one million reasons

I {heart} this cute project.

2011-09-18T23:53:00.000-04:00

A few days ago Jack and I were talking about making something for his teacher. We threw a few ideas around and decided that it would be super fun for him to draw some pictures and then we would turn it into a notepad. Although I don't think he TOTALLY understood my idea beforehand, he was on board to try something new. We found this project to be totally do-able for him (he's known for not completing crafty tasks) AND me (I am known for trying to do too MANY crafty tasks all at once). Macy heard about our idea and, of course, wanted to make something as well. She decided to make a notepad for Grandma ;)
Here is what our finished projects looked like:

This was SO simple! First, the kids drew a few pictures. Jack drew all school-related images and Macy drew a picture of Grandma.

Next, I scanned their artwork.

I reduced or enlarged each image as needed and arranged them on a new document (4.5 inches x 5.5 inches) in Photoshop. (This way I could fit four pieces of 4.5 x 5.5 notepad papers on one sheet of 8.5 x 11 paper.) I then printed out a few sheets of the notepad papers.

Cut them out and created a perforated line.

Decorated a strip of tag board across the top (and also for behind the notepad as well). Added some ribbon.

And, voila! Easy peasy.

Jack was quite excited to give his notepad to his teacher and Macy loved giving hers to Grandma. We will for sure be doing this project again in the future!

Leslie Knope is my hero.

2011-09-15T22:52:00.000-04:00

A few things are happening right now that inspired me to actually write a new post on my blog:
1. I'm watching old episodes of Parks and Rec, which is my favorite TV show, hands down.
2. I attepted finishing a Chipotle burrito. Failed. Now I'm eating M&Ms.
3. I scored some great deals at the Lucky Duck consignment resale event tonight.
4. My printer is low on ink, so I can't print anything. Which means I have nothing to laminate. (I puffy heart my laminator.)
5. My husband mentioned installing a soda fountain machine in our new house and I'm still giddy about the thought of that.
6. My husband updated his blog today, which inspired a friend of ours, Judd, to update his blog. So here we are.

I guess that's it, really.

In other news....WE SOLD OUR HOUSE! Boo yah. It was on the market for three stressful months. It was a crazy time of trying to prepare and clean our house for showings. Most of our showings occurred in the evening after we had 12 daycare kids here. We purposely put our house on the market in May so that we would have all Summer (we have very few daycare kids over the summer) for showings. However, our plan backfired on us because we had a bunch of showings in May and early June and then NONE over the summer and then a bunch of showings in August when our daycare load was full again. Sheesh! But we finally got an offer, found a wonderful house exactly where we wanted for our next house, and everything seems to be moving along towards our closing date. Yay!
Here is our new house!

This house has a fantastic floor plan for our family. Plenty of daycare space and plenty of family space. It has a fabulous wooded backyard, a full finished basement, and LOTS of personality inside and out. We are so excited to move in to this new house!
We have LOTS of ideas for this house. Oodles and oodles. I can't wait to share with you remodeling pics and home decor designs. Our current house has zero personality and we haven't really done much to it to reflect who we are. This next house will be busting at the seams with our personalities! You just wait.

This little lady had a birthday yesterday:

Classy, no? I think so. Happy Birthday, sweet girl.

Little Zoe is seriously the funniest little thing. Being a third-born child, she has learned SO MUCH from her older siblings. She says and does the funniest stuff for a new two year old. We love her to pieces!
We had a very small little party for her. It was supposed to be an Elmo theme....but this is what her cupcakes looked like, so....

I'll never start a cake decorating blog, thats for sure.

We still had fun, anyway.

scrapbook hall of fame

2011-06-28T00:20:00.001-04:00

Well hello there, blog reader. Its been a while.

Here's the deal: I've been in a funk lately. I just haven't felt like myself for quite a while now. Spiritually, physically, emotionally, and creatively. The best word I can find to sum up how I've been feeling is:
BLAH. I know, I should get a thesaurus or something.

I completely acknowledge that this is how life goes. That sometimes I feel totally inspired, on my game, and ready to take on the world. And other times I am always tired, not feeling "it" (whatever "it" may be), and I just want to curl up on the couch and watch episodes of Glee. Over and over.

Thankfully I've been able to finally admit that I've been in a funk and have started making little changes here and there. Exercising again, carving out time for some quiet time with God, MAKING myself MAKE STUFF with my hands, etc. And, surprisingly I'm slowly starting to feel like myself again.

One of my cousins asked me to email her some examples of some of my scrapbook layouts. So I decided that this would be a great opportunity to go through our scrapbook albums and pull out my all-time favorite layouts. I was going to try to only pick ten. I think I finally narrowed it down to 20-something...and THEN I realized that looking through all my scrapbook layouts really INSPIRED me to go create. It was a great little way to get back on the crafty bandwagon.

While looking through years of scrapbook pages, I made a list of things that kept coming back up over and over again:
1. I tend to use mostly neutral (beige, white, browns, and blacks) background colors.
2. I really like using circles as design elements.
3. I like my own handwriting. But even if I didn't, I would still hand write my journaling.
4. Almost all of my favorite layouts are about everyday stories and not events (birthdays, holidays, etc).
5. I like incorporating paint.
6. Grids are my scrapbooking friend.
7. I LOVE using just one photo on a layout to tell the story.
8. I also love using many photos from more than one scene/day to tell a story.
9. I made lots of mistakes on my pages and just went with it anyway.
10. My family is pretty rockin'. We've done a lot of living over these past few years. It is an honor to create art from the memories we have made. I'm SO glad I get to scrapbook!

With that being said, here are my all time favorite scrapbook layouts. I took a photo of each layout, so some images may seem slightly blurry. You can click on each image to see the layout larger.

"family"
Why I love it: Mostly because of the awesome photography by my cousin Jamie (Photography by Jamie). And all the black negative space. And the painted white edges. Ohhhhh I love me some paint on a layout. I love that this layout doesn't necessarily tell a specific story, its all just cool photos.

"capture life, create art"
Why I love it: Because THIS is my creative mantra. Capture Life, Create Art. I have this layout hanging in my scrapbook room STILL, even though it was created in 2007.

"the technique"
Why I love it: This layout was super quick and simple and tells the story about how my daughter Macy would scoot all her food to the edge of her high chair tray and suck it up in her mouth. Macy is now almost 4 years old and I'm certain this is a story I would have forgotten by now if I had not scrapbooked it. I love the simple design of this layout.

"almost 3"
Why I love it: This 2-page layout has nine photos on it that are all from different days during this season of my daughter Macy's life. This layout captures a short time span in Macy's life. I love that there is a photo of her crying and a photo of her crossing her arms when she didn't get her way. Lots of paint. I did the journaling in list form on the side and it includes snippets of Macy's personality at this stage in her life.

"love you"
Why I love it: This is one of my favorite photos of me and Macy. Although I tend to reach for neutral background colors for most of my layouts, teal is one of my favorite colors right now. I LOVE the color combo on this page.

"4 month old"
Why I love it: Oh my, what a cute smile. This is Macy at 4 months old. (The reason this image looks like there is a reflection over her face is because there is a photo overlay on top of the photo.) I love the design and colors and the tight journaling around the photo block.

"messy eater"
Why I love it: This is my daughter Zoe a few months ago. Man alive, she is the messiest eater of all three of our kids. I just wanted to remember that about her as a baby. Love the colors and messy design.

"sweet Zoe girl"
Why I love it: This is Zoe at 10 months. I just jotted down a few things I wanted to remember about her at this age. I LOVE the white background with red and pink accents. And I super love the white letters on top of white paper.

"travel bug"
Why I love it: This is a great example of using a grid as a design element. I do this often. I love that there are 10 photos on this layout, and they all capture Zoe's essence at this stage in her life, which included a trip to visit my dad in Arizona. Cropping photos to a fit on a grid layout is super fast and simple and looks great! I like the papers and the list-style journaling on the left side of the 2-page layout.

"5 months"
Why I love it: I love the title and butterfly on the negative space of the enlarged photo. I LOVE that big photo of Zoe.

"first bites"
Why I love it: I love that this layout shows the story of Zoe's first few bites of real food. Such a fun, although messy, experience. Love the super simple and easy layout design.

"tired"
Why I love it: This is one of my favorite photos of Zoe as a baby. Matt was holding her on the couch and they both fell asleep (oh the joys of a newborn!). And good ol' Conan (our old dog!) was right there in the baby action. I absolutely love this color combo and the placement of the long journaling.

"Zoe"
Why I love it: I love the white background and the mixture of black/white photos + color photos. I LOVE these photos of Zoe as a soft squishy newborn. Love the soft pink accents.

"barely 5, almost 2"
Why I love it: This might be my all-time favorite layout. I love that it includes TONS of information about Jack and Macy (this was right before Zoe was born) and a bunch of messy design elements. Stamps and paint. Yum!

"first smile"
Why I love it: Because this was literally Macy's first REAL smile as a baby and we just happened to have a camera ready at that moment! Special. Love the patterned papers and love the dotted border around the photo.

"hey, I'm 5"
Why I love it: Special photos taken throughout the entire day of Jackson's 5th birthday. Love the design of this page and all the journaling along the side of the page.

"merry and bright"
Why I love it: Again, loving the white background! Another example of using a grid as a design element. Lots of photos (12!) on this 2-page layout from an entire Christmas season. Lots of fun journaling about Christmas. I like the white letters on a white background.

"super Dad"
Why I love it: That top right photo is one of my favorite photos of Matt with our kids. Right after Zoe was born, they were all chillin' on the couch watching football. So sweet to me. The journaling on this layout is special to me as well.

"fall '09"
Why I love it: Another example of using a grid as a design element! I love all the white paint on this black background. And I LOOOOVE Fall photos.

"these hands"
Why I love it: Love the story this layout tells. I remember looking through a bunch of photos and noticing how many photos there were of Jackson using his hands. I'm so glad I made a layout about this! I love the photo placement of this 2-page layout.

"j"
Why I love it: This is a very special photo + story for me. Jackson is our first born. The day before our second child was born, I took Jack on a little photo shoot in our neighborhood (lots of construction and tractors) and this was my favorite photo. The journaling is written to him and it is all about how special he is to me and how our lives were about to drastically change the next day when he would have a new baby sibling. I just wanted him to know how special he was to me even though these next few months would be hard on Mama with a newborn! And I love the color combo.

"sit still and smile"
Why I love it: Again, I love the STORY this layout tells....about how hard it is to get a good photo out of your kids when they are squirrely and won't sit still! I love that I incorporated blurry and not perfect photos to tell this story.

"4"
Why I love it: Love the design of this layout and photo placement. LOVE that photo of Jack holding a red #4. Love the circles and squiggly journaling lines.

"10.4.08"
Why I love it: I LOVE this layout concept...."the story of today". The journaling is detailed snippets of what we did throughout that specific day. I do this a lot and love documenting the tiny little insignificant details of our regular day. Love that photo of Macy coloring.

So, there you have it! I'm definitely more inspired now that I've taken the time to go through all our scrapbooks and catch a glimpse of our lives. Love the hobby of scrapbooking.

corn on the cob

2011-05-05T14:11:00.000-04:00

Holy smokes! Has it really been a month since I've posted anything? Just when I thought I was getting back on track with regular blog posts, then I forget about it for a month.....sheesh.....

Well, ONE reason I may have neglected to post anything for a while is because we've been slightly busy around here since we decided to put our house on the market and move! We've been decluttering, cleaning, organizing, packing, rearranging furniture and wall decor, house hunting, number-crunching, fixing-up, painting, etc, etc. I go from being totally excited about moving to being totally overwhelmed about THE move. We've got three young kids of our own AND a house full of daycare kids everyday. You might think that it would be a logistical nightmare to get a house ready when there are so many kids around. And you'd be right. Trying to keep a house cleaned and picked up for showings is hard for any family. But twice as hard when there are so many little people trying to destroy everything in their path. And we haven't even put our house on the market yet! Our house is all ready to go and hopefully in the next couple of days we'll have a sign in our yard. Right now we are in the process of getting pre-qualified for a loan for the new house (which is a feat in itself when you are self-employed and run a business from your home...but that is a whole different story).
Then there is the actual move itself.....moving our three littles to a totally new home and not having any days off from work to accomplish the move. Hopefully it will happen over the summer when we have fewer daycare kids here, but still it will be difficult to MOVE and then run a daycare the next day!
So, setting all the logistical moving stuff aside, we are really excited about the possibility of a new home. Matt and I love running a home daycare. We love that we both work from home. But we also kinda hate that our daycare is IN our home. Our house does not have a good floor plan for a home daycare. The daycare kids have access to our entire main level and there is really no "safe" area from them! We have no privacy in our own home, besides in our bedrooms, and we would like to be able to leave our slippers on the floor or set a book down on our kitchen table and not worry about daycare kids devouring our own stuff. Ideally, it would be wonderful to have a space for our own family separate from our daycare.
We haven't outgrown our home by any means. There is plenty of space for our family. We just need a different floor plan! Another reason we decided to go ahead and start the moving process now is because we have not officially started the adoption process yet and once we do, we would have to stay in our current home till the process is complete. We'd like to get settled elsewhere and then start the adoption process.

In other news....

Around here, we spend most of our day chasing this cutie-patootie off of our kitchen table. Jackson and Macy were NOT climbers, but oh my does little Zoe love to climb.....and we're not so used to that! I'm pretty sure she'll start climbing out of her crib any day now.

Macy has always been very sweet and kind and lately she has been even EXTRA sweet and kind. She'll randomly shout from the other room: "MAMA!!! I LOVE YOU!" or run up and give a hug for no reason or thank me for making dinner or thank me for setting out a pile of books or thank me for making her bed or thank me for helping her pick up her room. She's been very thankful lately ;)
Macy loves her some books. She is very meticulous about looking at the words and pictures. LOVE this about her.

I made corn on the cob last night for the first time this season. We all love it. Well, except for Jack, but he only really likes peanut butter and jelly....so that was no big surprise. We were all excited to enjoy our first batch of corn on the cob this season. Zoe clearly loved it. This little girl was no holds barred with her cob of corn. It was quite comical. Macy is the same way, but I didn't get a good picture of her with her corn...

Jack, on the other hand, very carefully picked off every teeny tiny piece of corn silk he thought he saw. Then he licked the salt and butter off. Then he complained and whined about us asking him to eat a few bites. I keep thinking that SOME day he'll just start eating real people food without complaining.

i've kind of been a cooking machine lately

2011-04-07T14:16:00.000-04:00

This might sound weird....but I just recently realized that you can bake a cake without buying a box of cake mix at the grocery store. Yes, I know. I just figured that out like a week ago. I've never been super savvy in the kitchen. Although most of my time is spent in the kitchen. The hubs and I run a daycare and I prepare breakfast, lunch, and snacks for 12 kids everyday. And dinner for my family of 5 every night. You would THINK that I would have realized that I can bake a cake without a box of cake mix. Go figure.

The big "ah ha" moment in baking my own cake came about a week before Jackson's 7th birthday. But let me back up a bit first. A few months ago we started the process of eliminating partially hydrogenated oils, artificial coloring/flavoring, and high fructose corn syrup from our home. We eat as much organic food as our budget allows. If you opened our cabinets and fridge, you'd find them stocked with healthy REAL food. Food made with natural or organic ingredients. We did our research and learned as much as we could about ingredients to avoid and how to actually read the ingredient label (not just the nutrition facts!) on packaged food. It was a big undertaking! Grocery shopping takes a little bit longer these days as I'm agonizing over ingredient labels and figuring out which foods are ok to purchase. Now that I am more informed I am realizing that grocery shopping is a fun challenge and I like finding new-to-me products at the store that are healthy (AND TASTE GOOD) for my family. So, when it came time to buy a box of cake mix, I was of course astonished at the amount of nastiness and fake ingredients found in a box of cheap cake mix. But a box of gluten free cake mix or cake mix with all natural ingredients were all at least a whopping $4/box. Not really within our budget. What to do? I stood in the baking aisle wondering just how in the world I was going to make a cake for Jack's birthday. And then all of a sudden it hit me.....I could just make my own. Seriously, I was not programmed to bake things from scratch. I used to be all about convenience and time saving cooking methods. But these past few months I have changed my ways and am discovering things on a daily basis that I can make on my own using REAL food ingredients. Much healthier. And, believe it or not, much less expensive too. Now I am having fun challenging myself at the grocery store AND challenging myself at home to figure out how to make things from scratch. So far, so good. The only problem? Math. I'm constantly doubling or halving recipes or substituting ingredients for what the recipe calls for. Fractions scare me. And now I'm surrounded by them....

Back to Jackson's birthday cake....my good ol' Better Homes and Gardens cook book came through--I was totally surprised to find an entire section on cakes!!--and I made a simple chocolate cake. Twice actually. One time for cupcakes and once for his actual birthday cake. And I substituted fruit puree for eggs and oil and cocoa + fruit puree for chocolate. And the frosting? Oh my....I made a peanut butter chocolate frosting with real food ingredients that tastes suspiciously like Nutella. Except way cheaper. I may or may not have made three batches of this already....

These bad boys were smothered with some delicious Nutella-like yumminess right after this photo was taken:

I've made a couple different varieties of granola bars and they have been a HUGE hit in my family.

I'm beginning to see that the possibilities are endless when it comes to food I can make in my own kitchen vs. processed and refined foods that I would purchase in a store. And, BONUS, now that food prices are pretty much going up each week, its nice to make less-expensive options. Next up on my list of things to try: Mac & Cheese (that tastes like instant Mac & Cheese, not the baked kind, and that would be cheaper than store-bought organic Mac & Cheese), whole wheat bread, peanut butter, jelly, and working on my waffle recipe (its never quite right).

I'm getting rather excited for the upcoming season so we can pick some fruit at nearby u-pick farms. I've never done u-pick before (except when I was a kid!) and am nervous/excited about learning how to freeze and can my own fruits and veggies! Yay for new adventures!

this boy

2011-03-29T15:41:00.000-04:00

THIS boy--yep, this one with all the missing teeth--is now 7. SEVEN, for crying out loud. I'm not one of those parents who is constantly saying "How did this happen?" or "Where did the time go?" or "I can't believe you are already 7 years old!". Because I totally realize that life moves forward. And sometimes it seems really fast. But I LOVE being a Mama to my kids at all of their ages. I try to focus on living for TODAY and not worry about where the time has gone or what will happen in the future. Of course I think about those things too, especially around one of my kids' birthdays when you really start reminiscing about their short little lives, but I must admit that my oldest child turning 7 years old didn't really freak me out. He's 7. Yep. He's growing up. He's becoming responsible and remembering things ON HIS OWN (like what things he needs to take to school everyday), he's occasionally showing signs of being kind to his sisters, he's stinkin' brilliant, he amazes us with his ability to comprehend what he reads (this especially impresses me, because reading comprehension was never my strong point...), he has an AWESOME sense of humor for a 7 year old, he pretty much goes to bed all on his own and RECOGNIZES all by himself when he is tired and should go to bed (crazy, I know!), and he is starting to understand things outside of his immediate vicinity (such as world issues and such). AND he still loves to be tickled and cuddle and snuggle up on the couch. He's not too cool to come running to give me a hug when he sees me at his school or give a little kiss goodbye before he gets on the bus. (I'm sure that will change in the next few years.) But, he's also ONLY 7 YEARS OLD. He often cops a nasty little attitude and totally forgets all about being kind, respectful, and obedient. Yah, like last night at his karate class when he did everything in his power to NOT obey the instructor, dance around and lay on the floor instead of doing what he was supposed to, and interrupt the other kids in his class. He was THAT kid last night. So embarrassing. We were not pleased. Its a good thing those days are not his norm.

So, how did we celebrate his birthday? We had a fairly low-key day. He had breakfast in bed, went to school, had lunch with Grandma at school, and then later that day we had cupcakes and ice cream and watched Star Wars. Fun day for a 7 year old!

A few days after his actual birthday, he had a good ol' Nerf gun birthday party with some of his friends. Have I mentioned my husband's obsession with Nerf guns lately? No? Well, here's one wall in our garage:

Cake decorating is not my forte.....although that chocolate frosting is seriously yummy. Think Nutella. But homemade. That's for another blog post...

Naturally Jack is following in his Daddy's footsteps and becoming obsessed with Nerf guns as well. He got three new BIG Nerf guns for his birthday from all of his grandparents. He and his friends spent the afternoon shooting down targets in our garage and even shooting at targets on one wall inside our house too. I'm pretty sure they had fun!

Happy Birthday, my awesome Jackson!

Project Life update

2011-03-21T22:17:00.000-04:00

Project Life is coming along nicely for me. I've been adding in extra stuff some weeks and other weeks I'm just including photos + journaling. I love the flexibility to be able to add in extra life stuff! I also love the flexibility to not worry about having to take a photo each day. Some days I just don't. Or I forget. My weekly layouts are more of a "weekly glance" at our regular life. I'm not stressing out about having to take a photo each day. As long as the weekly layout sums up what happened throughout the week, then I'm good.

For this particular week in February, I added a few extra things to the regular weekly layout....

I included a blog post that I had written from that week. I just printed it on 8.5 x 11 white cardstock, trimmed it to 6 x 11, added some patterned paper to the top and bottom of the white cardstock, and slipped it into a 6 x 12 page protector.

Two of our kids went to the dentist at the same time, and I knew I wanted to include a lot of journaling about this visit. I added an enlarged photo to an Ali Edward's 8.5 x 11 "Story of Today" overlay template, printed it on my own printer, embellished it with some stamps and ink, and then wrote out some journaling.

I had more journaling than space would allow on the 8.5 x 11 layout, so I then printed out an Ali Edward's 4 x 6 photo overlay on white cardstock and finished the journaling on that. I put that in one of the photo pockets because the photo for that day was already printed on the 8.5 x 11 layout.

I actually ended up printing a bunch of these photo overlays (you can purchase them at Designer Digitals) on white cardstock. I have a stack of them in my little Project Life organizer and I'll regularly use them in place of a 4 x 6 photo when I want to write out journaling somewhere else besides on the PL journaling card. Yay for flexibility and awesome digital elements!

