Ummm...Saturday Stuff

I don't know why I feel the need to blog, when I am so extremely tired! I just dazed at the computer screen waiting for my blog to come up...after a few minutes I realized that I hadn't even signed in.

I believe the sale went well. So much for my goal of $50 or less. HA! The good news is that I did spend less than I made. I don't know exactly how much I made yet, but the first day's totals were posted. I made $150.00, and I spent $141.25. Oh and then today's little purchase of $6.50. So a total of $147.75. I did get a lot of good clothes for the kids. I don't think I even need to buy anything else for Spring or Summer. So for an entire 1/2 year of clothes for 3 kids, I think I didn't do too bad. I'll probably have to buy new shoes at some point (since the sizing is too hard for me to predict.)

We had to take Ashley to the doctor today. She has swimmer's ear (apparantly that is an ear infection outside the ear canal). This is the 3rd weekend in a row visiting the doctors office. I really would like it to stop now.

Oh by the way...Does anyone know how to get ink off a child's face that doesn't come off with just soap and water? I'm going to try rubbing alcohol tomorrow. I really hope I can get it off before church.

While Mom works...

(very hard on the consignment sale) the kids play!

This is what happens when Mom is not right on them every minute of the day.

There is a trail of Peanut Butter Crackers (I'm not sure if you can see that).

Just about every toy bin tipped over.

And you can see 2 of the suspects up on the roof of the little house. They have been jumping off of it and sliding off of it.

And then this is what Mason did to his sister. She came in saying Look Mommy do you think I look beautiful?

And here is the culprit:

OK then it's time for me to get out the door and make some money.

OH by the way: I'm doing the HAPPY Dance! Tammy from Scrapin' Memories just called. I WON the $50 gift certificate!!!!! Thank you friends who put my name in!!! Can't wait to get over there on Sunday afternoon.

1.Stupid 2. Sale 3. Prayers

Austin has been saying the word "stupid" alot! I tried to explain to him that 1st we NEVER call a person stupid. And 2nd that it is just an ugly word and we should try not to use it. Well today he was using it quite a bit. Everytime I heard him I would say, "Austin please don't use that word." And he would say, "Oh sorry Mom." Well it kept happening and I finally said, "Austin you have got to get that word out of your vocabulary." So then I hear him using it 2 or 3 times in a sentence over and over again. I said, "AUSTIN! STOP USING THAT WORD!" And he said, "I was just trying to get all the stupids out of me."

What am I going to do with him?
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So all you locals...POTATO (parents of Twins and Triplet organization) is having their consignment sale tomorrow at McGavock Middle School. It is open to the public at
8:00-11:30 and 1/2 price shopping from 12:00 to 2:00.

Please come and buy my stuff. I'm number 44 and my stuff is priced to sell! Most of my stuff is marked $3 or less.

My goal is to NOT buy anything! Now that is going to be hard! The kids actually need a few things...maybe I should make a goal of not spending more than $50. But I really want to make enough money for us to go to Disney one day while we are in Florida in a few weeks.
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Also I have 3 friends who need lots of prayers right now. One is going through a really nasty and abusive divorce and trying to sell their house, one is having major health issues and one is very financially stressed. Would you please say a little prayer for them right now? Thank you!

Just Get it OUT of my house!

Just a quick update to tell you I'm doing much better...just a few lingering headaches.

I have a consignment sale to get ready for on Friday. I haven't started. So tomorrow is going to be a very busy day. Yes I would really like to have the money, it would certainly help if we decide to go to Disney, but I just want to get rid of the stuff. I'm so tired of bags and bags of clothes and toys being in my garage and I'm not able to park in there. I just took 5 bags to Goodwill yesterday, because I just didn't want to go through them.

I tried to work on the sale a little yesterday. All I got was kids going through the bags and bringing toys back into the house.

I got to go to bed! My kids fell asleep at 5:00 tonight. Oh what am I in for?

By the way I'm really behind on reading blogs. Hopefully next week I'll get caught up.

doggone flu!

I'm so disappointed! I've got the flu.

My parents travelled 9-10 hours to get here. They were passing through on there way to Florida. I saw them for 5 minutes and they decided to sleep in a hotel. I don't blame them. But it makes me very sad!

The flu I have is not as bad as what I have had in the past. It is rather mild. My head hurts, my throat hurts a little, and I get a bit dizzy when I'm walking. And I need to sleep a lot! It's still a pain though!

Some Sunshine on a Cloudy Day!

I'm not feeling very well. I've got a headache that won't go away with medicine, and 3 sick or hurt kids.

Last Friday- I took the kids to doctor. Mason had a bad ear infection, Ashley had a small one and a yeast infection.

