Post #199

I've almost reached the 200 mark. I once read a funny statement about blogs - Never have so many been able to reach so many and been able to talk about absolutely nothing. Well, that might not be the exact quote, but it's pretty close and very accurate. Don't you just love it? I love all the mom blogs talking about laundry, cleaning kid messes and what to make for dinner. I've gotten so many wonderful recipes and ideas from all these blogs.

Thanks to all you many bloggers who talk about nothing - it makes my day!

I'm envious of my daughter. She came up to me the other day wearing her favorite jeans. "Mom," she says, "these keep falling off." She showed me her waist and it is thinner than it was a few weeks ago and her jeans are hanging low. She must have hit a growth spurt. There is nothing else that could have changed her that much. I wish I could say that about me. I would have to grow pretty darn tall to experience what my daughter has.

I've been working on exercising. I want to loose weight and get into better shape. We have DDR on the Wii and I love it. So, yesterday, this is what my exercise program is like. I pull out the DDR mat, start up the disk and get my hand controllers ready. Peanut starts to crawl on the mat. I pick her up and move her. She comes back onto it and sits in the center. I remove her again and give her something to do. I set up my options and get dancing. I do a couple of dances. Peanut crawls back onto the mat while I'm dancing. I miss a few steps because of her. I step on her hand once too. Well, my score wasn't very good. I move Peanut again. I start up the next dance. My three and five year old are jumping on the couch. They accidentally bump into each other and my three year old starts to whine, "She pushed me, she pushed me." Meanwhile, my daughter is saying, "I didn't push him!" I saw what happened and I agreed with my daughter, no you didn't push him, it's ok. Well, my son didn't like that. He got a hold of his toy light saber, walks up to his sister and hits her as hard as he can with it. It gets her right in the heal, and it hurt her. There goes my exercise. I turned off the Wii, ran to my son, grabbed the light saber from his hand and tells him what he did was very wrong and I send him to his room. He is crying from being in trouble, my daughter is crying because she is hurt and Peanut starts to cry because everyone else is. Well, exercise time was over after about 5 minutes. I had to take care of the crying girls and return son to his room because he tried to leave.

This is why I can't loose weight. My children are sabotaging my efforts!

Photo #3

They are coming!

This was a lovely morning. Hubby thought the cloud coming from behind the mountain had a very Independence Day (movie) look about it.

Random Photo #2

The rectagular tortilla

I love to make our own tortillas. They are tasty! I'm really good a flipping the pan and having the torilla fly out and land on it's other side to cook. However, when it come to rolling the tortilla, I'm definatly not a pro. Unless you take that making all sorts of strange shaped torillias is a professional thing. Usually they have a some what round shape, but I also manage to make a lot of rectangles. Voila!

And now...

And now, for a time, we will abandon Random Thoughts for Random Photos and their strange stories:

Photo #1


These are what use to be three of my children's tooth brushes. I won't go into the icky reasons why we thought they should be cleaned, but we decided that they could use a good cleaning. Hubby's idea was to soak them in bleach. I said no way, let's just boil them. So, Hubby put the tooth brushes into a large pot of water and he put it on the stove. Guess what? We forgot about it until later I smelled burnt plastic. I ran to the stove and found this! Thanks to teflon in the pot, they didn't melt and stick. The just melted. The pot cleaned up nicely and is usable again with no trace of burnt plastic taste or smell. The tooth brushes didn't fair so well.

Lesson learned!

The extinction of head phones

Peanut is teething. She eats everything she can get her hands on, as brought up in the previous post about crayons. She eats well at meals and I'm glad for that. There are very few foods that she turns up her nose at, but the non-food items are a problem. Like I mentioned, she loves crayons and I'm starting to think she has a secret stash of them somewhere because she keeps finding them. She also loves to chew on and rip up the foam on head phones. Several head phones in the house have suffered because of her need to chew and tear with her new teeth. She has 8 and they are lethal. She got one of my fingers in a surprise attack yesterday and I have a bruise - ouch!

Back to the head phones. Last week, Hubby got very upset with me when he said I let her chew up his head phones. I didn't let her! She crawled up to his computer, stood up, pulled his head phones off the computer desk, and chewed at them. The moment I found her, I took them away from her. The damage had been done, but not much. She must not have had them long when I found her. This morning, my oldest son was listening to his MP3 player. He foolishly put the head phones on Peanut and left her. She pulled the head phones off and ripped out a chunk of the foam with those sharp little teeth. Again, I saw this and took them from her, which she was very upset about. Months ago she got a hold of a pair and destroyed them.

After she chews up all the crayons and head phones in the house, I wonder what she will go for next?

crayons

My daughter has been coloring lately. She leaves her crayons where Peanut can get to them. Peanut has bitten off and chewed several crayons. Her favorite to chew is pink. I can't imagine what attracks her to the pink and surely it can't taste good. To me it looks like Pepto-Bismol.