Jackson has been writing some awesome stories at school so I included an example of one on the backside of the 8.5 x 11 layout. The last extra thing I included in this weekly layout was a baseball card page protector filled with extra photos from the week, packaging from things we regularly use (such as a tea bag package and the packaging from some diaper rash cream), Valentine's the kids received, receipts from the grocery store, a Red Cross certification card from a class I took, etc. One last thing to note is that I included a Netflix DVD envelope in one of the 4 x 6 photo pockets. I just folded it in half and slipped it right in. This is definitely one of those life things that I'll want to remember many years from now!

I totally plan on keeping my Project Life 2011 layouts all in one album. For this reason, I will not be adding all these extra things every week! If I included so much extra stuff each week it would definitely take another album to be able to fit all the weekly layouts from 2011. Again, I love the flexibility to be able to add extra elements and life stuff, but I also love the flow that the Project Life weekly layouts provide with just my photos + journaling.

Now that we're more than halfway through March, it is fun to see my PL album filling up! It is already so full of memories, stories, life, and photos. It is awesome to see it coming together!

my sweet SWEET ornery girl

2011-03-16T13:11:00.000-04:00

Oh, to be three years old again. I totally wish I could remember what I was like when I was three. Three year olds are like teenagers. They go through about twenty different emotions in a two minute time span. It is slightly comical. And slightly frustrating too.

Miss Macy is three years old. Three and a HALF years old, she'd like you to know. She can be an amazingly sweet cuddlebug one minute and then a nasty attitude mean chic the next. "Hmpfh" is a highly-used word in her vocabulary.

Macy likes being my little helper! She loves helping me do pretty much anything around the house. I love this about her. She likes helping prepare meals and bake goodies. Especially if there is a promise of licking the spoon or the electric mixer beater after making a batch of some tasty treat.

MOST of the time, Macy is a rule-follower. She's polite, quiet, and a good listener. When we are in public, she really doesn't test the boundaries or try to break the rules.

But a lot of the time she's a feisty little lady, just waiting for Mommy and Daddy to turn around so she can go do exactly the opposite of what we just told her.

She LOVES books, playing games (like Memory), riding her bike, creating art, and playing with her dolls.

I mentioned that she says "Hmpfh" a lot. She also likes crossing her arms if she's not getting her way.

She would implement "Pajama Day" everyday if she could. I have to very carefully choose how I convince her that it is time to change her clothes and brush her hair in the morning.

Macy is at the point where some days she still takes a nap in the afternoon, and other days she just has a quiet rest time. Most days she reads books in her bed for a while and then eventually falls asleep. But she no longer NEEDS a nap everyday. Right now she thinks it is super cool if she gets to skip rest time altogether!

She is falling into the category of "picky eater". Frustrating. She often claims she doesn't like something even before she tries it. The "battle with food" is one of my least favorite things about parenting. Right next to potty training.

Right now we are having SO much fun with Macy at age 3. We have some awesome conversations with her and its so fun to hear her opinion on things. And she has a great memory, so its pretty cool when she brings something up that happened a while ago and chats about it.

LOVE my Macy bug!

lists

2011-03-14T13:52:00.001-04:00

I like lists. Like, I really REALLY like lists. I love making lists, checking things off my list, making things up to put on my list just so I can cross them off, creating cute little notebooks to keep my lists all nice and contained, and reading other people's lists. There is something very artistic about lists. They tell a big part of my story. Grocery lists, to-do lists, idea lists, scrapbook layout ideas, waiting list (for families that want to come to our daycare--yep, we're that awesome--wink) Lists are a big part of my life.

Lately I've had a bunch of ideas swimming around in my head. Big ideas. Life changing ideas. Fun ideas. And tonight I realized that I just need to WRITE THESE IDEAS down. And then I thought that I should apparently just blog about them too ;)

So, here's my "life to-do list" as of right now, in no particular order....not really a daily to-do list, but more of a list about things that I need to think through, change, or just figure out.

1. Adoption. Adoption. Adoption. I have a heavy heart for Ethiopia right now. If you don't know much about what is going on over in ET read this post by my friend Ashley. She explains it well. I am sad for all of those folks who are currently pursuing adoption in ET who are now just waiting to see what happens. Adoption can be such a waiting game and NOW it will be an even longer waiting game for those families just waiting to bring home their children. But I'm even MORE sad for the millions of orphaned children in ET who are affected by these adoption changes. The longer the ET government takes to process adoptions, the longer the waiting orphans will be in orphanages taking up space, therefore sooo many potential orphans will not even make it to an orphanage. Please pray for this situation to resolve quickly and for adoptions to continue as usual.
Now, what about our family? What is our current status in our adoption process? You can read about our new journey towards adoption here. We are pretty much still in the same place we were a few months ago when I wrote that post. Once we felt called to adopt, we let that resonate for a while and just prayed about the whole notion. Matt and I both feel called more towards domestic adoption of a non-infant. And we feel strongly that we don't want to disrupt our biological kids' birth order, which means that the child we adopt would be younger than Zoe. And Zoe is just now 18 months old, so if a domestic non-infant is what God desires for our family, it could be another year or longer before that becomes a reality for us. We have contacted a FABULOUS ministry called Loving Shepherd Ministries that works with adoptive families. They have given us tons of information and our next step is basically just getting started in the whole process!
Last night we attended a Q&A session with True Vine Ministries, which is an adoption ministry within our church. It was great to get some questions answered as well as connect with other adoptive families. We left the meeting ignited and excited to begin the process! Stay tuned!

2. The Hole in Our Gospel. We joined a new Life Group a couple of months ago within our church. We have sincerely enjoyed getting to know the other couples in our Life Group and are excited about "doing life" with these people. Our group just started reading The Hole in Our Gospel by Richard Stearns. Oh my. I'm only a few chapters in and its quite good...yet I'm nervous to keep reading because of what I fear God will call me to do. This book is about figuring out what God expects from us. Its about going further and doing MORE than just living an ordinary life and going to church. Its about having a faith in God that literally moves us to action.

3. Finding new ways to live a greener lifestyle. This is something I'm really excited about right now! Our family has already made MANY changes to be healthier and leave a smaller carbon footprint on our planet. We now use all non-toxic (mostly homemade) cleaning solutions, which I LOVE. We have switched almost all of our personal care products to non-toxic (or at least less toxic), organic, all-natural, and/or sometimes homemade versions. (Read more about this process here...and if you have a few extra minutes, check out The Story of Stuff website.) We bring in less stuff and reuse/recycle more. I'm suuuuuper excited that our small town will be initiating a one-can recycling program at the end of March! We'll have one big trash bin where we can put ALL plastic #1-7 (currently we can only recycle #1 & 2 plastics) and all paper to be recycled. No sorting necessary. Yay!
After changing our cleaning products and personal care products, our next step was starting to re-think what we eat, how we eat, where we get our food from, and all that exciting stuff. We have eliminated all partially hydrogenated oils and high fructose corn syrup from our home. (With the exception of one particular kind of peanut butter that my husband can't live without...) We have switched over to an all natural and mostly organic diet. Literally every week at the grocery store I am in awe that I am able to find organic versions of most of the food we eat! My kids haven't noticed any changes in the food we eat at all. And my husband and I feel much better about the food choices we are making! AND, eating this way is not breaking our budget either. Some of my favorite brands of organic or all-natural products are: Annie's, Kashi, Mom's Best, Cascadian Farms, and Meijer (Meijer has a FABULOUS and affordable All Natural and Organics line.)
So now I'm just in the process of becoming more and more informed. Making even better food choices! Possibly joining a CSA or at least purchasing as much food as possible from local farmers. Learning how to freeze and can food. Phasing out fast food (gasp!) and soda (double gasp!)...the list goes on and on! And FINALLY read Food Matters by Mark Bittman and watch "Food, Inc." I have the book. And "Food, Inc." is on Netflix.....so I have no excuse to not utilize these two informative resources!

4. Coming up with new recipes. This sort of goes along with #3, but I need to spend some quality time coming up with some good new recipes....we're getting bored with the same old meals....

5. Spring Cleaning. Totally dread it. I've already got a mile long list of things I want to deep-clean....

6. Project Life. Still in love with the Project Life concept. Still keeping up to date with it, but just barely. LOVE that so many of my friends are sticking with it! I need to post about how my PL album is coming along!

7. Getting crafty. Lately I am finding that my free time isn't coinciding with my creative energy. This is frustrating for me! I NEED some good crafty projects going in my life. Scrapbooking has been my main avenue of craftiness and I'm feeling the need for some looooong scrapbooking sessions soon.

8. Painting our kitchen. We painted our kitchen red when we moved to this house back in 2004. And I really REALLY like the red. But we also run a daycare and have many MANY dents, scratches, and areas where the paint is chipping. Its become slightly embarrassing and we just need to repaint! Now to decide what color...

9. Finances. Budget. Need I say more? We have a budget. But I'm not proud to admit that we don't really stick to our budget very well....I'm pretty sure this little area of our lives needs a little extra attention right now to make sure we're making wise decisions with the money God has blessed us with. Its not much, by the way, but its enough to get us through! We have eliminated a lot of extra "stuff" that costs extra money. Like a TV service. But I'm certain there are a few key areas in our budget that could be reduced...

So, there you go. A little glimpse into what I've been thinking about lately and a look into my world of lists. I'm sure there is more on my brain at the moment too, but these are the items really sticking out right now.

Happy Monday!

Lint. Or is it Lent? I didn't know till recently...

2011-03-10T21:13:00.000-05:00

It wasn't till about 3 years ago that I realized Lent isn't called Lint. Seriously. I wasn't raised in a church and whenever someone would talk about Lent, I assumed they were saying Lint. It was quite the "ahha" moment a few years ago when I figured that one out.....and I've never really admitted that to anyone, so I'm sure I'll hear about it from quite a few people....

But now as a Christian, I'm slightly more aware of Lent. To be quite honest, I don't even know the whole background to Lent. I think I know the general idea, but we're not Catholic, so Lent isn't something strongly talked about in our church. Many of my non-Catholic Christian friends still consider giving something up for Lent. And some years I do as well. And this year? Well, I jumped the gun and decided to give up chocolate candy until Easter. But I made this decision a few weeks ago, so I guess I'm doing Lent+ this year. I'm such an overachiever. Not only did I decide to give up chocolate candy for Lent+, Matt and I are implementing something each day as well. We are committing to do the same daily devotion/Bible reading each day. For starters, we are doing the Proverbs Challenge. We'll read the same chapter from Proverbs each day. And then throughout the day we'll discuss how this particular Proverb manifests in our daily lives. Should be interesting!

I'm fairly certain I still pronounce it "Lint" though. I kinda like the twang. I also say "q-pon" instead of "coo-pon." Mostly because it irritates my husband. I'm nice like that....

can't get enough of this little lady!

2011-03-09T14:08:00.001-05:00

Man alive, this little girl is all over the place! Between raiding the bathroom and trying to play in the toilet, emptying all the kitchen cabinets, pushing any button on anything electronic within her reach, darting out the door if left slightly open, climbing onto the table, and sneaking up the stairs, we are certainly worn out by the end of the day! And we have two other kids AND a house full of daycare kids everyday too! Zoe is at that age (almost 18 months) where she is into EVERYthing and curious about anything. She stays occupied with an activity for about 3 seconds. Basically, we can't really take our eyes off of her! We joke about how easier life will be when we're not constantly tracking her down and figuring out what she's getting into. But I dearly love this age too. As crazy active as she is, she's also a great cuddler and adorable chit-chatter. She hasn't reached those terrible two's, so she's not really defiant.....yet.

Chase down these little pig tails and jeggings??? You bet. Zoe loves being chased and she ALWAYS runs straight to this corner in our family room. She thinks she is so darn sneaky when she hides next to the couch while we say "I'm gonna get you!", pretend like we're roaring, and act like we're trying to tickle those chubs.

And then she makes her way to the couch, which she thinks is her own personal playground.

She thinks it is super funny to rip off her socks right after we put them on her tootsies.

And she wakes up with the most awesome bed head everyday. Most days I just leave the crazy hair as-is because I can't get over how stinkin' cute it is.

She is literally repeating EVERYTHING we say, which is just so much fun. She has quite a large vocabulary for a 17 month old. She gets that from Daddy. Neither of them stop talking....

Zoe loves taking a "baf" and spends most of bath time dumping water on her own head. She has yet to figure out she can dump that water out of the tub, like her big brother and sister seem to enjoy doing.

She isn't really afraid of much! She loves water, loud noises (she thinks the vacuum is hilarious) and when we jump out and "scare" her. But she isn't a fan of strangers....or the doctor, or even going to the toddler room for church.

She likes emptying all the kitchen cabinets. Over and over again.

This girl LOVES her some books.

And dancing. She can seriously shake her little rump. Her favorite is anything by Dan Zanes or this one particular Sesame Street song sung by will.i.am.

And did you know that one tiny little M&M can make this big mess?

She is not really a fan of the snow. In fact when she looks at snow she says "NOOOOO!" She gets that from me. But if we let her loose outside, she makes a run for it. She is going to love playing outside this summer!

But today? Well, today she's not feeling so well. She has a fever along with a cold and is slightly crabby and not content. I finally got her to take a nap with her favorite snugglers, her pink and white speckled frog and her green bunny blanket....both of which stay in her crib and she only snuggles with them when she's sleeping. Hopefully a good nap will help her feel better!

Love my little Zoe girl!

photo cards

2011-03-04T15:32:00.000-05:00

I loooove making handmade cards. Love it. I love coming up with a design, gathering and cutting all my materials, and mass producing a big batch of cards. Its my creative therapy.

But life is busy. And when the moon and stars are aligned just right and it works out that my free time coincides with my creative juices, then I would much rather be working on a different crafty project than mass producing handmade cards. That is just how it is.....

However a few years ago I learned how to make my own digital photo cards. This technique combines my photography with my digi scrappin' skills. Neither of those skills are stellar, but I do enjoy photography and I know a little about Photoshop! Making photo cards is a huge time saver for me! All you do is take your photos, edit them, add a little text to the photo in Photoshop, print, and done! Becky Higgins does an excellent job of explaining these steps further on her blog.

Here are some examples of a few photo invitations I've done and Zoe's birth announcement.

For Jack's 7th birthday party in a few weeks. I added a digital photo overly in addition to the text in this one.

Macy's 3rd birthday party invitation. I think the hardest part of making digital photo cards is picking out the fonts. I think this handwriting font looks pretty similar to my own handwriting, which is why I downloaded it. I use it often!

Zoe's 1st birthday party invitation. I added some dingbat flowers to this one.

And Zoe's birth announcement.

Fun. Easy. Cute. And super quick!

sacrifice

2011-03-02T22:51:00.000-05:00

Romans 12:1-2
"Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God--this is true worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing, and perfect will."

I've been memorizing these verses from Romans for the past two weeks now. God is working in my heart and changing the way I view things. Or maybe I should say that God is bringing up some things in my life that I've been neglecting or trying to ignore and hope that they will just go away. Such as my lack of self-control when it comes to all things chocolate (darn you, Nutella), my lack of motivation to exercise and seriously lose the rest of my pregnancy weight, and my awesome ability to get lazy and take the easy way out....I mean, why WOULDN'T anyone want to attack those issues? Fun stuff.

Looking at issue #3 (being lazy and taking the easy way out).....this manifests its way into a tangible manner most commonly heard as "I don't feel like cooking dinner tonight, lets just get some Wendy's." This was getting slightly out of hand in our home, so toward the end of January Matt and I decided to take one month off completely from eating out. For 30 days we stayed away from all things fast food and eating out of any kind. And guess what? We DID it. This shouldn't have been that hard.....and it wasn't, for the most part. But every once in a while I so wanted to go grab some fast food rather than take the time to prepare a meal.

The CRAZY thing about all this is that we've been making changes in our diets for a while now--purchasing organic or all natural foods when possible, eliminating hydrogenated oils and high fructose corn syrup, and purchasing food from local farmers when possible. So you would think that we wouldn't even WANT to eat out at a restaurant knowing that we would be ingesting all sorts of nasty ingredients! But we are good ol' American consumers trained to purchase food based on convenience and taste and there is just something slightly thrilling about announcing "Let's go out to dinner!" And have I mentioned that fast food french fries are one of my favorite foods???

It was really starting to bother me how we would have a fully stocked fridge and pantry but still feel like we deserved to go out to eat whenever we wanted. And that many MANY people in the world literally search all day long for their next meal, yet we can totally take it for granted that we even have a few extra dollars to go out to eat. Bottom line: I was lazy.

I didn't go crazy trying out all sorts of new recipes or anything....I just told you that I was lazy. I didn't want to go overboard on having to find new recipes! I just cooked dinner like I normally would. But I knew I didn't have the option to skip out of cooking to go pick something up instead. I'm not saying we'll never go out to eat again! (In fact, we already treated ourselves to a little McDonald's...) But it was good to sacrifice all restaurant food for one solid month. We saved some $$ and felt a little better about ourselves in the end. Or should I say "in the rear"? Either way, I'm pretty sure my rear end looks the same as it did a month ago...oh well.

And, just for the record, we will probably do this little "no eating out for a month" sacrifice again in the future....in fact, we already decided that for March we'll be giving up all "non-meal food and beverage stops" at restaurants and gas stations. I love me some fountain soda.....and have been quite guilty of making special trips (or convincing Matt to go...) just to go get a fountain soda at a nearby gas station. Pure money suckage. Seriously, I have cans of soda and ice at home. But this really will be a biggie for me because I ALWAYS stop for a beverage when I'm out and about, so I'll for sure have to change my mind-set this month!

These are just a few ways that I am attempting to implement Romans 12:1-2 in my life. As I type this, I'm eating some Nutella on toast and contemplating watching a movie on the couch. Clearly, I've got some work to do in order to really take Romans 12:1-2 seriously...baby steps...

baby x2

2011-02-27T21:50:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was a special day. My cousin, Stacy, is expecting TWINS (one boy and one girl!) in May. Twins. And last night we celebrated with a baby shower at my cousin, Chrissy's, house. It was SO much fun. There was easily 50 people there. Probably more! Stacy lives on the other side of the country, so this was a big shower with all our family and some of her friends from here in Indiana. It was so cool to see her pregnant belly! She's still got a few months left, but she looks suuuuuper pregnant already. Stacy makes a gorgeous pregnant woman! These two kiddos will be Stacy and her husband's first kids, and they are super excited!

Here's a photo of me and Stacy. Yes, she's tall. I didn't get any pregnant belly shots last night (doh!), but one of my other cousins is a photographer and she captured the entire event, so we'll see belly shots later...

Chrissy has a gorgeous home and does a splendid job entertaining. I helped a little with a few decorations, but Chrissy did a fabulous job with everything! I made these little triangle banners. The banner says "baby x2".

And the cake? Seriously, adorable little baby bums.

I took Macy with me and she had so much fun. She sat and watched Stacy open all her gifts....look at that little cutie patootie just sitting on the floor watching Stacy!

Macy's favorite part of the night was discovering the candy table. Bowls and bowls of CANDY. When she first saw this table she was speechless and just shaking her hands. Quite excited was she! Between candy and cake AND a chocolate fountain, this little girl was in baby shower heaven!

Stacy is just three days older than me and we were really close as kids (she lived in Indiana until college). Our families were together all the time and she and I have many memories together. I am SO excited for her and her husband, Brian, to begin this journey. Just wish I lived closer to see those babies!

Winter Blahs

2011-02-24T21:14:00.000-05:00

Its no secret that I'm not a fan of Winter. I hate snow, ice, cold temps, winter coats, school closings, being stuck inside, snowsuits, Winter Storm Warnings, boots, rushing to the store to stock up on the necessities before a predicted snow storm, and literally everything else having to do with Winter. During the first snowfall of the year, I think that the snow looks pretty for about .5 seconds. Then I start hyperventilating knowing that there is no end in sight till Spring. We have some pretty nasty Winters here in the Midwest. This year in particular, we've really been dumped on with snow. Last week the temps were in the upper 50s for a few days! The snow ALL melted and even though it was nasty to look outside at the moldy grass, it was glorious! Felt like Spring was starting a bit early. But, oh no. Another snow storm that cancelled school for yet ANOTHER two days. Then school cancelled again today with the forecast saying we're getting another winter storm tonight and tomorrow. Yippie skippy. Its been crazy!

The end of February is when my Winter Blahs REALLY start kicking in. Feels like we've been living under snow for ages now and there isn't a promise of Spring any time soon. Boo. And to make matters worse for our family this year, we've all been hit with some nasty illnesses. Pretty much someone in our home has been sick since the beginning of December. That is really wearing on us! Flu bugs, sinus infections, fevers, and colds. Currently, the illness report card in our home is the following:
Matt: sinus infection (he's not been feeling well for about a month now and finally got some meds from the doctor)
Me: flu? Not sure. Body aches/chills/fever. Sounds like the flu. I slept pretty much all day today.
Jack: Today, he's fine.
Macy: sinus infection
Zoe: woke up with a mysterious rash and she has a cold

When someone in our home is taking meds, we usually stick them on the window sill above the kitchen sink. This is what our window sill looks like today. Crazy. Four prescriptions and five over the counter meds.

I've got a lot of super fun stuff planned for the weekend. Project Life party with my fellow PL friends tomorrow. Whoop! And an awesome baby shower for my beautiful cousin, Stacy, who is expecting twins. Should be totally rockin. I helped with the decor and will post pics of the baby shower afterward!

In the meantime, I will continue to THINK SPRING!

Oh, I just have to share this image of a Valentine my sweet Jackson made for his "girlfriend", Sienna. He doesn't see Sienna too often, so I put the real Valentine in my Project Life album. Its WAY too sweet to give away!

