Chatty!

Holy Cow. I'm gone for a few (6, to be exact) days and the whole world starts TALKING. I just checked bloglines for the first time in nearly week and had over 200 posts to catch up on. I did a lot of skimming and will return to comment soon. I haven't even peeked at my private blogs just yet.

I have lots and lots to post on (hopefully tomorrow). Laurie's wedding (Al's younger sister) was so much fun. Having my parents here was a blast. I've been busy finishing some Halloween projects and decorating. And now I have to get my crap together. Cleaning, laundry, grocery shopping... you know the routine. Hopefully getting a decent night's sleep - I am seriously sleep deprived! Real life, here I come!

Be back soon!

{PS, I also just read all the comments on my last post. You're kidding right? Like that's my schedule/To Do list every day? It wouldn't be blog worthy if that was my normal routine!!)

What a day!

I got up early this morning and jumped right into the shower. Fed the baby, made breakfast for the big kids, packed lunches/waterbottles, went through take home folders. Got beds made, kids dressed and teeth/hair done and in the car by 7:30 a.m. for school drop off. On the way we went through a couple paragraphs of the proclamation on the family, which our entire ward is memorizing, and then dropped Carter off.

I had 1 hour from when I got home until I had to leave to go visiting teaching. Hurried and got Addie down for a nap. Then the real craziness started. In that one hour I did the following (almost none of which was planned):
Cleaned up breakfast
Threw in a load of laundry
Answered/fielded 4 phone calls from soccer parents about various things (Al is coaching this year)
Let my pest control guy in (2 days early) and talked to him about some stuff
Let the termite treatment guy in (about 10 days early) and talked to him about some stuff
Put together my VT monthly gift and quote (a cute galvanized metal bucket full of apples, tied w/ cute ribbon - of course!)
Did my hair and makeup
Friend picks up Makenna for preschool carpool and another friend is with her so we all visit for a few minutes
Talked to my sister about Christmas plans and flights (and I have been on cloud nine all day because they are going to CO for Christmas too - I am SOOOOO happy!!!!!)

Then I did:
All my VT for the month
preschool carpool pickup
Got the girls home, fed and down for naps
Cleaned ALL my baseboards
Cleaned all three bathrooms
Wiped down walls, doors and switch plate covers
Put clean sheets on the bed in the guest room
Put tons of scrapbook/craft stuff away
Moved a few things around in the guest room
Watered the garden (twice)

Ran to the scrapbook store
Picked up Carter from school
Ran to the mall to buy M a pair of jeans and C a pair of church pants (Makenna did not have a single pair of pants that fit and we will be in the mtns this weekend)
Dinner/cleanup/get Al off to YMs
Homework time
Bedtime routine
Paid Bills
Painted a quick project for the girls' room
Made a cute/quick Halloween decoration (I KNOW, seriously, what am I thinking w/ the craft projects?!?)
Laundry, laundry and more laundry
Watched DVR'd episode of Fringe

Luckily I did most of my cleaning, shopping and meal planning earlier this week. My mom and dad come into town tomorrow morning! I can't wait! But first I can't wait to climb into bed tonight!

If I were someplace else....

... I would be enjoying fall by:

Picking Apples:

{Connecticut 2003}

{Connecticut 2005}

Playing, Kicking & Crunching in the leaves:

{Connecticut 2004}

Raking massive piles of leaves: {Connecticut 2005}

Enjoying the AMAZING colors:

{Stowe, VT 2004}

Enjoying a bountiful harvest:

{Seattle 2006}

Visiting the pumpkin patch:

{Connecticut 2003}

{Seattle 2006}

Attending Fall Festivals:

{Wethersfield Scarecrow Festival, Connecticut 2004}

Dear, Beloved Fall,
I miss you desperately!

To all you who are able to enjoy this glorious season, live it up for me and enjoy every second of it!

{Happy First Day of Fall Tomorrow!!}

(PS, Please excuse the quality and coloring of my older pictures. You are seeing scanned images and most of the REALLY good pictures from these days are already in scrapbooks!)

Yep, they're mine

2 sure signs today that my kids belong to me:

1. They begged to listen to Christmas music on the way to church (in case you're wondering, I always started listening to holiday tunes in September when I was a kid. I force myself to wait until Nov. 1 now)

2. During Sacrament meeting the choir sang a beautiful song that made me cry. When Makenna saw me crying, she dissolved into a puddle of tears. (No one cries alone when I'm around)

On another note, we were talking to another couple today who is expecting their first baby and an older man in our ward walked by. He stopped, put his arm around me and told the expectant mom that he's watched me with my kids a lot and that she could learn how to be a wonderful mother from me. Then I dissolved into a puddle of tears. It was truly one of the nicest compliments I've ever received - especially because it came from a virtual stranger (who was obviously being VERY generous!)

