We are going on vacation??

The title is really more of a wonderment than a definite. I don't know who Daniel talked to at church, or what he saw but out of nowhere he wanted to know how far away Nauvoo, IL is from us. (Its 5 hours 31 minutes FTR.)

So we might go up sometime in July. Like the weekend after Daniel's class is finished. As in the 30th and 31st because the class finished on the evening of the 29th. If we go, Daniel wants to go to all the shows he hasn't seen. Which might be hard to get tickets since its the last weekend. But, we have a month to get motivated enough to take a road trip and spend the night in a hotel.

As for other things...

Saturday we went to yard sales and found a Reel Mower! Wahoo! The back yard is mostly mowed. We did approx. 15 minute blocks of mowing since we have been under heat advisory. Reel mowers and too tall grass = LOTS of WORK!

We cooked up a bunch of meat and tried out several different grill seasonings. Pork and hamburger seasoning won hands down. Chicken seasoning was pretty disappointing. Steak was ok, but would have been better on steak (we used chicken and pork). I made up several lunches for Daniel and us home living folk for the week using the meat.

I also finished up cutting out my magnetic paper dolls for a stocking stuffer swap. Daniel helped a little when my hand started hurting. This project reminded me I am not a crafty person. I just don't enjoy getting an exacto knife out and cutting out detailed things. I still need to mod podge them and they go in the mail today. And I will be using a makeup sponge to apply mod podge. We don't have any of the craft sponge brushes. Oops.

I am sewing diapers for a lady in exchange for a serger! I finished cutting out almost all the fabric, but the solid color flannel I got pilled up pretty bad after going through the wash. So I have to run to the fabric store and find a print that coordinated with the print I already am using.

Oh, and the computer room has been emptied and is now my craft/sewing room. Its nice.

Plus today I do a huge mailing of the coop orders. (Yes I am running coops now. I like being busy.) I think I will have 8 packages going out today between the coop orders and the stocking stuffer swap. I think that is all I can think of at this time. Thomas is demanding attention. So I gotta attend to his needs.

Free Toddler for the taking!

I am sick of dealing with Alice today. She is just too good at figuring things out.

This week she learned how to open the fridge door. Yes I did vacuum up an entire POUND of shredded cheese from the just vacuumed living room floor. So I had Daniel stop at Walmrt on his way home from class yesterday to get a fridge lock It needs 24 hours to "cure" which means when she put her weight into it, she pulled the whole thing off this morning.

And she made scrambled eggs. All. over. the. carpet. Of course, she was kind enough to bring the bowl of what she didn't dump all over the living room carpet upstairs to me while I was feeding Thomas.

Did I mention that we just cleaned the carpet a million times in the living room because the house flooded? Well, now it needs cleaned again.

I put her down for a nap after Thomas had a complete meltdown (because she REFUSES to let him sleep...ever...never ever). She came out 30 minutes later after she took off the doorknob safety cover. Thomas had just fallen asleep. She woke him up by being loud. And she had no diaper.

I decided if she can take her diaper off, she can wear training pants. So I put a pair on her. As I pulled the pants in her, I smelled it. The rank odor that I knew was poo.

All.
Over.
Her.
Back.

Washcloths and scrubbing of the poo and stripping of the poopy clothes. Training pants pulled up. Daniel walks in just as I am washing my hands. He got to clean up her room. (except for the poo on the carpet that needs to be steam cleaned).

Fast forward to this evening. Daniel went to Cub Scouts (lucky guy) and I stuck her in the tub. Then I start nursing Thomas who was at that time SCREAMING at the top of his lungs because he was exhausted. And what happens just as he is falling asleep? I see her in the mirror holding the only lipstick I own. A frickking $20 one at that.

Put Thomas down, Thomas begins wailing. Try to grab lipstick, Alice hides under my bed. Finally get her out and see she is covered in lipstick. As is the carpet. The lipstick is destroyed and she is dirtier than when she got in the bath.

So I get several wash cloths and scrub her down, put a diaper and pajamas on her and stick her in bed. When I did this I made sure to fix her curtain so it was dark and put the doorknob lock back on.

I then returned to Thomas wailing. Only to step in a blob of lipstick on the carpet. Within 3 minutes of me starting to nurse him, she was in the hall again.

So Thomas will be up every frickking 2 hours all night...again...because he is too interested in the demon child to sleep in the day. Or the demon child finds a harmonica. Or a recorder. Or her lungs.

Its only Wednesday. I still have a million things to do today before I can get to things I WANT to do. I don't know if I am glad we have a carpet cleaner or pissed that every carpeted room in the house needs cleaned.

Its Broken! Words of Wisdom from a 2 Year old

It has been a week since my last post. I even took updated pictures of the garden. But, the SD card reader in the laptop is broken and the SD card reader in the ancient desktop also seems to not work. Plus we don't have the cable to attach the camera to the USB drives. So no garden pics. The green beans are getting tall and some are climbing the tomato plants as planned. With my luck tomatoes and beans will hate each other and neither will produce crops, but that is a story for another day.