Ahhh, young love....

through the lens

2011-02-14T22:40:00.000-05:00

I'm a big advocate of kids taking photos. With a real camera. (Not just a Fisher Price toy camera or my iPod camera or the camera on my phone.....) Its pretty amazing what kids come up with when you let them take photos. I can now honestly say that I am pretty comfortable with handing over my big bulky expensive nice camera to my two oldest kids, ages 6 and 3. I'm pretty sure they won't throw it. And its just about the cutest thing ever to see them holding a big digital SLR camera as they walk around taking photos at their level. Most of them turn out rather blurry, but that's ok with me. Tonight Jack and Macy each took turns taking photos around our family room. Very low lighting and the aperture was open as wide as could be, which tends to produce blurry photos if you don't hold the camera super still or if you don't have a good focal point. Taking those two points into consideration, I thought they did a great job!
Jack's:

Macy's:

Valentine's Day turned out to be pretty fun overall. Some highlights:
*My Valentine brought me a gas station donut AND hot chocolate this morning.
*There was chocolate candy everywhere we turned today. Although, those heart-shaped chocolate candy boxes usually disappoint me because I always take a big bite out of some nasty coconut-filled chocolate and then I have to scrape all the nasty coconut flavor off of my tongue. Ew.
*The kids had fun exchanging Valentines and there was one crazy 30 minute time period today where 11 little kids were all exchanging Valentine's and treats in our daycare room.
*Every time I tried to get Zoe to say "Happy Valentine's Day!" she would just say "diaper!"
*The snow is starting to melt (yay!) and it almost felt like a heat wave. It was somewhere above 30 degrees today, so at least it didn't hurt your lungs to go outside.
*Grocery shopping tonight was kinda fun because I got to see a bunch of last-minute shoppers running around buying cards, flowers, and stuffed animals.

Jack, wearing Star Wars PJs and reading a Star Wars book, of course....he's addicted right now:

Macy checking out her bag of Valentines:

Zoe just being squishy and sweet:

An attempt for one group photo of my littlest Valentines. Cute and uncooperative as always.

things i never want to say

2011-02-12T15:18:00.002-05:00

Before I get a little serious, I thought I would share a little bit about how we prep for Valentine's Day:

The kids address little cards to their friends and classmates. And, that's about it. BOTH kiddos said they didn't want to attach any candy or treat to their Valentine's cards for their friends. Um, ok? Less work for me! See, Valentine's Day is probably my least favorite holiday. I never really bought into the whole "you have to buy an extra present and spend lots of $$ for someone you love" Hallmark idea created years ago. Yah, I totally know there really is a reason for Valentine's Day and there was a Saint Valentine that performed illegal marriages or whatever. Blah blah blah. I'm not a huge fan of hearts (although every once in a while one will pop up on a scrapbook layout..) and I don't really like red and pink together. I'm totally not romantic. (obviously....) Sure, Valentine's Day is sort of fun because my kids get excited about it and they like making cards and handing out little Valentine's to their friends. But I totally don't go out of the way to do anything extra on Valentine's Day. Except maybe make heart-shaped waffles and sprinkle some Valentine M&Ms on my kids' PB&Js.....perhaps that makes me a Valentine's Scrooge. I don't know. But I DO want to make sure my kids know that telling and showing each other "I love you" is something we do all the time, not just on Valentine's Day. And that they won't be getting piles of gifts JUST because the consumer mind-set of our society is to spend spend spend money on things we don't really need. So, yah, I'm sure we'll have a fun little day on Valentine's Day this year eating our heart-shaped waffles and pink and red M&Ms. And I'm sure that we'll make a few more heart beaded necklaces and red doilie cards until then. BUT the ONLY thing I really want on Valentine's Day is to hear my husband and kids say "I LOVE YOU!" Just like they do every other day.

When I sat down to write this post, I really didn't intend to talk about my anti-Valentine's Day views!.....what I REALLY wanted to blog about is a little mental list I've been compiling lately about things I never want to say to my kids. This list is in no way exhaustive. And, there are items on this list that I have to REALLY work hard at not saying. Some are easier than others. Some of these things are just common sense and some may not seem harmful to you. But I've thought quite a lot about these things and have decided that all of them definitely have the possibility of being quite harmful to my kids.

1. "I promise."
I never want to promise my kids anything! Even something as simple as "I promise we'll do that puzzle after dinner." Because what if something else comes up and I'm not able to come through on my innocent little promise? But I also don't want to promise them big things. "I promise I'll pay for your college tuition." How do I know NOW that I'll be able to come through on a huge promise YEARS from now? We've learned how damaging a seemingly innocent promise can be to our son when we "promised he could go to Grandma's house" and then Grandma got sick (or, on another day, the roads were too snowy) and he wasn't able to go to Grandma's. "BUT YOU PROMISED!" was all he would say. He was offended and hurt. And he lost a little bit of trust in his parents.

2. "I just want you to be happy."
Of course I want my kids to be happy. Who doesn't? But, I want them to be emotionally healthy first. There is a difference between kids being happy and being healthy. ALWAYS allowing our kids to be happy means we're neglecting some HUGE areas of development. The three biggest character traits we are trying to instill in our kids are respect, obedience, and kindness. We also want to teach them patience, self-control, how to handle disappointment, living peacefully among others, being joyful in all circumstances, and forgiveness. I'm not trying to be my kids' friends. They've got plenty of friends and will continue to make more friends throughout their entire lives. I, alongside my husband, have been given the unique responsibility to parent Jackson, Macy, and Zoe. The kids do not lead/discipline/control this family. The parents do. This is how God intended parenting to be. My goal is not to please my kids' every whim and give in to every little thing they want. This is teaching them that happiness is easily attained at any cost. My goal is to teach them to be content with where they are (through being respectful, obedient, and kind....)

3. "Hurry!"
Simply because I do not want them to feel like life is always moving in fast forward and we have to hurry everywhere. I'm a better Mama when I'm not in a hurry. Unless there is a life or death situation where we would literally need to hurry out of the way, this is something I try not to say at all.

4. "Where did the time go?" or "I can't believe you are already __ years old." or "I can't wait until you are (insert next developmental milestone)."
This is something that has always made me stop and think. And yet I still say things like this every once in a while! Why would I want to wish time away to get to the next developmental milestone? Yes, it will be quite nice when all of my kids are potty trained and self-sufficient. But why do we feel the need to spend so much time wishing time away until then? Doesn't this dismiss where we are in life right now? And then, when we DO reach that stage in life when our kids are all potty trained and self-sufficient, won't we then just complain about something else that we can't wait for? Why should it be so hard to believe that my kids have reached a new birthday? Haven't I been with them every single day of their lives? I want to be more conscious of simply living in the present. To live. Just be. To not yearn for the kids' bed time. To enjoy the little ordinary things that happen in my life all day long. To love on, play with, cuddle next to, tickle, celebrate, and simply enjoy my family just as they are. Potty trained or not.

Alright, enough with the heavy.....

scripture memory challenge

2011-02-03T23:18:00.001-05:00

The awesome Women's Ministry at my church has challenged us to memorize two Scriptures each month in 2011. Many women in my church have taken on this challenge, including myself, and its been pretty cool to see everyone posting which verses they will memorize. Because I am a visual person, the only way I will actually remember to study and memorize my verses is if they are in plain view for me to see. Matt found this little photo flip album at Meijer and this is how I plan to keep my Bible memory verses in plain view:

And, where do I plan to keep it, you might ask? Well, in the kitchen of course. Not because I'm eating all the time....but because preparing, serving, and cleaning up meals is a HUGE part of my day as a Mama and daycare provider. So, my Scriptures will be in plain view for sure. Right next to my recipe box and blender. AND, I might even get a little crazy and move it around the kitchen here and there.....

What I LOVE about this flip photo album is that I'll have all my verses together and I can flip to them whenever I want. And, of course, you know I had to get a little creative and make each verse a little pretty ;)

I had another one of those "aha!" moments tonight when it comes to my Project Life album. I won this cute little "thirtyone" organizer from my friend Angie and I have decided to use it as my "Project Life all-in-one" organizer. I stuck everything in here that I'll use for PL and I can easily grab it to take it with me when I'm working on my PL album. Besides all the kit contents (journaling cards, date stickers, etc) that come with the PL kit, I also stuck my corner rounder, a small adhesive applicator, photo overlays, a pen, post-it sticky notes, and random things I want to include in my PL album (receipts, tags, small memorabilia, etc). I'm good to go!

In other news, we're on day 3 of NO SCHOOL here. Lots of snow + wind + ice + COLD = cancelled school. Its been kinda fun to be stuck at home with not a lot to do, BUT we're also ready to get back in the swing of things. Its amazing how little we accomplished these past 3 days! You would think we would have been able to check off a bunch of things from our to-do list. Well, we actually don't really have much on our to-do list at all.....so we did some laundry and I did a few creative things. But mostly we just snuggled up in the gigantic multi-couch fort (assembled by my Tetris-loving husband, Matt), played with the kids, and enjoyed the relaxation. We stayed at home for 2 days while most places were shut down and the weather was super crummy. And then today we were able to venture out. Jack and I went to the library to replenish his "Captain Underpants" books, Matt went to the store, and the kids went to Grandma's house for a few hours for a much-needed Grandma night. Matt managed to dig a little path out so we could go get the mail yesterday...

Good times.

how I revolutionized doing laundry...

2011-01-31T23:21:00.001-05:00

I recently changed every single thing about how I do laundry. And OH MY WORD my life is so much more streamlined now. Its been totally fabulous.

A while back we started going green in our home. This process has been going really well and we've made many changes in our home. One of our changes is that I now make our own homemade laundry detergent. This turned out to be super simple, very cheap, much healthier than store-bought detergent, and it works really well. My friend, Lisa, posted a tutorial on how to make homemade laundry detergent. I followed her recipe and am quite pleased! For my fabric softener, I add about 1/2 cup of baking soda right in the wash and about 1/2 cup white vinegar in the fabric softener dispenser.

That was step one in revolutionizing my laundering process...

Step two is where it gets super amazing.

With five people in our family, we do have quite a bit of laundry in this house. We have nowhere close to the amount of laundry the Duggers have to do, but the sorting and putting away of laundry can still be quite tedious. I used to just collect everyone's laundry and wash it all mixed together (well, I did sort out the whites....) Five people and five different closets equal a lot of time sorting all the folded laundry into the right person's closet. Just typing that last sentence gave me a little headache. Anyway, a while back one of my friends shared her laundry method and I finally gave it a try. Her name is Erin. She's freakin' brilliant. The method? Drum roll please.....

Do each person's laundry all in the same load.

That's it. Simple. Yet brilliant.

I like to keep up on our laundry. I don't really ever let it pile up, so this method works amazing for me, because I don't have heaps and heaps of laundry that all needs done at the same time. On Mondays, I do all of Jack's laundry. On Tuesdays, I do all of Macy's laundry. On Wednesdays, I do all of Zoe's laundry. And I do all of mine and Matt's laundry on the weekends. I do one load of white laundry each week. And I throw in towels, dish rags, etc with any load throughout the week. I seriously LOVE putting laundry away now. I literally fold all of one person's laundry and just walk it ALL in to that same person's room and put it ALL into that same person's closet and drawers. And then I leave that person's room happy and not frustrated because I don't have to enter four other closets and figure out who's laundry needs to go where.

So, really? An entire blog post about laundry? Oh yes.

our bedroom wall of awesomeness

2011-01-28T14:16:00.000-05:00

My cousin, Jamie, did our family photo shoot last October. She always does a great job photographing our family and no one even whines or complains during our photo shoots with her. Holy cats! Its amazing that its even possible to complete a photo shoot with five people and no whining....

Anyway, this photo was one of my favorites and we had it printed on a 2 foot by 3 foot gallery wrap canvas. Its huge. Loooove how it turned out. We hung it on the wall above our bed and I decorated some wooden/chipboard/paper mache letters and stuck them up there as well. Each letter stands for the first letter in each of our names. (As shown in order on the wall: Macy, Matt, Zoe, Betsy, Jackson.) Our bedroom decor has been a work in progress since we moved here approximately 7 years ago. Pretty much, it was just the last room we ever really tried to decorate. No one ever really sees it so we just didn't bother to decorate it. Well, we DID paint it a royal blue color and after a few years of feeling like we were sleeping in a dark blue cave, we decided to repaint....our room is quite large, and we still have a few bare spots that I'm thinking need a little crafting up. But for now, I at least love this canvas hanging above our bed!
Close up of the letters:

On a totally unrelated note, I'm sortof a minor celebrity now. Well, not really, but yesterday I was on Becky Higgins' blog. Becky Higgins! She posted the photo from our Project Life Kick Off party and also an email that I had written to her along with a link to my blog. And BAM, just like that I had a few thousand hits on my blog yesterday and was signing autographs everywhere I went! Ok, so the autograph part wasn't true, but it was DEFINITELY fun becomming a little bit famous for a day! I think Matt, my adoring husband, was rather jealous of my unexpected blog popularity. He takes his blog stats quite seriously.....

On yet another unrelated note, we have decided to give up eating out completely for one full month. Starting today and through all of February. We're huge suckers for "Hey, you want me to pick something up for dinner while I'm out?" or "I just don't feel like cooking dinner tonight, lets go out." or "Hey, lets celebrate getting on Becky Higgins' blog by going out for dinner." We don't make good choices when we eat out (not helpful when I'm trying to count points on Weight Watchers...), we really can't afford it (but we did get a lot of gift cards for Christmas...), and we don't always really ENJOY eating out with our whole family (Zoe likes to throw everything on the floor, Macy is very squirmy, and Jack refuses to eat most things, so the entire dinner isn't even FUN). So we made the executive decision to give up eating out for one full month. I am fairly certain we'll survive just fine, but it will be interesting to see how many times I have to talk myself out of going out to eat this next month!

my cheeks still hurt from so much laughter

2011-01-25T14:39:00.001-05:00

The 2011 Project Life Kick Off certainly did not disappoint! Lots of creativity, lots of inspiration, lots of laughs, LOTS of excitement about Project Life, lots of "ahha!" moments, and lots of productivity. We had a fantastic time celebrating the beginning of Project Life for this year. I can't wait to get together again next month! Here is everyone with our Project Life albums.

There is a nice mixture of different Project Life editions. Some from the 2010 edition, the 2011 Turquoise edition, and the 2011 Amber edition. (A couple of ladies in the photo are waiting to order their kits when Amazon has more in stock, so they were celebrating with us at the Kick Off, but didn't have their albums quite yet...) Some of us have scrapbooked for years and others have never scrapbooked. I am the only one out of this group who has done a Project Life album before, so this is a new scrapbooking concept for most everyone in our Project Life group. Some of us had been working on our 2011 Project Life albums since January 1 and some of us were scared to even open up the Project Life box! It was awesome to get everyone's albums set up and ready to go, start adding their photos, and to see each person "get" how to complete their albums this year. I so believe in this scrapbook concept. Especially for those who think they are creatively challenged, don't have time to scrapbook, or are just intimidated by the word 'scrapbooking'. I'm SO GLAD this group of women has committed to document the everyday stories and lives of their families for 2011. I think they will whole-heartedly treasure this album once it is completed. And, hopefully, have a little fun in the process!

Here are some views of my first two weeks of layouts from my PL album this year.

Week 1, right side of the layout. Photos along the top and bottom, journaling cards in the middle. This is how every layout will look like throughout the year.

Week 2. I took a bunch of photos that I wanted to include in my album this week. So, in addition to the photo per day in the page protectors that came with the PL kit, I added a 12 x 12 divided page protector right in the middle of this week's layout. This page protector is divided up into 4 x 4 inch squares. Its one of my favorite page protector styles! I included a few extra photos from our everyday lives from this week and also a few other things. A business card from the doctor's office, a note that Matt wrote to Jack and put in his lunch one day that week, part of a birthday card I made for Matt, and some extra fun patterned paper with a little extra journaling. I won't add extra pages EVERY week, but loved filling in this week's layout with some extra goodies.

Sometimes my journaling is just a simple story from something that happened that day, like this:

And sometimes my journaling is a list of things, like this:

Other days my journaling is just a quote from something the kids said that day, a to-do list, or just documenting what we did that particular day. I'll also be sure to add receipts, tags from clothes, artwork by the kids, etc, throughout the year.

This project can be tailored to whatever works for you! And its oh-so-fun!

how I scrapbook, part two

2011-01-14T22:03:00.002-05:00

Project Life. Ahhhhh. There is a tiny explosion inside my heart every time I think about my Project Life albums. I just started my second year of doing this project and I must say, I LOVE it. Its so simple. So clean. So easy to keep up with. And, as an added little bounus for this year, I have about a dozen of my friends doing their own Project Life albums at the same time. We'll be getting together on a monthly basis and sharing our albums and getting inspiration from each other. I know I will treasure this little community of Project Lifers.

Project Life is all about capturing the everyday lives of my entire family. I sincerely wish I had a place in my house where I could keep my PL album out and in view so my family could help participate in the making of it. The fabulous Ali Edwards has her album smack on the counter in her kitchen (she's a brave woman...) so its always at her fingertips. Our kitchen has waaaay too many little grimey hands for me to pull this off, but I do love the concept!

The way I'm tackling Project Life is to do a "photo per day" approach. I'm taking at least one photo per day, for the most part. For me the concept of PL is to catch a glimpse of our daily lives when looking through this album, so I want to add everyday photos that are significant to me and my family. If that means using two photos from one day and no photos from another day, then that is fine. Everyday significance. Telling our story. Including the details. (Not just taking photos of people!) I haven't printed any photos out from this year to add to my album, but once I do, I will be sure to upload what a weekly layout looks like.

Here are a few examples of my daily photos I'll be using from the past two weeks:

My husbands Nerf collection. He's slightly obsessed....

A stack of some of Jack's favorite books:

iPod Touch (looooove):

Zoe coloring with Daddy:

Ingredients for my homemade laundry detergent:

Macy and Jackson sledding:

Along side my Project Life album, I will also do my "regular" scrapbooking. On these layouts I'll delve a little deeper into each of our lives. This is also where my more creative side busts out as well. Some recent favorite layouts:

Me and Macy and a little note I wrote to her about how much I love her age right now.

Layout about Matt and I's favorite things to do on date nights. Don't forget to include yourself and your likes/dislikes on your pages! And be sure to utilize your camera's self-timer.

Here is an example of my method for scrapbooking school memorabilia and such. Let me explain. I mostly do 12 x 12 inch layouts. But I also love mixing and matching differnet types of page protectors (notice the baseball card page protector below) and different page sizes as well. I scrapbook school stuff (report cards, examples of homework, artwork, teacher newsletters, backpack "gems", etc) right along with my kids' other scrapbook pages. That way, down the road, everything is all together. I put all the kids' paper school memorabilia (report cards, homework, flat artwork, etc) in 8.5 x 11 page protectors and put them right in between the other scrapbook pages, chronologically. For large artwork that I want to keep but is too large for the scrapbook, I will scan it and include it in their albums. Of course there are some things I will keep the originals of, but mostly I like things neat and simple and I don't want a lot of extra stuff around. At the end of each school day, I empty out Jack's back pack and decide what to keep and what to recycle. Most of the time his papers get recycled. I just don't see the point in keeping EVERY SINGLE PAPER that comes home. But if it is something he is definitely proud of or that really sums up what his school year is about, then I'll stick it in the scrapbook. This system works well for me and keeps things nice and organized throughout the school year!

Another example of how I'll use different sized page protectors in my albums. This is a 2-page layout about Macy's 3rd birthday. In the middle, I included a 6 x 12 inch page protector and slipped birthday party memorabilia (cards from her friends, her party invitation, etc) in the page protector.

And now I'm feeling a burst of creativity, so I need to go make something....

the year of MY STORY

2011-01-02T00:19:00.000-05:00

This is one of my favorite photos! We now have a 2 foot by 3 foot canvas gallery wrap of this photo hanging above our bed. Yep, 2 foot by 3 foot. Once we add some finishing décor touches (wall art that I'm still planning on creating...), I’ll upload a photo of this bad boy hanging on our wall.

Its freakin’ fantastic.

And now, on a more serious note....

For 2011 the “one little word” I’ve chosen for myself is “story”. Focusing on really documenting the stories that make my family who we are. The big things. The little things. The everyday things. Mostly this will manifest in my scrapbooking. Which I’ve been doing for years now, but will be focusing on it a little differently this year. I’m doing Project Life again this year, but this time I’m doing it alongside a dozen or so of my friends. (I’m beyond words excited that so many of my friends are seeing the power of photos + words to document their stories!) I’m no longer concerned with HOW many layouts I create or HOW many albums I can fill. (This is something I’ve not necessarily always been too concerned with, but I’m REALLY making sure to let this go now!) I’ve got some bigger projects planned that aren’t even necessarily scrapbook pages, which I’m excited about too.

But more specifically than just documenting my story, this is the year I really want to focus on me for some other reasons. (But it all relates to MY STORY, right?!) The past two years have been a period of discontent for me. I’ve not necessarily gone through depression, but there have definitely been periods where I’ve had stronger feelings of discontent. I know God laid all this on my heart during this season of discontent in order to shake things up in my life and force me to see where changes need to be made. For whatever reason, the start of 2011 feels like a fresh start for me. Digging in deeper with some new friendships that were cultivated in 2010. Getting on track with my relationship with God (something I’ve ALWAYS struggled with), starting with participating in the Scripture Memory Challenge started by the Women’s Ministry at our church. Continuing with our “going green” initiative that started in our family in 2009, but was off to a slow and intimidating start, and then in 2010 we made BIG eco-wise changes. Making some big strides in our adoption process. (read: actually STARTING the process…) Really, REALLY buckling down and focusing on losing weight and getting back to my pre-pregnancy weight. Basically, stepping it up to the next level and LIVING my life the way God has intended me to. Living my life and then telling the story.

Looking back at the past two years, I see my life as being inside this big bubble. And I’ve just been skimming the surface around the bubble, never really penetrating inside it and getting to the core of things that matter. Just wasting time by not necessarily accomplishing anything. (Or ignoring the things that matter.) Basically, its time to get off my butt and stop being lazy! And, I don’t even consider myself as a lazy person, BUT when it comes to actually accomplishing the little things in my life that REALLY matter, I have certainly been lazy. I’m tired of procrastinating in the little things! Its time for some necessary changes.

So, here’s to 2011!

