45min... 

During their garage stay Hauss did this.

 Twice. I managed to coax him down the first time, but I didn't close the attic door and the next time he was up there for HOURS.

BC did this during the night 

And it dried. 

So now her poor legs are bald. 

And in the spotlight again is Hauss and his height defying obsession. 

He is up there everyday when I get home, and won't come down the same way he went up so I have to go let him in on the 2nd floor patio. 

All this aside, I do love it. C is living his dream! He builds a fire in his fire pit every night, and we leave the windows and doors open and hear nothing! We feed the deer and are making everything our "own" :) 

Until next time. 

Tschüss

How Abby Sleeps 2

I know everyone wants to hear about the new house but it will have to wait until next week. We are coo coo busy and I would like to take pics after we settle :) 

So for the time being please entertain yourselves with a post on 

"How Abby Sleeps"

This week the dog bed made a better pillow than a bed. 

I would also like to compile a list of things I say to Abby that I never thought would be coming out of my mouth. Maybe I will alternate between them both. 

I should have recorded the things kids said and/ or wrote to me while I was teaching! Those were priceless! I tell my mother all the time that she should make a book since she has been teaching way longer than I ever did!! 

Do any of y'all have funny stories of things you said to a child or pet, or things your child (or pet) said to you? Please share!! :) 

Tschüss

baking with lizards

Maybe the title is a little deceiving, it should say Baking AND Lizards. I did not bake a lizard. But I did think the title would catch your attention. Sorry for the deception ;)

The baking part first then the lizard:

Just like every other girl in the world, we all know that September means PUMPKIN time. Pumpkin everything! Coffee, cookies, cake, hand soap, candles, pancakes, roasted seeds etc, etc, etc. And I LOVE it!!

So in true fashion it was time to try a  new PUMPKIN recipe. 

Guess where I found one??!! Yep, Pinterest! BUT it was a Martha Stewart Recipe, so that makes it ok.

Found here: Pumpkin Woopie Pies 

I love woopie pies and I love pumpkin so how perfect is the recipe! 

I chilled the Pumpkin (the classic Libby's from a can ) 

Mixed the dry ingredients

Started mixing the pumpkin and all other "wet" ingredients and realized I was out of vegetable oil! 

What the heck! :( 

Well we have plenty of olive oil! but that has a unique flavor, so I'm not going to use that.

I know of a few other things you can use instead of oil: 

• butter (gotta save for the icing)  
• applesauce  ( don't have any) 
• bananas (too strong of a flavor and will clash with pumpkin) 
•  pumpkin (well that won't help! ) 
• yogurt (option 1)
• coconut oil (option 2) 

I bought coconut oil a while back with the intentions of incorporating it more into our diet and maybe even my skin care. So perfect time to try it out, right!? It replaces cup for cup.

After slowly adding all the dry mix to the "wet" mix, the dough started to get pretty thick and the more I stirred the thicker it became... (yes, ahhh ohhh )

As I scooped the dough onto the backing sheet I remember thinking "well these better flatten out once they bake, my chocolate chip cookies always do" 

In the meantime I made my famous cream cheese icing, which happens to be pretty similar to Martha Stewart's. 

It turned out normal (and perfect). 

The cookies are done baking and cooling, lets just flash forward to the finished product shall we? 

Yeah....... they are supposed to look like this: 

So I learned: 

1. Coconut oil does NOT replace cup for cup, probably needed more 
2. I should have know to add something when it became so think
3. Maybe Martha doesn't have the best recipe for pumpkin woopie pies 
4. I might be smitten for #3

They tasted good, but I'm going to try another recipe soon. And they will look like the ones above! I just know it! 

Now the lizard story.

As I was getting ready to leave this morning my cat Hauss (aka Hoss) was pawing at the carpet by a chair in my room. Of course I yelled at him to quit bc he could mess up the carpet. Stubborn little guy didn't listen so I went over to see what he was trying to get, I figured it was probably a little toy mouse or treat. By the time I got to the chair Hauss was completely under the chair!!??  I looked under the chair and couldn't see anything, so naturally I turn on the flash light on my phone and : 

THIS  BIG @$$ LIZARD WAS UNDER THE CHAIR!! 

You can imagine the screams and words that came out of my mouth.

So I ran away and panicked!

