Homework time...

More Easter recipes...

Yummy carrot cake

Yummy spinach salad

Saving this

for later. I think I'm going to try making these rolls for Easter dinner...

Amelia had a cheer leading exhibition last weekend. At first she was really nervous when she saw how big the arena was. It was held at a local state college arena. She had fun though.

Tent Building!

My kids love to build tents. It's something we do a lot in the summer when it's too hot to play outside. So for Spring Break, Amelia asked if they could make a tent and sleep in it. So, we did. Anthony only lasted a few hours before he came and got in bed with me, but they had fun anyway.

Our new toy..

The new toy at my house is the Roomba. Now this is really a gadget for me, I can turn it on once a day and know that all the floors will get fairly clean. With kids and a cat and an older house, (with an old furnace/ac system) it seems like the floors are always dusty and have cat hair, and cheerios, and I hate sweeping and vacuuming every day. So anyway, I got a roomba and I love it. That wasn't the point of this post. The point is my kids also love the Roomba. They've named it. (Roomie the roomba of course!) Amelia thinks it's our new pet. I usually run it in the morning when she's at school so because she's home on spring break this week she's getting to see it work more. The kids have spent the last half an hour chasing it through the house. Now Amelia is singing songs about it. I love my kids. :-)

In hindsight it's probably a bad idea to argue with a CHP officer...

Last weekend I'm driving home from Orange County. It's just me and the kids in the car. We're driving along and I notice a California Highway Patrol officer following me. So, I check that I'm driving the speed limit and I try not to drive like a crazy person because I'm always a little anxious when I'm being followed by a cop. So he pulls up along side me for a while, then gets behind me again, then his lights go on. He's been next to me or behind me for like ten minutes by now, so I'm not too surprised to get pulled over. I make my way to the side of the freeway. Of course as I'm pulling over he gets on his loud speaker and tells me to take the next exit. So I do. At this point, Amelia is in a full on hysterical panic. After she heard him on the loud speaker she kinda went a little nutso. I'm convinced the girls suffers from kindergarten anxiety already, and things that are big loud and scary kinda freak her out a bit. So I pull to a stop and roll down the window. (Okay really I pushed the button to get the window down, really who rolls down a window anymore?) Amelia is still panicking in the back seat and Anthony is just asking (over and over and over again) what's going on Mama? I'm trying not to panic cause I wasn't doing anything wrong, and so I'm a bit concerned about why I got pulled over.

So he walks up to the window and I tell him to please convince my kid that I'm not going to jail, which he sort of tries to do a half ass job of, but whatever. So then he proceeds to tell me that he pulled me over because I was on the phone. First, I look at him like he's stupid, then I tell him, "No. I wasn't." He says, "yes, you were." And we go back and forth for a few minutes. I'm completely flabbergasted, as I haven't been on the phone, talking or texting or even picked up my phone, since I left the party in OC. By this time he's asked for my ID, which is in the trunk, so we're standing behind the car, on the off ramp at Green River. The kids are in the car in full on meltdown mode. So after we argue for a few minutes, he asks if I have a phone with me. I say yes, and offer to show him my call log. Of course he checks it out and sure enough my last call was an hour previously. Somewhere in there he asks if I'm sure I wasn't on the phone back by some exit. I didn't even get on the freeway until after that on ramp. I think this is when he figures out he made a mistake. He gets a little embarrassed, and apologetic, and keeps saying, "I could of sworn that was you on the phone."

He then looks a little sheepish and tells me I have two choices for getting on the freeway. I can either drive a few miles out of the way and turn around, or if I think I can make it safely, I can just cut across three lanes of traffic right in front of where we're parked on the shoulder and onto the freeway. Of course I chose option 2. How often do you get permission from the highway patrol to drive like a crazy person?

