Laundry Update

I stuck with it and now there are only 2 loads waiting their turn. All clothes have even been put away after being retreived from the dryer immediately. WOW!!!

Now if I could just say the same about all the papers I have to grade.

I am having the kids pictures taken professionally on Saturday at a friends house. Any suggestions for cute pictures/clothings/scenes? What's hip and cool now?

Brent's 1st Foods

Brent is now starting to gum on large pieces of fruit like cantalope. I've tried to find him the Gerber sticks but I've been unsuccessful. He's had Ramen noodles and after a few crazy head shakes he liked it.

I wish I had some pictures to share but just imagine a big 'ol mess and lots of drool.

It's been crazy, busy here. I've got about 10-12 loads of laundry to catch up on. That stinks because while my sister was here I was all caught up.

It's a short post but better than nothing! I promise more to come. Stick with me. Soon there is going to be more than just 24 hours in a day!!!!!

Possibles Posts

I have done so much this weekend. I have so many post ideas in my head, so I thought I'd make a list. Check back soon for the following:

1. Brent's 6 months in review (I know I'm super late on this, so don't hold your breath)
2. Zoo
3. Easter festivities
4. Brent's first real people food
5. Benches
6. Making Easter eggs with dad
   

Now if that doesn't keep you in suspense I'm not sure what will. We are all off schedule, overtired and ready to return to work and "normal" schedules. Caitlyn woke from her nap after 7pm when we woke her up. She went down around 4ish if that gives you any indication of our days. But we've packed it in and had tons of fun.

Hope you had a wonderful Easter! We heard a fabulous sermon today and we are thankful for the cross!!!!

Spring Break 08

Kari, the girls and I had a great time. We packed in tons and here is a journal of our time together in pictures!
Olivia on the Merry-Go-Round, she loved it and showed great patience to get on.

Ava, not as much patience to get on - super excited. Every time it would start she was sure it was leaving without us.

Caitlyn was very excited until the man in charge made me put the belt on her. Then break down #1. Joy! But you can double click and check out how great her teeth look. We do a great job of brushing 2 times a day!

Here we are day 3 at the Aquarium/Rain Forest. Here I am, the photographer.

Kari, Olivia and my sweet baby Brent. Kari was a trooper and carried Brent the majority of the time because I have had a crick in my neck. That and 18 lbs. do not go together well.

Olivia, Caitlyn and Ava checking out some fish.

Target, day #5, trying on shoes. 2 things: 1. They picked out some really cute shoes 2. We could of saved a lot of money by just going to Target.

Isn't he precious. And just $19.99. I just love him to pieces!

We had an Easter egg hunt in our front yard. Caitlyn is not really using a paper basket. It is a cool, rectangular wire basket that she chose. I got them off the $1 shelf at Target to further my organization mission.

Brent loved laying on the grass today. Jeff keeps it nice and soft like a blanket.

More of the hunt. Olivia and Ava are more of the typical hunters with baskets in hand. Caitlyn is more of a powered hunter. She puts her basket down and runs around looking for eggs, races back to her basket, checks to make sure there is candy in the egg and that is not a bum egg and then drops it in and off to the next one all in a matter of seconds. Check out Kari's new trench (she is in fashion now!)

Love this face!

Then we took a photo-op. It went well as far as cooperation, but I think Kari would agree that we didn't get a picture that we fell in love with but it was fun and certainly a memory that will forever stick with me.

Spring Break 08 Rocks!
Thank you for visiting Ava, Olivia and Kari
I love you

Go, Go, Go

So we were off again today! The kids were up today at 7:00. They played (and destroyed) and had a blast.

My sister and her two girls are in town. They got here last night and what an ordeal that was. They flew in and it was very wet here. You can read about her interesting trip alone with two toddlers, spending about 10 hours in an airport here.

