Daybook

FOR TODAY
Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Outside my window...are gorgeous blue skies, lots of sunshine and 70+ degree temperatures. I think Spring has finally made it to the Ohio River valley!

I am thinking... about Easter shopping. We're hosting for the first time ever and need to get the food together (except for dishes that everyone else will be bringing.)

I am thankful for...My Savior and the sacrifice he made for me to save me from my sins and to give me eternal life.

From the learning rooms... we continued working with money today (pennies, nickels and dimes- who would of thought I'd be dealing with this for Kindergarten!!!!) We got through math and then Bri melted into a puddle so I decided that was enough for today! When it starts to become a fight, it's time to surrender! (We're ahead of schedule anyway so I didn't feel too bad about it!)

From the kitchen...tonight's mom's dinner night (she takes Mondays and Wednesdays, I take Tuesdays and Thursdays, and then we switch off Saturdays and Sundays) so I don't know what we'll be eating.

I am wearing... a black track suit with my "Chicago The Musical" t-shirt. I have dance rehearsal for a skit for our Drama club cast party on April 9th.

I am creating...a list of what we need for Easter baskets on Sunday and for the Easter egg hunt with the cousins Sunday evening.

I am going...to dance rehearsal. Oh heaven help me!

I am reading..."Stone Cold" by David Baldacci

I am pondering...the mercies of our Lord

I am hoping...for a successful and peaceful Easter Sunday.

I am hearing...Cailou. Does anyone else have children who are obsessed with Cailou? I need a support group!

Around the house...the smell of paint. We are trying to get the rest of the first floor painted before Sunday. The only rooms we've painted since we moved in (2 years ago this July) are the dining room and the kids rooms. Time to get the rest of the house done. Last night I did the mudroom and Steven got the morning room started. I love the color...it's called  Melted Butter! Isn't that scrumptious!

One of my favorite things...new clothes for Easter.

A few plans for the rest of the week:
1) church sedar meal Thursday night.
2) Good Friday service on Friday
3) Easter Vigil Saturday night
4) my Aunt Stacey and cousin Kenzy coming in Thursday
5) Easter Sunday with family!

Here are 3 pictures for thought I am sharing... #1 and 2 are Bri and Jonah exploring our Resurrection Eggs on Monday night. Oh the lessons they can learn with 12 simple plastic eggs!!!! #3..Micah and his new big boy hair cut! Where did my baby go!?!?!

 Have a great weekend everyone and a very blessed Easter! Check out more Daybooks here at The Simple Woman!

A Day in the Life of a Sick Baby

We've had all kinds of sickies floating around our house since Friday. We got to Indiana for the weekend and Micah was burning up. He felt a lot hotter than he really was (about 100.9 degrees) but he was miserable. Then the coughing started. Then Saturday night Bri and Jonah started with the coughing. And now the runny noses. Jonah felt like he was running a fever for a few days, but it was never very high, maybe 99 degrees at the highest which is OK. The most pitiful of course is Micah. It's just so sad when a baby isn't feeling well. I got these two pictures of Micah because it seemed like every time I turned around he was falling asleep...no matter where he was. One minute he was bouncing in his Jumperoo, and the next minute I see this:

The next day he was eating a bottle propped up in his high chair and I was unloading the dishwasher. I turn around and I see:

So sad, but it's kind of funny how they can fall asleep anywhere! I wish I could!

Intervention

I need an intervention! Twilight: New Moon came out on DVD on Saturday. I got it Saturday night. I'm now watching it for the 3rd time (the kids are down for quiet time...just in case you were wondering!)!!! I need an intervention! Is there a Twilight 12 step group because I think I need one! 

 Need I say more?!?!?!?!?

Daybook

FOR TODAY...Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Outside my window...it's gray, rainy and cold again! But at least that means that we don't have to water the red maple trees we bought this weekend!

I am thinking...it's time to get my butt off the couch and do something!!! Hehehehe!

I am thankful for...the opportunity I had to see my family this weekend for my grandma's 70th birthday. That was really fun!

From our kitchen school room...more math today, work on our "My Body" unit (maybe start our Five senses lapbook)

From the kitchen...egg salad sandwiches for dinner, with fresh fruit. Yum!

I am wearing...black athletic shorts (why, I don't really know!), and an orange sweatshirt. Once again, it feels like a lazy Tuesday.

I am creating...a plan to spring clean the dining room/entry way. I'm done with the living room (it looks so good!!) and now it's time to move on.

I am going...nowhere.

I am reading...Keeping Faith by Jodi Picoult. It is sooo good and I'm almost finished!

