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....