P.S. I promise to get back to the whole “why/how I scrapbook” thing I was posting about in November. Clearly the month of December came and went and I didn’t even touch on the subject! More to come soon.

how I scrapbook, part one

2010-11-27T21:13:00.000-05:00

I've already shared quite a bit about WHY I scrapbook. Now let me tell you a little bit about HOW I scrapbook and about my creative process. Here's my secret: I don't really have one creative process. I'm crafty so sometimes I want to do an artsy creative scrapbook layout. But I'm also a busy mom. So sometimes telling my family's stories needs to be done in a more time efficient manner. One of the best decisions I have made with my scrapbooking is that I don't scrapbook every photo I take. I DO print out lots of photos. I DO keep a little notebook where I write down ideas like topics I want to scrapbook about, sketches I have seen that I want to mimic, ideas for titles, color schemes, etc. I do not keep track of how many pages I have created for each of my 3 kids and I do not make sure that they have equal amounts of pages in their scrapbooks. And I also have no intention of handing over 30 scrapbooks to each of them when they get married (or move out or whenever I end up deciding to give them all their scrapbooks). Again, my main goal is to document our everyday lives, NOT to be a scrapbooking ninja and see how much cardstock I can use in one year.

A few years ago I started doing "month in review" layouts. I would gather a bunch of random photos from the previous month and journal about all the things we did that month. Then one week out of the year I would do a "week in review" approach where I would take TONS of photos everyday for one week, journal in great detail about our days, and keep lots of extra little goodies that helped tell our family's story (tags from new clothes purchases, receipts, grocery lists that I had written out, mail, things the kids drew, etc.....THESE are the little things I would love to have from my childhood!) At the end of the week I compiled all this stuff and did a 2-page layout for each day.

Here are some examples from one week back in 2008. My camera has a hard time taking getting a photo of a layout that is already in a page protector, so these photos might look a little cloudy, but I think you can still get the idea.

When I was designing these "week in review" layouts, I decided I wanted each 2-page layout to look similar. So, I enlarged one photo from each day to 8 x 10 and included five 4 x 6 photos from each day. I used divided 4 x 6 pocket page protectors for one side of each layout and a sheet of beige 12 x 12 cardstock for the base of the other side. Each day's layout included a bunch of journaling on what we did that day. For the remaining 4 x 6 section of the divided pocket page protector, I included receipts, grocery lists, random thoughts, my to-do list, etc.

This layout is from September 29th, 2008. The left side is an 8 x 10 photo of Macy in her baby swing. The right side includes photos of Matt and Macy listening to his ipod, the kids on the swing set, Jack playing with a piggy bank, Macy playing on the floor, and the apple selection at my grocery store. Random photos that all made up my day.

And an up close look at how I included the journaling for this day.

This was October 3, 08. The left side is an 8 x 10 photo of Matt reading a book to a bunch of our daycare kids. And a bunch of journaling towards the bottom of the page of our daily happenings. And the right side of the layout is 5 photos from our day. We happened to be at Jack's preschool that day for a Fall Festival, so some of the photos are from that. Crayons from his school, a scarecrow, Fall themed books, lanterns, and me driving our van.

This was October 4th, 08. On the left side of the 2-page layout, I slipped 5 photos of everyday life into a divided page protector. Macy standing in her crib, Jackson eating at a wedding reception, Jack and Macy playing on the couch, Jack eating a sucker, and a shot of my messy computer desk. The right side of the layout is an 8 x 19 photo of Macy coloring. Then towards the bottom I wrote in great detail all the little things that happened that day.

At the beginning of 2009 I had an idea to start what I eventually called "Project 365". This idea was something I had been thinking of for a while but didn't know how to execute. Then one of my favorite scrapbookers, Becky Higgins, created a product called "Project Life" that was EXACTLY what I had been thinking about. The whole point of this little project is to take one photo everyday and journal a sentence or two about what you did for that day. Brilliant. Becky's Project Life kits contain everything you need to scrapbook through this "photo a day" approach. I took at least one photo a day. I took photos of everything in our lives. Not just people, but photos of places we regularly visited, things around our house, prices of things (like gas!), meals I prepared, seasonal things, etc. I took my camera everywhere and just snapped away. Project Life is an awesome way to document your story. And if you use one of Becky's kits, then you don't even have to have one ounce of creativity. She gives you all the elements you need to create an awesome album using your own photos and words. I love this approach. However, I also discovered throughout the year that I still wanted to scrapbook other layouts as well, so I will not be doing Project Life EVERY year.

Here is one example of a weekly layout from my Project 365 album from 2009. Again this image of the photos looks cloudy. They aren't, its just hard to see in this image. On this 2-page layout, there are seven 4 x 6 photos. One for each day of the week. Macy in her swing, Jack walking out of preschool with his teacher, my craft room, Matt mowing, eating s'mores by our campfire, the kids playing in the sandbox, and our dog laying in the grass with his favorite ball. The green 4 x 6 cardstock shows the week that this layout is about. And the small white journaling cards at the bottom of the layout are where I journal a sentence or two about what we did each day. Simple, simple, simple. And now I have an entire album with 52 weeks of everyday stories. A little glimpse of our lives from that year.

While I loooove documenting my family and our sweet everyday stories, I also enjoy doing "traditional" scrapbook pages as well. In the next post (or two...) I will share more about my creative and artsy scrapbook side, perhaps a little about digital scrapbooking, thoughts on scrapbooking my kids' school memories and the millions of papers that come home from school everyday, and how I scrapbook on a budget.

why I scrapbook...

2010-11-24T21:07:00.001-05:00

I’m going to give you a sneak peak into the life of a scrapbooker. Are you excited?? I sure hope so. Because the scrapbooker who’s life you are about to get a sneak peak of is none other than me. *wink*

First off, let me tell you a little bit about WHY I scrapbook. Mainly, I scrapbook so I can preserve my family’s history. And I’m a crafty kindof gal, so preserving my family’s stories in a creative way suits me so well. I believe that there is no right or wrong way to scrapbook. Using photos and words to document the amazing everyday stories of each of my family members is what it is all about for me. I may or may not consider myself a perfectionist. But when it comes to scrapbooking, I have adopted a few mantras that I often repeat to myself when my perfectionism rises to the surface. --->Imperfection is perfect. Its OK the way it is. Don’t make this more complicated than it needs to be.<---

Because I focus on scrapbooking everyday moments and stories, my goal is that anyone could flip through one of my scrapbooks and really understand the essence of my family. Both good and not so good things. Funny things. Quirky things. Our likes and dislikes. What our everyday routines looked like. Conversations we had with our kids. Places we go on a regular basis. And all of the many MANY little stories in between. This is why I scrapbook.

I don’t worry about “keeping up” with my layouts. I don’t even come close to scrapbooking all of the photos we take. I scrapbook those photos that tell the stories I most want to tell. I scrapbook some of my favorite photos just because I want to. And lots and lots of photos just get put into our photo boxes. And that is fine with me. The day that I start to say I’m “behind” in my scrapbooking is probably the day that I will stop scrapbooking. I don’t want my hobby to become a chore. I don’t want to feel pressured to make scrapbooking a lot of extra hard work. I just want to document my family’s stories.

Here is where I do most of my scrapbooking. This room is our old walk-in closet. But it was too big for a closet so it is now my scrapbooking room. I LOVE it in here.

I have everything out and ready to go. All my supplies are within an arms reach. Well, some supplies are a few steps away….but it is nice to go in my scrapbook room and work for a few minutes and then leave everything out until I have a few more minutes later in the day. By the way, my scrapbook room also serves as our home office and Santa’s workshop (wrapping + hiding gifts). Perfect.

Throughout the next few posts, I'll share some of my favorite scrapbook techniques, post a bunch of photos of recent layouts, and attempt to show you how it IS possible to document your family's stories on a tight budget with not a lot of free time....and EVEN if you think you're not creative. Stay tuned!

green living 101

2010-11-14T23:26:00.001-05:00

Going “green” can mean different things to different people. For some, it may mean just starting to recycle. And then for others it means making many changes in your regular everyday routines, habits, purchases, thought-processes, life-style, etc…

For us? We’re the latter. We have recycled for years. I actually don’t remember a time when I did NOT recycle, even growing up. And then about a year or so ago we started making little changes here and there to reduce our use of disposable products. A little while later we realized all of the toxins that lived in our house, so we changed the way we clean. And then some time after that, we started contemplating the toxins we were putting in and on our bodies and started attacking those issues. Going green is a process. But you have to start somewhere!

And because I don’t really want to re-invent the wheel on how to start going green, I’ll just offer a few tips that have helped us and point you in the right direction for what you’re looking to change.

Let me just say that not everything we do is considered eco-friendly. For example, we still use disposable diapers. Gasp! And, although I try to reduce the amount of hydrogenated oil and high fructose corn syrup that my family consumes, I’ll still buy M&Ms and the occasional bag of potato chips.

Like I said, going green is a process…

The Enviromom blog has been a wealth of knowledge for us. Check it out. You’ll be glad you did. They have tons of info on taking baby steps to go green. This was a good starting point for us.

Some changes we have made include:
*eliminating paper napkins and switching to cloth napkins
*majorly reducing our paper towel usage
*re-using plastic Ziploc baggies
*using only non-toxic (and mostly handmade) cleaners
*changing almost all of our personal care products to healthier less-toxic versions (we even make our own deodorant and face wash now…)
*bringing in LESS STUFF and repurposing what we already own (reduce, reuse, recycle!)

It may seem like an overwhelming task to change your cleaning products to handmade eco-friendlier versions. Its really not! Combining natural ingredients for all your cleaning needs will save you money, help save the planet, and keep your family healthier in the long run. Companies that make cleaning products are not required to disclose ingredients on their labels. This BLOWS MY MIND! What has happened is that our society has been brain washed to think that we need bleach to clean everything. In reality, bleach is killing us and making us even more sick. Bleach is NOT necessary for cleaning!

So what happens when you change your cleaning products to non-toxic (and handmade) versions? Well, first off, you’ll learn to love the smell of vinegar. Vinegar has become one of my best friends. I use it everyday, multiple times a day. I use it for general cleaning, deep cleaning, fabric softener, dish detergent…the list goes on and on. Seriously, vinegar is a work horse! My eco-friendly friend, Lisa, introduced me to the advantages of vinegar. Actually, Lisa introduced me to the entire green living world to begin with! When I saw how easy it was for her to implement so many green living ideas into her home, I knew I’d be able to do the same. And I haven’t turned back since!

All of my homemade cleaner recipes have come from various sources. Lisa has a few on her blog. There are some on the Enviromom blog. Simple Organic is a fantastic website with lots of cleaning info on it as well. I compiled a nice little list with all of the different types of cleaners I need and recipes that work best for me (general, disinfectant, toilet cleaner, smooth stove top degreaser, window, laundry detergent, dish detergent, fabric softener, etc) and refer to it whenever I need to make up a new batch!

When you are ready to tackle the toxins in your personal care products, you MUST check out the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep database. This database is fantastically amazing. It rates every personal care product you can think of by how hazardous it is for your health. You’ll be overwhelmed with the nasty chemicals that are in your personal care products! Hopefully you’ll be willing to make some changes after doing a little research on Skin Deep.

Changes I hope to implement in the near future:
*composting our food scraps
*changing ALL of my personal care products to organic, healthier versions (I still haven’t found an organic shampoo I like for my ultra frizzy curly hair…)
*buying more organic and local produce, meat, and dairy
*growing some of our own produce (this one might be in the very far distant future….I can’t even grow a chia pet, so maintaining a garden seems totally impossible for me at this point in my life!)
*learning how to freeze and can my own food. Again, that might happen after I figure out how to grow a garden…..

Have fun making eco-friendly changes! Your health and your planet will thank you. And hopefully you’ll feel a little empowered in the process.

happy arm pits = happy planet

2010-11-09T11:02:00.001-05:00

In our never-ending quest to live a greener lifestyle, one of the major changes we've recently made is switching many of our personal care products to more eco-friendly and healthier options. After watching this video about The Story of Cosmetics as well as just doing a heck of a lot of research on my own, mostly through the Environmental Working Group's website, my eyes have been open to the hazardous toxins we put on our bodies every day. Did you know that the personal care products industry has NO regulations as to what ingredients they put in their products? AND, even worse, these companies don't legally need to disclose the ingredients on the label. So, we literally have no idea what we're putting on our bodies. The problem with that is these prodcuts contain thousands of toxic chemicals. And those chemicals get absorbed into our bloodstream, mostly through our skin. But you can read all about that on the above mentioned websites.

Our family has already changed all our cleaning products. (But that's for another post.) And we've made many other eco-friendly changes as well. But the thought of changing our personal care products was downright overwhelming. What I have discovered is that making these changes wasn't as scary as I had originally thought. In fact, I love it. I am much more knowledgeable and totally empowered. I'm happy to make these changes for the health of our family AND the health of our planet.

My friend, Lisa, posted on her blog about the homemade deodorant recipe she used. So a few months ago I made the exact same recipe. It was freakishly easy (and kindof fun!). I will tell you right now that I have very VERY powerful arm pits. They can sweat on the coldest of days. Literally. All my life I've had sweaty pits (I'm blaming that gene on my dad's side of the family...) and I've never found a deodorant that I've been totally happy with (that was affordable). Even the eco-friendly brands of deodorant haven't worked. Well, they worked for about a month and then instead of masking any odors, my pits decided to constantly smell like a high school boys football locker room after a hot August afternoon practice. Yuk. I'm happy to report that this homemade deodorant recipe has been fantastic! It is by far the best deodorant I've EVER used and there has only been one day that I noticed any odor under my pits, and that was on a non-shower day.....I've been using it for a few months now and I think I'm kindof in love with it. My husband even uses it and likes it too. Here's the recipe:

1/4 cup baking soda

1/4 cup corn startch

6 Tablespoons coconut oil

Mix all together till it is solid-ish and then mash into your container. Matt wanted his in a deodorant container. So, we cleaned out the remains of an old deodorant container and mashed some homemade deodorant in it. But for me? That wasn't happening. The coconut oil starts to melt at around 76 degrees, which if you recall, your body is warmer than that. So, when you start applying it to your pits, it starts to melt. And then it runs down the side of the deodorant stick. Not ideal for me. For some reason, my husband doesn't seem to mind this. I decided to just put some in a small plastic container. And I just scoop out a VERY tiny amount with my fingers and apply.

So its better for my armpits because I'm not adding nasty toxic chemicals like aluminum into my bloodstream. And its better for the environment because I'm not throwing away old deodorant tubes. And its better for our budget as well. I figured out that it costs approximately $1.60 to make one batch of deodorant that will last both of us for months. MONTHS. Not too shabby, even for this coupon-clipping mama.

all from one photo

2010-11-05T22:50:00.001-04:00

You know that saying "A picture is worth 1000 words?" Well, I was looking through some photos in my Photoshop program tonight and came across this little gem. Seriously, you can learn SO MUCH about me in this one little photo.

That's my youngest daughter Zoe. She's 13 months. Zoe doesn't walk independently quite yet, but she cruises around the house holding on to furniture and walls. And, she pretty much tears up anything she comes in contact with. Literally. So, it only makes sense that she is emptying out a cabinet for me while I'm trying to bake in the kitchen. Thanks, little lady.

That's my kitchen. I'm attempting to bake yummy banana muffins on a lazy Saturday morning. Zoe really likes to "help" Mama in the kitchen. And by "help" I mean get as much stuff in my way as possible.

Now lets talk about some minor details that you may not have noticed upon first glance at this photo....

Look at the counter. Its messy. That's how I like to cook and bake, which is TOTALLY unlike me when it comes to everything else. I'm organized and always have all my ducks in a row. Except in the kitchen. I pretty much throw everything on the counter that I think I will need for a recipe and just have at it.

The cabinets are open at the top of the photo. This is another Betsy-ism. I just open up all the cabinets till I'm done cooking or baking. For some reason my mind has decided that I don't have the time to re-open a cabinet over and over. So, I just leave them open till I'm certain that I'm done. This method fits right in with my "throw everything on the counter that I think I will need for a recipe" technique.

In the right cabinet you can see an bright orange container. That's one of my most favorite discoveries. Its our baking soda container. I have never been a fan of how hard it is to get baking soda out of those little orange boxes. So, now we use an old Parmesan cheese container. You can sprinkle the baking soda out of one side or pour it out of the other, just like you would for Parmesan cheese. Totally brilliant.

You can tell I'm making banana muffins because the only time I make banana muffins is when I have 3 bananas left that are brown and yucky looking. Good thing that happened on a Saturday, becuase otherwise I wouldn't have time to make them.

I've got a cold beverage (Diet Coke, if you must know) sitting on the right side of the counter. I pretty much always have a cold beverage while I'm baking, and I always set it in the same spot. Normally, one of my older kiddos is helping me bake. And by "helping" I mean the opposite of what Zoe's doing. They actually DO help. So, they would be standing on a chair in front of the counter right next to the fridge. Naturally the only safe place to set my cold beverage is on the far right side of the counter.

See the empty milk jug, soda can, and coffee cup sitting on the counter next to the fridge? That's the recycling pile. Because we are too lazy to walk 5 steps to the garage where the recycling bins are located, we just start stacking recylables up by the fridge throughout the day. And, from the previous knowledge that I have gathered, I'm always the one who notices the pile and eventually hauls everything out to the recycling bins in the garage.

Another little detail, which is kinda hard to see, is the recipe book that is open on top of the stove. I'm HORRIBLE at remembering recipes. No matter how many times I've made banana muffins, I still have to get out the recipe book.

Okay, now looking in to the cabinet that Zoe is emptying, you'll see that there literally is no organization to it at all. That's because Zoe empties it 74 times a day. I don't see the point of stacking everything nice and neat anymore. I just throw everything back in there.

See that green pitcher with a yellow lid? That was the Kool-Aid pitcher my mom used when we were kids. And, now we use it. LOVE it.

Let's see, what else.....oh, back there behind one of the mixing bowls is a container of Shaklee soy protein. Because we've been using Shaklee supplements for a while now and love them.

I originally took this photo because I wanted to capture how little Zoe helps out in the kitchen. But once I realized how this little scene was capturing a moment in my life that I didn't want to forget, I HAD to write about it. I'm assuming that was about 1000 words....So there you go.

happy halloween

2010-11-04T21:49:00.001-04:00

For real, how adorable are these little people?

Jackson was freakishly excited for trick-or-treating this year. He thought about his costume for months and he wanted to be a Viking like in "How to Train Your Dragon". He ran around our neighborhood like a crazy person. And then crashed the second he got home. He is sortof an emotional roller coaster most of the time anyway, so we're used to it...

And Macy pretty much decided on her costume about one minute before we left to go trick-or-treating. Originally she wanted to be Dan Zanes, her most favorite musician ever. She LOVES her some Dan Zanes. Most days, she tells us to call her Dan Zanes. Our costume plan was to just dress her up in crazy clothes and make her hair stick up like Dan Zanes. After Halloween last year, I bought 3 little girl costumes for $1 on clearance at Walmart. A cowgirl, Super Girl, and a princess. (I have to admit, I'm super glad she's not embraced the princess thing yet...) We also have a bunch of costumes that our daycare kids play with everyday. So, the girl has options when it comes to costumes. Every time we would ask her what she wanted to be for Halloween, she always came up with a different answer. I was slightly pleased that she decided on Super Girl since we already had the costume ready and didn't have to put much last-minute effort into getting one ready. Macy has always been a little on the shy side, but these past 6 months or so she has really come out of her shell. So, she enjoyed trick-or-treating as well. Admittedly, she had a hard time keeping up with her older brother who was running around and screaming all night, but at least she walked up to a bunch of houses and said "trick-or-treat" and "thank you" at the appropriate times. And then when we got home she was over-the-top hyper. Opposite of Jack.

Last but not least, our little Zoe monkey. This costume was from our stash of daycare kid costumes. It fit her. So that's what she wore....she sat in her stroller most of the time we were trick-or-treating. Well, it was more like she was stuffed in her stroller, since the monkey costume was slightly puffy. She grabbed two little candy bars with her chubby little Ninja death grip and didn't let go of them all night. She was all set.

Hope your Halloween was super.

a new journey

2010-11-03T21:57:00.001-04:00

Warning: This is clearly a rather long post. Its my attempt to begin to explain the story of how we got to the point of deciding to adopt. So read on!

I have always seen myself adopting a child. But I always thought I would adopt only if I was unable to have biological children. Then we had three biological kiddos and I didn’t think much about adoption for a while.

But God was tugging on my heart about 6 months ago. I went through a season of discontent. Almost to the point of depression. At the time, I thought I was just uncomfortable about my place in life. I was always asking God “Why am I here? Who am I to complain about anything? What is my purpose? Why am I so blessed when others suffer? What did I do to deserve this life?” During those few months, God showed me that I AM worthy. I am exactly where He wants me to be. I learned that I am not in control. God is. He knows what He is doing, even in the midst what may seem like a cloudy outlook for me. Events and life changes from our past occurred because God had His hand in our life. While I may have thought at the time I was in control of my decisions, in fact God was the one leading my heart to make those changes.

Let me explain. Matt and I had talked about adoption a few times here and there throughout our marriage (we got married in 2002). Neither of us felt it was what God had intended for us at the time and it was usually just a passing thought. At the end of my season of discontent a few months ago, God kept whispering in my ear to consider adoption. For a while I thought that God was just asking us to be more supportive, encouraging, open, and financially supportive of others going through adoption. So we tried to be obedient to that for a while. But it felt like something was missing. Then Matt went on a 2+ week mission trip to Serbia. While he was in Serbia, God started tugging on his heart regarding the crisis of orphans in the world. He came back changed (in MANY ways). Shortly after he returned he said to me “I think we should adopt a child.” I was slightly taken back because I never really thought that WE were supposed to adopt. I thought we were just supposed to be supportive of others! We prayed about it for a while, but it was really a no brainer for us. We should adopt. God tells us, in the Bible, to help the orphans. God poured information over and over into our lives about orphans. Our eyes were opened and eventually the question became “Why would we NOT adopt?” How could we turn our backs on what the Bible tells us? How could we ignore this crisis? We realize that not everyone is called to adopt. But as Christians, we are called to help the orphans. And for us, this means adopting a child in to our family.

Looking back, it is cool to see how God has laid the foundation for us to ultimately make this decision. He has orchestrated our lives in such a way that we are ready to start this process! Whether we were aware of it or not, God’s hand was in the tiny details of our lives so that we could adopt one of His orphans.

