We Went for a Walk...

...and Mommy took her camera along...

These big plastic tubes were just TOO picture-worthy...

Playing in the grass...

Posing for Mommy... kind of...

Priceless Faces...

Candy!!!

A "Big Owie"...

Phew!!!

We have had quite a day today! But let me back up a bit... I stayed up later than my bedtime last night to watch part of a movie with Mike. I actually watched all of "Dan in Real Life," which was a really fun movie. Then Mike watched "Beowulf and Grendel," which is just not my kind of movie, but I stayed up and watched the first part... until I decided that sleep was more important than watching the rest of the movie.

Anyway, I ended up sleeping in until 8 this morning, which just throws my whole day off. I really need to leave the movie watching for Friday and Saturday nights! I made my espresso and had a lovely sprouted sesame seed bagel with onion and chive cream cheese, natural cheddar cheese and broccoli sprouts.

We picked up JJ from school, then headed over to Bass Pro to check out the big fish tank and the (dead, stuffed, but still decidedly cool) animals there. We rode the elevator and walked around and had a grand old time, and the boys were so well behaved! It was wonderful.

Then we went to Arby's and picked up lunch and took it to Mike's office, where we all had a lovely picnic on the picnic table located in between a big field of tall, waving grass and a charming little lake with lily pads in it and a walking trail around it. After we finished eating, we all walked around the lake. We were going to play Pooh-Sticks -- if you haven't seen Winnie the Pooh, "Pooh-Sticks" is a game in which you all choose sticks, then drop them on one side of a bridge and whoever's stick gets to the other side first is the winner -- but the bridge at Daddy's office lake was located just on top of a dam-like thing that just wouldn't work for Pooh-Sticks. So we abandoned our sticks and finished our walk.

We all took a restroom break inside Daddy's office, which is just the ultimate in cool places to the boys. Then we came home and spent quite some time playing in the back yard on the swings. We decided another walk was in order, and walked down the trail behind our house, over the bridge (no water under that bridge) and up to the road, then back again. Yeah, I got my exercise in today! Chasing three active little boys around outside would tire anyone out! They will sleep well tonight, though, and they had SO much fun collecting roly-poly bugs and yellow dandelions and making wishes on big puffy white dandelions before blowing them to pieces... yeah, it was worth it.

I am enjoying sitting right now, and am watching Griffin work on a puzzle and Sammy play on the little VTech computer. I'm really looking forward to tonight when Mike comes home, and am hoping that maybe, just maybe I can have some time to work on cards for my website. I am running pretty low, and I have so many ideas floating around in my head, I just need to sit down and put them "on paper." With my new early bedtime, I need to use my evenings wisely and not waste my free time!

Okay, time to fix dinner. We'll be having cabbage and mushrooms over Ramen noodles tonight. Um, without the mushrooms. Because we don't have any. I think we'll have beets too. Mike's mom makes the most awesome pickled beets, and we have been enjoying them with many meals. They are very versatile, and go with a lot of different foods, so we pair them with at least one meal a week, it seems. Yummy!

Breakfast

It appears I will be getting up much earlier than my usual wakey-wakey time for the rest of the summer! I will need to be up and ready by 6:30 now!! We have another little boy who will be joining us for the summer, and he gets here early! I'm so excited to have a reason for getting up early again. I'm such a morning person!

It's disgusting, really.

I was always the one who showed up to work at McDonald's (that was over 10 years ago, I can't believe it!) at 6am -- which meant that I would have been up since 4:30 -- bright and perky and smiling and driving everybody else there nuts because they were tired and groggy and sometimes hung over from the night before. I soon learned to contain my excitement at getting to watch the sun rise every day, and just lean out the drive-through window (where I was usually placed because I was the fastest moving person that early in the morning) and soak in all of God's beauty while the morning dew evaporated and the sun warmed up the earth.

I love the smell of coffee brewing, or in my case now, espresso, thanks to Mike's famous poker-playing skillz. He won me an espresso machine, and I am learning how to brew the perfect cup for me. I broke the glass pot right off the bat, so I'm going to be buying one, but I can handle $13... lots better than paying for a new espresso machine.