The girls are quite mischievous together. Ava moved the table over to the shelf and got down the paint box. But Caitlyn did open the paint and squirt it all over the carpet and pillow. Now I will admit I was totally stupid to put paint in a toy room, put a picture on the box and make it accessible to a child by putting a table nearby. Geez, what was I thinking! Paint is now removed from toy room!

We gave the kids a nap and then headed to the mall. We got to see our cousins and thiner kids. We had a great time with them. They are getting so big!

We hit up an awesome jewelry store but had to shop separately as our children watched a movie in the car. Then we visited our grandma.

It was another long day but filled with so many memories. Here's a good one. Having my sister push my Caitlyn in the stroller when she was screaming her head off while I got to push Brent around - he was dreaming! She was also pushing all 3 girls. Her two girls fit in the backseat of my stroller. She didn't realize she was getting the raw end of that deal - although I offered on many occasions to switch with her.

Too Much

There is so much going on today. This is in no specific order.

1. Brent held his own bottle for his entire last feeding.
2. Brent was grinding his gums today and has some serious drool going on. Teeth coming soon? Hmmmmm. Maybe within the next 0-6 months!
3. Caitlyn has shopped, driven her car, played with her play-doh, set out about 15 bowls in a straight line for all her friends to come over (more about that later), played in the back yard with the dogs, eaten goldfish out of a basket (thank you Cali for cleaning that up!)
4. I have vacuumed the stairs, living room, play room, done loads of laundry, gone to the dentist, gone to Target, made 2 phone calls to straighten out insurance matters (we still don't know how much Brent costs), done all the regular household chores and let's just throw in many more!
5. So Caitlyn is beginning to put napkins, utensils, plates and now bowls out for her friends. I'm not playing along. When she told me that I looked around and said, "I don't see anyone" Put them away so they'll be clean if anyone shows up. She starts to count them and even has the "non"sense to spit in one bowl. I guess she thinks she can hang on to that one. She is such a stinker.
6. I have straightened up the garage and taken the double stroller out of the back of my vehicle to make room for luggage.
7. I have added two more car seats in the third row of my vehicle. There are now 4 car seats in my car. CRAZY! I'm either going to start my own daycare or pick up my sister and her kids tomorrow!!!!!! Can't wait.

So let's break from the list. Caitlyn is becoming a little diva. Today she wanted to go back outside and I had told her no. She looked up at me, came closer, threw her head back, squinted her eyes and added a sparkle and said with all the attitude she could muster, "I said, I want to go outside!" Poor thing, has been reacquainted the naughty spoon today on several occasions. I on the other hand have been reacquainted with myself!

Sick

So we've been sick. Well really I've been sick. Caitlyn and I both tested positive for strep on Friday but for her it was just a test reading and for me, well it has kicked my butt. It feels like there are 20 things in my throat and without ibuprofen my life doesn't exist. But of course we all know that life as mom just keeps on going. My husband thinks I am super mom and I am amazed at how much he thinks I can handle when I'm sick. But I guess I should give him some credit because I do have some trouble with asking for help, at least in a polite, upfront, before I'm out of patience type of way. I have used every spare minute to sleep and I am going to do head back to bed now, well as soon as I'm done blogging and checking blogs.

We did go to the furniture store (our favorite rustic store is changing locations and will be out business for who knows how long) and Chili's yesterday. We went to church this morning and I was supposed to go to Super Target afterwards but was just too tired, so I opted for later on that. After all it is Spring Break and I can do that any day. Actually sometime soon as Brent will need to eat (formula) and I only have about 5 more meals for him.

Check back soon for a 6 month and 1 week in review of my little man. He looks so big and he weighs so much more than Caitlyn did at this stage in the game.

2 Easy Recipes

These recipes are so easy it's barely like cooking but they turned out so gourmet!
Chicken Parmesan frozen bread chicken breasts (I bought mine from Costco) jar of favorite spaghetti sauce (Classico Italian meat sauce) mozzarella cheese Put aluminum foil over a cookie sheet ( I layered mine for dish washer protection) and put chicken breasts on sheet. Cover with sauce (don't be stingy - use the whole jar) and cheese. Bake at 450 for about 14 minutes. Yummo! I served with zucchini and squash.