The diapers we sent away for repairs came back Monday. The snap conversions are fine and all, but oh my the rainbow snaps she did are P.R.E.T.T.Y! I took a pic using the laptops built in camera. Yes, its a horrible dark picture, but I am sure you can see the prettiness that is on the diapers. Alice sees them and asks for a diaper change.

Half of them are rainbows without pink, one is just shades of purple, and the others are are rainbows with pinks. I admit, they are the first to get used. Like I might try to sell or trade my diapers for more white ones that have not been snap converted just to get some more rainbows. Nothing like a little pretty in the pants.

Alice also had her first toilet reading session yesterday. I caught her pooping in the corner and fetched the tiny toilet seat. She acted fine with just sitting on the toilet (once I got her to sit ON it and not step into it), but once I handed her the Hancock Fabric's mailer ad she was in heaven. Well, I guess. Either way, she sat there for a good 20 minutes before deciding to climb onto the sink and get things. She didn't poop any once she was on the toilet though. But hey, baby steps.

Let's see, I don't know if anything else has really happened. I somehow twisted my ankle so it hurts to sit cross legged. Thomas slept HORRIBLY last night. Namely he went to bed around midnight. Yeah, it was fun. Alice went to bed early though and has started sleeping really well. Daniel has things planned for every day this week (school, scouts, school, scouts pool party at the city pool, cannery). And since he is gone so much I clean. Well, I did until I somehow hurt my ankle yesterday. Its not like its hurt bad, just enough to convince myself i don't need to clean. I guess the only important thing left is that my birthday is in 9 days.

Guess what!

Our garden is growing! That is right, after not planting anything except the tomatoes, eggplants, and herbs I started from seed...we finally got things in the ground. On Memorial Day. Slightly late, but the week before that was pretty wet and chilly. Over the weekend I took pictures of the plants that are sprouting. With a little luck they will grow fruitful. The plants are much bigger now, but its rainy again and I have been dealing with a screaming crying Thomas all day and frankly I don't want to go take pictures. SO here they are (click on pics to see them better):

First are the cucumbers. We have lemon cukes and another kind (forgot the name, but its similar to an english cuke).


Next are the melons. These will be tiger melons - small orange and green striped watermelon type things. We also have a few other variety of hierloom melons including some cantelope/musk melon types.


Next are a few container plants. The left is wild strawberries. The right os cilantro and oregano.


And finally the plant I can grow like a pro...tomatoes. We have lots more plants. And they look lots better now (I had just pruned these). If you look closely you can see some geen grass like things in the corner...that is Onions! Grown from seed no less. Go me. And if you look close and use your imagination you can see the start of the Purple (green) pole bean plant at the base of a tomato plant. I am going to see of they will grow up the tomato plant supports. We have quite a few more that have grown since and some ate 8 inches tall now.


Other than that, Thomas has been teething and not sleeping well for the last week or so. We are both suffering. Alice things Hylands Teething Tablets taste good (I tried one they are not yummy). Thomas has his first cow milk...courtesy Alice and her sippy cup. Daniel's summer programming class starts tonight so I won't see him until 9ish pm. And I have started making things for Christmas. [I am in a stocking stuffer swap. I am making magnetic paper dolls.]

Hump Day

I have no reason for this post. Except that it's Wednesday.

And both kids are napping.

And I have all the clean laundry folded and put away. Except the ginormous pile of diapers on the bed that need stuffed and sorted into Alice only and Anyone diapers. (Though Daniel puts Thomas in pink diapers, so really I just need to sort out the sized diapers.)

We bought a grill this weekend. Its 'strange' according to Daniel. I think he says that for 2 reasons. One, its a smoker so it is one of those pod shaped grills. Two, its electric. We ate steak for dinner last night. It was ok. We need to delve into the world of rubs and steak seasonings. Supposedly I need to look for this stuff called "Pork Chop Seasoning." But, it was NO effort to cook the meat, and we cooked it all at once. To me that means, stinking awesome.

So the other strange thing, is that it has pan you can put in for steaming things. And it has lava rocks in the bottom. But hello, much cheaper than gas and much more even cooking and easier clean up than charcoal. We can grill, roast, smoke or steam. Its a multifunctional pod of glory. And its RED. What more can I say.

So that means the next thing we try cooking? Smoked turkey. That is right, we will smoke the whole bird. It will only take a week to thaw the sucker. Maybe it will happen by/for my birthday. How do we celebrate getting older? With meats.

Alice is growing out of 2T clothes all of a sudden. Half of her shirts are snug on her. Same with dresses. Thomas is filling out 9mo clothes with style. And he is almost 5 months old! Go him. I suppose at some point I will have to drag myself to yard sales to find some 3 T stuff for Alice.

I guess I should have titled this something to do with meat. Since that is all I talked about. Oh well. So long random rambling blog post.