In hindsight, I probably shouldn't have argued with him. But it all made me wonder, how often does that stuff happen? I think there was probably another car similar to mine with a driver on the phone, the CHP was following, then I got on the freeway in between and he pulled me over instead? Who knows. I've always wondered how they keep track of which car is speeding, especially when they are pulling out from the side of the freeway. It's not like traffic is ever light on the 91... At least it was talking on the phone and I could prove it wasn't me. If it had been speeding or something I think I'd have been out of luck...

I love dirt!

(Lets just ignore the ratty swing cushion in the background. Making a new cushion is one of my upcoming projects. I'll get to it. One of these days. Really I will.)

Menu Plan Monday:

Monday: Breakfast for dinner
Tuesday: Wheat Pasta, red sauce, broccoli, salad
Wednesday: Pizza night or leftovers
Thursday: Lighten up Pan Fried Chicken corn on the cob, carrots, cucumbers, peppers, dip
Friday: Turkey Tacos
Saturday: Baked Cheddar chicken, brown rice,
Sunday: Pork Chops (from last week that we never got to)

Awards...

Last week Amelia's school had an awards ceremony for the second trimester. Apparently she has been busy at school and has reached all of her goals for the school year, so she got three awards. She was so very proud of herself.

Menu Plan Monday:

Dinners this week are a bit of a hodge podge. I let the kids each pick a meal. I'm trying to clean out the freezer again and have a lot of random stuff in there (edemame and pork chops for example). I'm making less "yummy" stuff and more healthy stuff these days, so a lot of our favorites aren't making the cut. I'm trying to find a happy medium between the Amish breakfast casserole (a billion grams of fat I'm sure) and the chicken breast and brown rice type meals that aren't J's favorite. I've found some good stuff in cooking light magazine and on their website (everyone loved the Wasabi and Panko crusted Pork I made a few weeks ago.) I'm learning that it's mostly about moderation, and loading my plate with veggies anyway. That's a whole other post though. Here is our menu for the week.

Monday: grilled cheese (Amelia's request) broccoli, salad, tomato soup
Tuesday: Wasabi and Panko-Crusted Pork with gingered soy sauce, edemame, sweet potatoes, salad
Wednesday: pancakes (Anthony's request), scrambled eggs, fruit,
Thursday; turkey Meat loaf
Friday; chicken, brown rice, mix veggies.
Saturday out for dinner
Sunday amish breakfast casserole

Rainy days...

Ribbons everywhere!

You may remember that I used to make and sell bows. Mostly I made them for Amelia and my friends' kids. I don't sell them anymore, I mostly just make them for Amelia, but my ribbons are kind of a mess. I just found this great idea for ribbon storage though and I'm definitely stealing it for my ribbons. Just have to figure out how to make it on a bigger scale. Or maybe I can stack them somehow....

Menu Plan Monday

Monday: Tacos
Tuesday: Pizza night
Wednesday: Chili Spiced Chicken Soup with Stoplight Peppers and Avocado Relish (Longest soup name ever!)
Thursday: Breakfast for dinner

Friday: Wasabi and Panko-Crusted Pork with gingered soy sauce
Saturday: Spinach Pasta Bake
Sunday: Leftovers

So Amelia's latest activity is cheer-leading. I think this might actually be her "thing" as she gets to dance around, memorize stuff, yell and do cartwheels. So far we've tried ballet, she liked it for a while but got bored eventually; gymnastics, I don't think she was quite ready for that one, and then we moved; and soccer, she liked the idea of it, and the practices, but lost interest really quickly at the games. But now she's started cheer leading and so far she loves it. She was the only one in her class to go home last week and memorize their whole cheer, so she got to pick a prize from the goody box this week. This might be a sport where being the smallest kid might come in handy. We ordered uniforms tonight, and we had to get her the smallest size. They don't even make a practice uniform small enough for her, she was really sad about that. So yeah, that's what's new in Amelia's world.
(The face she is making in this picture totally cracks me up.)