I am hoping...that the kids feel better soon. All three of them are sick! Boo!

I am hearing...kids coughing :(

Around the house...the dishes really need to be done (I couldn't get my act together yesterday so that room fell apart!), and more laundry needs to put in the washing machine and a few loads (see what I mean about not getting my act together yesterday!) need to be folded and put away! (See why I need to get off my butt and do something?!?!?!)

One of my favorite things...when my kids are playing nice together. (HINT, HINT, HINT!!!)

A few plans for the rest of the week:
1) Continue spring cleaning
2) Go to a planning meeting
3) Make doctor appointments if these phlegmy coughs don't start getting better!

Here is picture for thought I am sharing...My Nana with her grandkids and great grandkids at her birthday party on Sunday (minus a few!). Happy Birthday Nana! We love you!

Visit The Simple Woman's Daybook for more Daybooks! Happy Tuesday!

Daybook

I have seen this Daybook sponsored by The Simple Woman on many blogs and every time I see it I think, "I'd like to give that a try!", so today I am linking up for the first time. So here's my first Daybook..

For Today, March 16, 2010

Outside my window...it's gray and chili, although the sun looks like it's trying to fight it's way through the clouds.

I am thinking...about all that needs to be done in the house to get organized! I might drive myself crazy trying to figure out how it's all going to happen. (or if it's going to happen at all!!!)

I am thankful for....my 3 little ones and the opportunity I have to stay home with them. Even on the hardest day it's the best job I've ever had!

From our kitchen school room...today we'll be reviewing the numbers 1-20 (how to write them) in math, be talking about more traditions for St. Patty's day in Social Studies, and work on writing the letter "G".

From the kitchen...I'm thinking about French's Onion chicken for dinner, maybe with mashed potatoes and some kind of veggie. Yum...I'm getting hungry just thinking about it!

I am wearing...jeans and my NKU sweatshirt. It feels like a lazy day today with the dreary weather outside!

I am creating...a plan in my head for organizing the house (did I mention that I'm trying to organize the house?!?!)

I am going...to a short meeting tonight and then over to Kroger to have them refund my card for buy 1 get 1 free pork tenderloins that I bought last night that they didn't credit me for. (I will fight for that $6.22!!!)

I am reading...the Bible and that's about it because I need to make a library run! I'm out of material!!!!

I am hoping...that I can come up with a plan to turn around my childrens' behavior. Brianna is down right defiant and turning into the master manipulator! And Jonah is becoming a hitter and a screamer! It's time to nip this in the butt!

I am hearing...Barbie and the Nutcracker playing on the TV. (I must admit, I enjoy these Barbie movies too! They're great!)

Around the house...is chaos! Or at least, it feels that way to me :(

One of my favorite things...is that the grass is starting to turn green again, which means that spring is on it's way!

A few plans for the rest of the week: another meeting tomorrow night, and then off to Indy this weekend to see family! Yea!

And finally, a picture to share... Actually two pictures to share of the kids playing with empty storage boxes the other day! Have boxes...will play!!!

Well, that's my Daybook for this week! Stop by The Simple Woman's Daybook to see more or to put up your own Daybook!

Letting Go

So, I had decided to participate in the Spring Fling challenge over at Life Frosting. The challenge is to get rid of 100 things by the first day of spring, March 21st. Today I got a start on getting things out of my house! Tomorrow the Am Vets are coming by for a pick up, so today I tackled the office! Our office is the bane of my existence! It has become the dumping room! Some of you may be thinking, "Oh come on! How bad can it be?!?!!" Well....(Steven close your eyes now!) I took pictures so that I had proof!

These bins have been piling up along the wall for weeks! (OK...months!!!) They were full of Bri's old clothes, Jonah's old clothes and lots and lots of baby clothes! (It's obseen that my children have that much clothes!) This doesn't include the piles that were starting to accumulate in the laundry room as well! Well, after several hours of work I turned this into this:

8 bags of clothes to go to Am Vets! Over 200 pieces of clothing (and the worst part...I'm not done yet!)

This bin has winter coats, snowbibs, hats, gloves and scarves. I'm afraid to put it away totally because as soon as I do this gorgeous spring like weather will be replaced by a blizzard with 5 feet of snow :P

This is what's left of the clothes that Jonah has outgrown to be handed down to Micah, and clothes that Jonah hasn't grown into yet.

I also ended up with 6 piles to make lots to sell on Ebay, everything from maternity clothes, to newborn clothes, to some of Brianna's spring dresses and her jeans that she's outgrown (all her jeans are perfect because she hates to wear jeans! She says they are scratchy!)