My breakfast this morning has been:

*a banana, before my quiet time

*Bible reading... I am reading my new Women of Faith "The Message" Bible (Happy Mother's Day from my family!), and I love it! Today I read Genesis 9, where God established the rainbow as the sign of His promise to never again kill every living thing with a flood. I also read Matthew 1-2, about Jesus' birth and the wise men and Herod killing all of the baby boys ages 2 and under (what a horrid person he was!) and then I flipped over to Proverbs and read Proverbs 31, because I wanted to see what it was like in "The Message" version. Oh, wow. It was still just as convicting as ever, if not more...

*a cup of organic espresso with organic cream and Hershey's syrup (just negated all of the organic stuff there!)

*a mug filled with organic whole milk yogurt and topped with a generous helping of Flax Plus Pumpkin Seed Granola

Yummy stuff!

Now the boys are awake, and Sammy is sitting on the kitty, so I need to go run some interference!

Sometimes I Wake Up Grumpy...

... and sometimes I let him sleep.

Sammy woke up from his nap hungry for Cheddar Bunnies, and nothing else would satisfy. I appeased the little monster, and he soon turned into quite a happy fellow.

Fresh Face

So, how do you like it? I know, I know... music, how annoying, right? Well, if you love it, let me know, and I'll keep it. If you hate it, let me know, and I'll keep it. Just kidding! If everyone hates it, I'll get rid of it. Or you can just turn your speakers off. *wink, wink* If you can't hear the music, you may need to turn your speakers ON, or you may just need to grab yourself a cup of coffee to wake up!

I love this new format, I was getting a bit tired of BROWN everything. Let me know what you think!

Boy Play

Happy Kitty

Yes, he is in the birdbath. It is the closest to the sun he can get without climbing onto the roof.

Pansies -- Before, During and After

I'm sitting here while three little boys are chowing down on bowls of macaroni and cheese. They love that stuff! And therefore, so do I! It sure makes lunchtime easy. Throw some carrot sticks or peas on the plate, and you have yourself a meal.


Okay, I'm writing because I want to try a little experiment. My pansies desperately need water. They look pathetic. They were all happy and perky this morning, but as soon as the sun came around, they began to wilt. So I'm going to give them water and take pictures every 5 minutes. This should be fun!


Here they are pre-water.

And this is every 5 minutes thereafter.

and just so you can compare, here's the "before"...and a couple of close-ups of the "after"...

Fun stuff, huh? In case you weren't counting, that took 50 minutes. I'm such a dork! You know you have too much time on your hands when...

Menu for May 6

Here is our menu for today. Just so that I can record it for posterity, or something. I might start posting my menu more regularly, now that I have SO much time to blog!

Breakfast

scrambled eggs with melted cheese
country gravy with sausage (I cut sausage links into chunks so that I can eat around them)
waffles with maple syrup


Lunch

deli turkey on bagels with lettuce, cream cheese, vinegar and oil, oregano, green onions
OR
leftover Little Caesar's cheese pizza
salad with homemade orange marmalade (fresh from the farmer's market!) vinaigrette dressing


Dinner

all-beef hot dogs on the grill -- chicken breast for me
all the fixin's -- warm buns, ketchup, mustard, relish
baked mozzarella sticks
steamed asparagus spears

Meetin' Time!

Oh, how I love Stampin' Up! meetings! We have a card club that meets once a month and we make a couple of cards and talk and hang out and, oh yeah, order a bunch of really fun stuff from Stampin' Up! :) It's a happy time. And this month the meeting was at MY house!! Which means I am the "hostess" and get all of the hostess goodies you get when you... hostess... a party. There really was no better way to word that. Or maybe there was, but I'm in a hurry to go play with my last month's order, so I'm not paying attention to grammar.