I'm trying to make this quick, because I'm tired.

Last night, Mason fell on the corner of the banister and cried and cried. He is much more sensitive when he is sick. Over the last 2 days he spiked a fever. He was telling me his mouth hurt and his head hurt. I kept him home from MDO on Thursday. Ashley doesn't understand that when one of the others is sick they need to get extra attention. So she was very jealous and needy. Also, last night while I was trying to fix the plastic gate in our family room, Austin decided to "tight rope" walk it. He fell right down on his groan and cried for at least 2 hours straight. His upper thigh was pinched and his testicle was scraped. I fell apart at that point and cried too.

I slept with Austin to make sure he was ok. Greg slept with Mason to make sure he was ok. Mason had a hard time sleeping. He was short of breath, heart racing, burping a lot and had a fever.So off to the doctor again today. I thought maybe Mason's ear wasn't getting better, I just didn't know. Well he has the flu! Apparantly, since he had the flu shot it is not as bad as it could be. I found out something I never knew today. His burping throughout the night, was his body's way of kind of throwing up. I had never heard that before.

Anyway, Mason, Ashley, Austin and I are all on Tamiflu. It should help Mason get better and prevent us from getting it.

Now for the sunshine! I got 2 packages in the mail today. One from Stephanie, it was the Blackberry Jam that I won from the Make-It-From-Scratch contest. I look forward to having some of it tomorrow with breakfast. And the other package was from my Secret Sister, she sent me 3 packages of letter stickers for Scrapbooking and 3 cute bookmarks. Thank you friends!!! I really needed that smile today!

What a hoot!

Mysterious picture found after 20 years! Thanks Eric!

Scrapbooking Fun and Layouts

These are the fun place settings Jeanette had at the crop.

This is a close-up on the name cork board she made for each of us. I need to replace one of the brad that I used down in the corner.

And Here are the three layouts I did:

fun facts

I found this slipper kit at JoAnn's on clearance for $2-$3. I bought one for Ashley and one for a birthday gift for one of her friends. She enjoyed making them and she wanted to where them everywhere. She was quite upset when I said she couldn't wear them to the store and that they might get ruined outside.

Then this is a cute story: Sunday morning Ashley told me she named the dragon. I said, "What did you name it?" And she said, "Gramma" I said, "???????Why did you name it Gramma??????" And she said, "I named it Gramma because it has green eyes."

And there you have it! LOL

Chinese Birthday Bash

Here is the Birthday Boy:

Funny thing about the cake: When I had it made I took in the symbol to have put on the cake. The guy came back in a few minutes and asked me which side was up. I said it didn't matter, but then I said, Oh do it upside down because it means good luck come down on you. He comes back with it and said, "Oh man, I hope I didn't just write you will fall over dead this year."

The kids made these linked dragons. We took them to the resteraunt to show Daddy.
We talked about how the dragons represent strength. So all three showed their muscles.

And here is Austin holding up the Happy New Year sign.

Here Ashley is showing off her extra long noodle.

And here is Greg in the costume the kids made for him.

Making the decorations

Fabulous Weekend!

What an absolutely WONDERFUL weekend I had! I just don't have the time to go into it all. I'll have to post pictures in another post.

First...Remember that Make it from Scratch Contest? I WON....(hee hee hee) Anyway, I wasn't going to post until I received my prize (blackberry Jam YUM YUM YUMMY!) so I could take a picture. But so many people were congratulating me, I thought I should mention it before then. Thank you to all of you! It sure was a lot of fun. And if I saw correctly I think there is another contest starting. You can't win 2 times in a row ( I'm making up that rule...share the love), but I still will play.

Next...OH MY GOODNESS... I had the time of my life at Jeanette's Pajama Crop. She had a goody bag with candies and scrapbooking trinkets and a stack of paper at each seat. And my favorite thing was the little corkboards with our names on them to mark our seating arrangement. Then she had 2 games that were hysterical. I especially loved the one where we partnered up and had clues. We had to find a little sticker on items throughout her house. Dana was my partner. She felt very weird going through Jeanette's personal things, but I didn't I was picking things up left and right. We tied for first place. We laughed and laughed and laughed! I got 3 layouts done and I like them. And for anyone who knows me you will find this quite amazing...I was the last one up! Isn't that bizzarre? The music stopped playing at 4:30 AM, so I thought it was time for me to go to bed. I called Dana to make sure she was safe driving home and I then fell asleep around 4:45 AM on the couch. Jeanette had enough beds for us...but 1st I was too embarrassed to wear my CPAP in front of anyone AND I was afraid that if I didn't wear it I would snore. It was so much fun!!! Thank you Jeanette for hosting an awesome crop!