She also took a bite from the purple crayon too. The purple one was of a different brand and instead of just chewing off a chunk, the color seems to disintegrate and next thing you know, she was covered in purple slime. Luckily for her and me, she had just finished lunch and had no shirt on so the purple slime just got on her chin and chest. It was off to the bath tub, which is her favorite place to spent time right now.

What about crayons are so appealing to babies? They can't taste good and Peanut spits and gags when she does bite into them, so why does she go back and do it again?

Bath time!

Peanut loves taking baths. I'll fill up the tub with hot water, stick her in and she will play until the water is cold and her lips are quivering. Bathtimes are many and they happen any time day or evening.

yard sales

I love to go to yard sales. When we lived in Hawaii, in the military housing, there were a thousand yard sales every Saturday. Military families who were getting ready to move or just cleaning house would have yard sales. They were the best and I got quite a few nice things, too.

When we moved to Virginia, very few yard sales. Then here in NM, I heard if you got a Thursday edition of the Thrifty Nickle newspaper, a list of many yard sales could be found. I got my Thrifty Nickle and this morning, we took our paper and the map and went bargain hunting. Unfortunately, we couldn't find some of the streets. Now, I'm a good map reader, so it's not my inability to read the map, but I've learned, so much of this city is still growing, even though the street is on the map, doesn't mean that is exists just yet. We came to many dirt roads where the map told us streets should be. For one sale, we found the street, but the number didn't exist. So, we only found maybe 4 of the 10 yard sales we went after. None of them had what we are searching for - a grill, bookshelves, a vacuum, and other little odds and ends. Oh well, I'll pick up my Thrifty Nickle next week and see if we can't do better. Although, I should probably just wait until March or April, when everyone does their spring cleaning.

It was sweet, at one house, there was a little boy sitting out with his parents, who were having the yard sale. My little boy went right up to him, got about 3 inches from his face and said hi. The other little boy said, "You want to come play?" Of course my boy did and they ran into the back yard like best buds. When I finished looking at the yard sale, I had to tell my boy it was time to go. He cried, he fussed, he threw a tantrum. He had made a new friend and they were having fun together. So sweet. I felt bad having to leave.

like it?

Do you like my new look? I figured after a year, I needed a change. I made it myself on Photoshop. OK, I know it isn't very good... but I did it myself! Photoshop is a program I would like to learn, but it is really hard. I usually can't do anything unless I've got Hubby close by to ask questions to. He is really talented on Photoshop. But this time, he wasn't around and I did it alone.

Not much is going on. I want to get into the kitchen and do some baking and cooking to get ready for the weekend, but Peanut won't let me do much.

A few odds and ends:
- I took Peanut to the doctor to see if she had an earache, since she had been whacking at her ear all week. No earache, just teething, which apparently, can make the ears itch, explaining why she kept whacking at her ear - she was itching it. Peanut did come weighing in at a super 21 lbs, 2 oz! She is getting so big.
- Peanut, who is 9 months old now, can stand alone. She hasn't tried walking on her own yet. I'm trying to get that first step out of her, but she isn't going for it, yet....
-My three year old son is looking like John Denver in the 70's. He really needs a hair cut.
-The older boys are going on their first Cub Scout hike. We just moved from an area that had no scout troop for them so they are way behind and have never done any scout activities before. It's going to be a 3 mile hike!
-We are going to try and go to some yard sales tomorrow. Hubby doesn't have a grill, we have no money to buy a new one, so we are going to see if anyone is selling one for cheap at the yard sales. Hubby can't live long without a grill.
-I've submitted my first short story to a magazine. I don't expect it to be accepted, but I've made my first effort in accomplishing one of my lifelong dreams, to be a published writer. I may never reach my dream, but at least I've tried.

mmm, dessert

We were all having a sweet tooth moment yesterday. I looked through the pantry at the dwindleing supplies. I'm doing my best not to go grocery shopping this month and save money by eating what we have in the pantry. So, looking through what we had I found a can of cherry pie filling and an idea came to me - cherry pizza!

I looked up a recipie online for a sweet pizza crust and found one that was perfect. It's basically a sugar cookie recipie. I baked it for a few moments alone, then I added the cherry pie filling, some pecans, and some chocolate chips. I put it back into the oven for a few minutes to let the cherries warm up and the chocolate chips melt. When I pulled it out of the oven, I piped on some cream cheese frosting I made. Look at the result:

Wow Wee! It was good!

friends and hair-dos

A number of months ago, I joined Facebook. It has been so much fun to reconnect with friends. I'm a pretty quiet person and I have a tendency to be quite shy, until I know you. However, it is interesting to see the number of friends I have on facebook and realize that I've been so blessed to know so many super people throughout my life. Until Facebook, I had lost touch with most of them, but now, we chat again.