Anyway, I didn't take pictures of the meeting, but just picture a bunch of giddy women sitting around a table (okay, was I the ONLY giddy one there? nah) stamping, embossing, punching, drooling, and eating Ghirardelli -- I totally just butchered that spelling but I'm too lazy to get up and go look at the brownie box -- triple chocolate fudge brownies. Yeah, it was a good night. I had the worst headache before everyone got here, but amazingly enough it was gone by the time the meeting started! Well, it could be because I treated it with my one-two knock-em-dead headache killer combo. Caffiene and Rapid-Release Tylenol. No headache stands a chance. The chocolate didn't hurt, either, I'm sure. So now I am still wide awake, when my schedule tells me I should be going to bed in half an hour. Not gonna happen. So you get to sit there and read this rambling blog, and maybe look at some cute pictures of my animals, if I ever get around to posting them. ;)



Griffin informed me today that I need to add "reading time" to the schedule. I have stopped reading to them in their bedroom right before naptime, because that just draws the bedtime routine on for WAY too long, and they expect it Every. Single. Time. So I've stopped. We sat down to read this morning halfway in between breakfast and lunch (we were obviously not using the schedule because if we were, it would have been time to go outside and play), and the boys just loved it. Even Sammy sat still... well, okay, he paused while running around the living room... to listen to how the Magic School Bus with Ms. Frizzle's class in it got shrunk (got shrunk? I don't know...) and went inside of a moldy old log and learned all about reusing old things, recycling and not trashing something just because it is old, moldy and...old. Good times.

Oh, okay, the pictures are finally done loading to Blogger, so here they are!

Now Featuring....

I'm expanding my card business to include... beer bottles! Okay, just kidding. I actually just made 12 of these, and I figured I'd see if anyone likes them enough to buy one! They'll be $5 each. They're actually root beer bottles, but when they are decorated, they make a great vase for a single flower. Aren't they cute? Don't you just want to buy one? ;)

What Day Is It, Anyway?

I have been confused since Wednesday of last week, and have been a day ahead since then. This wasn't so fun last week when I thought it was Friday and it was actually Thursday, but it did work out to my advantage today when I woke up and was going about my morning getting ready and playing with the boys. Then I saw the clock and went to wake Mike up. It was 9:06 and I knew that if he wanted to come home from work at a reasonable time, he'd better go in soon. So I woke him up and told him the time, and he was like "OH, I forgot to set my alarm!" and was about to jump out of bed when all of a sudden I realized that it was Sunday. Oh. Yeah. WHEW! One more day of freedom.

 Anyway, this weekend has been so much fun for me! I discussed it with Mike, and he has given me the "go ahead" to make Saturday mornings my own. I love going to the farmer's market, so I got up at 6:30 (I know! ME!!! Up before 7! It was amazing.) and headed on over to see what goodies I would come across. There was a lady selling jars of jelly and preserves that I just couldn't pass up, so I grabbed an orange marmalade for us (yeah, okay, for ME) and a sugar free strawberry for Bonnie, which she let me taste, and it was fabulous!

I also picked up a big bunch of green onions and a marvelous-looking bunch of asparagus. Oh yeah, and a basil plant. It's just a baby, but it already has a bunch of nice big leaves on it!

No pictures from the farmer's market trip, but here are a couple we took when we went up to bed on Friday night.

Griffin has been making his way into our bed almost every night while we are busy doing other things before we go to bed. We almost always find him under the covers, snoozing, but this time he was sprawled out in a very uncomfortable-looking position, and I just had to get a picture of those dirty toes.


Anyway, back to Saturday... After the farmer's market, I came back to our subdivision, where the yearly garage sale was in full swing. It was almost 8am, which anyone who is an experienced garage "saler" knows is almost too late to find all of the really great deals that the garage sale giver has unsuspectingly undermarked. You know, the stuff that is actually worth (to you!) a LOT more than what is being asked for the item. So here are some things that I found.




The wall hanging is called a French memo board, and I'll slip pictures and other memorabilia under the criss-crossing ribbons. It was $1.50.

A Little Tikes "mountain thing" that the boys are having SO much fun racing their Hot Wheels on. Mike even went next door to talk to the neighbors who were participating in the garage sale, and they had some Hot Wheels they were going to give the boys when they found out that Mike was about to go buy some, but Mike had the boys pay 5 cents for each Hot Wheels car so that they could learn about money. So cute! And it cost me... $2.

I got a big pile of books ranging from The Magic School Bus to Tonka Repairs to The Fuzzy Porcupine to The Puppy Tales Collection to The Fairyland Storybook to Where Fish Go In Winter... and that's not all of them! All for $5.