Anthony is working on potty training. Okay really, I'm working on potty training. Anthony loves wearing underwear, can stay dry all night, and will stay dry most of the day. The problem is the boy will not go #2 in the toilet. It's been about a month of this battle and me cleaning poop out of clothes a few times a day. So I'm thinking I might give up. I'm just so sick of cleaning up poop. Any of you Mamas out there have any advice? He hides to go #2, he doesn't got at a consistent time each day and if I catch him going and move him to the bathroom, he'll stop going and wait an hour and go in his pants again. So frustrating. On the plus side his speech has improved drastically. There are still about 10 sounds that he doesn't say, but he's still come really far. I think he's old enough now that they'll consider speech therapy for him.



This picture is almost a year old, but I love it anyway...

52 weeks of organizing!

I love this idea! Laura over at Orgjunkie.com is doing a challenge of 52 weeks of organizing. So I've decided I'm going to play along, as there is always something in my house needing to be organized. I've been doing a lot of decluttering lately (thank you flylady.net for the inspiration/motivation). I've thrown out so much junk, broken toys, stained up kids clothes and random broken things throughout our house. I've also taken a huge amount of stuff to be donated. In fact I have 3 garbage bags of toys and clothes in the back of my van right now that I'll go drop off once Amelia is delivered at school. Anyway, the point of this is I am going to join in the 52 weeks. Now I just to think of 52 projects. :-)

More holiday pics...

Merry Christmas

Awww aren't they cute? Amelia is in love with her baby cousin Cash.

Oak Glen! Two months later...

I finally bought a new camera cord a couple weeks ago, so I'm working on getting months of pictures off the camera. I love going back and looking at pictures from adventures we've had as a family. This is from our trip to Oak Glen for apple picking. It was about 10,000 degrees that weekend, but we had fun anyway.

Three days till Christmas!

Wow. It's one of those days today. It seems like everything that can go wrong, has. And I'm kind of overwhelmed. Just need to remember I can only do what I can do. I can't make the kids get well, (I was wrong before, I only thought the tummy bug had left our house) or the rain stop or time stop so I can get thirty 11 things done before Christmas. So I'm going to remember today that I'm thankful for my family, I'm happy we get to spend time with Jeff's family at Christmas, I'm glad that we have presents under the tree and nice warm dry beds to sleep in and I'm grateful that Jeff is taking a few days off soon to spend with us. Mostly I'm thankful that there is only a week and a half left of Christmas break. :-D

I can't believe it's almost Christmas. The presents are wrapped, no baking done thanks the tummy bug that just finally left our house, but that will get done in a day or two. I have to get the house back in order first. I am amazed at how quickly my house turns into a disaster area. Thursday morning I got a call to pick Amelia up from school because she was throwing up. So we've spent the the last five days in various stages of illness. And the house is a wreck. Seriously. I've washed sheets, bathed vomit covered kids and one night I'm pretty sure I actually contemplated sleeping on the bathroom floor. But today is better. The kids are making Christmas presents for people, and begging to go out and stomp in mud puddles. I'm getting packages in the mail and lots of Christmas cards, and it's finally starting to feel like Christmas. Yay.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I was gone all day. We had a great holiday with some awesome friends. :-) I'm home now, and I'm full and I'm ready to go chill on the couch and watch Pumpkin Chunkin. See ya tomorrow! :-)

I'm here..

and I'm posting. But I'm tired. Got up at 430 this morning and haven't sat still much since. The kids were up at 5, and never did give in to nap or quiet time. Between the kids being home all day, the neighbor child coming over to play (which makes three kids and then they all fight) and me trying to get stuff done, I never got around to blogging. Or sitting still for more than about 10 minutes. I turned on Monday's episode of House about four times before I gave up trying to watch it. On the plus side I did 30 bajillion loads of laundry (and put them away!) did some baking, made a yummy dinner (meat loaf, rolls, mashed potatoes and veggies) and did a whole bunch of cleaning and decluttering. Bathrooms, living room, my room and the kitchen are all clean. Friday I'll tackle the kids rooms (again)and the office. Isn't this an exciting post?

