Things I Love Thursday-Family Fun Magazine November 19, 2009

My mother in law recommended a magazine she saw in her doctor’s waiting room, so when my 4 year old’s school was doing magazine sales as a fundraiser this is what i picked to order.  Family Fun Magazine arrived in my mailbox last week and I read the whole thing in one sitting. I LOVED all of their ideas of activities and crafts to do with my kids, some fun recipes and food ideas to try, and even travel info/ideas. I was really impressed! I am usually the type to tear out articles or pages from magazines that I want to try or keep, but I found myself wanting to tear out every other page! I am anxiously awaiting the next issue, but until then I have plenty to keep me busy with my kids from this issue!

Head over to The Diaper Diaries for more TILT. She is also offering an awesome Yummie Tummie giveaway so be sure to enter!

Christmastime November 16, 2009

This year I am especially struggling with trying to explain and focus on the true meaning of Christmas with my kids. I think partly because my 4 year old is coming up with a lot of questions and it is hard to figure out how to talk about some of this stuff to a 4 year old and 2 year old!  In addition, our family is just so blessed that it seems ridiculous to even consider getting my kids gifts for christmas. Of course, we were still at Toys R Us last night doing some shopping and having lots of fun plotting what our kids might like to receive. I’m still feeling quite disatisfied with the selection at the chain stores and have been doing a lot of online searching trying to find some good things to get that are worth the money for our kids. All of this is really beside the point…it is so easy to become consumed by the materialism that this season can bring on.  The gimmies are crazy in my kids right now as the toy catalogs keep showing up in the mail and newspaper.

One thing I hope to do before Christmas is to find some sort of charitable work that our family can do together. At our MOPS meeting last week, we had a speaker from the Columbia Voluntary Action Center. She was a truly inspiring speaker. She was very passionate about volunteer work, especially for families and children and I feel called to find something for my kids to do this year. It is so easy to say that we will start doing volunteer work when our kids are older, but how exactly is it easier to suddenly start trying to get my kids to do volunteer work in 8 years or so?  Why not start now?

Back to Life

I am ready to get back to Life!  I have been missing in action in all aspects of my life as I finished up items for an annual craft sale in Lowell, MI my friends and I participate in.  Long story short, I was going to be attending and am not now, so I had to get everything ready that I could and ship it up there.  After over 100 Christmas cards, 200 Christmas gift tags, burp cloths, and onesies, I am ready to close the door to my craft room for a couple of days!  I enjoyed making all of these things, but I am exhausted and need to catch up on the neglected areas of my life.

I think my kids are glad to have me back! We had fun today making these Indian Corn Crafts.  I have a variety of other fun things in my head to do with them, but that’s what we managed today. 🙂  Right now they are playing in their buckets of black beans digging for “bugs”. Gotta love boys!

MY HOUSE IS CLEAN! November 6, 2009

Tonight we had our monthly MOMS Night Out for my local MOMS Club.  I was the hostess and we did a MOMS Night IN tonight!  With the holidays coming up we thought it would be good to plan something that did not cost anyone money to attend. So, we had a project night at my house.  I created a couple of cards for people to make as well in case they needed a project. People who came could play with my inks, stamps, supplies, cricut machine, etc.

Obviously having a group of people to your home is a great motivator to get your house cleaned.  I have been cleaning for 3 days, it seems.  Today, I spent the day finishing up my cleaning and telling the boys all day that they were not allowed to play with their toys and barking at them to “clean that up”.  I told them we could play tomorrow! 🙂

The thing I am most excited about is that I got my stamping/scrapbooking room cleaned up again. It had gotten pretty messy and out of control but after my cleaning frenzy last night it is in great shape again! I feel re-inspired and ready to tackle my many projects!

And the cherry on top is that I have about 80% of our laundry done!  I think I am about to see the bottom of the laundry hampers!

Stomach Bug Be Gone! November 2, 2009

Harper came down with a stomach bug last week (you may have read about it in my fight the frump post). I thought he had gotten better, but that was a fluke semi-healthy day, and for the past week he has continued to have some sort of nasty stomach bug (luckily no one else in the fam has gotten it).  It has kept me busy.  Laundry, lots of diaper changes, nasty diaper rash, 3AM baths, and a whiny 9 month old, who also is not able to sleep. Yesterday, he finally seemed back to himself….including his appetite. He is voraciously hungry now! The time change, is of course, not sitting well with my already early riser, but we are working on that. I am just grateful that life can go back to some resemblance of “normal” again and I can start getting something done besides holding Harper all day.