We are all much older now and our lives have separated in many ways, but what is really fun, is seeing my friends from middle school and high school and realizing I know things about those friends that their spouses don't know!!!

My daughter has been a hairdresser lately. She loves to comb her dad's hair. She has to bring in the heavy duty brush on mine. She brushes out my wavy, crazy hair and puts countless twisties and scrunchies in it. I look FABULOUS!

Favorite brother

Peanut loves her big brother, who is 8. He has been super with her since she was born. His mellow personality has been a perfect match for her. I trust him with her and she trusts him too. Ever since she was very small, he has had the "magic touch" with her.

Since Christmas holidays ended, she has missed him while he is at school. As soon as he walks in the door from school, she screams in delight, and holds her arms up for him. He picks her up and she won't let him go. Her oldest brother tried to take her one day from her favorite brother and she screeched an awful noise and pushed his arm away. It's clear who her favorite is.

Brother loves that she loves him so much, but he gets tired of holding her after a while. Last night I ran a few errands, alone. It's a rare treat. When I got home, I found Brother sitting in the rocking chair with Peanut asleep in his arms. It's so sweet. He can put her to sleep like no one else can, that is his "magic touch" and he is proud to have it.

Sweet kids!!!
Speaking of sweet kids, my older daughter, Princess, informed me today that Jesus doesn't have a phone. No he doesn't, I agreed. She then told me that he doesn't need to call anyone and he doesn't need a camera either. I love those moments when I get into a glimpse into my child's mind.

PS, while writing this, Brother has been holding Peanut and she fell asleep in his arms. Her oldest brother tried to take her from favorite brother, and she won't let go of him, even in her sleep. She scrunched up her eyebrows and poofed out her lips, alseep, in protest of being taken from him. It's funny.

Clothes line and snow

Over the weekend, Hubby put up a clothes line in the back yard for me. I'm happy to have it. The yards here are totally ridiculous. It is rock. That's it. The landscaping is done with lots and lots of rocks. It makes the small yard area totally useless. So, we put a clothesline in the useless back yard. It's funny, the city we live in, Las Cruces, translated is The Crosses. Crosses are found all over the city. Now there are two in our back yard, my clothes line! I'm making good use of it today.

This morning we woke up and I was looking out the back door while eating breakfast at the mountain that is right out behind the house. I asked Hubby, is that snow on the top? He looked and confirmed what I saw, a light dusting of snow at the very top of the mountain. I noticed the rooftops of the houses around us, they had snow in the crevices of them. Amazing, snow! It was gone with in an hour and now the day is bright, sunny, and you only need a light jacket to go out and that is to protect you from cool winds.

I've enjoyed the weather here in Las Cruces!

Resolutions?

I resolve not to make resolutions!

No, I've learned after many years resolutions don't work for me. There is no way I can say I'm going to do this (fill in blank) everyday (or every week) this year. It never happens. Life and kids are unpredictable. There are days I get nothing done on my "to do" list because of life and kids. No disappointments this way.

Writing with a 5 year old

My daughter, who turned 5 in November, loves to write. With Christmas past, we have been working on thank you cards. I'm pulling teeth to get the boys to do it, but not my daughter. She has used most of my stationary thank you cards and has written 4 to 5 letters.

When she writes, she wants to know how to spell things. It's nice that she cares about this. My 10 year old doesn't care how he spells. So, I have to spell out every single word, one letter at a time. There are a few letters she is still learning and she has developed a very interesting way of making sure she is making the correct letter.

Some examples:
N and M - when I spell out something and we get to an N or M she asks, is it up down up or up down up down? This is of course, how you write the capital letters. I then have to tell you N is up down up or M is up down up down.

D, P, B - These are tough, but she is smart. Last night she needed to write a P. She asked me "is it around around?" No, just one around, I said. "It is around at the top or around at the bottom?" I answered, it's around at the top. Are you seeing this? When it is a D, she asks if it is around top to bottom, and it is.

So, not only do I spell out every single letter to her in every word, I'm also explaining how to make certian letters. It is interesting and I hope she can learn it all by the time she gets to kindergarten, because I'm thinking her teacher isn't going to explain all the letters to her every time she writes them.

PS, if you know anyone who wants to buy a house in Virginia Beach, please let me know. We have got to sell this house soon! Come February 1, if it isn't sold, we are going to start having some major finacial trouble.

Happy New Year!

Can you believe it is 2009?

Souldn't we be riding around in space ships yet?

Did you make it to midnight? I did. So did Hubby and my two oldest sons. We watched Prince Caspian and then Return of the King, the extended edition. We ate chips and dip and drank hot chocolate. What a fun night.

I hope you all have a wonderful new years day!