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. :-)