And then I threw out a bag with about 40 items that were stained and ripped, etc. So far I feel great about this challenge and I'm so glad that I chose to participate because it made me get rid of a lot of things I kept saying I was going to let go of but just wouldn't until now! Why do we hang on to "stuff"? I hope I can turn a corner and hang on to the memories instead!

Head over to Life Frosting to join in the challenge and the fun! (Because simplifying is fun!!!)

Friday Family Fun Night

A few months ago I started to post about our family nights. We did pretty good for a while, and then, like usual things started to fall apart! I told Bri we would start again this week, but I waited til the last minute and came up with diddly squat come Thursday night. Today I had some extra time so I thought I'd go ahead and plan out our family night for next week (or at least get a good start on it!)

Since we have Family Night on Thursday I thought we should do a lesson on St. Patrick, since St. Patty's Day is the next Wednesday (when a holiday falls like that I like to do the lesson the week before and let the excitement set in!) So I went to the net and found some great stuff at DLTK. They had a great sheet with some background info on St. Patrick and what he was known for. Then I found some great activities. One is an active poem called Five Green Shamrocks that my kids will love! Another thing I found was the template to make Shamrock napkin rings with old toilet paper rolls (I knew I was saving those things for a reason!!!)

Aren't these cute??? I can't wait to see them on the table on St. Patty's Day!

 If you've never gone to DLTK you should! It is a wealth of great crafts and coloring pages and other activities. It's definately one of my favorite sites, not only for family night but also for school activities!

Then, I headed over to Family Fun Magazine's site (another great site for crafts, but also for kid friendly recipes!) and found a great idea for a scavenger hunt where the kids find a black pot full of gold chocolate coins at the end! So fun! I think I'm gonna have to hit the Dollar Tree and see if I can find a black pot! (Yea Dollar Tree!)

And finally, everyone's favorite part...the dessert! I LOVE The Picky Palate! If you've never been to Jenny's blog you've got to check it out! Especially if you like to bake! She has a recipe right now for these adorable Lucky Green Velvet Baby Cakes. I mean, look how cute these are!

And they look oh so yummy! I can't wait to try them! So that's what we're going to do next week for Family Night! What are you doing? Leave a comment and let me know! If it looks like I might have enough interest I might get a Mr. Linky and do a weekly Friday Family Fun Night forum here on our blog! We'll see! Have a great weekend everyone!

Sitting and Rolling

Micah has been sitting up, unassisted for about a month or so now. Before that he would sit for a really long time with someone behind him, or in his Bumbo, but he wouldn't sit up by himself for long. It's so fun now for him to be able to sit up. It gives him greater access to his toys, which he LOVES to play with. He is also rolling all over the place. I'll put him down to play, he'll end up on his back and then I'll look up and he's on the other side of the room! He definately uses his ability to roll to get where he wants to be (and plenty of places he can't get out of!!!) He is starting to get up on his knees and rock back and forth. He'll be crawling in no time! I don't know if I'm ready for that, but ready or not....he's on his way! I don't have pictures yet of the rolling or the rocking, but here's some pictures of him sitting up and playing. He's so sweet..I could just eat him up!

In February here we had record snowfalls for this area. We had a two week period where I think the kids were in school maybe 1 or 2 days. Everytime things would get cleared and safe again, here came 5-8 more inches of snow. By the time it was all over we had over 2 feet of snow on the ground, which is huge for Cincinnati! We don't usually get that much snow! Bri and Jonah loved it! (So did daddy!!!) Brianna loved it more than Jonah and would have spent hours outside, which would have been OK if the snow hadn't been accompanied by 20 degree temperatures. That gets dangerous fast! But they had a great time, rolling in the snow, building snowmen and snow beds and drinking lots of hot chocolate! (I, bytheway loved the first snowfall. By snowfall #3 I was over it!!!!)

All bundled up to play! At least Jonah didn't have to wear the pink snowsuit this year!!!! (Thanks Nina!)

Our snowbabies, (from left to right) Jonah, Micah and Brianna!

Brianna's snow bed-I can't get her to take a nap in her bed, but she'll "sleep" outside in the snow!!!

This particular day Jonah lasted exactly 5 minutes before he was knocking on the door to come back in!

And just one more shot because it amazed us to watch it happen, all the snow that was building up in the kitchen window due to the winds!

Lucky for us we will get a taste of spring this weekend as the temperatures get into the 50's! I think a trip to the park is in short order! Have a great Thursday!