Chicken Pesto Pizza
Pizza crust (I use the kind in the can and love it)
pesto sauce
chicken (I used leftover chicken from the day before)
artichokes
tomatoes (take out all seeds and juice)

Bake according to the directions on the can. It is so yummy. Serve with a Caesar bag salad.

Check out the blog below, I blogged twice today!

First Snow of the Season

Well obviously by the title you probably figured out I live down south. We got our first snow and it was only a 1/2 inch so school was not closed and we did not use up our snow day the day after Spring Break, yeah!

So anyway, Friday morning, before leaving for school and of course always running late, I bundled up Caitlyn to go play in the snow. Of course, Jeff said get your camera. So I ran outside to get a few pictures. Unfortunately I didn't have more time to get better pictures.

So let's back up a bit. I was getting ready Friday morning and Caitlyn burst in the bathroom and announced that there was snow on the ground. Furthermore she said, "I want to go outside and make a snowman in the winter!!!!!!" Pretty cool how much she has picked up, because obviously it is winter now that it has snowed.

Anyway I couldn't find any gloves for her on such short notice and she wouldn't wear mine because they were "too big". Each time she touched the snow she yelled, "Ow". She had a blast none the less and got to make a snowman over at the babysitters house.

A few other things, last week I averaged 77 people a day to my blog. That's awesome and

I'm thrilled to have so many visitors. Who knows how long that'll stay up though cause I didn't blog much last week. Anyway stick around we have lots of fun, well at least I do!

Toy Room Clean Again!

So apparently this will be the story of my life. Clean, organize, dirty, ignore, clean, organize, dirty, ignore. Repeat, repeat, repeat. So here goes again.

This weekend I conquered the toy room again. I went through every little bin and container and made sure all like things are with the like things. I gave away tons of stuff, moved all the Little People toys to Caitlyn's room and rearranged the furniture. I even took pictures of what was supposed to go in each basket in hopes that Caitlyn and visitors would know where to return items. Sometimes visitors clean up the toy room (that was dirty to begin with) and just put toys in containers so that the floor is clean. I even do this at other's homes. This is a good thing unless you are really picky about where things go, of course never bad enough to deny help cleaning the toy room though. So hopefully the pictures will help! Again, I hope they especially help Caitlyn. Already she has enjoyed playing with the baskets of toys, pulling them out specifically by their pictures.

I moved the table by the window to entice her to sit here and play calmly.

I labeled these boxes to remind what is in here and to use these craft items more often.

You can laminate your own labels at home by using packing tape over the front and folding over the back, trim the sides. Then use strings to hang on the basket. Now we'll see how long it stays on the basket before being ripped off.

I just love moving the furniture around, it gives the room a new, clean look!

I know the label should have said Baby Toys instead of Baby Things! Oops!

Here is Caitlyn playing a game with Brent!

Brent is playing his first game. He has officially played twice now. He is a good sport and does whatever Caitlyn tells him to do.

On a side note, I showed my students the pictures from Camp Write A Lot and on the same camera disk were tons of pictures of my kids even dating back to Christmas. So I let them see them all, cause of course I'm so happy to show them off. So here she is getting toy after toy and I hear one of my students say, "She gets lots of toys". Then another says, "That's because both of her parents work." Silly kids. Funny thing is the one who said that has two parents who work outside the home. I explained that her toys are less inexpensive then their toys cost so can have more but as she gets older she will get less because they will increase in price.

Oh yeah, BTW, I got my hair cut. I like it and it seems others do as well. Although I have had to students who admitted they really liked it longer better but they did quickly tell me it was very pretty still.

