Been missing this week

I've just has one of those weeks, surely you know the kind, right? But I'm goign to start getting back on track tomorrow. Which actually starts my weekend, but whatever. I need to do spring cleaning and do the big clothes switchout. And I'm actually looking forward to it. Odd.

This is kind of funny. Last Thur I went down to DH's grandma's house to clean for her. She's getting up there in age and can't do quite as much as she used to be able, so I went to help out. I mopped her floors, vaccuumed, dusted a bit, cleaned the bathroom and helped her move some furniture around. We went back later in the week to visit and she said somethign about "a lady came to clean my house a few days ago" and I was thinking "well that was nice of someone... duh, she's talking about me" lol. I thought it was a bit funny.

That's all for now, just wanted to post that I was till alive.

And for those who might be interested, lol, I live about an hour from Louisville.

My menu

I'm so proud of myself. Two days before grocery shopping day and I've already got my menu made out, grocery list done and everythign printed out. Maybe you all can help me out with something. I used to always plan 5 meals a week, with an assumed pizza day on the weekend. The other day of the weekend we eat leftovers. I was constantly only cooking 4 days a week, plus pizza. I always had one meal a week that just wasn't getting cooked. This frustrates me to no end. I swear I had spaghetti on the menu for two months before we finally had it. So when I had to cut down the food budget two months ago, I started only planning 4 meals, plus pizza and leftovers. Every week I was having to scrounge around the last day and find something to cook for dinner! So after a month of that I went back to 5 meals for my last shopping trip. Wouldn't you know it, we've skipped a meal both this week and last. ???? Anybody know why that is? Ooh, here's an idea...maybe I'll start planning 5 meals one week and 4 the other. That might work. Anyways, here's my menu for the next two week, starting Sunday.

Sunday: Santa Fe chicken w/rice
MOnday: Taco lentils w/beans
Tuesday: Black bean lasagna
Wendnesday: Macaroni and cheese w/hamburger&veggies
Thursday: Tomato and Spinach pasta toss

Sunday:Spaghetti w/salad and garlic breadsticks
Monday: Creamy spinach ravioli
Tuesday: Taco lentils
Wednesday: Chicken Fajita skillet
Thursday: Shepherd's pie

A few notes: The two spinach meals are something we haven't tried before. I got the new Kraft magazine last week and DH went through and picked those two out as things to try. The creamy spinach ravioli is made from lots of prepacked, preservative filled things. Not my top pick, but hey if it makes DH happy. Chicken fajita skillet is DH's all-time favorite meal. It's not mine though and it has lots of Velveeta cheese in it, so it only makes the menu every other week. If it were completely up to dh, it'd be on there weekly along with taco lentils, but he understands that's not exactly cost effective!

The breadsticks to go with the spaghetti, I got the recipe from hillbillyhousewife.com and they are awesome. I made them about a week and a half ago, to go with spaghetti, but I never made the spaghetti, b/c everybody filled up on breadsticks! DH requested that I make them to go with the spinach quiche we had last week and I'm sure he'll be thrilled to see them on the menu. They are super good!

Let me know if you want any recipes!

Tax day!

Everybody got their taxes filed? We jsut got ours done this weekend. Actually, they're still not even considered "filed" yet. We have to send in a signed paper, but we're not supposed to send it in until the IRS accepts our 1040, which they haven't done yet. Even though I sent it in on Sat. I'm thinking about mailing it out today anyways, so we don't get penalized for being late! I would have loved to get this done sooner, but DH didn't get one of his W2s and was dragging his feet on getting it. He just finally got it on Friday. It doesn't matter too much though b/c pretty much the whole refund will go to back support he owes. We might get a few hundred dollars. We WILL get all of the rebate this summer though! Yay for htat. We only get $1500 but that's $1500 in free money, so I won't complain :) And actually DH never filed his 2006 taxes (I've been one him about getting me all the W2s for that too!) and we'd probably get a few thousand back even after they take the penalties out. So I REALLY want to file those, but again, DH is dragging his feet and there's really nothing I can do about it.

I think my landlord is going to quit answering the phone when he sees my number, lol. I swear I've had to call him every other week just about since we moved in. This weekend I had to call him b/c the water heater was not working, again. Yeah, 2nd time in 6wks. Fun. So he came over yesterday morning and "fixed" it, telling me to call if it didn't work, or stopped working, etc. I had to call him in the afternoon to tell him it was working, but all the hot water was scalding hot! I can't have scalding hot water coming out of the faucets with little kids around. So he said he'd come by again today and fix that. Then I had to call him *again* in the early evening b/c I had no hot water again. Ugh. So today he's goign to replace it. Good bye hot water woes!