Spring Fling

How ironic that last night I was just saying to Steven that it was time to start getting rid of "stuff" and today I came across this challenge at my friend Britni's blog (which she found originally on this blog called Life Frosting). The idea is to get rid of 100 things (ie freecycle, recycle, Craig's List, trash, regift, etc.) by the first day of spring, March 21st. So I'm joining in and I encourage you to join in too! Let's make 2010 a simplier year and get rid of all the stuff that is causing choas and clutter in our homes! My first oppurtunity comes on March 9th when the Am Vets are coming by for a pick up. I might reach all 100 items with this pick up! (I have a lot of baby and maternity clothes that I'm getting rid of!) But even if I do I'm not stopping there! Check back to see the running list on the side toolbar of the items as I get rid of them. And thanks to Chelsea for such a great challenge!

Gettin' Crafty (for Kaysi!!!)

Ever since I talked about getting my Cricuit Expressions machine for Christmas my friend Kaysi has been asking me to post pictures of what I'm doing with it. So far, I've mainly used it to make cards.

Like this one that I made for my mom after her trip to Las Vegas:

Or this one I've made for, well, I won't say in case they read the blog (I'm not sure if they do or not :P)

I've also made one scrapbook page so far for Jonah's album. I'll be making a duplicate of this layout for Micah's album. (I'm soooo far behind in my scrapbooking right now!)

But the thing I am most excited about is what I made last night. I have found so much inspiration from Kaysi's craft blog. I was looking around yesterday, not only at her adorable crafts, but at the links she has. I found so many St. Patty's day crafts. Now, my mom was always the queen of decorating for every holiday. But I've never really decorated for St. Patty's day. So I thought, well, why not use some of this inspiration, and my wonderful Cricuit and make a St. Patty's day decoration for our entertainment center. So here is what I came up with:

Here's a close up of each letter:

These are corkboards that I had that were almost perfect 12 x 12. (Our entertainment center is big and they needed to be able to be seen!) I used 4 coordinating green papers. I didn't have any St. Pat's papers, but it worked out well! All letters and embelishments were cut using the Cricuit (George Basic shapes cartridge). The letters are 7 1/2", the flowers 2", the hearts for the Shamrocks on the "L" are 2 1/2", and the hearts for the Shamrocks on the "C" are 2". Then I just added buttons, ric-rac, ribbons and brads. Next time I think I might try to do something with more 3D dimension, but I was very happy with my first crafty endevour with my Cricuit! I've now been bitten by the craft bug (Thanks Kays!) I think the next craft is a new St. Patty's day wreath for the front door! I'm linking this post up to the St. Patty's Day Link Party at Craftaholics Annoymous. Head over and check out all the awesome St. Patty's Day crafts and get inspired!

Shine On

Last night I had the chance to go with mom and my Aunt Stacey to the Trace Adkins/Martina McBride Shine On tour! It was AWESOME! I had seen Martina McBride years ago with Reba McIntire and some others for the Girls Night Out tour, but I had never seen Trace Adkins before! He was awesome! His songs are so upbeat and fun to sing along to (although some can be a bit inappropriate!! Just ask his momma!) But his ballads are phenominal! He was so high energy and really brought the crowd to their feet! By the time he was done the crowd was rearin' to go and ready for Martina.

Martina McBride is one of my favorite country singers and has been for years! In fact, when I auditioned for American Idol in 2005 I auditioned with her song "In My Daughter's Eyes". She didn't do that one last night, but she did just about everything else from "This One's for the Girls", to "Concrete Angel" and "Independence Day" to "When God Fearing Women Get the Blues". She is just amazing! What a set of pipes that woman has! WOW!!!! Everytime she opened her mouth I just got goose bumps. After she performed "Broken Wing" the crowd was on their feet and clapped and cheered for a good 3+ minutes. She just stood there shaking her head, you could tell she was overwhelmed by the response! She was literally speechless. I'll tell you what, people in Cincinnati love their country music and I think she was feeling the love by the time she got back on her bus to return to Nashville!

One of the coolest things was when she rose up out of the stage sitting on a quarter moon seat, floating over the crowd and singing "Concrete Angel". She floated out over the crowd and to the back of the arena, where a smaller, revolving stage was positioned. She performed the rest of the song back there and then another new single from her new album. Was that a treat for the people in the back or what?!?! And it was thrilling for everyone as she floated over top of them! So cool! Kind of reminded me of the 'NSync concert back in the day, when they flew over the audience singing "Sailing". Stuff like that is soooo cool!

She is absolutely the best and I hope she comes back soon because I will go see her again! We love you Martina!!!!

And thanks Mom and Stacey for such a fun girls night out!