Paralyzed By My To Do List October 26, 2009

I made a to do list.   Is it really a “to do” list when it is like 3 pages long and you haven’t a clue where to start?  I think I am juggling way too many things!  I’ve got my stampin up classes that I need to complete my samples for so I can post them on my SU blog…I love doing this so I don’t really want to eliminate it! I have a variety of MOMS Club commitments that are coming up and I need to prepare for. I of course have all the typical household to do things like 65 loads of laundry, pretty sure my hubby has no more clean socks because when he opened his sock drawer this morning while I was still trying to steal a couple minutes of sleep, the drawer sounded really hollow.  I have stuff I WANT to do with my kids, like activities to keep them from driving me C-R-A-Z-Y!  Where to start? I think I am paralyzed. I am so overwhelmed I don’t even know what to tackle first. So, of course, I am tackling Blogs, Facebook, and Twitter first.

Great web site for you crafty people October 25, 2009

My wonderful friend, Emily, and her mom have started a new blog. If you are into cardmaking and paper crafting, you have to check this out. They are both so talented. I have had the pleasure if meeting Emily’s mom in person finally earlier this year, and have seen some of her work in person and it is just fabulous!!!!  Emily is one of the most talented and resourceful people I know…if I ever need an idea or need help with an idea, she is the one I ask first! Emily and I have known each other since our husband’s first year in med school and it was such a pleasant surprise when we found out that they had each gotten a residency spot in the same city so we would once again be living in the same location for 3 years!

Here is the site:

(on a side note, please lift Emily up in your prayers, her kiddos have been sick with probably H1N1 and she is preggo with #4 and also sick with the same virus)

Swagbucks

Unfinished Mom posted a comment on here earlier this week, and so I hopped over to her blog to read her Works for Me Wednesday post.  Here is what I found. It’s a great little tutorial/rundown on Swagbucks. I had heard of swagbucks and had even signed up for an account, but I just had not done anything with it. This was a great reminder for me, and even informative since I had been living under a rock and did not know there was a tool bar you could download. That is just my style!

Fight the Frump Friday-This is A True Story October 23, 2009

Have you heard about the Fight the Frump Friday carnival over at Blissfully Domestic, led by Jenny at Mommin It Up? Well, I am really the last person in the world who has any advice whatsoever about fighting the frump…in fact, I am the frump.  However, I have been trying to fight it for a few months now….after all, Harper is 9 months old so I no longer have the whole I’ve had 3 children in 4 years and the youngest is a newborn right now excuse. So I thought, Ok, I can write something…and I felt pretty inspired with all the talk about Mary Kay products because I love their products, used to sell them, and now my sis in law sells them (here is a shameless plug for her). The story you are about to read is true, and I wish that I was about to exaggerate or embellish it just a little, but I’m not.

Several months ago my best friend took me shopping when I was visiting her in Michigan.  She helped me pick out a HUGE pile of trendy clothes, we took pics of outfits I could wear, including new “casual” wear outfits so I would look good even when I was lounging around the house.  She strictly instructed me to stop wearing my husband’s shorts and t-shirts around the house! I LOVE my new clothes and have been really inspired MOST of the time to wear nice clothes, add some accessories like some earrings, and do my makeup. I even started taking care of my skin again.

Fastforward to this week, here is what has been going on.  Hubby left for TEXAS for a 5-day conference on Wednesday.  I have had big plans of cleaning out our laundry/storage room, guest bathroom, and guest bedroom in the evenings while he was gone so my appearance hasn’t been high on my priority list.  Wednesday went fine, I was dressed decently, probably just had some mascara on.  Yesterday (Thursday), I wore my pajamas all day.  I did shower, but applied no makeup, moisturizer, or hair product. So, I looked pretty crummy.  Harper proceeded to develop a horrid stomach bug yesterday so I seriously changed probably 20 dirty diapers of diarrhea, so not a bad excuse to look “frumpy.”  By the time 6am this morning rolled around, I was pretty darn tired, so I started off the day in the same clothes as I had on yesterday and did not have much of a plan to change out of those clothes.  As the morning wore on, and Harper’s diarrhea seemed to have lessened, I still felt gross and very very tired.  I hopped on the internet to read some of my favorite blogs and saw the Fight the Frump posts.