Here are some examples. I used to be an athletic trainer at a high school and I LOVED my job. Loved the kids, loved the parents and coaches I worked with (for the most part…), loved my co-workers and boss, and loved the duties my job entailed. Rather out of the blue, God opened the door for me to open a home daycare. Huh? This is something I had never considered doing and it was completely unrelated to what I studied in college! But I went with it. I jumped in head first. From the time I had that first inkling to open a daycare to the first day I had daycare kids in my home was about 8 months. In that short 8 months, I finished out the school year at my job, prepared my home for a daycare, confirmed a handful of families who would bring their kids to my home, set up a business plan of sorts, and started getting everything in order legally for me to run a business out of my home and be self-employed. When I started my daycare in August of 2006, Matt was still working 3^rd shift at an ice cream factory. Those first few years of our marriage, we literally had opposite schedules. Our bed was never made because someone was always sleeping in it! It was something we didn’t really like, but we made it work for a while. On Matt’s days off, he would hang out with me and the daycare kids a little bit, and a few months into it, he started to think about the possibility of him working in the daycare with me. Again, this is something he had never considered doing and it was pretty much out of the blue for him to decide this! Another God thing. Since there would be two of us running the daycare, we could have more daycare kids here and earn enough money to make it work for our family. So we did it! And its been fantastic. We have the same schedule now, which has been awesome for us as a couple. We BOTH get to raise our own kids full-time, which is a huge blessing. Over these last few years of us running a home daycare together, we have come to realize a few things. 1. We now see how it IS possible to love a child that is not biologically our own. (Something necessary for adoption, don’t you think?) and 2. We are confident in our parenting abilities. This was more of a bigger deal to Matt. Had he still been working in an ice cream factory 3^rd shift, I’m not sure he would be able to consider adopting a child. God was laying the foundation for us as a family to logistically be able to bring in another child AND he was preparing our hearts for how to become better parents.

Another example of how God has orchestrated this….when I was pregnant with my 3^rd child, Zoe, I went to the doctor for my regular OB visit. I was probably around 5 months pregnant. My regular OB was delivering a baby, so they squeezed me in with a different OB in the same practice. This rarely happened to me, but I was fine with it. I was sitting on the exam table while the doctor was looking over my chart. He looked up at me skeptical and said in a rather rude way “Will you be getting your tubes tied after this pregnancy?” (I had all c-sections, so getting my tubes tied during the c-section would have been really easy for the doctor.) I was slightly taken back. This was only my 3^rd child! Its not like I already had an army of kids at home and wanted more more more! I knew that the doctor COULD perform a tubal ligation during the c-section, but I wasn’t prepared to have that procedure done! And I REALLY wasn’t prepared to answer that question when that random OB asked. So, I went home and presented the idea to Matt. You see, we KNEW we didn’t want any more babies. We would be fine with our 3 and we really didn’t want any more. But it wasn’t until that doctor’s appointment that I realized that perhaps it would be a good idea to have a tubal ligation. So after months of praying, we decided to do it. I was worried that after Zoe was born I would be so upset that I didn’t have the ability to have any more babies. Even if I knew I didn’t want any more. But the exact opposite happened. After she was born, I had complete peace about it. Another God moment. Had I not had the random doctor ask me if I was going to have my tubes tied, I never would have considered it. And had Matt and I thought that God was leading us to have more kids of our own, and not go the adoption route, then we probably would have just tried to get pregnant on our own instead of considering adoption. But, you see, all of that happened for a reason. And, let me clarify this right now, we are NOT adopting because we WANT more kids. We are adopting because we feel God has called us to help the orphan. Ultimately we will have another little Beers’ child running around, and I am beyond excited for that, but it was not because we desired to have another baby on our own. There is a big difference!

We are members of a fantastic church that is very supportive of adoption. Our church advocates adoption, actually, and its quite awesome to be a part of that. Since deciding to adopt, we have discovered SO MANY others who are considering adoption as well. Its been awesome to see how God is working in the hearts of many to help His orphans. Some of my oldest and dearest friends, Brian and April, are leaving tomorrow to go meet their 2 kiddos in Ethiopia. So cool.

Now that we have decided to adopt, we’ve got a lot of decisions and work ahead of us. We’ve done some preliminary work and research and are at a point where we need to make some big decisions. We are working with a local ministry called Loving Shepherd Ministries that has some fantastic adoption services and they have been a big help. We will probably look to them for answers throughout this entire process.

I’ll be posting on here with regular adoption updates and prayer requests! I also have some cute stories of Jackson and Macy’s reactions when we told them we would be adopting a sibling for them. I will post those soon too. I’m so excited to begin this journey.

books on my nightstand

2010-11-02T22:22:00.001-04:00

I like to read. And I also like to not read. (I go in phases...) I kindof have a pretty narrow tunnel of books that I enjoy reading. I'm a big Nicolas Sparks fan, but my dear husband doesn't consider Nicolas Sparks books as "books". And I like Twilight. Ahhh, Twilight. (I'm Team Jacob.) Other books that top my list would be the Harry Potter series, Redeeming Love, anything about Ramona Quimby, and all the Babysitter Club books (I'm kicking myself for gettin rid of them years ago....) So, perhaps my taste in books is a bit juvenile, but that's just how it is. I ALWAYS seem to have a stack of books that I want to read or am currently reading. I'm real bad at just reading one book at a time. Something about being a woman and trying to multi-task....so here is a rundown of the current stack of books I'm working through. And they aren't literally all on my nightstand (is nightstand one word or two?). The truth is, if I try to read a book in bed, I automatically fall asleep. My husband is opposite. If he lays down to read a book, HOURS later, he's still wide awake reading. I don't get it.

Matt thinks I only like to read self-help type books. And this is true to a point. I like reading non-fiction books, MOST of which help in some way for me to be a better person. But I'm not searching for answers in the big cosmic new age kind of way. One book that I just finished yesterday is a FANTASTIC parenting book. Its called Parenting From the Heights by Anne Wiggins and Linda Williams. I read it as a part of a women's Bible study through our church. It was more of a book study than a Bible study but it was just really good. This book gives helpful tools and solid information on discipline and parenting in general. The techniques taught in this book help parents teach their kids right from wrong while building up solid character traits in our kids. Cultivating their hearts from within to create positive outward behaviors. Seriously, its a good book. I HIGHLY recommend it for all parents. Its one of those books I want to carry around with me while I'm grocery shopping at Walmart at midnight when there are other parents there dragging their overly-tired and whiney kiddos around the store and the parents keep yelling and spanking their kids for "not behaving". I'd like to give this book to them. It challenges us as parents to change OUR parenting techniques to create postive changes in our kids. Just read it. You won't be disappointed.

Another book I've started reading is Food Matters by Mark Bittman. I'm going through this one slooooowly. Mostly because I know it will provoke many changes in the way we eat. And, to be quite frank, big changes sometimes scare me! You see, our family has been on a "green living" kick for a good year or so now (more on that later, I promise) and we've been slowly changing many areas in our lives to be more Earth-friendly. We've already changed many of our personal care products and cleaning products. We are making better choices in what we purchase and are generally creating less waste. The next "step" in our family's journey on becoming "green" is changing how we eat. In this book, Mark Bittman offers some eye-opening information on what we are eating and how it affects the environment and our bodies. And, most importantly, how to make changes in our diets that won't break the bank and are easy to do for most people. Like I said, I'm reading it slowly! Its a lot of information to digest.....no pun intended.....

I Capture the Castle (not pictured because it literally IS on my nightstand and I'm downstairs) by Dodie Smith is actually a fiction book (whoa!) that I'm getting ready to start per request of my husband and friends, Erin and Evan. All of those people are book lovers. So.....we'll see. I read the first page but I was kindof in a bad mood, so I'm gonna need to start over again. And I have this wierd thing about not liking books that others recommend. I should get past that soon, because apparently this is a super good book.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. This is one book that I've had among my stack of "books to read" for years now. I've started it about 12 times and each time I'll get to around page 40 and then I can't read anymore. Pride and Prejudice is my FAVORITE movie and I've literally watched it 348 times, so its really hard for me to read the book since I've seen the movie so many times. But I'll keep trying....

Matt, my husband, and I are leading a life group in our church and we are currently studying a church-wide topic called "Life on Purpose". Its based on the book The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren. Its all about figuring out what purpose God has intended for each of us. Its a daily devotional book. Good stuff.

Crazy Love by Francis Chan. Fran Chan, as we like to call him. This is a crazy good book that was super challenging and I need to read it again. Its about living a radical life for Jesus.

The Gift of an Ordinary Day by Katrina Kenison. This is a mother's memoir about realizing that life is about the little things and stepping back and realizing what is important in life. I haven't started it yet but love the idea of finding important life moments in the middle of an ordinary day.

So, there you have it. My life in books. This post took way too long for me to write. All that time I could have been reading....

welcome back, blog

2010-11-01T13:59:00.000-04:00

So, where was I? Oh yes, I remember....that was my shameless attempt to joke about the fact that I officially neglected my blog for almost a year. Go me. (I DID title the last post as "taking a break", and it was nice to exit the blogging world for a while!) I've been considering starting up the blog again with regular posts but I'm trying to figure out what kind of blog I want this to be. I've decided to make it a blog about--are you ready for this???--the everyday goings-on with my family. Basically, similar to what it was before ;) But with a little twist. You'll just have to keep coming back to see! I'll post about our family, fun crafty-goodness, green living ideas, and our adoption process. Yep, I said adoption process! We have recently decided to adopt a child and are in the very early stages of adoption. I'll post about this soon. Its a really cool story. I promise.

I won't attempt to try to explain what happened in our family over the past year. Because its just a lot of fun ooey-gooey cuteness. I will, however, explain in a few words what has been going on with each one of us:

Matt: Nerf guns. Video Games. Texting.
Me: Scrapbooking. Going Green. Couponing.
Jackson: First grade. Star Wars. Harry Potter.
Macy: Dancing. Loves "reading". Enjoys chattering.
Zoe: Moving everywhere. Loves playing catch.

There you go.

Its my birthday today and I'm trying to convince all our daycare kids that they should bring in all their Halloween candy and give it to me as a birthday present. So far, I don't have any volunteers.....

I'm going to go drink my birthday Doc Rickers' Frozen Mountain Dew.
And, as soon as I remember how to upload photos, I'll do that too.....

taking a break....

2009-12-23T19:19:00.002-05:00

So, as you can clearly see by my lack of regular blog posts, I haven't really been too attentive to the ol' blog for a while. Although I really do like the concept of a blog, it has just become one more 'thing' to keep up with in my life. Right now I've just got too much going on and keeping my blog up to date is not even close to the top of my priority list! So, for a while, I won't be posting anything on here. If we're facebook friends, you can see photos and stuff on there......

Eventually perhaps I'll get back to regular blog posting.....thanks for understanding!

i'm here.

2009-10-21T13:40:00.004-04:00

Yah, so obviously it took me longer than just a few days to get some more photos on here! Blogger has been acting weird for me lately and I’m having a hard time placing photos within my text, so its frustrating every time I try to update the blog. But, I decided to post something today…..

Everything here is going quite well! We only had 2 weeks off from the daycare after Zoe was born. That was a little rough! It has been going really well, actually, considering we have 12 kids here all day everyday. Two of them, including Zoe, are infants, so it’s a busy day around here for us. We’ve transitioned quite well though, I must admit! Zoe is quite laid back and go with the flow, so she’s an easy baby to add to our daycare. Plus, we have good group of daycare kids right now and they don’t get in Zoe’s face and smother her, so I’m glad for that! With the nasty flu season among us, we’re not taking any chances around here and we’re not letting any of the kids get in Zoe’s face or even touch her! The H1N1 bug has already gone through Jack’s school. There were 100 students absent one day last week (there are approx. 500 students in his entire elementary school). So far, Jack has not got it, but he does have pink eye right now, so he’s missed 2 days of school from that alone. He’s actually sad to be missing school, so that makes me feel good because he must really like it!

Macy is doing quite well too. She’s every bit of being age 2. She definitely loves her baby Zoe and even helps me out quite a bit too. I’m LOVING her age right now. She’s very vocal and chit chats all the time, which I just adore.

One thing that has simply amazed me is how wonderful Jackson and Macy are at being big siblings to little Zoe. If she starts crying, they get her a pacifier. They don’t smother her, but love cuddling and holding her. They respect her space and are quiet (for the most part) when she’s sleeping. Jackson loves telling other people about his sisters. I adore watching them all interact together.

Baby Zoe is doing fantastic. She’s on an awesome little schedule and she just fits right in to the flow of our family. I’m loving every little piece of her! Since I know this will be our last child, I’m soaking up her infancy, although I’m not a huge fan of the newborn stage, which she is definitely still in. She is still waking up twice at night, so hopefully in the next few weeks she will start cutting out one of those feedings. She is 5 weeks old now and is already growing out of some of her clothes! I can’t believe how much she has grown in just 5 short weeks! I went through all her clothes yesterday and put away half of her clothes that are already too small. Her little legs are even starting to get some chubs. Love it.

Fall is in full swing here and this is by far my favorite time of year. I need to get out and get some good Fall photos. We’ve gone to a couple Fall festivals and stocked up on pumpkins. This year, we’re planning on carving a couple, but I also want to paint some and see how that goes. I love everything about October. The anticipation of the fun holiday season is just around the corner and its not too cold outside yet.

we're home.

2009-09-20T19:31:00.004-04:00

We've been home from the hospital for a few days now....and things are going pretty well! We're still trying to adjust to having a new member in our family, so give me a few days and then I'll add a bunch more photos and info on here....

welcome Zoe Campbell Beers!

2009-09-15T21:29:00.003-04:00

We welcomed the newest member of the Beers’ clan on 9/14/09! Zoe Campbell was born at 1:03 PM and weighed 8 pounds, 4 ounces and was 19.5 inches long. She’s beautiful and just perfect all over and we’re enjoying getting to know our new daughter.

I had scheduled my c-section for 12:15 on September 14th. We arrived at the hospital at 10:00 for all the lovely pre-surgery admission stuff. I walked into the surgery room at 12:20 PM to get prepped and my doctor started opening me up at 12:50. It takes half an hour to get a spinal block as well as get everything prepped and ready to go! She was born just 13 minutes after the first incision! As she was being pulled out, I heard two nurses say “That’s not a little girl!” and I immediately thought that they meant that it was a boy! But they actually just meant that she was a big girl, not a little girl. So, all was well =)

After she was born, Matt went with her and the nurses to the adjacent room as they cleaned her up and weighed her. Then she was all set and Matt got to hold her for the rest of the surgery. He sat right next to me so I was able to look at her and talk to her while I was laying there. But, let me tell ya, I as SO uncomfortable for the rest of the surgery. My eyes itched horribly and I could barely keep them open. The oxygen tubes in my nose were driving me crazy. My hands (my arms were laying straight out to the side) had fallen asleep and I couldn’t feel anything. After the doctor delivered Zoe, he tied my tubes, cut out a bunch of scar tissue from previous c-sections, and inserted a pain pump tube into the area of the surgery. I had to lay there till 2:15 PM as he did all that! It was a long process, especially when all I wanted to do was hold my newest baby girl! After everything was sewed up, they wheeled us back to the recovery room and we stayed there for a full hour. I was able to nurse Zoe a couple of times in there and Matt started making some phone calls. We were finally able to get back to our post-partum room at about 3:30 PM.

Zoe has been amazing! She is nursing and sleeping pretty well and also enjoys being held. She is quite the little cuddle bug. The craziest thing about her is that she looks exactly like Macy did when she was born. Exactly. We keep calling her Macy because she looks just like her! It will take us a while to have “Zoe” ingrained in our brains as her name!

The first full night was extremely horrible for me. I literally did not sleep at all. Zoe was fine and she was not the problem at all. I was in a ton of pain, I could not get comfortable (hospital beds are just not the best), my butt and legs kept falling asleep from being in a bed all day long (I was unable to get up quite yet), my hands had fallen asleep and were numb and tingly, and I was hooked up to quite a few different IVs, tubes, and catheters. So, anytime I even attempted to move positions, I had to move about 8 tubes or IVs and get everything situated. Not fun. But mostly I was just in a lot of pain. I had a great nurse who was trying to keep me comfortable, but nothing was working. Matt was here, but he slept most of the night on the couch unless he was helping me feed Zoe. I wanted him to sleep because he had to take care of Jackson and Macy today and its not fun being a tired daddy! Finally, at 3:00 AM my nurse suggested that I go ahead and try to stand up and walk and sit in a chair to make me more comfortable. Standing up was extremely painful and not fun, but I managed to make it to a comfy chair. I tried falling asleep in the chair, but was even unable to sleep there. Basically, it was just one crappy night! At 5:00 AM I was so upset with the tubes and catheters sticking out of me, that my nurse went ahead and quickly finished my IV medications and unhooked me. She also gave me two Percocet pills and within 15 minutes I literally had no pain. Plus, I was a happy camper because I was unhooked from all the tubes! I was able to take a shower and change clothes and I immediately felt much better. I took a long nap this afternoon in between visiting with friends and family. Zoe has been perfect all day! Right now is the end of day #2 and I am having a lot of abdominal pain again. Plus a lot of bloated gassy pain. It really hurts to stand up/sit down. I’m just hoping I can sleep better tonight.

Jackson and Macy have been busy little bees these past two days. They got to spend a lot of time with Grandma! Jackson has gone to school everyday and has had fun telling everyone about his newest sister. Both kids have really enjoyed seeing Zoe and touching her. They get a little crazy and wild in the hospital room, so they haven’t stayed here for very long each day. They have both held her a few times and seem to understand that there is a new baby! Macy has been quite a little pistol for Grandma and daddy these past two days. She’s thrown a few more fits than normal and has had quite an opinion lately. I think she is just being a typical two year old and also she is sorta confused about where I have been these past two days. I’m hoping they both transition to Zoe well when I come home on Friday.

More later!

tomorrow is the big day.

2009-09-13T16:42:00.003-04:00

Today is the last day I'll be pregnant. EVER. Tomorrow we welcome baby Beers #3 to the world. Pretty anxious and slightly nervous but EXTREMELY excited.
Lately I've just been going over and over all the details that need to be done before the baby arrives. With two kids already at home and me being in the hospital for 5 days for this baby, there are a lot of logistic details that need covered before we head in tomorrow! My surgery is at noon, so I'll have a little bit of time in the morning to finish up some things too, I guess. The worst part is that I can not eat OR drink anything after midnight tonight. Not even water! So, yah, I think I'll be slightly thirsty tomorrow. Then I'll be on a modified liquid diet (think popsicles, broth, jello, pudding, etc) for a while after the baby is born (till I pass gas after the surgery, which takes a day or two..). Anyway....
Not much else to report right now. I am not posting any photos or anything today because I'm just trying to check things off my to-do list.
We will post photos and info tomorrow sometime!

Kindergarten.

2009-08-19T16:08:00.005-04:00

I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that my oldest child is now in kindergarten. Such a weird and crazy thing! Its been an awesome week! Jack has been counting down the days till school starts and he’s had his back pack all ready to go for about a month. Jack’s first official day was August 13th. Parents were required to come that day, and they did not ride the bus to school. I went along with him and it was such a neat thing to experience.

They went around the room participating in a bunch of activities and basically learning all about their classroom (where the bathroom is, how loud the toilet flushes, where their mailbox and locker is located, etc). Then they sat on the rug and his teacher, Mrs. Chaffee, read a story. They chatted a bit with the teacher and then they finished the morning coloring while Mrs. Chaffee talked with all of the parents. While on the story time rug, Jack sat next to his best little buddy, Jase, who Jack has been friends with since they were 2 years old. Jase is quite shy and was very upset and crying while they were sitting on the floor. Jack kept patting Jase’s back and saying nice things like “It will be ok. I miss my mommy too. I’ll be your friend. You’ll be just fine, Jase. Look, you can see your mommy right over there!” My heart was MELTING as I observed Jack being such a good friend. The teacher called out each child’s name and they were supposed to raise their hands. When she said “Jackson Beers”, Jack raised his hand as high as he could and said “I’M RIGHT HERE, MRS. CHAFFEE!!” and then he helped Jase raise his hand when she called out his name. I am so proud of him for being such a caring friend.

The next day was the first day of kindergarten with no parents! And he rode the bus to school! Wow, that was a crazy thing to observe! Jase and Jack get on the bus at the same time and they held hands as they walked right up the bus, said “hello” to the bus driver, found a seat together and just sat right down! No big deal!

I picked them both up from school (kindergarten is just ½ day, so we have to pick him up everyday). I asked 100 questions, and they didn’t really want to share a whole lot, so after a while I stopped asking questions…..they did, however, tell me that it took a long time to get to school and they had to pick up a bunch more kids (they are on the bus for about 15 minutes total) but that the bus ride was really fun. His favorite part of the day was recess (of course) and they went to the library and the “librarier” read them a story. It was sweet to listen to him retell a few things about his day, but I would have LOVED to be a fly on the wall in his classroom to see what it was like!

It is a little weird to think that he’ll be learning from someone else now and he’ll be spending a lot of his time away from us. I’m so proud of him and so excited for his future.

random Summer updates

2009-08-11T16:33:00.006-04:00

Wow, 2 posts in one day! I also updated our daycare blog today, so clearly I’m on a roll. Now that we’re getting back into the swing of things with the school year starting again, I’ll be updating the blog more regularly.

We found a Dinosaur Monopoly game at a garage sale for 50 cents. Jack is REALLY good at it and it is so much fun to play! Right now Jack is really into "big boy" things like Harry Potter, Star Wars, board games, video games, etc. He seems so old to us now!
Kindergarten registration was last week. Hard to believe that the little man is going to be in kindergarten. His first day is August 13th. He's had his backpack all ready for a while and he has been counting down the days till school starts. In this photo, Jack (on the right) is standing with his best friend, Jase, in front of their classroom door. They are in the same class and they are very excited. They will ride the bus together and everything. So cute.

My dad's side of the family had a Zimmerman gathering at the lake a couple of weeks ago and it was great to spend the day there. The kids had fun playing in the sand and going on a boat ride. Here, Jack is getting ready to head out on the jet ski with my cousin, Jeremy. He loved it!

The Zimmerman clan that was able to make it to the get together....

Matt and Jack had fun making a sand castle. Macy just threw sand around with a little shovel.

On the boat...

Macy is really into playing dress-up right now and she likes wearing ALL the jewelry all at once.