Ok then onto today...Today is Greg's birthday. We had a great day! The kids and I made lots of fun decorations. Since today is also Chinese New Year, I decided to give Greg a Chinese Birthday party. We went to Evergreen for lunch. I gave Greg 9 "Lucky Money Envelopes". The are red envelopes that have money or well wishes in them. I used this time to educate the kids all about the Chinese New Year. The waitress and waiters were amused and kept coming over and teach us more Chinese. We made paper dragons and we made a big dragon costume for Daddy to wear. We also made Chinese lanterns. And I bought a Dairy Queen icecream Cake and had the Chinese symbol for Happy New year put on it.

It's been so busy but so fun...now it's time to sleep. I will post pictures tomorrow!

Schools Closed-updated

Today: A few flurries possible early. Mostly cloudy skies. High 32F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph.

Absolutely ridiculous!!!!

Schools are closed today.

No alterations have been made to this picture...it is what it is!

This layout is from my Mom in Ohio. It is 5 degrees with a wind chill of -4. (And they have school!)

Happy Valentine's Day

Won't you be my valentine?

lightbulb moment

Granted...I'm not a very good housekeeper. Unfortunately, I don't keep up with the laundry like I should. But I KNOW my kids have plenty of underwear to get me through a few loads.

Where in the world does it go?

These are the things I thought:

1. I don't put the laundry away right away, it stays in baskets and sometimes things fall out. Not knowing if they are clean or dirty...They go into the dirty clothes to be washed.

2. Along the same lines...Kids like to dump the baskets out so they have a boat/car/airplane to play in.

3. The kids look for their favorite underwear/socks or doll clothes and while in their drawers they decide to take everything out of it.

4. a few accidents- causing the need of a new pair

Yes these are frustrating...but still I know they have a lot of underwear and for goodness sakes we shouldn't be running out so fast.

So about a week ago I found out just where this underwear is going. Or rather why it is going in the laundry so quickly.

In the morning I dress the kids and I put clean underwear on them. In the evening if Greg dresses the kids for bed--he puts clean underwear on them. When I found this out...I asked Greg why he was putting clean underwear on them at night time. He said, "Well I saw you do it." Well I do put clean underwear on them after a bath- so he must have seen me do it then.

But now I know. I know it's not an excuse for not getting the laundry done quicker.

I Made it From Scratch- Bushman Bread

Do you remember that Make It From Scratch Contest I'm doing? Well tonight is the last night to enter. I made the Outback Steakhouse bread.

All I have to say is I'm thankful that this contest is just pulling a name out of a hat of who participated and not of how it turned out or how prepared I was. LOL!

So here is goes...(We are to post pictures)

Alrighty Mix 2t. granulated sugar into 1 1/4 cup warm water and then dissolve 1 package of yeast in it. Set aside while it does its thing.

Next Mix 2 cups bread flour, 1 3/4 cup whole wheat flour, 1 T. cocoa....Oh shoot Cocoa? I don't have cocoa. Ummmm....Will one of these do? Well it's gonna have to. So in goes 1 T of Nesquick and a tsp. salt. Then mix in 2 T of softened butter.

Make a well in the dry ingredients. Add 1/4c honey and 2 T molasses.
Now add food coloring to the yeast solution. Oh my goodness...It wants me to put in 3 1/4 teaspoons of food coloring...Um that's an awful lot. Alright that is ridiculous...let's change it. Add some red, yellow and blue food coloring until it looks dark enough. This is disgusting...let's add some more red.

Alright now what? Read recipe...blah blah blah...Um where is page 2? PAGE 2???? I printed this recipe off the internet June 2004. I don't have page 2. So what do I do? I tried to look it up on the internet again. No luck. Searched my recipes. NO LUCK. AHHHHHHH! Alright don't panic...Let's look in another recipe book and see what it says for some other breads. OK then let's let it rise. So I let it rise while we went out for dinner. Came back...hmmm looks descent. Broke it into 6 loaves. I probably should have let it rise again at this point...but I didn't. Yes it does look gross. Still hoping it is better than it looks.

Ok into the the 375o for how about 35 minutes. Waiting....waiting...mmmm that smells good....waiting...mmmmm that smells REALLY good...

waiting...waiting...smells like it's burning... OH SHOOT! I guess that was too long.

Now for the guinea pig...

Smells good...little Crispy...but he likes things a little burnt.

Dang that's hot! I promise that is the look!

Alright thinking...

He gives it a thumbs up.

Alright my turn...

Not so bad! Will I make it again? Probably not. But the inside is pretty good.

So there you have it... my version of the Honey Wheat Bushman Bread.