Goodnight Goon

As I was perusing Target this week ( a favorite past time of mine), I found an awesome new book for my kids. Goodnight Goon by Michael Rex is a "petrifying parody" of Margaret Wise Brown's Goodnight Moon .

It is an absolute hoot and has the same rhyme and cadence as the original. Of course my kids L-O-V-E it (I've already read it to M 3 times this morning), especially since we all have the original Goodnight Moon memorized. The illustrations are awesome too.

Here's a couple of pages (just so you get the feel for it). Call me if you want me to read you the entire thing over the phone:

"In the cold gray tomb
There was a gravestone
And a black lagoon
And a picture of -

Martians taking over the moon"

You get the idea. It is absolutely hilarious! I found mine with the Halloween books at T

Plateau

It's official... I've hit a weight loss plateau. I know I haven't been blogging about the whole weight loss thing lately. It's too depressing. Don't get me wrong... I'm down 55 (fifty five, yes, 55, it feels so good to type that so I'll do it again... 55) pounds since I had Addie in February. I am officially about 5 pounds below my prepregnancy weight. But I think I've only lost about 3 lbs. since school started in August. Is it coincidental that the plateau hit at the same time I started baking again? Probably not. What's a girl to do when she wants her kids to have homemade goodies?

The good news is that I'm working out pretty faithfully. Makenna being in preschool is helping with this immensely as I work out after she leaves and while Addie takes her morning nap. No getting up early (or earlier than my now 6:00 a.m. alarm clock), no more trying to muster up the energy after the kids go to bed and no more trying to do it with the yahoos trying to step on the treadmill or complain that one of my exercise tapes is taking up precious educational cartoon time. I'm going to try to up the ante though and work out for an hour 5 days a week. 30 minutes of cardio and 30 minutes of weights. Is that too aggressive for a person who officially hates working out?

I still want to lose another 20 lbs. before Christmas. Keep me accountable, ok? And now I'm off to run for the 2nd time today since I ate In-n-Out for dinner, followed by an icecream cone. That's a sure way to break out of a plateau (ugh).

A GOOD shopping day

At long last, after months and months and months of looking for the perfect master bedding, I've finally found it! It was pretty affordable which is an added bonus. I am just itching to get going on our room but we have a few more storage/organization projects we need to get to first. By then it will probably be the holidays... so be looking for pictures sometime after the first of the year. (Does anyone really believe I'll be able to hold off for that long?!? We shall see!)

I hate to even mention this, for fear of people thinking I'm CrAzY, but I also purchased the girls' Christmas dresses today. You think I'm crazy, don't you? They are divine x a million. And they are festive but don't scream Christmas so they can be worn for longer than the season. I have to give a shout out to Hilary for pointing them out! (All you Hilary blog readers now know exactly what dress I'm talking about).

I also finally purchased the last piece of the wedding outfits - Carter's shoes. Why are little boy clothes so difficult? It took me forever to find something suitable for him in the chosen (fabulous) color palette. Whew!

AND finally, I got our tickets to the see The Lion King on stage. I'm so excited! I've been dying to see this show for the longest time and it is coming to Phoenix at the beginning of next year. We had a gift certificate from Christmas last year that we have been waiting to use for the PERFECT show!

Carry on, that is my frivolity for the day!

7 Months!

Miss Addie Lu is 7 months old! My friend Erin came over this weekend to take pictures of her but she wasn't terribly cooperative. I had woken her up from her nap and she just wasn't very smiley. We got some cute ones anyway (thanks a million Erin!!)

Here's what our little muffin is up to this month:

- Has finally nailed down a consistent napping schedule and takes two long naps and one short nap in the late afternoon.

- Is still waking up once a night to eat (around 4:00 a.m.). She is also still sleeping in our closet because neither of us wants to walk upstairs to get her in the wee hours of the morning.

- Does the inch worm crawl everywhere! She is really fast and can get across the room quickly.

- When she gets really excited she gets on her hands and knees and rocks back an forth really fast. She also pants like a dog when she's happy/excited (sounds weird but is completely adorable) and kicks her legs really hard (like when she's having her diaper changed)

- Finally likes baby food a bit more. She still prefers "real" food and loves: pizza crust, french fries, cheerios, bread, pretzels and fruit. She hates the sippy cup but we're working on it.

- Loves to play in the Tupperware cupboard, crumple paper (still), play with the dollhouse furniture, suck on anything left on the floor, watch her brother and sister on the trampoline and bang on the mirror.

