quick funny

this just made me laugh. i decided to be nice and get some steaks to grill out with. i had stuck them in the freezer until the night i wanted to cook them. i had them on the counter to defrost and my kids, being very excited to see steak out had written a little "thank you" on them in the ice on the meat. cracked me up when i saw



it!

mother's day 2010

I was not expecting much. i ask for the same thing every year and never get it....the kids to not fight. however, this year the day started off with a wonderful smell of waffles in the air. my assumption (You know what they say about assuming!) was chris got the kids up to help make me breakfast. NOPE, a little later, gracie heads into frankie's room to wake him up, now this was like 7:30 in the morning! a minute later, in they come with "breakfast in bed". no sign of chris. i asked gracie if her dad helped her, she said no he was still sleeping. i could not believe this girl who had never even turned the stove on, had made me waffles, eggs and toast all by herself! AND it was tasty! she had also made me a picture card and frankie had typed me up a poem. we then headed to try another new church. i had been getting so discouraged as of late, but what a wonderful mother's day suprise to not only finally attend the church we think we will join, but to see familiar faces there from our old church FBC!!! later, i took a long nap and then we taught the kids to play clue and decided to implement family game night! and the cherry on top was the kids did NOT fight all day! this was truly the best mothers day i have ever had!

Going Organic

Call me a fanatic. Most of my family and friends know, with me, it's usually all or nothing! I usually throw myself into something or am not interested AT ALL! i am now becoming one of "those" who goes for organic! i used to be the one who looked at the "healthy" food section at the store, roll my eyes, and think, ya, go spend twice as much for a smaller package, ya right! Now i find myself amazed at what i can find at the local Kroger, even if it's in the "healthy" food section. such as hormone free, no antibiotic chicken nuggets! (that was a very exciting moment! ) As you all know, I started my journey in gardening last year. Learned lots of lessons in what NOT to do, that's for sure! (if your interested check out that blog). I have stuck with this desire for longer than most interests i have... (Squirrel!) . i still want to garden for the same reasons, ie. save money, pride in what you've done, less mowing....lol. But i am now finding even more reasons, such as all the chemicals on/in grocery store food, not to mention the poor quality. but after watching the documentary Food Inc. it's also to quit encouraging and "voting" if you will to the big companies that are bullying the farmers and producing par quality food at a higher and higher cost to us and not just monetarily. They are destroying the soil so the food will not get any better, yet the raise the prices. They also use so much chemicals and pesticides, the food isn't even natural in the seed itself! Don't even get me started on the meat in the stores, restaraunts and fast food places. I am disgusted with myself for feeding my kids that for so long. So now i am on a quest, to find LOCAL farmers who grass feed their animals, to buy my meat and dairy from, and to grow, can and freeze all my own produce so i know it's fresh and the best quality i can provide. until i get better i will have to subsidize my homegrown with someone else's so i have chosen to go to farmer's markets, and question them on what they use. Luckily the downtown market, has mostly organic vegetables, so i can buy them. in the meantime, i am encouraged with my own harvest thus far.....my strawberry patch. they are the most beautiful strawberries and i grew them myself. my small little patch has put out quite the bounty so far and still has many growing! my family and i had been saving the cartons you buy strawberries in from the store, so i can REUSE (my new favorite thing to do) with my own. Today i picked 4 cartons full from my little patch. i can hardly keep up with them! we plan to extend the patch so i can freeze and can a bunch. it's crazy how much food we can grow ourselves just in our backyard....IF it all does as well as my strawberry patch!

and yes, the camera still needs a new date set....

Anne of Green Gables

Gracie's end of the year book report was done on Anne of Green Gables. Anyone that knows me, knows this is my ultimate favorite book and movie! So obviously, I was tickled pink, err green, she chose that book! she did her report, a poster board and dressed up like Anne (as best we could with a modified goodwill dress, old apron and braids! lol). I was very pleased with her.




The kids were given options on what they could do with this final project. Some chose a power point presentation, some gave oral reports. One child chose a model from a scene from his book. Now I must say I am one that loves lots of bright colors and the effort put in was great! However, for many reasons, especially since it was a young boy's project, I think I would have coved the bottom of the box with some construction paper or something! HAHAHAHAHA!


And yes i know the date on the camera needs to be fixed big time.

Firestarters

I have been trying to find ways to reuse things and come up with homemade alternatives for as much as i can. Luckily my friend Jenifer, the Martha Stewart of all my friends, taught me a wonderful "craft" if you will, that does both. We have 2 firepits in our backyard. Chris usually starts the fires in them, however I attempted to the last 2 fires we had. Needless to say, I am thankful I will now have these firestarters to help me along! They make "reuse" of dryer lint, cardboard egg cartons, and if you want, crayons. However if you are unlike most Americans with kids, and don't have a ton of old crayons that can be melted, you can always buy some wax. You can also use either coffee cans (espcially if you do this over an open fire, like a firepit) or like we did, you can use glass jars, which also were recycled from spaghetti sauce, mayonaise, etc....
Fill the jars with the wax and set them in a pot of boilling water. Stir until melted.







Careful not to let water get into the jars. But if you do, just wait for it to harden and then you can pour the water out and melt the wax again.




Once the wax is melted, pour it over the egg cartons/lint. Let dry then just tear off as many as you need to place under the sticks to start the fire with. The cardboard and lint catch fire easily and the wax keeps it going for a long time so as the wood has plenty of time to catch fire.

Just a note, old spatulas, get brittle and break easily! hahaha!

Spare the rod....Soften the blow?