After the garage sales, I met up with Bonnie and we went on a little Saturday morning adventure. We drove up "to the city" to a very unique restaurant that has 66 different omelets to choose from, and 3-inch-tall biscuits, and crispy potato chunks, and good gravy! It was all so yummy, and I ate too much, but it was such a good meal, and the atmosphere in the restaurant is so fun... it's like an old-time diner. They even sell cakes there that are like a foot and half tall. Amazing! The food there is just delicious.

After breakfast, we went back to Bonnie's so she could feed Diamond, who had been silent as a mouse the whole time we were driving and eating. She went from silent to screaming really quickly while we were on our way out of the "big city," though, so we hightailed it home. After Diamond was happy, we went to get drinks at the gas station and headed over to our original destination: Antique Mall Heaven. Not its actual name, but it could be. There are hundreds of individual booths set up, and it would take literally all day to look at everything in the store. We had a time limit, because we were both headed over to a birthday party in the afternoon, so we looked only at the things we were interested in. I ended up with this:





I will use this beauty to hold all of my ribbon in my scrapbooking room. I was planning on using it to hold utensils in my kitchen, but it is too tall! I hadn't factored in the height of the jar versus the height of my cooking tools, but I LOVE the jar, so I'll put it to good use. It would make a great cookie jar except for the fact that the jar's lid has a unique scent to it that I fear may affect the scent of any cookies that were to go inside. I won't need to use the lid if I use it just for ribbon! It was $18... the most expensive purchase of the day.

Then today, which, it turned out, was Sunday(!!!), I got to meet Christy at Children's Orchard, one of our favorite children's resale stores, and go shopping for some shirts for Sammy. I ended up with quite the selection of shirts for him, as well as three pairs of sandals, one for Sammy (he has a pair of Griffin's from last year that were passed down) and two for Griffin. They are about to outgrow their beloved KU crocs, and I don't want to get to the middle of summer and not be able to find a pair of sandals for them. Because that's the way it usually happens around here. I wait until the boys really NEED something (usually something seasonal, like mittens or coats or... sandals) and then go looking for it, only to find that my only choices are everyone else's castoffs. Well, not this time! This time they got "cute" sandals -- at least that's what Sammy has been calling them all afternoon. "Cute, Mommy." He really likes his lime green Speedo sandals. I must admit, I think they're cute too.


Most of the shirts I got were $2.00 to $4.00, with the vast majority of them being $2.99. I just love the Orchard!! Their motto is "Find a Treasure, Save a Fortune" and it's so true! They also have lots of toys and games and puzzles, movies, cribs, bedding, swings... anything you might want! Oh, yeah, and we also found some great little baby girl things for Diamond. The cutest little hot pink sandals, some dresses and some shoes that she might fit into by the time she's 3 years old. Tee hee. But they were so cute! Actually, they were only a size 2, so she might be in them when she's... 6 months old? I'm not sure how baby shoe sizing works. Griffin wears a 9, and Sammy is in a 7 or 8. But they have really wide feet.
Anyway, I got 19 shirts, 3 pairs of shorts, a pair of Hot Wheels pajamas, and 3 pairs of sandals... oh, and this beauty...

I call it the "two-fer chair"... it's like it was made just for Griffin and Sammy! They are actually sitting in it right now. :)
So all of that for the grand total of $130!! I couldn't believe it when she told me my total. That's less than a week's worth of groceries, for all of that stuff!!!!

Did you notice that I was excited? Yeah... it's been a good weekend. :)

Sandbox time os one of Griffin and Sammy's favorite things to do. It's even on the schedule! Well, okay, so it doesn't say "sandbox time," it actually says "Outside." But it might as well be Sandbox Time because they spend most of their time outside filling up buckets, burying each other, dumping sand in each other's hair... this must be the boy equivalent to playing with each other's hair, because my sis and I used to play with each other's hair. We would have been thoroughly scolded by the other sister and/or "told on" if one of us would have DARED put something as dirty as sand in the other's hair.

The boys are usually thoroughly dirty, worn out, and smelling of little boy sweat when they come inside. The first thing we do is ruffle their hair to get all (most) of the sand out so that it doesn't find its way into all of the cracks and crevices of our house -- which it usually does anyway.

They are happily playing away with Play-Doh right now with their cousins Miguel and Brianna. So fun!