It's Monday again!

So we had a great time this weekend. For some reason weeks go by really fast with DH having Thur/Fri off. Because we have our weekend, and then it's the real weekend with a Sabbath rest and then DH works in the morning, so we still have that night time together. It's great. It's like the week is really only 3 days long.

On Thursday we spent a good bit of time outside, the kids playing with neighborhood kids and us talking to the neighborhood adults (at least in the evening). We have the only swingset in town, so we get a lot of kids over when we're out. I've established a "please don't use our swingset when we're not outside" rule. It just makes me feel better. Right now we have an old cheap metal swingset and if the kids get all swinging in the same direction (especially if htere are bigger kids on it) then the whole set starts rocking. Scary. But in some awesome news, a friend of ours, her dad has a big solid wooden swingset, but no swings and nobody every plays on it, so she asked her dad and we can have it!! We've been wanting a wooden playset, but no money. The swingset we have now was actually a Freecycle find 4 yrs ago when Asher was just a toddler. So hopefully either this Thurs or Fri or next DH will go help tear down the new swing set and bring it over to set up. And after all that work he put into putting this one up, lol.

I hope everyone has a great week!

It's Friday!!

Ok, for hte normal world it's only Wed, but for me, it's Friday b/c DH is off of work tomorrow and the day after. So that makes it Friday, right?

The kids and I enjoyed a beautiful evening outside last night. Of course it was about 15 degrees cooler out there than inside, so it was for my sanity. My poor baby girl though. I've been letting her outside on the front porch with no shoes and yesterday I discovered 3 splinters on the bottom of her feet. One already had a puss blister around it, another was just starting to get pussy but thankfully the last one looked just fine. So I held her down and got the first two out and left the 3rd alone. Usually I dont have a problem letting kids go barefoot (*I* go barefoot most of the summer), but 3 splinters in the matter of a couple days and ones that are getting infected at that, is just too much. Baby girl will be wearing her soft leather shoes outside from now on.

It's official. Asher needs a new bike. He's got the smallest two wheeler w/training wheels you can buy, like a 12 or 13 in. I've raised the seat, but it's still pretty small. It probably wouldn't really matter that much, but there are a ton of kids around here who ride bikes and Asher has the smallest one. There's even a little girl who's about his size, maybe smaller, and her bike I swear is twice as big! (though it's a bit big for her). So he needs a new (probably used) bike and Canaan will get the small one. I think this summer Asher needs to learn to ride a two wheeler. And Canaan doesn't even know how to peddle yet. Good thing Daddy's around to teach them important stuff ;)

Halfway through another week!

Okay, so it's only Tues, but for me, that's half way through, espcially since DH might have Thurs/Fri off this week. He's having a really rough time with another cook that works Thurs shift, so he's goign to have his schedule changed until they can work somethign out. Don't ask me how I'm goign to get everythign done this week, I havne't figured it out yet!

Our weather here has been just beautiful. In the 70s the last two days and again today. Tomorrow is supposed to be a bit cooler in the mid 60s and raining. Blech. DH got the swingset put up yesterday. The boys spent almost all day outside and both ended up with sunburns on the back of their necks.I think we start every spring/summer that way.

The only down side is that it gets really hot in here! We don't have a/c and whenever we open the windows it ends up smelling like cat pee in here b/c we have about 5 strays that hang out next door. I could deal with the cat pee smell if I had to, but we don't want the landlord to think it's our cat making it smell in here. So for now we're keeping the heat off at night, even though it gets pretty chilly so it stays cooler in here longer. But by afternoon it's pretty hot. So today I plan to get as much done in the morning.

Well, the boys just got up so that means I need to start breakfast. I think we're having pancakes today, yum!

Another week!

Good morning!

So it's Sunday morning, 6am and I've been up up for about an hour already. Sundays are a different day for me. DH works in the morning so I have to get up and moving that much faster. It's general clean-up day and kitchen prep day. I have lots of baking to do this week, so I may just get stuff done for the beginning of hte week and then work on the rest throughout the week.