Did I mention that I was home alone? Well I was, and C was at his moms. I proceeded to call him several times but he didn't answer. I called my mom next, I knew she couldn't come help me but I was freaking out. My mom laughed a bit then told me to go get a shovel and take it out side bc I couldn't leave it there all day. Luckily C called back at that moment, and I thought "I'm SAVED".

 But I wasn't.

He was still asleep and not coming to my rescue. 

He said to be grateful that it was there because it eats spiders and scorpions.

 He said it wasn't a Komodo Dragon. 

So I sent him a picture! 

Apparently it's a Swift Fence (Hauss got his tail) 

Also, apparently, it was all up to me now to take care of this creepy huge lizard ALL by myself.

Because if not, by the time I got home it could be in one of my bags or in my bed and then we would have a health emergency on our hands. 

After a A LOT of prep talk to myself I did my best to man up. 

And he lives happily outside for the rest of his life. Or until Hauss finds him again. Hopefully he will be more swift now. 

I think I deserve a new pair of shoes. 

Tschüss

How Abby Sleeps

I decided to post a weekly special called (obviously) 

"How Abby Sleeps"

This dog, y'all, she thinks she is human!

She is, super crazy, FULL of energy and the most loving, sweet  and patient dog you have ever met! 

He daddy (C) is the meaning of her existence. 

I mean she loves me too, but I am pushed to the way side if he walks in. 

Anyways , let's get to the point: 

She sleeps in strange ways/ positions ALL. THE. TIME: 

Apparently it is more comfortable to sleep with your head in the handle of the car than on the car seat.. 

Precious, sweet girl! 

Have a great weekend y'all! 

[ps: feel free to add me to blogger, or on google+ or whatever way you want to follow me) 

Tschüss

and here we go again...............

Over a year later... Let's try dabbling again.

THE CHAOTIC SUMMER 

We decided to move, quit talking about it and actually do something, and sell our house and MOVE! AHHHHH.
Friends need to warn each other and have a coming to jesus talk with each other about such things. Because this is the first week in 3mts I have been able to breath and I don't have high blood pressure.Until Sep.30 and I'm sure it will resume.

So we made a plan, spend the next few weekend staging the house to sell, contact a Realtor, list the house, sell the house. Here is how it went down:
End of July 
-Clean, clean, clean , organize and box up unused stuff. C got a huge climate controlled storage unit and we -took extra furniture first
-work farmers market,box up more stuff, fix water heater that is located in the 150*F ATTIC
-packed up all of the kitchen stuff and left only essentials
Beginning of August
-meet with first Realtor, had great expectations, Realtor fell off the face of the earth.
-meet with 2nd Realtor, he is awesome, we will keep him!
-Panicked!
-Went to Lubbock to celebrate my gma's 85th bday with all my cousins (and mom and dad)

the 5 Mangrum cousins

-Is the house ready!! Let's purge more stuff
-filled a bakery truck (a 20ft truck)
-listed the House on Aug.8
-Had an offer at 9pm Aug.8
-became super excited!
-cried
Aug. 9
-Panicked again because we have to be out of the house in a month and have NO WHERE TO GO!
-cried
The rest of August 
-negotiated the contract.again. and again and again and finally settled
-spent the next three weekends packing the rest of our crap and moving EVERYTHING into storage! we are 28yrs old how do we have this much CRAP!! but we need it all.....  well except things C just didn't want to deal with , those things were tossed. I'm sure once we settle in again we will be missing RANDOM things.
-found time to enjoy a friends bachelorette party

Katlin's last Rodeo

-filled a bakery truck with our stuff TWICE
September
-found a house we both liked, made an offer, negotiated, negotiated, had inspections and surveys and appraisals done.
-moved completely out of our first home, and into our MOM's houses with 1 crazy dog and 3 cats and our left over stuff
-filled a bakery truck with more of our stuff, again.
-Closed on our First Home on Sep.12
-Euphoric feeling
-have not cried yet


We have 13 more days of living in separate houses , me with the cat's and C with the dog. It was too much for us to impose on just one set of parents since they all have animals too!
But it's kind of been fun for our relationship, it's like dating again... We schedule dates and sneak time with each other at work and have the anticipation of seeing each other at different times everyday, oh and we  don't have privacy anymore :)