A Letter

Dear Puke,

Please go away. I am tired of cleaning you up. You are like an unwelcomed house guest that is overstaying your welcome. It was one thing when I didn't even know you came to visit Lily until morning and had to clean you up. I was actually grateful I didn't know you were here so I could get a good nights rest. But two nights in a row with Lily is two nights too many! Again I was glad that I didn't know you had arrived and would much rather clean you up in the morning (twice) than be up with you and Isaac tonight every half hour even if he does know how to get you into the throw up bowl. So it's day three and you are asked to pretty please leave. We don't need or want your services around here anymore.

Your un-friend,

The Mom

Proof that I really do try to be a fun MOM! (warning: Long Post!)

Every once in a while I try to be a fun mom. Most of the time I surely am NOT! But these last two weeks I have redeemed myself. Last summer with Lily being a new born I feel like we did nothing but hang around our tiny rental house and wait for our home to be rebuilt. So here is the fun stuff that we have been doing lately!!

The Circus

My Friend Nicole had a circus give away on her blog and I WON!! I was so super excited. It was for 6 tickets to see the Zing Zang Zoom show. We got VIP passes and they provided a hot-dog dinner before the show, went to the preshow and then had fantastic seats (2nd row from the floor!!!). It was super fun and the kids had a great time! We didn't think Lily would be too much fun since it started at her bedtime so Chris offered to stay home and the girls invited two friends. Here are the girls with their clown noses on at dinner! They gave all the VIP kids a goodie bag with a stuffed white tiger and some other fun stuff. They were in heaven!!

Isaac refused to take pictures with any of the characters at the preshow party. I think he was a bit scared of them!!

The tight-rope walkers were amazing!! We were so close to them!

The Fair

Tuesday was kids get in free at the California State Fair, and all rides were a buck. So my friend, Anne talked me into going. I have never taken the kids before because I SO hate crowds! We left Lily with Nana and gave it a try. It was pretty fun, but hot. It's not something we are going to do every year, but at least I can say we have gone now, and it was so fun to watch the kids have a blast! I guess it is my old age (HA!) now but just watching the roller coasters gave me headache and made my stomach turn! No more for me!

Em and Courtney


TAHOE

The girls tracked off in the middle of August so we headed up to Tahoe for a week. My parents came for a few days and then we had some good friends (the Bake's) come up for the weekend. We had so much fun hangin' by the pool and the lake!




Isaac did the Euro-Jumping this year and LOVED it!

Here all three of them are!

Catching crawdads was the hit at the lake!

These last two weeks have been exhausting. I am going back to boring old Mom now!!!

Oh Crap!

Here is a list of the crap I have eaten in the 8 days...

Taco Bell

Lunch at Chick-fil-a (complete with a milkshake)

Frozen Yogurt with toppings (twice)

Nugget cake (twice)

Cold Stone Icecream

Dinner at the Stockton Country Club

Dinner at Bubba Gumps


Mimi's Cafe Breakfast

Dessert at Mimi's (free for my bday!)

About 10+ cookies worth of Cookie dough

Multiple brownies

1 extremely large chocolate chip and oatmeal cookie from Boudines Bakery

4 homemade Milkshakes while watching movies (nothing out of the ordinary here we do this almost every night...)



A handful of other cookies (snickerdoodles, and oreos)


BJ's appetizers and oh so yummy chocolate chip pazookie (also free for my bday!!)



A few pieces (I am rounding down) of birthday cake.


Are you ready to puke yet?

Domestication Update

Just in case you were worried I was going to go all June Cleaver on you from this previous post, not to fear. I was making bread the other day (with the dough setting on my bread maker of course) and I started smelling something burning. I looked into my handy dandy bread maker and nothing was happening. The motor was running but the dough was not moving. So I got a spatula and poked the bottom to see if the mixer part was moving. Well silly me forgot to put the mixer part in! I was so sad because I was so excited to try this bread because I heard it was super yummy (it has 2/3 cup sugar in it!). So I was about to throw it all out, when I thought to myself (dangerous I know), "Hey, I can do this by hand!" So I took the dough out and started kneading it by hand. It was SO not fun. My mom thinks it is a great stress reliever, but I disagree. It was causing me major stress. So I was all frazzled and spend like an hour doing the whole process of kneading and forming the rolls. Not exactly what I wanted to do with my free time when Lily was napping and Isaac was at school, but whatever.

So I let the rolls rise for a couple hours and the house smelt SO good. I just couldn't wait to get my mouth on those yummy rolls. Fast forward to after I baked them. When they came out of the oven I let them cool a bit, then I grabbed one, buttered it and took a much anticipated bite. ...... YUCK! It was not good. It hardly had a taste at all. I couldn't understand why I was told they were SO delish. Then a thought came to my mind. Wasn't I supposed to add other ingredients after it mixed a bit in the bread maker? Oops. I guess in my frazzled state of smelling something burning and my dough ball not being formed I left out a slightly important step: Adding the egg, powdered milk, and salt.

P.S. I won't tell you that this is actually the second attempt at making these rolls. The first time I added to much floor and it overflowed my bread maker (that time I did throw it all out).



Maybe third times a charm?

So back to packaged dinners and crescent rolls it is.....

Don't Hate Me Because.....

I'm all caught up on my scrap booking!

What can I say, I am a bit obsessed and I quite enjoy it. It gives me anxiety to be more than a few months behind so I am usually pretty well caught up. However, after having Lily and taking WAY too many pictures of her I was getting a bit behind. Here are the two keys in my opinion, to staying or getting caught up.

(1.) I try to scrapbook everyday, even if it is just one layout.

(2.) I also have been better about not scrap booking every single picture I take (this was soooo hard for me to not do!).

I do one family scrapbook, and then I do individual ones for the kids only up until age two. It is basically just their baby book with milestones and monthly pictures. I definitely don't claim to be the worlds best scrap booker, but I have fun doing it and my layouts (even though lots are simple) look good to me. Plus they are done so that makes them look even better! People have often asked me if they could pay me to do their scrap booking for them and I have actually thought about this before and decided that it really would take the fun out of it for me (and create more anxiety!!). So sorry you gotta do you own......

There you have a sample of some of my pages. Most of them are two page layouts, but I only posted one page. Feels good to be done. Now if I could just stop taking pictures it could stay that way!!

And The Ugliest Couch Award Goes To.....

US!

Here is our nasty ugly couch. I can't wait to get rid of this piece of junk. We have had this couch since we were first married. It has been over 12 years. Not only is this couch ugly (although I swear it was in style at the time!) it is super uncomfortable. The other day Abby and I went to some one's house to visit her and her new baby. That evening Chris asked Abby how the visit was. The first thing she said was, "Dad their couch was SO comfortable. I just sank into it and it was so great!" The other sad part of this is that not only do we have an ugly couch, but we also have a matching love seat to go with it!! What?!

Here is the cushion that I tried to vacuum one day in my feeble attempt to be a good wife and impress Chris with my cleaning abilities when we were first married. I think we must have only had the couch a few months at that point.

(The reddish fabric sticking out is the blanket we have to put under the cushions because it is so lopsided without it...)

Over the last few years we have been couch shopping numerous times. One time we actually were super close to buying new couches, but we decided to wait. At one point we decided to wait until Isaac was bigger, then we decided to wait because we knew we were going to remodel and weren't sure the what the configuration of our living room would be like and what would fit. Now our excuse is that we don't want to buy anything new until we move back in. Then our excuse will be we have no money. So I wonder how many more years it can go....... Seriously how long am I going to let it keep ruining my pictures!!! I think there needs to be an intervention!