- Had her first trip to the park and loved swinging in the swing

- Still has no teeth or any signs of teeth (our kids haven't gotten teeth until after their first birthdays)

- Is still wearing size two diapers and 3-6 month clothes. I do put her in some 6-12 month but they are big on her.

- Constantly blows raspberries at all of us and is getting much more vocal. We can always tell she is tired because she gets very chatty when she's sleepy

- Is sucking her thumb a lot less and usually only for a minute after we put her in the crib.

- Is starting to get interested in pulling up on things (I know I say this every month but I sure wish she would slow down on this growing up business!!!)

I'll have to post some more of her photoshoot pics after I go through all of them. We love our girl!!

I *might* need an intervention...

... a spray paint intervention, that is.

I'm home today because I'm watching some friends' kids so I'm using the time to get stuff done around here. I had a pile of projects that were "needing" paint.

Here's my before:

And after:

I bought these jars last year at Christmas time and LOVE the red lids but I was wanting to use them year round - so I painted them black. I figure if I want them red again, I'll just repaint them :)

I *might* also have a new love for fleur de lis', but not gaudy gold lame ones:

And I wish I had taken a before picture of this lantern that I got at Target last week (less than $5, originally $35!!!) It was shiny silver and quite cute but definitely did not go with the "look" of my house:

Hmmm... my spray paint projects just might get their own blog tag!

Have a great weekend! It's plant-the-garden weekend around here!

Remember

Apple Week

In honor of apple week at preschool last week:

Art imitates life?

I didn't even know what to title this post since it's so preposterous. Last week Carter brought home this lovely piece of art from church:This is a picture of our family. I am on the far left. Notice anything funny about me? Like my CHEST?!?!? I asked him about it and he got really embarrassed but said I'm always feeding Addie... I guess art is imitating life here? We laughed and laughed about it. Then I called his primary teacher (who is a good friend of mine) and she and I laughed about it too. Funny boy! (He is so going to hate me someday for documenting this!)

Rocket Man

I've mentioned before that Carter has recently gotten into space/astronomy/rockets, etc. Like he is OBSESSED with it. We have a whole slew of solar system books in the rotation and he begs and begs to watch the educational videos about space every day on National Geographic (and really, who am I to complain?) His arsenal of space facts is really pretty astounding!

I would REALLY love to redo his room in a space theme. Wouldn't this be cute:

With a few of these on the walls:

While I'm deciding the fate of his room, these SS tshirts are on the way along with his astronaut Halloween costume:

Pretend Mail

A few weeks ago I came across the idea to make pretend mail for my kids. They are forever writing letters and putting things in envelopes so I knew they would love this. PLEASE don't look too closely at my craftsmanship, because it stinks. I worked on this while I was watching a little RNC last week. I'm still on the hunt for a pretend mailbox but haven't been able to find something I love yet.

Felt Envelopes front:

Envelopes back:

I just used a handy dandy blanket stitch to sew them together (Blanket Stitch tutorial)

Laminated cards:The cards can be drawn on and then wiped clean after they're done playing.

Hours of pretend play fun. And the best part of this project is that I didn't purchase a single thing! I just used leftovers from other craft projects for everything. I love that.

(If you're in the market to BUY a cute mailbox set, check out this adorable one I found: Felt Mailbox Set )

Food Storage 101

I've been formulating this post in my head for a really long time and finally decided to get it out on "paper." I've mentioned a number of times that this year Allen and I are focusing on getting our food storage together. Lots of people have asked questions relating to this so I'm just going to share what we're doing.

Here's the important part: I am by no means a food storage expert! There are literally thousands of people who have been doing this for years and would be SO much more qualified to write this post. So what I'm saying is take it all in stride. I'm sure it will take us a few years to work out all the kinks.

Why Food Storage?

Here's a couple of "extra" reasons why we're finally making a push to do our storage this year (aside from the following the prophet bit). As we've come into an oil crisis I've really been forced to ponder what would happen if gas prices really really jumped. One analyst predicted that if Israel bombed Iran (which there was talk of over the summer), that gas prices would go up to about $12/gallon. I've already noticed a huge increase in the price of many groceries and cannot imagine what this kind of jump would do to prices. Having a 3 month supply would allow for us to not be affected immediately by this kind of spike. Many speculate that truckers wouldn't drive and so there might not be any food to buy at any price!

Another blogger really got me thinking when she pointed out how absolutely horrible it would be to send her kids to bed hungry at night. To know that she could have done something about it but chose not to heed the counsel of the prophet. I'm not trying to be preachy here, at all. When she wrote it on her blog, my heart hurt thinking about what it would be like for my family if we didn't have food or couldn't afford it.