Kitchen Reoranization

I have been working on reorganizing the function of my kitchen cabinets during the month of February. I was inspired by Laura at Organizing Junkie. If you haven't visited her website, take the time to do so, she is very inspirational and has some great ideas.

I actually finished last weekend, but am just now getting around to posting. Luckily I can still enter her contest until tomorrow night.

I had a few goals in mind when I started: pans by the stove, a cabinet for Caitlyn's sippy cups, bowls and plates, and to put all like containers together. I feel I have achieved this goal. Also putting Caitlyn's things at her level has helped tremendously. She can get her things ready for dinner, lunch, breakfast and snack and she now unloads her dishes from the dishwasher every time. I also got Brent's bottles organized and off the counter. Probably the last important thing I did was find a home in the cabinet for the bread. This is great for our bread cost (our labs have recently decided to eat full packages off the counter tops after years) but the dogs are quite sad. It only took 3 times for us to figure out we needed to find a better home for the bread.

Here are the before and after pictures! I am posting twice today, so check out about Camp Write a Lot below too.

Oh yea, Brent had his first raisin yesterday. Caitlyn was very generous. I noticed him choking and swooped him up. Then he was fine. Then I noticed that he was gumming something so I did a sweep of his mouth and sure nough there it was, his first raisin. So I had to remind her again, that we do not feed Brent. So tonight she got him two containers of baby food, a bib and spoon when I put him in the high chair. Now that's a much better choice!!!! Gotta be tough around here.

Before:

After:
Made a spot for the bread, organized the spices, and put measuring cups in a basket here to keep away from Caitlyn.

Before: Caitlyn's cabinet

After:
This cabinet is working so well, the back shelf is for extra things I need for Brent.

Before:

After:
Moved Brent's bottle's into cabinet and moved Caitlyn's plates and bowls from this cabinet. This gives me much more space.

Before:

After:
I moved my pans to another cabinet by the stove and put all my storage containers together. I can cook and store in some of them,but I always forgot this because they were tucked in a different cabinet.

Before: Appliance Nightmare

After:
Now this cabinet stores only the appliances I use on a regular basis. My other appliances are at the back of different cabinets. I also used a brick, covered in a cloth to help store by serving platters horizontally.

Before: Used to hold serving dishes

After:
Cabinet by oven, that now stores pots and pans

Before:

After:
I actually have room to grow in this cabinet!!!

So there is not a before and after of my pantry. I had reorganized it a while back. But the container on the floor holds my chips and I love the shoe rack on the door. It is great for holding small envelopes and opened packages of crackers, etc.

And here is proof that I can clean my kitchen. I did keep my bags out on the counter to keep a "normal" effect though.

Check out our center workspace for Brent. He loves to be in the middle of all the action. We are planning to paint the walls green this week. I can't wait to see it completed.

I don't know if I will win the contest but I do know that I am so ecstatic to have my kitchen reorganized and it works for me! Thanks for inspiring me to do it this month. The deadline of one month really helped.

Camp Write A Lot

Friday we had a camping day in school. The kids brought their sleeping bags, flash lights, pillows, blankets, canteens (water bottle), and snack. They had several writing activities to gear them up for our state assessment this Wednesday. They made a camp flag, wrote a jingle about writing, wrote a beginning and ending to a Bear Tale and wrote a story to go with a Camping Headline that was pre-made. They had a terrific time. Here are some pictures, the kids are turning their heads or looking down for confidentiality + it shows them really working!

We had a campfire and tent in our room. We had to have smores of course (graham crackers, marshmallow creme and Hershey's chocolate) while we sat around the campfire and shared our stories and jingles. We were at camp for several days and even wrote a letter home to our parents (day= lights on, dusk= one light on, night=all lights off). We had to be quite and respectful of the animals that lived in nature (bears and coyotes, etc) and we made sure we didn't leave any crumbs behind. My kids really got in to it and addressed me as Camp Counselor and we answered our class phone as Cabin 504. Now wouldn't you love to be in 4th grade again?