See this is why I stopped blogging. Most of the time, my posts would sound just like this one. LOL

Tuesday!

It's Tuesday, and the kids and I have a couple errands to run later, but other than that, I think we're staying home today. So, we're cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. (It's never ending when the kids are home all day. As far as cleaning goes, I can't wait for the days when they're both in school each day. LOL ) We're playing Bingo on the Flylady's Facebook page. It sounds silly, but basically you write down 6 things that need to be done, then someone rolls a dice and you go do that task. The kids are having fun with it, so that's what matters. They get a sticker for each thing they complete. So far we've done laundry, washed some windows, picked up the living room toys and fixed one of Amelia's books. Gotta go do the next task! :-)

Oops!

I forgot to post yesterday! I wasn't feeling good and never even got on the computer. I had a checkup with my doctor today, and had to bring both kids. We were there for 3 hours! At least the kids were pretty well behaved, I was really proud of them. :-) We're on Thanksgiving break, so I doubt I'll be on the computer much, but I'll try and post each day for the rest of the month...

I'll miss you!

The last week has been a challenging one for me. On Monday I found out that my Grandma Ruby had passed away. She was sick, so it wasn't a total surprise, but it's still hard. It stirs up a lot of stuff for me as she was my Dad's mom. I swear sometimes that I miss my dad more, not less, as time goes on. I can't believe it's been almost 5 years that he's been gone. Anyway, I wanted to talk about Grandma Ruby. She was such a strong person. She had 6 kids in 7 years. She took care of everyone. When I was little, maybe 4 or 5 years old, Grandpa built them a house out in Surfside to retire in. It was at the end of a long dirt road. They'd lived there in a trailer first, an airstream. I remember stories of Grandma cooking in the trailer with the door hanging open. She came out of the back of the trailer to find a bear checking out her food. I guess she startled him though and he took off. The summer that Grandpa built their house, I remember when there was only a foundation there, and I got to go roller skate on the foundation. I thought that was the coolest thing ever. I remember going out in the woods behind their house and finding an old rusty coffee can full of army men. I thought I'd found a treasure, but really my older cousins had left it out there years before. Grandma didn't tell me that though, she just went along with letting me think I'd found some great treasure. :-) I could write all day, but I'm going to stop before I get myself all sad again. I know Grandma is in a better place now. And, she's got my dad, and Aunt Cathy, and Uncle Bill and Grandpa to keep her company...



I borrowed the picture from Grandma's facebook page... lol

Sick day...

We're on day two of Amelia being home sick from school. She's better today, but she's still sick enough that I let her stay home. I've definitely gotten used to having only one kid home in the mornings and no fighting! I was trying to come up with some things for them to do, I can't really take Ant to the park when Amelia's home sick, so we've been doing some crafty stuff. Today they are both practicing their cutting. I gave them a whole stack of ads from the Sunday papers, and they've each got a pair of scissors. Anthony is working on just holding the scissors properly, and Amelia is actually cutting out pictures of things she likes, I think she's making a list of things she wants for Christmas as well as things she thinks she should get the rest of us for Christmas. It's good for their fine motor skills, and it's keeping them from fighting.

I see a lot of cutting and gluing in our future because Amelia has a whole week off of school for thanksgiving.

What kind of stuff do you do with your kids on no school days?

School Stuff

Amelia is happily (most of the time anyway) enrolled in kindergarten. Monday they did awards for the first trimester. Amelia got one because she knows all of the letters and the sounds they make, and can identify them quickly. She was so proud of the medal she got. I love seeing her excited about school. Hopefully that lasts! I only had my cell phone with me at the assembly, so I didn't get any good pics of her getting her award, but she recreated it for me at home.

I'll call you...