Another hour or so went by, and I decided that maybe I shouldn’t be the poster woman for frumpiness.  My tip for fighting the frump that I wanted to share with the blogging world was to get yourself showered, dressed, and made up because it will make you feel better about yourself and probably give you more energy. So I was going to instruct all those mommies out there to get dressed, accessorize, and apply some makeup EVEN if you are not going to see anyone but your children that day.  My hubby is still in Texas, but I decided I would feel a lot better if I followed the above advice.  Around 11am I looked pretty darn good. I had a new, super cute top on, my make up done, hair combed, and even some funky earrings on. I really did feel better, I had more energy, I stopped sulking about the fact that my hubby is in Texas, and I went on with my day in a much better mood for my children!

At precisely 1pm, Harper was playing so sweetly at his little activity table, and he was super proud that he was standing at it!  Then he fell….and bumped his head….and started to cry.  The tears and snot fest ensued for awhile, and he started to calm down. I was holding him and getting ready to take a bite of my lunch. Just trying to keep him happy for a couple of minutes so I could scarf down a Healthy Choice meal before putting him down for a nap.  Without any warning whatsoever Harper vomited ALL OVER my shirt, then again all over my neck, then projectile vomited all over the kitchen floor. It seriously just kept spewing out of him, as if we were in some kind of SAHM Horror Flick.  I did what every good mother does in this situation and completely froze for a good 30 seconds, trying to process what had just happened to me.  There was so much vomit that it soaked through my cute shirt, and when I took it off I had chunks of vomit on my bra, and my skin was soaked.

I will spare you the rest of the cleanup details. However, while I may have looked good for a solid 2 hours, I am back in a cruddy t-shirt, and trying to laugh about Harper’s not so subtle reminder to me as to why there are days when I simply do not “fight the frump.”

We had one of those days October 21, 2009

A couple of days ago we had “one of those days”.  It wasn’t any one bad thing in particular, but it was just a variety of random occurrences that happened all on one day…the kind that make you feel glad when you finally crawl into bed for the night.

That morning, I had my first experience of leaving a child behind, so to speak.  I have feared this moment since Harper was born. Oftentimes I take a panicky glance in my rearview mirror when we are halfway to our destination just to be sure I did in fact put Harper’s carseat into the car, and that the other 2 are both in the back seat.  Well, that morning, upon arriving home from picking up Lucas at preschool, I pulled into the driveway and turned off the car. It was a 2 trips to the door type of arrival. I carried bags, McDonalds, purse, keys into the house first.  Then I came back out and began my favorite task of all (NOT)–getting everyone out of their carseats and headed toward the house.  I got everyone in (or so I thought) and shut the front door. I put Harper into his highchair and got Lucas settled in at the table with his lunch. I put Avery’s lunch on the table and then called him to the table, assuming he was off playing superheroes or some other such thing.  He did not come. I asked Lucas where his brother was, really how far could he be…down the hall?!?!  Lucas said he had no idea where Avery was.  I quickly realized that perhaps Avery had not followed us into the house afterall so I hurriedly opened the front door to find Avery standing on the step about to burst into tears.  Poor thing! All was well though, he wasn’t in the street or out wandering the neighborhood. Still, I felt terrible!

Not but a couple of hours later I was changing Harper’s diaper and realized he had been wearing the same pair of socks for 2 days straight. I know *GASP*.  He is a third child afterall.  I took them  off, knowing that they were a little snug so that must feel good to get those off those chubby ankles.  Underneath those socks though was a horrendous red line going across his ankles.  Those socks were obviously WAY tighter on him than I had realized.  Crazy that he never acted uncomfortable.  We are talking a serious red line on both feet….as in the circulation had to have been close to being compromised.  In fact, 3 days later he still has a mark across his ankles. It is fortunately improving. However, I feel AWFUL.

By around 10pm that night I thought I was finally home free.  No other “bad’ things could happen.  Right before bed I came back out to the kitchen to do something random like get a drink of milk or something. I took one step out of my bedroom and was greeted with the HORRIBLE smell! I asked my husband what it was and he said he thought it was whatever it was I was cooking overnight in the crockpots. I said no, my cooking is better than that! Still, I wondered if one of the crockpots was burning or broken or something, but they both checked out fine. The smell was clearly coming from the kitchen.  I sniffed around for awhile and narrowed it down to the dishwasher. I opened it up and was greeted with all sorts of steam and stink!  At the bottom of the dishwasher, lying directly on the heat element was a lid to my husband’s cheapo pharmaceutical company freebie coffee mug.  Just burning away…mmmmm the smell of burnt rubber and plastic.  So, when I finally was able to climb into bed for the night, I had the pleasure of being lulled to sleep by a lovely stench. Thank goodness that day is over!