A very sweet moment between brother and sister. Macy just woke up from her nap and was sitting at the end of her bed. Jack always insists on being the one to go into her room to get her up from her nap (even now that she is in a big girl bed...). He likes opening the door and being the first one to talk to her. He also likes giving big hugs and kisses. I wonder how long this sweet relationship will last? I'm praying forever!

my little 2 year old baby girl!!

2009-08-11T14:48:00.009-04:00

Told you I would probably not post much this summer! Summer has truly blown by, which I am ok with, because that just means we are closer to baby #3's arrival! I'm puffy, swollen, and uncomfortable most of the time, so I'm quite ready to deliver this baby! The c-section is scheduled for September 14th.

Anyway, this post is mostly all about Macy.....more on Jack and everything else in a later post....

I'm quite frusterated with Blogger lately. Its been very finicky and not letting me upload photos and finally when I do get them uploaded, I can't rearrange them, so I am going to have to just write about the photos in the order they were uploaded, apparently.

We finished her big girl room and here are the pictures! This used to be my craft room, so this room has seen quite a bit of change in these past few months! A new bed, dresser, and nightstand. New décor. New curtains and white wooden blinds. I painted some circles to the walls. She started sleeping in her new room and new bed last week and so far, she’s done great! She stays pretty still when she’s sleeping, so she hasn’t fallen out of bed…yet. She LOVES that when she wakes up, she can get out of bed by herself, open her door, and come get us. She has been sleeping well in her bed and isn’t getting up at all hours just because she can. Its quite adorable really!

And the baby’s room is basically all ready for baby #3 to make her appearance too.

So, I am now the proud owner of a 2 year old little girl. And, let me tell ya, a new little attitude has developed since the little lady turned 2. Macy is now a little more opinionated, a little more feisty, and a little more independent than she was a couple of weeks ago. Her favorite activities now include throwing her fork and spoon across the table, screaming if she doesn’t get dessert (even if she didn’t eat any dinner), and doing the opposite of what we tell her. Yes, sweet little Macy is growing up.
Actually, she’s not quite as “bad” as it sounds. She’s still VERY sweet and gives lots of hugs and cuddles and loves being tickled and playing with us. She is BRILLIANT too. She knows her shapes and colors, and can already recognize all the letters. She can also count from 1-15. Hello, smart little lady!

Her birthday was July 23rd and it was everything a 2 year old girl could have wanted. She got to have her favorite meals all day, plus a few cupcakes and yummy desserts, lots of coloring with markers (her FAVORITE thing right now!), went to a playground, opened a few presents plus got some mail from Grandpa, and basically just got to play with all of her favorite toys throughout the day.

She discovered that she is not a fan of candles. She wanted nothing to do with any part of the candle, especially the flame. Jack ended up blowing out her candles from across the table. Thanks big brother.

Here she is trying to hold up 2 fingers for her age. A hard skill to master.

Jack helping her open her presents. This was the gift he gave her, but he couldn't remember what it was, so he's sneaking a peak of it while she's opening it up.

Macy’s birthday party was the day after her birthday and she had a good time. A few of her little friends were there and she had fun playing with them, opening gifts, and eating her Elmo cake (although, again, not a fan of the candles…) A good time was had by all =)

Even Conan joined in on the celebration.

Some favorites from her 2 year photo shoot.

This next one I love because she is "cooperating" and standing in front of the pink backdrop, but she would NOT look at the camera....

SUMMER = happiness

2009-07-15T16:56:00.005-04:00

You would think that I would have MORE free time in the summer to update the blog, but there is something about the summer months that makes me get slightly lazy in the blogging department…which means that my last few (and probably next few) blog posts will just be quick updates on what has been going on in our lives!

I’ve been having trouble on Blogger with rearranging the order of photos and text, so I’m just going to talk about each photo in the order it was updated, I guess!

Jack’s t-ball season ended at the end of June. All in all, it was an excellent season and he really enjoyed playing t-ball. His coach gave him the “Mr. Personality award” at the end of the season. Jack was always doing SOMETHING to get the coach’s attention. It was quite comical to watch him out there, to be honest! The other parents would regularly comment to us that they had a blast watching Jack and just seeing what little antics he was putting on that evening. Great…we’re raising a class clown!
We took some photos during a recent trip to Jefferson Pointe. They have gorgeous landscaping around this outdoor mall and we took a bunch of photos of the kids among all the flowers. This was just one of my favorite shots of both of them in front of a brick wall.

Our 4th of July was, well, interesting! We stayed at home and lit off a bunch of fireworks on our driveway. Jack LOVES fireworks and sparklers. So does Matt. It’s a guy thing, I think! I like the big pretty ones, but I could really do without the little dinky ones that just make a lot of popping noises and shoot flames in the air. Because sometimes those stupid flames shoot at my yard and burn the grass. Anyway….Macy, on the other hand, was NOT a fan of fireworks. The first one went off and she just started shaking and was unable to move. She couldn’t even move to crawl into one of our laps! So, after just a couple minutes, she and I came back inside the house. And all was well again!

After all those weeks of watching Jack play t-ball, Macy has decided that she likes to play too! It is adorable, really. She hits the ball off the tee (with fairly decent form, I might add!) and then runs all the way to the patio and back. She even likes to take turns with Jack and she’ll stay out and field the balls that he hits off the tee. So cute!

The sandbox has been a huge hit this summer as well. I can’t believe how dirty the kids get after playing in the sand, but they love it, so we play in the sandbox often! Jack really REALLY likes playing in the sandbox by himself. That way, Macy doesn’t destroy all of the things he builds.

Ahhhh…..so……we’re making efforts to go green! I’ve always been drawn to an eco-friendly life-style, but have just recently started making some new changes around here. I’ve been inspired by a blog that one of my friends directed me to, called Enviromom. Its written by two moms who are trying to live more eco-friendly and they are learning how to do so everyday. They are big on taking “baby steps” to become more earth-friendly. We had already been doing many eco-friendly practices, such as recycling as much as possible and buying in bulk to save on container consumption. But...we have decided as a family that we would like to initiate a few more practices into our daily lifestyles. First on the list…using cloth napkins during meals instead of paper napkins. Saves us $$ because we don’t have to restock paper napkins and it obviously helps the earth. I looked and looked at garage sales and other places for cloth napkins, but never found any, so I finally resorted to buying new ones. I found a bunch of cloth napkins 50% off at Target (in the $1 spot!!!) after the 4th of July…so I bought about 25 of them. That should be plenty, I think. So far, I’ve found that I have not used ONE paper napkin since we’ve made this transition and I have also found that I have not noticed a difference in the amount of laundry that I do each week. I just throw the cloth napkins in the laundry with the rest o the clothes and it has not added any extra loads each week. The kids enjoy the cloth napkins as well! We keep them in a basket in the middle of the table, so they are easy to grab when we need them. I am, however, also keeping a small basket of paper napkins on the table in case guests feel more comfortable using paper napkins! The other big change we decided to make was that we are now going to wash and reuse our plastic baggies. Quite surprisingly, I LOVE doing this! It feels so much better to reuse plastic Ziploc bags rather than throw them all away all the time! One other little change we have begun is to make sure that when we pack lunch to eat somewhere other than home or if I’m taking snacks for the kids while we’re away, we package everything in reusable containers. No big deal. I have lots of ideas on things I want to implement, but for now, those are the big changes we’ve made.

Macy has found a new love…markers. She LOVES them. It is so sweet to watch her use them because she pulls and pulls and pulls to get the cap off. Her whole body shakes sometimes as she is pulling so hard. So sweet!

We’ve completed Macy’s new big girl room! All her furniture has been put together, we added some décor, hung new wood blinds, and I painted some circles around the room. I also sewed some ribbon on the curtains and made curtain tie backs with the ribbon. Her clothes and toys have all been moved to her new room and she LOVES it in there! The kids play in Macy’s new room every day and I think she’s getting used to the idea that it is HER room. In a few weeks, we will transition her to the big girl bed and see how she does! Then, baby #3’s room will be all ready for her to arrive.

can't think of much to say.....

2009-06-27T22:51:00.006-04:00

So, summer is for sure in full swing here in Indiana. In fact, we sorta just skipped lovely and nice Spring weather and went straight to 90 degree humid hot sunny weather. Gotta love Indiana.

Let's see....whats happening around here....my pregnancy is going pretty good. I'm 28 weeks right now, which means I am just entering the 3rd trimester, which is generally when you are most uncomfortable. If you do the math, you'll quickly see that my entire 3rd trimester coincides with the entire 3 months of summer.....so basically it is going to be one hot and long summer for me. I now get to go to the doctor every TWO weeks, instead of just once a month. Super fun. The baby is moving a bunch and I love feeling her wiggle around inside me. It is so fun talking to the kids about thier new baby sister on the way. Jackson is pretty excited, he just really wants us to pick out a name for her! Everytime someone asks about me having another baby, he says "I'm having another sister, but my mom and dad haven't picked out a name yet." Kinda cute. Talking to Macy about it is an entire different story. I keep telling her that the baby is inside my belly, but she insists that it is inside HER belly. None of that makes any sense to her. We read the "I'm Going to be a Big Sister" book all the time. She loooooves babies. She sees me and Matt with other babies and kids all the time, and I am certain she'll be fine with adding a new little munchkin to our family in a couple of months. More and more baby "things" are making their way into our house (new car seat and new swing/bouncy seat thing, for example) and she's asking "Where's baby?" a lot. On top of all the baby talk we are in the process of getting her "big girl" room ready. She will be moving to a new room in about a month or so and the baby will take her old room, since it is ready for a baby and Macy is done with the crib and everything. We just bought new furniture for her new room this past week and Matt has been putting it all together these past few days. Her room is slowly coming together and I think in the next week we'll have it all set up. She now has a new bed and mattress, dresser, and nightstand. We've also picked up random decorations and other things at various garage sales or crafty stores the past few months. I LOVE projects like this, so its fun to put together a new room. We're hoping for a smooth transition for her both in her new big girl bed AND in her new room!

A photo of Matt putting together her dresser (and Jack and Macy 'helping' out):

Matt's upstairs right now hanging her new blinds and then we'll be hanging up more decor soon as well. Will post photos of her new room as soon as we finish it!

We've been outside a LOT lately! Jack loves the kiddie pool. Macy is more a fan of the swing set and running around the yard. This photo shows them playing "restaurant", which is one of their favorite things to do outside. One of them asks "What would you like today?" and the other one orders their food.

Father's Day.....started the day waking up Matt with breakfast in bed and he got to open his gift....while the kids rolled around the bed. Then we went to church, out to lunch, and to a new park with a Splash Pad. The afternoon was all about relaxing and then we made ice cream sundaes after dinner. I am so thankful for such a wonderful husband, friend, and father of our children. He rocks!

Our 7 year anniversary was June 22nd. We had a nice day! We've sorta started running out of new things to do on celebration days.....so I let Matt sleep in for a couple hours and then he let me have a couple hours of 'alone' time later in the day, we went to Jack's tball game in the evening, and had Pizza Hutt for dinner! The weekend before we were able to go out to eat and plant our butts at Borders looking through books and magazines, which is one of our favorite things to do. Except that this particular evening that we were there, they had a horrible musician playing, so we didn't stay there as long as we normally would!

Jack and Macy have been playing together REALLY well lately. Jack is usually quite helpful and has been for a while when it comes to his little sis....but lately Macy has been playing nicely with him and enjoys being around her big brother. Here they are sitting together (voluntarily) in a saucer chair we found at a garage sale....which they LOVE!

my little graduate...

2009-06-10T09:49:00.004-04:00

We've had a whirlwind of activity around here the past few weeks, and I think I am just now able to sit back and breathe! Jack has been one busy little bee lately. First of all, his last day of preschool was June 2nd. Yep, he's on his way to kindergarden now. =) He had a Field Day at his school and he LOVED every second of that! Then he had an official little graduation ceremony as well. He's had numerous t-ball games the past few weeks and he really seems to like it! He listens to his coach really well and participates in the game as much as he can. It is really quite fun to watch him play.

Getting ready to go to the last day of school with his friend, Caitlyn:

Macy has had a rather uncharacteristic month. She has always been an incredibly laid-back and "easy" child. For over the past month, she has had a really hard time falling asleep and therefore has been extrememly sleep-deprived! She eventually created a little habit for herself where she would start screaming and crying on her way to her crib. Then she would cry/scream for up to 2 hours throughout her nap, and it was taking her a couple of hours to fall asleep at night and she was also waking up multiple times throughout the night and would cry and scream for hours. This is NOT normal for her! She was so tired all the time. She would randomly fall asleep all the time. She fell asleep on her plate at the table a few times, she would sleep anytime we got in the car, she would fall asleep in her swing on the swingset or just on the couch or floor at various times throughout the day. Again, NOT normal for Macy! Finally -FINALLY- we called the doctor. We think that what happened was that she had an ear infection about a month ago (ear infections can often cause pain in kids' ears when they lay down), and then she just created a little habit of being scared to sleep. We had tried everything we could think of to help her sleep....from holding her to giving her a pillow to putting a few books in her bed, etc...but nothing was working! Anyway, the doctor prescribed an antibiotic to finish getting rid of the ear infection and we were instructed to give her a few other medicines as well. Today is the 6th day on the antibiotic and we are now in the process of helping her figure out her sleep schedule again. We took some things out of her crib and turned on the AC before she went to bed (I normally don't like to turn on the AC until it is REALLY hot, so this was a stretch for me!) to make her room more comfortable, and she has slept for 12 hours straight for two nights in a row! And, the best part is that yesterday she took a 2.5 hour nap all on her own with NO crying beforehand! It thrills me to no end that she is getting her normal sleep again and my little munchkin is feeling better!

Jackson has been extremely sweet and an amazing big brother through this past month of Macy's sleep issues. He regularly asks her if her ears hurt and if he can do anything for her. If she is crabby he'll go through a round of questions trying to figure out what's wrong ("Macy, do you want a puzzle? No? Do you want something to drink? No? Do you want me to give you a kiss? No? Do you want me to get you a toy?") and none of the questions really relate to each other, but he's really trying to help her out! It is such a sweet thing to watch. He'll then report to me the questions he's asked her and what he thinks the problem is (which is usually not anything close to any of the questions that he asked...like the other day he came to the conclusion that she had a little mark on her shoulder and that was why she was crabby.....um, what?) He has not complained about her being crabby or even about all the crying she's been doing. He just goes with the flow and seems to understand that this is a little phase for her. Last night he spent the night at my mom's house and he just called this morning to "check in" and see if Macy slept through the night. How adorable is that? He is quite the caring young man!

Here is a cute little photo of Jack helping Macy walk across a bridge. He is always looking out for her! On this particular day at the playground we had been there for a while before a large group of boys about 10 years old or so, came to the playground. They were being pretty rough and wild and Jack said to me "Mom, those boys are being crazy over there, and I do NOT want them to hurt Macy, so we're going to go to the other playground now." And he led Macy over to the little kid section of the playground where she would be safe. Seriously, how adorable is that? I just pray that this behavior continues for many years!

Have a great day!

t-ball

2009-05-27T21:24:00.004-04:00

Jack had his first t-ball game tonight...and it was SO MUCH FUN to watch! He had a blast and did quite well! He's making friends with his teammates and seems to understand how to play the game, which is awesome! He had a few practices before thier first game and he really liked going to them. Tonight he got to hit the ball 3 times and each time was a completely different experience. This video is hilarious.....first of all, he's trying to get the ump to look back at Macy climbing on a chair...then he hits the ball the wrong way...then he smacks the tee with his bat...a few swings and misses...and then finally at some point he does hit it, decides to finally make his way down to 1st base, and immediately throws off his helmet when he gets there. You just never know what kids are going to do in t-ball. Very fun and entertaining to watch, that's for sure!

portraits

2009-05-17T20:41:00.005-04:00

Jack had his first school photos taken a couple weeks ago and we got them back yesterday. His are so sweet! His school actually had a really nice portrait studio, called The Picture People, come out to the school to do their photos. They look great, but not your typical school portraits! He was mostly excited about the one where the photographer asked him to look tough....

And I think this next one is just quite sweet =)

We had a family portrait taken for our church directory a few weeks ago, and it actually turned out quite well, I think!

My cousin, Jamie, took some adorable photos of Macy wearing a tutu. Jamie has her own photography business and wanted some photos of a little girl in a tutu for her portfolio, so I was more than happy to help her out! Here are a few of my favorites...

"Where Rannie go??"

2009-05-09T21:19:00.004-04:00

So....we got a new "pet". A fish named Randy. Macy LOVES fishies, so this was a big day for her. She loved looking at them in thier tanks at WalMart, squeezing the bag (a little too tightly, I might add) over and over, and "talking" to Randy in his little bowl. Randy cost 12 cents. I must say, I'm not sure he's going to make it through the night. I followed the directions on how to prepare the bowl and everything...but Randy is just not really swimming around at all. He's sorta just laying towards the bottom of his bowl. One of us may need to rush out to WalMart to purchase Randy 2.0 at some point...Randy has had a big day. He went from a tank full of fish friends to a tiny bowl that only has room for one fish. Maybe he's just bored? Matt said that fish sleep, but I'm not so sure Randy is supposed to "sleep" all day long....

After we got him all settled in his new bowl, we put him on the table and let Jack and Macy check him out. Macy wanted to get a little too close a few times...

After we convinced her that she does not need to grab Randy out of his water, she just smooshed her face up to the bowl and "talked" to him a bunch. Oh, by the way, Macy can now climb up on to the kitchen chairs, which also leads to her climbing up on the kitchen table....so Randy now lives on top of our counter. Randy may get moved even higher up if Macy discovers how to climb onto the counter soon...Macy walked around the house all day saying "Where Rannie go?" like we were just going to let him flip around the house or something. So sweet.

Its a GIRL!

2009-05-07T13:38:00.003-04:00

Well, we THINK its a girl, anyway. Sizzles (that is the nickname that we affectionately call the fetus) wasn't exactly being super cooperative and giving us a good "shot" at the girly parts, so the ultrasound tech said it appears to be a girl....but we're not getting rid of all of Jack's old clothes till the baby is born and we can officially tell what the baby is. =) It was fun to find out though! Matt and I took Jack with us to the ultrasound so Jack could see a "picture" of his new sibling. When we got into the room, he was suddenly concerned that this is where I'd be having the baby. He asked the tech "Um, will you be cutting open my Mommy's belly?" (I will have a c-section this time again, so we've explained that my belly gets cut open but that I can't feel anything.) Oh, and he was also concerned with the gooey gel that was smothered all over my belly. He wasn't a fan of that. It was fun for him to be there though!

Jack had his first tball practice last night. It was hilarious! If he starts using his tball bat as an actual BAT (and not a lightsaber), then we might have a somewhat successful tball season. Matt is more proud of Jack using it as a lightsaber though, I think. He had a lot of fun running the bases and fielding the balls. I'm hoping he at least has fun and enjoys playin tball this summer! Last summer, soccer was a complete joke for him, so we're hoping for a more positive sports season for him this year. I will take photos of future practices and games for sure. I didn't even take the camera last night.

A cute photo of Jack and Macy working on an ABC puzzle together. Jack is VERY helpful when it comes to Macy. He loves his little sis and does everything he can to make her happy, make her giggle, or help her out. I love thier sweet relationship. Look at her cute little piggy tails!

Scrapbook crop weekend

2009-04-29T14:46:00.004-04:00

I was lucky enough to be able to attend a weekend scrapbook crop this past weekend! I didn't end up spending the night there, but I was still there ALL day Saturday and most of Sunday. It was great to focus just on scrapbooking and getting crafty for 2 days and not worry about anything else. I am grateful that Matt didn't mind me being gone all weekend. He and the kids had a great time too!

I had not done much scrapbooking in 2009, except for my Project 365, which I do everyday, or almost everyday. So, it was awesome to get the creative juices flowing again and get back to business! I completed 14 layouts this weekend, which is a LOT for me in one weekend! Here are a few...

This one is all about our hammock and how we love it....and yes, that one photo is of me right after I had fallen out of the hammock (aren't I glad Matt just happened to have the camera in his hand?). I'm REALLY good at falling out of it. Especially now that my center of gravity is all out of whack with baby #3 popping out.

This layout is a compilation of random photos of Macy from age 18-21 months.

A few random photos of Jack at almost age 5. A bunch of journaling about all the things he likes and is into at this age.

First photo of Macy with her little pony tail. Age 21 months.

And, a list of all my "necessities", like my laptop and a Sonic coke....

crafty space

2009-04-28T20:21:00.004-04:00

So, here's some photos of my new crafty space. With baby #3 on the way, we reorganized some rooms upstairs. The baby will have Macy's current room and Macy will move into my old craft room.....which is currently a mess. Seriously. Stuff everywhere. A bunch of stuff we still need to go through and organize. And a bunch of stuff we're trying to sell at our garage sale, which is next weekend. Anyway, sometime in the next couple of months it will turn into a little girl's room, which will be fun! Matt moved his "office" out of our walk-in closet (which has never really been an actual closet) and his office-y stuff is now in our bedroom. And then I now have the walk-in closet for craft space....and it is also part home-office. Lots of transformations going on upstairs in the Beers' house! Projects like these are good for me. I like decluttering and moving stuff around and uncovering old stuff that I forgot about. We still have lots of work to do, but its coming along nicely!

As you walk in to the craft room, this is what you see. The room is about 6 feet wide and I think about 11 feet long. My craft island is no longer in the middle of a room (like it was in my old room), but now lives up against the window. I prefer to stand while scrapbooking, so this works well for me. I do have a stool to sit on when I get tired of standing, but mostly I stand. I do get a little tired of standing for so long now that the baby bump is sticking out there.....