I have the silliest kids ever. This is Anthony calling Grandma on his banana phone. Silly boy. :-)

Yay

I can post again! So much for NaBloPoMo.... Blogger and I have been fighting lately. For a while I could only post by typing something on the computer, saving it, and then going on my phone to post. Well that didn't happen! I think I've finally got it fixed again. Yay!

National Bog Post Month, Take 3

It's that time of year again! This will be my third attempt at posting every day for a month, I don't think I've successfully made it through the month yet. Some days my post might be long, others might only hold a photo. We'll see what happens. :-)

testing again

Posting has been a major fail lately, just trying again....

So true...

I got this in an email earlier today. The author has obviously been hanging around at my house... It even has the correct ages for the kids. :-)

You Give a Mom a Muffin
If you give a mom a muffin,
She’ll want a cup of coffee to go with it.
So she’ll pour herself some.
The coffee will get spilled by her five year old.
She’ll wipe it up.
Wiping the floor, she will find some dirty socks.
She’ll remember she has to do some laundry.
When she puts the laundry in the washer,
She’ll trip over some boots and bump into the freezer.
Bumping into the freezer will remind her she has to plan supper for tonight.
She will get out a pound of hamburger.
She’ll look for her cookbook. (101 Things To Make With a Pound of
Hamburger.)
The cookbook is sitting under a pile of mail.
She will see the phone bill which is due tomorrow.
She will look for the checkbook.
The checkbook is in her purse that is being dumped out by her two year old.
She’ll smell something funny.
She’ll change the two year old.
While she is changing the two year old the phone will ring. (Of course!)
Her five year old will answer it and hang up.
She remembers that she wants to phone a friend to come over for coffee on
Friday.
Thinking of coffee will remind her that she was going to have a cup.
She will pour herself some.
And chances are,
If she has a cup of coffee,
Her kids will have eaten the muffin that went with it.

Written by Kathy Fictorie

Pictures...

The bathrooms...

Last year, we remodeled the kitchen. It was not a small job, the room was gutted, and we had no kitchen for around six weeks, (I've tried to forget and so I'm not completely sure on the amount of time we went without a kitchen.) After that fiasco, I have sworn we will never remodel again. However, it's looking like the kids bathroom might need a minor overhaul sooner, rather than later. They don't need a huge new bathroom suite or anything, just a new cabinet and counters, and some towel racks would be nice too. We've already redone the floor in there and the tub/shower is pretty new as well.

If I had unlimited time, space and budget, I'd probably enjoy the remodeling process more. I'd love to have a kid's bathroom with big clawfoot tub, a seperate shower, a linen closet and double sinks. Realistically though, that's probably not going to happen in this house. I think there's room in there for double sinks, but that's about it.

If you could have your dream bathroom, what would it have?h

Happenings

Lots of things have been happening around here lately. Amelia is officially a kindergartener. She was hesitant at first, and there were some tears the first week, but eventually she calmed down and now she loves going to school. We had a little hiccup when they moved her to a new class two weeks in, but she seems to be doing well. She was upset at first as she doesn't have her lunch and recess with the other kindergarteners anymore, they are out with the first and second graders. This class is supposed to be a bit more advanced, it's a K/1 blend and they are moving a bit faster than the other kindergarten classes. So far, she loves it, and I'm really happy with her teacher.

While Amelia is in school, Anthony and I are trying to do more activities so he gets some one on one time too. The picture above is Ant making an apple wreathe. We never got around to making the wreath part, he had too much fun making a mess painting with the apple pieces. He had a great time though! I'm trying to do at least two crafts a week with him, right now just working on having fun with the activites, although I want to start focusing more on things like shapes and colors (he knows most of them pretty well) and then move on to letter stuff.



Amelia has started soccer. She had her first game yesterday and for the most part she loved it. She was a little whiney by the end, but that's what happens when it's 90 degrees out, the girl gets hot and she complains. lol. She kept asking if we could take a break and get ice cream. :-)