Here's the list for today:

1. General pick-up
2. Make beans
3. Brown hamburger
4. Make garlic bread for tonight's spaghetti
5. Make tortilla shells for later this week
6. Make cinnamon rolls for next weekend
7. Make pie crust for pot pie
8. Bake something sweet for a weekly treat, cookies maybe?

I think that's about it. I have my list in the kitchen but don't feel like getting up to look at it.

Oh, and just to make things more fun, af showed up yesterday. So I'm feeling crampy and icky and slightly depressed. Fun for me! Both DH and I have actually been feeling for months now that the spacing between Genesis and the next baby is goign to be a bit longer than our usual. I just want to know how long!

The good news today though is that the high is almost 70 today and will be over 70 mon and tues. It's finally spring! Now if only it would stop raining every other day....

Another day, another dollar

Well, maybe not another dollar that *I* make, lol. But it is payday and that's always a good thing :)

Want to hear a kind of funny about Genesis? She regularly gets up in the morning when it's still dark aside but I'm already up and on the computer. She just kind of wanders into the living room from the bedroom (which is right off the LR). Last night DH was up late on the comp and I guess Genesis thought I was up already b/c she got out of bed and went into the LR. DH said she got the most disgusted face when she saw it was him and not me,lol. He asked her if she wanted to come and cuddle with him for a few minutes which was enough to wake me up, so I called her name and she immediatly turned around and came running back to bed with me, lol. I thought it was funny anyways.

I think I got everythign on my list done yesterday. Oh, except school stuff. I did look at the Teacher's Manuel again though to refamiliarize myself with it. Asher really wants to start doing school, but I just think we'll get so much more out of it if we have access to the library first. It sucks not having a car.

Alright, onto my todo list:

1. Wash diapers
2. Scrub down table, chairs and highchair
3. Mop dining room floor
4. Clean up laundry area
5. Clean boys' bathroom
6. Start going through school stuff

It's the last day of the week for us, yay!! DH has Fridays and Saturdays off so we can celebrate Sat sabbath. So all I'm doing tomorrow is grocery shopping, which I already have my list made out for.

Happy Wednesday

For some reason I keep thinking it's Tuesday. No idea why. Anyways.

Would you beleive I lied yesterday when I said I finished Mon's list? Not on purpose, but I completely forgot that Menu/grocerylist was on there and I didn't work on that at all. But I did get my menu made for the next two weeks. I got almost everythign done on yesterday's list, didn't get to the fans. Ah well, nothing wrong with carrying some things over to the next day's list!

1. Laundry
2. Kitchen counters
3. Mop kitchen floor
4. Organize kids craft stuff (that's the least likely to get done, lol, but it's all in cabinets so you can't see it anyways)
5. Microwave, one shelf in fridge
6. Clean fans
7. Work on grocery list

Happy April!!

I can't believe it's really April. Spring time is here!

I'm super frustrated right now with my sleeping schedule. Ideally, I need 9 hours of sleep, but with the boys only needing 11 hrs, that only gives me two hours of no kid time a day. 1 hr in the morning that I must have to not be a grouchy mom and then 1 hour in the evenings, which is just not long enough!! So I've been seeing if I can get by with less sleep and so far I've discovered that I absolutly cannot get 8 hrs of sleep. It's impossible for me to get up after 8 hrs and if I do manage to get up, I need a nap. A few nights last week I got 7 hrs and did alright with that, so I'm goign to try a consistant 7 hours of sleep this week. I'm just debating on where to add the 2 extra hours of kid-free time!

I actually got my whole todo list done yesterday, including washing curtains. Even after Genesis threw a whole bunch of clean towels in a bathtub full of water and the boys doused themselves with muddy water. It also looks like I'll be baking bread a bit more often now. The recipe I've been using if for 2 loaves, but I was always getting these little half size loaves. I think it's the size of my pan that's the problem, but who knows, maybe it's the recipe. It really bothered me, so yesterday I just put the whole thing in one loaf pan, and it turned out perfect. It actually looks like bread is supposed to look! But that means I'll probably be making it twice as often b/c it seems it doesn't matter what size the loaf is, we go through it in the same amount of time. But it's getting late in the morning and my kids are hungry, so I need to get this show on the road.

My todo list for today:

1. Declutter living room
2. Vaccuum under the couches
3. Vaccuum around the edges
4. Organize toys
5. Clean the tutle's cage
6. Organize shoes
7. Extra for the day: Clean off fans.