So i think there is only one thing worse than having to spank your child, having to sit and listen when someone else (ie your spouse) does it!
at the kids school, if you get a mark, it's a warning, two marks, one last chance, three marks and you fill out a think it through and have to have your parents sign it and return it the next day. when they were younger, they had colored fish, one time and one time only did frankie get a bad colored fish, and he got a spanking and grounded from some privelages. this standard is how we have kept him from doing anything bad (enough to get a think it through) in the years since.
until yesterday. 3 marks, and a think it through! he did not want to tell his dad. he knows mom can be a softee on these things, and so does she, which is why dad has to be involved. he asked me not to tell his dad, i said i wasn't going to, he was! so we get home and i call chris upstairs and he tells frankie to hurry up, he had to be on a business call in 4 mins. now as bad as it seems, i am doing a little dance in my head, he can't surely do too much punishing in that short of time. so frankie blurts out what happened. chris informs him he will be back up to deal with him AFTER the call! dunn dunn dunnnnn! so frankie heads to his room, and the tears fall. i go to him, to discuss how just the night before, we discussed, being responsible and accepting the consequences to our actions and not trying to get out of them. he asked shouldn't he get some credit for telling the truth! i said, yes and he will not loose privelages due to that, but he still has consequences. he said, ya it wont' save my butt. i said no, the only to soften that blow would be a couple extra pair of underwear and a soft pair of pants. and i left. well chris gets off his call, and asks for the wooden spoon. he asks how many whacks i recommend. i said no more than three. so he calls frankie downstairs, as he goes by (i'm picturing dead man walking) i see he still has his school pants on, and feel bad that he didn't atleast change pants. i kept waiting to hear the spanks....nothing, i kept waiting to hear the wails....nothing, finally they start to come up, first frankie, and close behind, chris. as frankie is winding the corner, chris says "wait, what do you have on under your pants" frankie mumbles extra underwear, chris is about to add to the spanking, and i interceded and said i told him to and sent frankie on his way. chris is having a hard time not laughing, yet he was mad at me at the same time. i said, i did not interfere with the spanking, i just offered advice! and i told him he needed to now go in and make sure frankie remembers how much he loves him still.... we go in to frankie's room, and chris asks how many extra pairs he has on, and frankie says, three, so he tells him to take off the extra pairs and put them away so not to accumulate extra laundry (we always have tons of laundry! ) so as frankie takes off his school pants we discover, underneath he had also added a pair of fleece pajama bottoms! now we both were having a hard time not laughing! but chris informed both frankie and i, next time it will be a bare butt spanking! :-( i still refuse to feel bad, all i did was offer advice and i'm sticking to that!) however chris did think it odd, he didn't hear the crack sound when he spanked him, and that frankie received the spanking without fighting nor did he cry as much as usual....what's a mom to do, baby steps to letting her kids get what they deserve......

Spring Yard Work

WARNING! my garden/yard work blogs will probably be boring to most, but i want to keep them so when my kids are older they can look back at our experience while hopefully working in their own yards/gardens! Ahhh! i love spring, however, all the yard work that goes into it.....well i don't mind alot of it while the weather is cool. but it can be expensive and seem to take forever to get all the things done you want to. however for the first time, we have made a list, and prioritized it. for instance, the garage can wait no longer.....as you can see it is in DESPERATE need of new paint....

and the trellises around the pool may come all the way down to be used in the garden and then plant bushes around the bottom, however that decision has not been official yet, due to....the money portion to buy the bushes. however i am happy to say that stupid fence thing around the burner barrel is gone as of today. we will till all that area up (where every year it turns to weeds!) and plant weed and seed grass seed there, and just let it be grass for a few years. however the old clothes line pole, is taking alot of work to remove, seems they dug to china, then poured cement then put the pole in. it is gonna take more time and effort to get that baby out of there!

Frankie and Chris have been working on cutting down the branches in some of the trees to open up more areas that the sun can reach on the ground. i missed getting the shot of frankie in the tree on the ladder and sawing away, but he did and i let him....that's a hard one, i just knew he was gonna fall or cut a finger off! but i am happy to say he did neither and he did a very good job! here he is opening up so the sun can reach the grapes we planted next to the arbor last year. the front ones really took off cuz they were able to get alot of sun, but the ones behind were blocked alot from the tree's branches.

however there was some new growth on all the grape plants, no mater how small!

there also is the work of the garden this year.....last year we left grass in between the rows, something i had read in a book. i really don't care for that book any more, because it caused me tons more work keeping the grass from growing around all the plants! this year, we tilled it all up and expanded. therefor, not knowing how many rows i could fit in and how many plants in the rows, gracie and i measured it all out (where the sticks are) and then we also made a path down the middle (that's what grace is doing) that we will cover with straw and planks to walk on later. we already got the peas in last week, so i still need to plant a few other cold hardy plants then we wait until may, where all the plants i have started in doors will get transplanted and the rest direct sowed.

we wer very pleased with how the cherry tree we planted two years ago shot STRAIGHT up this spring! we thought it was a goner when one of the dogs dug it up that first year! the dog is gone but the tree is luckily still here! lol

the peach tree we planted just last year, got blooms on it this spring, we were extremly suprised to see that, chris said we'll probably get tiny peaches that are all pits but it's still exciting! we still have a LONG way to go in this wonderful yard of ours, but i am glad to have my large (to me) yard to do soooo many things, and plant so many things that we can rely on to feed ourselves instead of settling for high priced, low quality produce that seems to be the norm here lately. it's gonna take us awhile to get everything, but one day, i will garden like it was second nature, can food in my sleep and kill chickens with my eyes closed (but i have to wait until next year for that experience!)