Most of my stamps live on that brown bookshelf in the back right corner. Foam stamps and acrylic stamps hang on the side of the bookshelf. Then, the old divided wine box next to the bookshelf is something Matt put together for me that houses all my loose wooden stamps and some other random things. Ink pads and markers all live in the ink pad holder on the right wall. And ribbons are next to that. Albums, photo boxes, and memory boxes are all in the low bookshelves on both sides of the room. Memory boxes (for lack of a better name) is what I call the boxes where I store all the stuff that doesn't really fit in a scrapbook. Or, stuff that I will go through later to scrapbook. For example, Jack brings home school papers from school every Tues/Thurs, so I go through his bag and decide what to keep or recycle. If I'm keeping it, it goes in his memory box (each child has his/her own box and Matt and I share one) and I decide later what to scrapbook or where to keep his important papers and craft projects that I want to keep. I'll keep a few birthday cards for each birthday and those go in there too. Other random things in there are birth announcements, hospital bracelets, etc. Lately, I've discovered that what works best for me is to actually put as much of this stuff as possible right in with thier regular scrapbooks, that way everything is in one place. So, after Jack's first semester of preschool, I decided to keep only a small selection of papers that he brought home. I just stuck them all in one page protector, labeled the year, and in the scrapbook it goes! Easy enough. Ok, enough about that....back to the crafty space....

The next photo is what it looks like standing at the craft island and looking the other way. I have a bunch of 12 x 12 acrylic frames hanging around the room where I hang most recently completed layouts. I like looking at my stuff before putting them in page protectors and away in an album. Way in the back corner is where the home-office part of the room is....not much going on back there! That tall filing cabinet is something Matt had in his room when he was a kid and he spray painted it random colors.

who had more fun???

2009-04-24T17:08:00.004-04:00

So Spring FINALLY (and I mean F-I-N-A-L-L-Y) arrived this week and we've been soaking up as much lovely weather as we possibly can! The kids even wore shorts today!!!!! woohoo! We had our first visit to the zoo today too. Gorgeous weather!

Yesterday we went to the local park and I'm not sure who had more fun.....the kids or Matt.....seriously, I've never seen Matt play so hard on a playground before! Besides chasing the kids and running around with them on the playsets, he was swinging (and having a little contest with himself to see how far he could jump off the swing), going down all the slides (by himself, not with one of the kids!) forwards AND backwards, and hanging/swinging from anything that was higher than he was. He actually woke up sore today. Yes, my dear hubs is sore from playing on the playground too hard. Take a look for yourself and see who had more fun.....

And this photo is just a little bit creepy....

And this little brainiac knows all the states....he knows all thier names and where they are on the map.

All right, we're getting ready to go to a school carnival (yippie). I've got loads of things to discuss and share on here, including photos of my newly-decorated/finished craft room! Stay tuned!!!

cutest l'il pony tail....

2009-04-14T13:11:00.004-04:00

Macy wore her first pony tail the other day! I'd say she's quite adorable with the little pony tail right on top of her head. She's never really had much hair and I'm just dying to get to play with it when it gets a little longer!

Enjoying a little bathtime smootch....

Easter, Easter, Easter. I wish that commercialism for Easter was as big of a deal as it is for Christmas. Sooooo much emphasis is placed on Christmas in our society. That was just the day Christ was born! Exciting, yes, but Easter is so much more important. Easter is the day Christ was resurrected, brought back to life to save us from our sins! How glorious that we have a Savior who died so that we may have eternal life. This was a very happy Easter for our family. We were able to explain the entire Easter story in more detail with Jack now that he's 5.

We celebrated Easter with Matt's family on the Saturday before Easter. We enjoyed a nice dinner and a fun egg hunt with all the kids! This was the first egg hunt for Macy, since she was not walking last year. The Easter bunny at Nana's house hides the same amount of eggs for each child AND each egg has the first initial of each child on it. So, the kids were only allowed to take the eggs that had thier initial on them. The eggs are filled with candy, except for Macy's, since she's a little too young for candy-filled eggs. Macy would find an egg, shake it, and then if it made noise she would put it back for someone else to pick up, but if it didn't make a noise when she shook it, she would put it in her basket. Clever little girl!

We celebrated Easter with my family on Sunday. After church in the morning, we had a nice lunch and then another egg hunt at Grandma's house. By this time, the kids were egg-hunting pros.

oh, happy day!

2009-04-09T12:47:00.004-04:00

This week Thursday=Friday. (Tomorrow is Good Friday and we're closed.) Three day weekends are always good!

So, life in the Beers house has been quite fun these past two weeks! Some highlights:

First off, Jack officially turned 5 on 3/23. It was a super fun day all around! We got to have cookies for snack time and we let him skip his rest time that day so he could go run errands with me (he still thinks this is fun…) and of course we picked up a Sonic beverage on the way home. He did, of course, got to open a few gifts on his actual birthday…a book from us, a t-ball bat and glove from Grandpa, and the Wall-E DVD from Grandma. Then, for dinner he decided that he wanted to go to Red Robin because they sing “Happy Birthday” to you, and he loves getting attention from strangers! So, we did that. Turns out, it was freakin’ HILARIOUS! The servers asked him to stand on his chair, and he immediately made a mean face and acted like he was miserable and unhappy about being put through such torture. Then, right as the song was over, he shouted “Just kidding! I loved it!”. He had us all laughing so hard, including the servers and people at the surrounding tables. He was just pretending to not like the song, he said. Who does that at age 5? Seriously?? After Red Robin, we stopped at Toys R Us, Jack’s favorite place in the universe, and he got to pick out a small toy with his $3 gift card that Geoffrey the Giraffe (the Toys R Us mascot) sent him.

Since his bday landed on a Monday, and he only goes to school on Tues/Thurs, his teachers asked us to bring in a treat on the Tuesday after his birthday and we could come visit during snack time. So, Macy and I headed over to his school and had an awesome time watching him interact with his peers! He took homemade cookies for his treat. Macy even got to play in the Imaginarium with Jack and his class for a few minutes before Jack handed out his treat.

Fast forward a week….and we had another bday party for the birthday boy! This time, we were celebrating with our families. We waited until this past weekend to do this birthday party because Matt’s sister, Michele, was going to be in town this week along with her two daughters. It was another great afternoon!

I love the anticipation in his face as he’s looking at his candles:

Other recent happenings…
Macy can officially climb up the swing set ladder all by herself. She loves doing this and I’m glad she can do it by herself! She loves going down the big slide =) Macy has had a recent interest in sitting on the toilet to go potty. We’re not necessarily pushing potty training quite yet, but she actually asks to sit on the toilet a couple of times a day, so we’re just doing that for now.

Macy licked her first cake beater the other day. Whenever we bake something yummy, I always try to get her to lick the spoon or beater after everything has been mixed, and she always says “NO!” and won’t even come close to tasting the yummy goodness. Apparently she thinks I’m trying to get her to eat something gross. Anyway, she finally decided that maybe I actually am offering her something good! She grabbed the beater with her chubby little hand, and started licking away! She said “YUMMY!” and licked it super clean.

I’ve been feeling baby #3 move for the past couple of weeks, which is awesome! We have an ultrasound scheduled for May 1st and we should hopefully be able to feel the baby move at that time. Right now I am 16 weeks pregnant and feeling just fine!

The weather was starting to act like Spring for a couple of weeks there, until earlier this week when it actually snowed for a couple of days. The temperature is supposed to stay in the 40s and 50s all week. If we’re lucky, it MIGHT get to 55 on Easter. Thanks, Mother Nature. Before this nasty cold weather snuck back in and reminded us that northern Indiana is just not a happy place for warm weather, we were really enjoying getting back outside and having some fun! We even had the hammock set up and everything…until this happened:

Yes, I fell out of the hammock. TWICE. After the second time I fell out, I was laughing so hard, I couldn't even get up! And, this is of course when Matt happened to have a camera.

Happier hammock times...

Today is Matt's mom's 60th bday! Happy Birthday, Ellena! We're looking forward to celebrating Easter this weekend with both of our families. Happy Easter!

Happy Birthday, little man!

2009-03-22T20:52:00.004-04:00

Jack's birthday is tomorrow (Monday) March, 23rd. He'll be 5 years old. Jackson's turning 5. Jackson 5. oh yah. He shares his birthday with Grandpa (my dad). Happy Birthday Dad!

It is so crazy that he'll be 5! So crazy. Crazy to think how much he has grown in 5 years. It is crazy to think how much he has grown in one month, let alone 5 years! He is one amazing little boy and we're so grateful that he is in our lives.

We went to kindergarten round-up this past week. Again....CRAZY that our little boy is starting school in a few short months! He was nervous to go for some reason. He's not usually a nervous shy type of child. During the evening the parents filled out paperwork, listened to a few people talk, and took a tour of the school. The kids went into classrooms with the teachers and did various activities. He had a great time once he got back there, so it all ended up well!

Today was Jack's 5th birthday party. His friend party. He invited 4 friends for his little shin-dig and he requested a "Lightning McQueen" par-tay. So, we had a Chick Hicks bday cake and a few decorations around the house, but mostly, just lots of balloons. We ate cake, opened gifts, and played outside till thier parents came! The weather was sunny and in the mid-60s, which is probably the nicest the weather has been for any of Jack's birthdays.

Here's a photo of Jack's "Chick Hicks" cake:

He was too quick on the "blowing out of the candle" part for me to even get a photo! You can kindof see the little puff of smoke though:

And a few photos of him and his friends who were at his party:

Macy wasn't quite sure what to do during the party.....so she just ate cake and ice cream and was one happy little girl.

On a totally different note.....I've been waiting months for the DVD release of the movie "Twilight"...and it came out yesterday! So far, I've watched it 3 times. Although not as good as the book, I actually REALLY like this movie. I think some parts are a little better than the book can describe, since the book is written from Bella's point of view, and the movie can show other points at the same time. Anyway, highly recommended!! I'm re-reading the 4-book series right now and am falling back in love with it!

I can't think of a title...

2009-03-15T21:49:00.004-04:00

So, not much new going on around here, but I haven't updated the old blog in a couple of weeks, so I thought I'd just drop in and say hey!

Let's see.....what's been going on....

Macy discovered she LOVES red sugar-free Kool Aid! And then she loves checking out her red tongue in the mirror over and over and over and over....super cute.

Jack has kindergarden round-up this week. I can NOT believe our little man is almost in kindergarden.

I had a 24-hour flu (that's what I'm calling it anyway...) and spent a lot of time here one day last week:

No matter how much we try to convince him to keep his room more tidy, this is what it looks like by the end of the day:

Jack has learned how to buckle his own seat belt in the van. We have two booster seats and we keep one in the third row of the van, and he loves sitting way in the back, but we don't necessarily enjoy climbing all the way in the back of the van just to buckle him in. So, the deal was that once he could buckle his own seat belt, he could sit back there....and here he is all tuckered out after an evening at Nana and PawPaws house.

The weather was GORGEOUS today! We've had a few days of fairly nice weather over the past two weeks! We're not out of the cold-weather woods yet (March is tricky here in Indiana....), but at least the kids have had some fun outside. Macy likes sidewalk chalk. She even thinks it tastes good for some reason. She's wearing a hat here, but the past few days we only had to wear sweatshirts outside! YAY!!!! Spring is SO WELCOME to arrive anyday now.

Macy finally got some new shoes since her feet are finally growing. I don't have a photo of them or anything, but she loves trying on shoes at the shoe store. It is quite cute. Both kids got new sunglasses too. They are stinkin' adorable! I haven't uploaded new photos of those either, but I will soon. Macy loves wearing her sunglasses and Jack has been wearing his quite a bit too. We got them from the Disney Store at the mall last night and they both wore them while we walked all the way around the mall....and then wore them in the parking lot, even though it was dark outside. Kids are so funny.

I've been so ready for Spring weather for a while now. Like, since last Fall. =)

Both kids have freshly washed warm-weather clothes and they are all ready to be worn!

photo shoot

2009-02-25T20:23:00.005-05:00

Jack and I went to my cousin's photography studio last night to practice some portrait photography. It was really fun and I learned quite a bit! In the future, I might get the opportunity to work along side my cousin, Jamie, in her portrait studio as well as assisting with some weddings. We will see what the future brings! In the meantime, here are a couple of my favorite shots from last night...in the first one, he's playing with a red dinosaur...and it was his idea to take off his shirt and socks!

This expression is SO JACK.

Here's my little lady waking up in the morning....rubbing her eyes all cute-like =)

In other news, it is both a happy and sad day...we bought a second point and shoot camera today...because our first ever digital camera finally broke for good yesterday. I've come to know and love this little work horse camera! Here is a photo of her...

She lasted us about 5 years and took TONS of photos. She was our only digital camera until about 1.5 years ago when we bought a digital SLR camera. She was only 3 megapixels, but she took GREAT photos and I loved this little camera! She lived in my handbag and went with us everywhere, because our Canon Digital Rebel SLR camera is too bulky to take everywhere. We ended up buying a Canon Powershot A590IS, which is a HUGE upgrade compared to the one we had, but I love Canon Powershots for point and shoot cameras. I should have Matt write a little haiku about that old camera or something!

4 + 1 = FIVE

2009-02-23T22:10:00.002-05:00

Yep, we're having another baby!!! Baby #3 is currently at about 11 weeks gestation and is due on September 18th. We're SO EXCITED for this new adventure! I'm feeling fine, but still have that "blah" feeling quite often. I've been sleeping more at night, which is wierd for me because I don't usually get tons of sleep at night. That's ok though! I'm stocking up sleep hours now because I know how precious sleep is once the baby is born.

I've had some serious Spring Fever mixed in with a little Cabin Fever lately. I'm so so so tired of seeing white stuff on the ground. No one is even excited to play outside anymore! I'm tired of bundling up with bulky coats and gloves and hats and boots. I'm tired of being cold all the time. I'm tired of having the windows closed. I'm tired of only seeing shorts and t-shirts in the stores and knowing we won't even be able to wear them for a couple more months or so. I'm just plain tired of everything having to do with winter! So....I took the kids to Target this past weekend and Jack got some new rain boots and sandals and Macy got some Spring/Summer dresses, shorts, and t-shirts. Then I went through thier closets and pulled out all their Spring/Summer clothes, took "inventory" of what they already have for the next season, washed them all, and bascially just got excited about the thought of a new season ahead! The days are getting noticabley longer, which is GREAT too!

Let's see....what else is going on....Macy has been doing more and more everyday. Her current favorite things are: grapes, playing with milk jug lids, saying "NO" even when she means "yes", putting her shoes on, playing with Jack's toys when he isn't home, jumping on mommy and daddy's bed, throwing peas, pretending to tickle people, standing on her little chair behind the couch to watch TV (this one doesn't make sense to me....she would be so much more comfortable if she just sat down on the floor!), and playing chase. That sounds like she has a lot of "favorite" things, but you know what I mean. Her personality is really starting to come out and it's quite adorable. Especially when she throws a screaming fit in the middle of Target because I wouldn't let her try on a 6th pair of sandals. Adorable.

Jack is doing good too. He beats me at Mario Kart every single time. He would probably play Mario Kart or another Wii game all day long if we let him. He takes after his dad. I can play video games for about 10 minutes and then I'm done. His 5th birthday is in exactly one month and he is SO excited already. We always thought it would be hilarious to have a "Jackson 5" birthday party for his 5th birthday, but we had trouble finding any kind of Jackson 5 birthday stuff, so he decided he wanted "Cars" instead. Either way, he'll have fun!

I'll post some current photos soon....

wow, I officially ignored my blog for over a month.....

2009-02-04T11:21:00.005-05:00

The short answer as to why I haven't updated my blog in over a month......I'm just exhausted.

The long(er) answer as to why I haven't updated my blog in over a month and why I've been exhausted.....My body is still adjusting to these new thyroid meds and I still don't think they are quite right. I get through the day just fine, often with a mid-afternoon nap while the kids are napping, but by the time evening hits, it is all I can do to stay up past 9:00. If you know me at all, this is NOT NORMAL. I am usually up way past midnight. I've not had any energy to do anything creative either! I've kept up with the Project 365 scrapbook, but that is about it. I had more bloodwork done last week, so hopefully the results will be helpful. My to-do list keeps growing and growing because I just can't bring myself to get anything accomplished, which is really just not like me at all! OK....enough of me whining....

Here is what has been going on the past month or so.....

We did some rearranging and painting upstairs last month and we now have random piles and just extra stuff that has yet to find a home. The only room upstairs that didn't get rearranged or reorganized (or both) is Jack's room! He was quite clear that he did not want anything to move in or out of his room. So......we agreed. But, my craft room, Matt's office, our bedroom, and Macy's room have all been changed up! It is kinda nice and I actually enjoy this kind of change every once in a while, but it just takes a lot of energy to do the deep cleaning and reorganizing of all those rooms. Anyway.....photos and more info about this entire project coming soon!

Let's see.....Jack is doing good. Usually. We've had some serious behavior issues that needed lots of attention....and hopefully we've addressed them and he's back on track! He is enjoying preschool, but getting him out the door to GO to school isn't always fun. Today was his Valentine party, and he stamped his own Valentines and wrote out all of the kids names in his class on each one.

Macy is doing good. She's walking like a pro now and has even started slow running. Yay! It is so nice that she can walk on her own now. We're quite proud! She had her 18 month check up last week and she weighs 26 pounds and is 31 inches long. She has developed a little attitude, which is quite adorable at her age, really. She asks for cookies all day long and expects to get them whenever she wants, although we NEVER do! So, she has started throwing little fits. Kinda cute.

Cabin fever is pretty much in full effect right now. January brough VERY bitter cold temperatures and lots of snow, which just starts to bother me when February hits. February is a hard month for me to get excited about. This past week we actually had a little heat wave come through and it was 60 degrees one day. Although it was only for one day, it was great to get the kids outside and get some nice fresh air without having to get all bundled up. It is back to freezing again plus lots of wind today.....come on Spring!

Anyway....I'll upload some photos in the next few days, but for now I thought I would just give a brief update!

Project 365

2009-01-08T18:27:00.003-05:00

I mentioned a couple of posts ago that I would not be doing the "Week in the Life" project again this year.....and this is why: I'm changing things up a bit in the world of "Betsy's scrapbooking" and doing Project 365 ALL YEAR instead. Here is what this project is all about....last January I contemplated doing something where I would take a photo each day and scrapbook that one photo for each day of the year. Once I realized that this was a pretty unrealistic goal for me, I put it on the back burner and decided to think about it a while before putting that project in action. Fast forward a few months when I heard Becky Higgins was designing a kit for Creating Keepsakes. Becky is known in the scrapbooking industry for her clean design lines and her wonderful sketches. She has also designed many kits for Creating Keepsakes. The kit she designed for January of this year was called "Project 365" and my jaw dropped to the floor when I realized that this project was EXACTLY what I had in mind. It is an awesome kit to scrapbook a photo a day for an entire year. This year I'll be focusing on scrapbooking these daily photos with the help of this kit and then mixing in some of my regular-style scrapbook pages for spice.

Some of the photos are specific to the daily events, like these:

taking down Christmas decorations...

working in the todder room at church (that's Matt on the far right playing a drum)....

And some of the photos are just random happenings around our house, like these:

this is how Jack and Macy watch TV, and I think it is adorable....

just a random photo of Macy...

I plan on taking LOTS of photos of random everyday things around our house so we can remember how we lived every day. I also plan on taking photos of my kids' toys, our hair styles, clothes, how I organize closets/shelves, calendars, favorite stores, inside our refridgerator, decor around our home, landscaping (or lack thereof), favorite magazines, as well as LOTS of other details. This project has seriously inspired me to record our everyday lives!

My kit is scheduled to arrive tomorrow (yay!), so I will upload layouts every once in a while to show how I've been recording my daily photos.

look out, Little Debbie

2009-01-07T17:09:00.004-05:00

So, um, let me just say.....I'm not a huge fan of Little Debbie cake dessert things.....and I especially don't like the oatmeal cream pies. But, Matt would kill for some, and since his birthday is coming up in a few days, I found a recipie for homemade oatmeal cream pie sandwiches on the Taste of Home website .....and it turns out.....they are DELICIOUS. I even like them a lot! The recipie says it makes 4.5 dozen and I thought that surely that meant 4.5 dozen individual cookes (before making them into sandwhiches).....but after mixing everything together and having to upgrade to a larger mixing bowl (before even adding flour), I realized that it meant 4.5 dozen sandwiches.....I even had to wash some cookie sheets before baking more cookies. Crazy! But, at least there are enough to go around, but sadly there probably won't be any left for Matt's actual birthday, which is January 11th, by the way.

Jack helped mix the ingredients, and he's quite the star at it! His favorite thing to do is measure out the flour and then level it off, which he is doing in this photo. Matt took this photo from above us when we were making them. And, yes, he had to stand on a chair, because as you may already know, he's about as tall as me.

And here is the glorious finished product...

Week in the Life

2009-01-07T17:05:00.005-05:00

So, here it is FINALLY. My "week in the life" layouts from September 29th-October 5th, 2008. Basically, I took a crap-load of photos over that week and then scrapbooked a bunch of those photos as well as a ton of tiny details that happened that week. It was FUN, but I won't be doing it again this year.....and I'll explain why a couple posts after this one.....

Each two-page layout has a large 8 x 10 photo on one side and five 4 x 6 photos on the other side in a divided page protector. All the photos are just random things or events that happened each day and I wrote out all the everyday happenings that went on around here. I included lots of random lists as well as receipts from various stores. All receipts are tucked behind photos.

end of year thoughts...

2008-12-30T19:07:00.005-05:00

I have a lot on my mind this week as I try to wrap things up for the year (lots of business-related financial stuff comes up at the end of the year when you run your own business), think about new plans/goals for 2009, and checking random things off of my to-do list.

A few photos and stories from Christmas Eve and Christmas day....

First of all, we had a totally wonderful and completed blessed Christmas with our friends and family this year! Christmas Eve was held here this year, due to the power-outage that Matt's family was still trying to clean up. Here's a hilarious video of Matt's mom playing Wii boxing:

Matt's step-dad was also hilarious at Wii boxing....and I thought he was going to punch our TV a few times!

Trying to sneak a cookie from the plate we left out for Santa....

Decorating cookies. Yes, he pretty much ate all that he decorated.

Finishing his letter to Santa. It said...

"Santa

Whiff

Madge

love,

Jackson"

Translation....

"Dear Santa, I've been a pretty good boy this year and I would really like the "Whiff" and "Madge" trains from Thomas and Friends. I promise to be nice to my sister. Love Jackson."

