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.

Good morning!

Well, it's MOnday again. Another start to another week :) In good news, DD slept through the night last night, yay!! Hopefully she will continue that trend and her teeth won't bother her so much.

In other exciting news, I got a food chopper yesterday! It's just a tiny little 1 1/2c food processor, but it will make my life so much easier I think. Plus it fits nicely on the counter top without taking up too much space. And the best part, it was free! For who knows how long now I've been taking surveys for points (I go through spurts though where I don't take any surveys, so i don't get any points). Anyways, I finally decided to go ahead and redeem some of them. I had something like 3,400 points and the food chopper cost me 2,500, so I've still got some left over. It's just a nice little thing I do for myself b/c I would never pay even $10 for something like that that I don't *need* you know? I also have $11 in checks sitting on my counter from Pinecone Research who pays actual cash ($3-5/survey). So that's nice.

On to my todo list. I don't remember if I posted one last Monday, but I think I probably did, in which case this one will look pretty similer b/c I set weekly chore schedule.

1. Make bread
2. Laundry plus sheets
3. Declutter and vaccuum bedrooms
4. Master bath
5. Wash curtains (my extra chore of the day)
6. Start working on menu/grocery list for Friday's shopping trip

I think that's about it. And I don't remember what we're having for lunch today, I'll have to be sure to look later. Have a wonderful last day of March!

Having a hard time

The end of March is coming, and afaik I'm not pg yet. I knew this was a possibility, but in the back of my mind, I still beleived it would happen. All 3 of my kiddos, and one pg before Asher were all concieved in March. I was fully planning on being due in Dec again, like I have been for the last 3 even numbered years. I know it's not out of hte picture yet, but I just don't think it's going ot happen. I know it will happen in God's timing and that's the best timing of all. And we don't have the money for a midwife, so it's probabl better this way. But I was still hoping this was God's will and the money situation would work itself out when it became necassary. I need to have faith. I do have faith, but it's still hard. I'm afraid I'll have this huge spacing, which I don't want. But if it happens, that's what's best. I KNOW that, but why doesn't that really help any? It doesn't make my heart feel any better. I watch my baby girl growing up and I just want another baby growing in my womb. It doesn't help any that my SIL is getting ready ot have her third baby in a few weeks and it seems everybody around me is either having babies or getting pg. Just needed to type...

Another productive day

I finally went through toys with the kids today. They were so excited. Last night when we were doing our nightly pick-up I had them put away the toys they already had extra neatly, so the shelves would be ready for more toys this morning. So here's the tally, out of 8 boxes of toys, 3 are repacked and ready for the yard sale, one is packed up to get traded out later when they're bored of their toys, and I guess that leaves 4 boxes that are now on the shelves. I'm thinking of packing up one more box for rotation, just b/c the 4 shelves they have for toys are a little crowded. I've got a new plan to hopefully help keep down the mess. 2 of the toy shelves are in a cabinet, all the toys with lots of pieces and mess potential are on those shelves. It has been declared that they are not allowed to get those toys out without asking. So if the living room is already stewn with toys they'll have to pick up before getting the desired toy. All the baby toys and single toys or toys with only a few pieces are on the other 2 shelves on the bookshelf. We'll see how this goes.

Other things I got done today:

1. Scrubbed down counters, underneath everything
2. Scrubbed down dish rack
3. Cleaned one shelf in the fridge
4. Cleaned microwave
5. Cleaned off the boys' craft table
6. Mopped kitchen floor
7. Helped DH's grandma take all the globes off her ceiling lights, wash them, put the back on

For lunch today we had what I refer to as "Taco lentils" I got the recipe from hillbillyhousewife.com and my family loves it. Recipes on that site are hit and miss, but we've gotten several family favorites, so I"m willing to take the chance. We have this once a week, and everytime I say we're having it my whole family cheers. It's that good. We use it as a taco filling with homemade refried beans. It's also really cheap, which is always a good thing and why I made it a once a week meal. We could live off of this if we had too I think.

It's a beautiful Tuesday :)

One day into a new week :) I actually got a lot done yesterday. The only things on my list that didn't get done are: didn't get the boys laundry put away, but all the rest of it is, and didn't do toys, which I had a feeling wasn't going to get done anyway. We'll try again today.

Genesis had a bad night last night. I don't know what her problem was, teeth I assume. I think tonight I'll put the teething tablets next to the bed so I can give her some if she has another bad night. Right now she's sleeping with her head in my lap. She's been doing that a lot of mornings lately. She wakes up just long enough to stumble in here and nurse back to sleep. I try and nurse her before I get out of bed, but she's been wanting to nurse a lot lately at night. Not sure what's up with that.

So here's my todo list for today:

1. Flip couches and vaccuum under them (this seriously needs to be done almost weekly at my house)
2. Wash mirrors and windows in the living room since they're all covered in little fingerprints
3. Vaccuum living room well around the edges
4. Clean turtles cage
5. Declutter shelf that turtles cage is on
6. Clean up shoe rack
7. Clear off top of cabinets in living room that got filled with stuff while unpacking
8. Unpack/go through toys.

For lunch today we're having Easy Parmasean Garlic chicken, from Kraft.com. I'll try and give a review of it later and add a link if I think it's worth the time.

Musings of the early morning

Good morning!! It's the begining of a new week and I'm ready to go. Most everything is unpacked so I can start with actual daily cleaning and such. The only thing I haven't unpacked really is the toys. I sooooo don't even want to go there. I don't need to just unpack them, I need to completely go through them, almost 10 boxes worth of them and seriously weed them out. I just keep trying to remember how much better I'll feel when it's done.

I was up extra early this morning. I usually try and get up at 6, but today I was up at 5:30 with a nightmare involving child services. After that dream I just had to get up and give the boys kisses and stroke their hair and stare at them a while. I had to do that with Genesis too, but she was in bed with me, so that was no big deal. After I got up to do that though I decided no point in goign back to bed! I'll probably be taking a nap today though since I got to bed late last night on top of hte early morning. If I don't get a full 9 hours of sleep at night I have to take a nap. I wish I could go on less sleep, but it just doesn't seem possible.

My chores for today include:

1. Making bread (I made some yesterday but forgot about it and burnt it, sigh)
2. Laundry, including all bed sheets
3. Clean bedrooms, including decluttering
4. Vaccum bedrooms
5. Clean master bath
6. Put away laundry that I washed last laundry day
7. And maybe, just maybe, go through toys

Lunch (our main meal) today is Beef Stroganoff. Yummy!

Officially moved, really this time!

DH got all the rest of our stuff out of the old house yesterday and got it all cleaned up. So we're now officially moved. And now I can really get down to business unpacking. Oh the joy.