Water

Water is a huge issue for most of us. The church recommends having 1 gallon of drinking water per person per day for 14 days. So for our family that is 70 gallons of just drinking water. Add in water to cook, clean and bathe and you would really need substantially more than that. We purchased these 55 gallon water barrels several months ago along with a hand pump to get it out of the barrels. We would really like to get two more to ensure we had enough for everything. From what I understand, as long as the barrels are not directly on concrete or the ground, it is fine to drink for at least 5 years.

We store them on the side of our house where no one can see them. We also have quite a bit of bottled water stored in with our food storage.

3 Month Storage

To figure out our 3 month storage I have broken things into meals. Breakfast was the easiest/cheapest so I focused on getting 3 months worth of breakfasts first. I have cold cereal, pancake mix and syrup and oatmeal in my storage. I figured out roughly how much of each thing I would need and purchased when I found good sales. I actually like cold cereal quite a bit since it is "stand alone" - meaning I wouldn't have to use water or any other ingredients - it's edible as is. I have about 25 boxes of cereal in my food storage that I paid less than $1 for each box. Here's a little stroll down the "cereal aisle" in my closet (and really, my husband and son think they've died and gone to heaven)

I did the same thing with lunch - I have peanut butter, jelly plus everything I would need to make bread (I figured 1.5 loaves a week and then made sure I had all the ingredients for 3 months worth of loaves). I also have ramen and mac n cheese for lunches. I have lots of canned and frozen fruit stored (not my favorite but would do if fresh produce weren't available)

Dinners are the hardest. I have lots of stapes on hand - rice, beans, pasta and sauces. I also have the ingredients for a lot of the dinners I make regularly - stuff for soups, casseroles, etc. The last thing we are stocking is our extra freezer. Right now I have about 20 lbs. each of beef and chicken, 1o pounds of pork, frozen shredded cheese, butter and frozen veggies. I also pretty much at least double every recipe I make these days so I have about 25 ready made dinners in my freezer (enough for at least a full month when factoring in leftovers).

Don't forget snacks! Again, I've stocked up with sales on things like pretzels, crackers, granola bars, fruit snacks etc. I also have a whole ton of baking mixes - brownies, cakes, muffins, etc. I think one of the most important things to have plenty of is spices/seasonings. I have been trying to get more of the spices I use most. If all we had left was rice, I'm sure I'd be thrilled that I'd purchased those 5 bottles of soy sauce.

Storage

Another huge issue for us is storage. We can't put anything in the garage and have no basement. So we've gotten really creative. I've begun using plastic storage boxes to store many of my staples. A 60 quart box can hold 100 lbs. of sugar or flour. I also use them to store some of my snacks to save shelf space for canned goods. They're water and pest proof and easily accessible. One of my snack bins:

100 lbs. of flour:

Other essentials:

Now that we have much of our 3 month food supply, I've started to think about what other essentials I would hate to be without. My top things: Toilet paper, laundry detergent, diapers/wipes and feminine hygiene products. I can't imagine my life without these things so now I have a 3 month supply of these things as well.

I also had to figure out a plan for Addison. Her food needs will be changing quite a bit over the next year. I have 3 months of baby cereal, lots of baby food but most importantly, a food grinder. Hopefully she would be able to eat a lot of what we are eating as long as it's ground up.

Whew! That's all my brain can get out in one day. I'll do another post about long term storage soon! Hope this answers most of your questions or helps someone out!

My favorite 4 letter word....

.... is Fall!

Yay! My favorite season of the year is finally "here." Hey, it may be 100+ degrees out but I can pretend that it's fall, right? Today I got all my decor out and I will be putting things up here and there this week!

Here's a sneak peak:

(see, see there's my cute footed bowl!)

And another of my new favorite things for fall:

Febreze Pumpkin Harvest & Fall Spray It smells soooo good!

Happy First day of School to all my mommy friends who sent kids off today!

Swim!

It's been a weird week of blogging... first the 401 post contest (congrats to Jan and scroll down to see the answers), and then the Nie Nie auction (which I am thrilled at the outcome of - I was hoping to hit $50 so I could not be happier about it). Anyway, I have tons to catch up on!

Last week Mindy & Charlie were in town for a day on their way to a family reunion. We were able to get together after school to swim and have dinner. The kids swam and swam and swam some more (about 3 hours worth, I think) and Mind and I got to chat it up on the side of the pool. Ahhh... heaven. Anyway, I took tons of pictures since I haven't taken very many swimming pics this summer, which is ironic since that's all we ever do around here.

Here you go:

Then there was all the time I spent playing with (coveting) Mindy's camera. I took these on sports mode:

Flipping:

A big, big thanks to Mindy's younger brother who must have thrown Carter around the pool at least a hundred times! (And Jan, I need mosaic tutorial since I tried to put all these pics in one and failed miserably)