Christmas day was wonderful and we stayed home in the AM opening stockings and gifts and playing with our new stuff. This was definitely a "Wii" year for Matt. He got the Wii last year for Christmas and this year receieved TONS of stuff for it. Jack received lots of Thomas stuff as well as a new big boy bike (which he LOVES.....he already tried riding without the training wheels, but decided he likes having them on for now), and plenty of new toys. Macy recieved some clothes as well as lots of musical instruments and loud toys. I received lots of new books, movies, scrappin' goodies, and kitchen-y things. It was a fun day, that's for sure!

Jack woke up right at 6:30 AM and came in to our room and said "Mommy, I have to go potty. I wonder if Santa came? Merry Christmas!" but we made him wait to go downstairs till 7:30 AM. He had received some fun toys from Christmas Eve with Matt's family, so he happily played in his room with those! This was the first year EVER that I have not walked downstairs on Christmas morning wearing pajamas. I'm a big fan of getting out of bed and going downstairs on Christmas morning when everyone looks like they just woke up. But.....this year was different.....Jack woke up super early, and Macy had no clue that it was a special day, so she didn't wake up so early.....and we were anxious to go to my mom's house for lunch and more gifts, so we didn't want to waste precious late morning hours getting ready! So, I just got ready BEFORE going downstairs. It was weird, that's for sure!

Here's a video of the kids coming down stairs and checking things out early on Christmas day. Notice how Jack runs to the kitchen FIRST to see if Santa ate his cookies and milk and then eventually makes his way over to the tree:

One of the many loud toys that Macy received...

Jack opening up his Thomas roundhouse train thing:

I did a bunch of scrapbooking yesterday and am taking photos tomorrow of a bunch of recent projects. Will upload asap!

Merry Christmas

2008-12-24T21:33:00.004-05:00

We didn't send very many Christmas cards out this year, but I wanted to share our card, photo, and Matt's annual letter with you!

Here's the card:

and our photo:

and Matt's hilarious "2008 Beers' Family Christmas Letter":

"Hello, friends and family. Thank you all for joining us yet again for a recap of the adventures of the Beers family throughout 2008 (excepting the six weeks following the writing of this piece, but if anything important happens I’ll fill you in next year, or you can just check Betsy’s blog (www.onemillionreasons.blogspot.com) which is where I go to find out anything that Betsy might be keeping from me, like car accidents and pregnancies).

I will begin with Macy, the youngest member of the family, who has decided that, as long as people are willing to bring her things, there is absolutely no need to walk. Ever. Macy has developed a knack for repeating much of what she hears and her father has put this trait to good use by teaching her the names of various Star Wars characters. Betsy knows nothing of this. Macy’s best friends are her bear, Pink Joey, and the Tupperware cabinet.

Jackson, who will turn five in March (Jackson Five, cool, huh?), has started preschool and is doing very well. His teachers say that Jackson is very helpful and quite a good listener, which leads Jackson’s father to believe that his son’s teachers are filthy liars. Jackson, being four, is very energetic and opinionated and LOUD. He’s also very cute when he sleeps.

Betsy is continuing with her plan to take over the world. Matt found a receipt in the trash for a death ray, so it looks like things are going well for Mrs. Beers.

The king of the castle, or rather, the acting mascot of the house, Matt, recently decided to let his glorious hair once again cascade down his bronzed shoulders only to realize, rather painfully, that there will be no more cascading hair, nor any bronzed shoulders for that matter, unless he pays for a wax job, and that doesn’t look like happening any time soon.

The following is a list of actual things that happened to the Beers familia in 2008:

Jack played his first, and probably last, season of soccer. There was a tense moment when we thought he was going to kick the ball, but instead he screamed at it and ran away.

Macy found that the most comfortable place one can place one’s finger is in one’s nose. Or in the nose of a loved one.

Betsy turned thirty, which justifies Matt’s wearing so much black.

For a couple of months in the summer Matt began a regular exercise program and reaffirmed that running is stupid. He lost approximately zero (0) pounds and is now the proud owner of bad knees.

Jack has started reading and he also understands simple math concepts like addition and fraud.

Macy has stopped crying when she is dropped off at the church nursery, however, she cries whenever she sees her grandmother, which is kind of funny.

Matt and Betsy became members of Pathway Community Church. If you happen to run into them there, please refer to them as Santos and Maria Ramirez. There was a problem with the background check.

Conan has made it very clear that he does not miss the cat in the least.

Jack has decided that he will be either a race car driver or a “fire truck worker” when he grows up, despite his father’s hopes that he will become a ninja or a pirate.

Macy has only two teeth, which she uses with surgical precision to carve cheese sculptures.

Betsy has continued scrapbooking, making the leap to digi-scrapping, which is a thing I’m pretty sure she made up just so she could buy a laptop.

Matt has pretty much stopped writing altogether since he got a Nintendo Wii for Christmas last year. For a few weeks in February he also stopped bathing, but Betsy made it very clear that… Well, he now bathes habitually.

Matt and Betsy would like to thank each and every one of you for whatever it is you do for them throughout the year. If you feel such thanks are unwarranted, they have a list of things that you could do for them. Just let them know.

Have a merry Christmas and a safe New Year and we hope that 2009 is as wonderful as you deserve.

With much love,

Matt, Betsy, Jack, and Macy Beers

p.s. You didn’t think I forgot the haiku, did you? Well, I kinda did, but then I remembered so shut up.

This year I’m going

to do my very best to

out drink my grandma."

Well, there you have it! Have a WONDERFUL Christmas!

getting back in the swing of things

2008-12-24T11:21:00.005-05:00

I have not had as much crafty time as I would like, since I've been slightly preoccupied these past few weeks with getting everything ready for Christmas and also with the ice storm that took out power in most of our area for days on end. All of our family members have power now, thankfully! Tonight we are hosting our Christmas Eve celebration with Matt's family here at our house. Usually we are at Matt's mom's house for this, but they did not have power for a long time and are now trying to get thier house back in order. Jack is sooooo excited for tonight and tomorrow. I keep reminding him WHY we are celebrating Christmas. He totally gets it, but he's only 4.....so he's mostly excited about the presents right now.

I finally had some crafty juices flowing again yesterday and was able to do a couple digi pages:

My goal for 2008 was to scrapbook 150 pages. So far, I've completed 140. With just a few days remaining, I'm going to bust my butt to get this goal accomplished! I also need to finish my December Daily album.....I have some serious catching up to do on that. This weekend, I will be posting photos of that album as well as the Week in the Life pages that I completed about a month ago.

Have you heard of the "one little word" concept? I beleive this was started by Ali Edwards a few years back. Basically, you select a word that you want to focus on for one entire year. There is now even a One Little Word blog that has scrapbooking challenges based on one word. For 2007, my word was "flow" because I seriously needed to focus on "going with the flow". For 2008, my word was "accomplish". For 2009 I have chosen the word "embrace". As in: embrace my family, God, my imperfections, my hobbies, my free time, and my life. I challenge you to choose your One Little Word!

Have a wonderful Christmas!

ice storm...

2008-12-22T01:00:00.003-05:00

So....Mother Nature dumped a huge ice storm on us last Friday night and everything is still covered with ice! Approximately 75,000 homes in our county lost power and (according to the news) tonight, about 50,000 are still without power! Fortunately for us, we did not lose power....until this evening (Sunday). Matt and I woke up early Friday AM to an explosion and quickly looked out the window to see a telephone pole and transformer box thingy blowing up and on fire. Quite exciting! My mom did not have power all day so she and her husband and thier dog spent the night here Friday night and stayed much of Saturday (they got thier power back Saturday)....then Matt's mom and step-dad came over for the afternoon/evening because they lost power as well, but went back to thier house to sleep (they STILL do not have power as of right now, so they are now at a hotel...)...then last evening Matt's sister and her husband and two daughters and dog drove in from Virginia and were supposed to stay with Matt's mom, but since his mom didn't have power, they ended up staying here with us for the night. Everyone left today right before lunch.....and then our power went out a few hours later.....ARGH!.....so we took our kids over to my mom's house to spend the night and then Matt and I spent the evening hanging out with our old friends, Brian and April. Our power came back on around midnight tonight...and now I'm wide awake....and it is about 1:30 AM....

We're very thankful that we only lost power for a few hours, as of right now.

EVERYTHING is covered in ice. It actually looks quite gorgeous! The above photos were taken at my mom's house.

new look

2008-12-18T11:02:00.002-05:00

Some big changes are on the way! I've changed the look and design of my blog....and I kicked Matt off of here, so he started his own blog......I added some lists to the sidebar (a link to Matt's blog is listed over there).....and have some big plans for the future of this blog. I'm planning on posting way more crafty projects that I complete and will be posting more frequently as well. Matt and I are starting a new little crafty venture, which I will announce as soon as it is up and running. We have all next week off, which we are devoting to getting it all started.....so stay tuned!

hey Santa

2008-12-17T23:50:00.004-05:00

Macy was not so much a fan of the big man. Jack, however, talked his ear off....

Walking in to Santa's Cottage at a local outdoor mall. Notice how Jack is holding up his pant legs. This is a new "Jack-ism" this winter. He's afraid his pants will get wet and/or snowy if he doesn't hold up his pants when walking outside either in the rain or in the snow.

Macy before she turned around to see Santa.

Like I said, she wasn't a huge fan.

I think Jack would have stayed all night to chat with him!

early Christmas presents...

2008-12-16T21:32:00.007-05:00

Christmas gifts arrived yesterday from Grandpa (who lives in Arizona)! Grandpa said we could open them early.....so of course we did! Here is a video of Jack finding his gifts under the tree and then opening them. You might notice that at the end he gets a little mad right before the video stops recording. He LOVES both gifts, but was apparently expecting something else in gift #2. We had a nice little chat afterwards about being grateful when you receive a gift!

(Dad.....these are VIDEOS, so you have to click on the play button!)

The second video is Jack and Macy with thier new gifts....

it's Monday...

2008-12-08T14:08:00.003-05:00

So, we took some photos of the Beers' children the other day (to send in our Christmas cards), and I must say....although photo shoots aren't necessarily Matt's favorite thing, we took some hilarious shots! These two are my most favorites.....

The top one just cracks me up because Macy is ALWAYS trying to pick her nose and the bottom one cracks me up because Jack was just letting her slap his face.

Neither of these ended up getting sent out in our card, you'll just have to wait and see which one we sent out later!

I'm working on my December Daily album right now, which is basically a small-ish album where you document all the fun things that happen in December. More photos to come later.

Yesterday Jack and I were playing in his room and he says "Remember the good old days when..." and I just had to chuckle because a FOUR year old was reminiscing about the good ol' days.

Macy is doing well! She is super close to walking all by herself. She walks everywhere around our house, but is always holding on to someone's hand or furniture or a wall or whatever. She will take up to 5 steps on her own, but just isn't too sure about it yet. We've been doing lots of therapy with her to get her legs stronger and to increase her balance. Seems to be working!

I've been feeling a little sluggish and lazy lately. I have all these grand plans to get so much accomplished each day and then I end up not getting near as much fun stuff done as I wanted. I still haven't even taken photos of my "Week in the Life" project. I need to spend some quality time getting serious about some stuff! More to come soon!

we're in the Christmas spirit already!

2008-11-26T19:03:00.005-05:00

Well, it isn't even Thanksgiving till tomorrow, but our family has been in the Christmas spirit for quite some time now! All our decorations are up, Christmas cards are all made, the shopping is done, gifts are made, and Christmas music has been playing for the past few weeks! One of my goals this season was to get as much as possible done BEFORE December 1st so we can just sit back and enjoy December and all the magic that the season brings and not get stressed out with all the gift-making, decorating, baking, and shopping that has to get done. So, I'm quite pleased with all that has been accomplished so far! I used to have that "no Christmas till the day after Thanksgiving rule", but this year Matt has been giddy about Christmas since July (LITERALLY), so somewhere in the past few months I got excited about it earlier than normal too. And then we decided that Christmas decorations only enhance the Thanksgiving holiday! So, here we are....all ready for the Christmas season to begin.....

I haven't blogged in a few weeks, and lost of stuff has been happening around here! Jackson is taking a swim class right now and LOVES it! This is his first swim class, so they are basically just learning how to be comfortable in the water. He jumps in the pool all on his own and he even now goes all the way under water!

Other exciting news is that Macy has started walking! Yay! She is still getting physical therapy once a week and Matt and I work with her everyday as well. Her legs are getting much stronger and we're really working on her balance now. She will take a few steps on her own and she also can stand up from just sitting down. And we're pretty sure she's talking way more than Jack was at 16 months....according to a list I have from when Jack was her age, he could say about 40 words....and now he's a freakin' chatter box with a vocabulary just about as large as mine....and I made a list of all the things that Macy says.....and it is WAY longer than 40 words! She just talks all the time. She repeats everything we say and she has fun yelling. Yesterday Matt told Jackson "No running." and all of a sudden Macy screams out "NO RUNNIN." It was super adorable.

A few Christmas-y photos to get you in the spirit....

Putting up lights on the tree with a toddler under your feet is a little tricky....

Jack absolutely LOVED putting up the ornaments this year. He had them all laid out in a row and was even putting the hooks on them before hanging them up. He even spaced them out well! He had so much fun he even asked Grandma if he could help her put up her ornaments....which of course she was all about! So, we'll be doing that this weekend! Macy enjoyed playing with the ornaments as well...

Wearing one of our many MANY Santa hats...

Hanging out with Daddy on a lazy afternoon....with Santa hats on of course (Macy's is sortof under her head instead of on top of it.)

We went to The Picture People for a little Christmas photo shoot.....seriously stressful, to say the least! The photographer took pictures for 45 minutes......and only was able to even take 11 photos! Of those 11 photos, only a couple were even good! Our kids were very VERY moody that night! That might be an understatement....Jack was just being a teeny tiny bit uncooperative and Macy is teething, so she did NOT want to stay on the white background and did NOT want her brother anywhere near her.....it was interesting....I don't think Matt will be going back next time. We were all sweaty and moody afterwards!

And, now for your video viewing pleasure....Macy now eats from a spoon. It takes her about 20 minutes to eat a small bowl of applesauce, but she enjoys it, so we're not complaining! Here is a video of the kids eating lunch.....it's pretttty exciting! Actually, it is kinda boring, but still fun to watch, in my opinion!! She eventually dropped her spoon and tried eating it with her fingers...

Fall photos...

2008-11-03T22:31:00.003-05:00

We have had gorgeous Fall foliage colors this year and I'm so glad I finally had a chance to take some photos of some lovely trees. My friend, Stacy, lives on a few acres with lots of trees so she let me take a bunch of photos today. Some of my favorites:

Happy Birthday to ME!

2008-11-01T12:49:00.003-04:00

It is official. I am no longer a "young adult". I've entered my 30s. All week long I've heard "turning 30 is not that bad!". yah, thanks! I'm dealing with it, but it certainly sounds oooolllllddddd to me!

Oh well, at least I get some presents out of it! Also, tonight I get to go scrapbooking with a bunch of my friends at a local scrapbook store, so that's awesome! And tomorrow after church Matt and I have an entire kid-free day and have no plans yet! yay!

Halloween was super fun this year. Jack is at a great age for Halloween. He actually WANTED to wear his costume this year (which is totally different from previous Halloweens!) and he had so much fun trick-or-treating. He and I walked around our neighborhood and the neighborhood next to ours for over 2 hours straight. He finally got tired of walking after about 2 hours and 15 minutes. He loved it! This year he was a chicken and Macy was a monkey. Macy actually liked wearing her costume as well. I think she was all snuggly inside. The weather was PERFECT this year for Halloween and we didn't have to bundle up at all for trick-or-treating. I didn't even wear a jacket! woohoo for that!

Getting ready to go trick-or-treating with a chicken, monkey, and frog (Jack's friend):

Macy chillin' in her stroller. Have I mentioned how much she likes wearing sunglasses? She LOVES them!

Trick-or-treating at our own house.....

Our carved pumpkins. Matt did all the carving. He does an awesome job! The pumpkin on the far right is a pumpkin carved inside another pumpkin. Clever! The pumpkin second from the left is a self-portrait, according to Matt.

random happenings...

2008-10-25T21:37:00.004-04:00

Well, I think I'm back in the blogging world again! After a few weeks of computer issues, we finally settled on getting a new computer. It is actually quite nice, seeing as that my old one was almost 5 years old, which everyone knows is ancient in computer terms. Anyway...

The days are getting shorter and colder around here, which is not pleasant if you ask me...but I'm learning to deal with it. I do love the chilly Fall temperatures, but I hate that it is dark so late in the morning and so early in the evening. And it is still October! We've still got two more months of the days getting shorter and shorter until that dreaded December "shortest day of the year". Two months. ARGH.

I've been digi scrapping like crazy and enjoying learning Photoshop more thouroughly. It is empowering to me to know so much about such a powerful program like Photoshop! Anyway...here is a 2 page digi layout about a recent trip to the pumpkin patch and then some photos from the visit following the layout....

Macy now climbs up stairs, which is great! She is even standing up all on her own for a few seconds at a time. She will walk with us just using our hands to balance, which is a huge improvement for her in the area of physical development. She has been getting physical therapy for the past month now. We had some issues with her physical therapist, and starting this next week she'll be seeing someone new. Hopefully she'll continue to gain strength in those little legs!

Macy also likes using her own silverware now. She will NOT let us feed her anymore, which is great, except that she won't use her spoon as an actual spoon. She just holds on to it with a little ninja death grip and eats her applesauce (or yogurt, cottage cheese, or whatever) with her free hand. Cute until it is time to clean up....

Jack is really looking forward to Halloween. He's going to be a chicken and he enjoys wearing his costume around the house as much as he can. Macy is going to be a monkey, and getting her to wear her costume is quite a different story. We shall see how that goes on Halloween!

This is one of my favorite digi pages that I have done so far. The story behind this...we have a lot of Chuck Taylor brand shoes in our house. Jack and Macy even have thier own pairs. Anyway, Jack has had shoes that velcro for quite a while now, but his Chuck Taylors are tie shoes. So, he calls them his Chuck Tielors because they tie. So cute!

I will be turning 30 in exactly 7 days. I can't quite pin point how I feel about that. Obviously I don't think I'm going to wake up on November 1st and feel older or anything, but 30 just seems SO OLD to me right now! 30. THIRTY. 30. That's a lot of years. I kinda like my 20s. I am still considered a "young adult" by many people, but once you hit 30, you are no longer considered "young". Oh well.

Day 7

2008-10-20T13:23:00.004-04:00

Last day of this project.....I took tons of photos over the course of that week and I'm excited to get this project all put together. I have all the photos printed out that I want to include (about 6 for each day) and I have all my notes and lists and other content gathered together, it is just a matter of getting it all done! I will share when it is complete...hopefully later this week!

Macy has discovered that it is super fun to climb into the kitchen cabinets. This particular cabinet is her favorite one and it usually is where we keep all our tupperware. I've given up on even attempting to keep it organized anymore because she just gets her little chubby hands back in there every few minutes throwing everything back out!

Me and Jack playing a game of CandyLand.

Giving kisses after Macy's bath.

Everyday photos:

Day 6

2008-10-19T23:35:00.002-04:00

Well, hello there! I'm writing this from our brand new shiny laptop! We've finally found one within our price range that had all the specs we wanted, so we got it today! It is soooooo nice!

I've got some catching up to do on here, assuming that THIS computer gets along with blogger better than my old computer. =)

First things first....a recap of photos from Day 6 (October 4th) of "Week in the Life".

We went to my cousin, Jamie's, wedding. Jack really liked the chocolate fondue-covered marshmallows.

One of my favorite photos EVER:

Jack enjoying some quiet time on the couch:

So, I still have yet to complete the layouts for the Week in the Life project, but I have started them! I will post those on here when I finish them. The pages will have more details about our week than just showing you some photos of each day. So, you can look forward to that, I guess!

Day 5...

2008-10-17T23:27:00.003-04:00

Well, I know I left my many hundreds of devoted blog followers just wondering what the heck happened in the middle of my "Week in the Life" project.....just kidding.....anyway, the answer is that our computer has been attacked with a lovely virus that we can't control and basically we're in the market for a new computer. In the meantime, I'm going to try to update the blog with the remaining Week in the Life photos as well as an update with our previous past two weeks!

Day 5 (October 3): finally Friday! Went to the Fall Festival at Jack's preschool. It was great to see him interact with his classmates! Also great to put a face with the names we hear about everyday. We got to meet his little girlfriend, Megan, which was fun! He talks about Megan ALL the time.

Photos...

Week in the Life, Day 4

2008-10-03T21:13:00.002-04:00

Moving on to Thursday, Day 4 of this week's "Week in the Life" project:

Putting on Jack's shoes in the AM before school:

Vacuum, vacuum, vacuum. Between our two kids, a shedding dog, and 10 other daycare kids, the vacuum is never ending in this house.

The FedEx truck!!! We've been waiting for this particular shipment for almost 3 months now. We were quite excited to see it arrive!

Playing on some climbing cushions in our daycare room:

And a digi page completed on Thursday:

Week in the Life, Day 3

2008-10-03T20:47:00.003-04:00

Again....my computer is still in a cyber fight with Blogger. I can't figure it out....everytime I upload photos on here, it ends up kicking me "offline", even though our internet is always online. Long story, but it is rather annoying, so for now I'm just going to upload a few photos at a time and see if that helps anything.

I just listened to an adorable conversation between Jack and Matt. Matt accidentally hit Jack with a baton (that was won tonight at a Fall festival at Jack's school...):

Jack: "Daddy, you need to sit in time out for hitting me."

Matt: "ok"

Jack: (brushing his teeth now) "Daddy, your time out is almost over."

Jack: (1 minute later): "Daddy, your time out is almost over."

Jack: (a little bit later): "Daddy, your time out is almost over."

Jack: "Daddy, you can not talk or play with toys while you are in time out."

Jack: "Ok, Daddy, you can get out of time out now. Do you know why you had a time out?"
Matt: "Because I accidentally hit you with a baton."

Jack: "Yes, that's right. Don't do that again."

Jack handles time outs much better when he's giving them out than when he's the one receiving them.

Day 3, Wednesday:

Jack making his bed. Notice the huge pile of stuffed animals on his night stand. There is even a huger pile under his comforter...

Macy's physical therapy session at our house:

A mid-afternoon visit from grandma:

Taking a walk with the kids:

Waiting for a dinosaur to hatch: