A beautiful day

I have nothing to blog about but feel I've had nothing to blog about for some time. So, I will give you an ever-exciting day-in-the-life. I love reading other's accounts of their days. The really exciting part is that no two days are ever even a little bit alike.

5:30 Woke up to my cell phone alarm going off because I forgot to disable it from the day before....Its disabled now. Made coffee. Ate breakfast. No need to wait around, you know!
6ish - Kids wake up while I'm watching the news. We all snuggle under the blanket on the couch.
6:30 - Start researching other adoption agencies online. Convinced we're working with the best. (had to look, though)
7:00 Doug home from the gym. Crawl back into bed to cuddle with him.
8:00 Drag my butt out of bed again.
9:40 Paying bills. Call friend to see if she can get together on spring break!
10:00 Intend to be at friend, Jenni's, house with coffee but start tidying up the kitchen, sweeping, etc.
10:55 actually arrive at friend's house. Stay and chat for a little over an hour. A total blast to be able to connect!
12:00 Go pick up tax stuff from the accountant. Woo hoo!!! We don't owe extra! Thank you God. Head out to Doug's office.
1:00 Calling husband from office to find out where he might be. Did I mentiong its 1? Make kids lunch.
2:00 Dear husband arrives. My work is already done. :)
3:00 ish - finish school with kids with no contest from Ty. Drama queen acts up as anticipated. She calms down and completes the work.
4:00 back in the office to finish up.
4:40 hit the road to go home.
5:10 eating dinner alone. Kids are playing. Don't like my dinner. Oh well, I guess they don't have to eat tonight.
6:00 Kids are playing. I'm vegging.
7:00 Wheel of Fortune. One of my favorites.
7:15 Youngest gets her feelings hurt and begins to meltdown. Take care of huge fit while finishing laundry.
7:30 still melting.
7:45 Still melting. Laundry done.
8:00 Calm again (ahhhh) Reading to all three on the couch. Why do they make those kids books so darn long!
8:15 Daddy home. We say a prayer for our little brother somewhere out there, and for all the kids to have a sleep over at their friends homes, and for their birthdays to come soon (a bit of a fixation for them all nowadays). Clean up the play room "all the way."
9:05 Head to bed and find two kids in my bed. Shoo them off to bed. Watching Jon and Kate plus 8. Love that show! Makes me feel like I have it so easy.

That's it! Grateful for another day. Which brings me to my next point. I've been reading Holy Experience which is an amazing blog. She has been making a list of 1001 things she's thankful for. I'm going to copy her. Here's the beginning.

#1 Thankful for every day - the good, the bad and the ugly.
#2 Thankful for the husband snoring. At least I know he's breathing.
#3 Thankful for amazing friends (four of whom I know read this blog!)

Chub Club Update

Three pounds! Woo hoo! I'm thrilled with losing three lbs in a week. I think I'll go for another week. Makes me want to start exercising now :)

Easter

What's this? A picture of my children in their Easter outfits! I found this on our computer today. I didn't know my husband actually took a picture of them all dressed up before they completely destroyed their clothes with the gobs of chocolate they received.

We had a great Easter. We celebrated up at our new house on Saturday and I decided that I want to do a big egg hunt up there each year for all the little ones. It was really fun. My sister and her daughter were there (the platinum blonde, Zoe) and some family friends, Drake and Cruz. And then there was baby Aspen, but she's not hunting-age yet.
On Sunday, we went to church. My parents were at our house when I got home and had already given out loads of candy. There is always SO MUCH CANDY! And I won't let my kids eat it all, and Doug is Mr. Healthy these days, so that leaves ME!
Doug and I ended the day by torturing our children with a FREEZING COLD bike ride at the park. It was sunny when we left.... Madelyn was a shivering ball of ice when we finally quit. Didn't make it too far, but it was really fun to all be riding bikes together. This is actually the first time we've been able to that since Maddy can (kind of) ride her own bike now. We finished the night off by tucking the kids into bed so we could steal all the good chocolate. (We being me, myself and I)

We dyed eggs yesterday. It dawned on me today that I only have a few Easters left with Brooklyn where we will dye Easter eggs and hide them. Then she'll be too old for all that childish behavior. Only a few more years of dye stuck on their fingers for a few days, and finding real eggs a few weeks after Easter. I wish they would never grow up. Being a mom is so cool and such fun. It really sucks to put it in that perspective. (Glad I could bring you down a bit)
On that pathetic note, the Easter bunny will be bringing art supplies this year and money instead of chocolate. Mommy can't eat art supplies....or, maybe its more like mommy wont eat the art supplies. I have my limits, you know.
Hope you all have a great Easter. I want to see egg hunt pictures!

The Chub Club

This is what I feel like. That is a giant hippo STUFFED into the back seat of a car. No chance of moving. Seat buckling is questionable. Definitely can't reach its feet.
So I joined Weight Watchers tonight with my sister and her husband. The descent down the scale has begun....or will in an hour when I get up out of bed and start the day. I would post "before" pictures, but I really value the few readers I have. So I'll save the "before" pics for when I have some after pictures to go with them. ;)
I'm so proud of my brother in law. He was really nervous tonight and was hoping he wasn't the only guy there. We're all going to make a good team - Team Clump as we've so fondly named ourselves. We're going to be in this for the long haul. I figured it will take me AT LEAST A YEAR!!!! A year????? I'm getting hungry.

Pedro

So, the Women's Retreat was this weekend up in Leavenworth. We stayed at the Enzian motel, which has the BEST breakfast of any hotel ever! There were about 80 women. I was in such a bad mood when I arrived. I didn't really want to be there, but i went anyway. Turned out to be a good thing because I won the grand prize!!! A trip to Desert Canyon Resort for two nights and dinner, too!!! Woo Hoo in the words of my dear friend Pam. I was so excited I could have peeed my pants.
The theme was "Sharing the Gifts." Everyone was supposed to bring a gift to - you guessed it - share. Any remaining creativity that might be lurking in my brain refuses to come out and play, so I have nothing, nada, zilch to offer. I brought a Starbucks card, which, by the way, I would have loved to have come home with. But no, that was not to be the case this weekend.
In my one of my previous posts, I was ranting about all the doilies that were sure to appear at this retreat gauging from the ages of the ladies attending. But, oh, it got so much worse than doilies!
You know the kind of plastic that you wind yarn through? Remember? In third grade???? Well, somebody's third grader made a very nice place mat and set of coasters for my friend Wendy. It was....nice. My friend Rhonda got the yellow doily. And Pam got a nice, primary-colored, quilted centerpiece. And me? This is what I got.
Go ahead. Click on that picture to get a good look at it! Its like the Mexican hat dancer....but why?
It gets better. The dear lady who made "Pedro" as he's been so fondly named, also made papa and has mama on the way!

What, exactly, makes a person sit down and create this sort of thing? It serves me right.
On a better note, I did buy this fabulous purse that I absolutely love. My sister helped me pick it out.

Watch out, dear friends. Pedro may be making his way to your home!

Smile

I was preparing the kids another quality dinner - corn dogs, and only corn dogs - when I started to make the ketchup happy face (the kids totally freak out with excitement when I do that. Not that it should be a suprise since I do it EVERY TIME!). Then I realized I did it on my plate too!!! It just happened. I guess we're really happy at our house. The happiness just spills out when we're least expecting it. :)

Too Many Women in One Room

Tonight I went to the final planning meeting for our ladies retreat coming up this weekend. I don't even know why I'm on this committee. I think I signed up just so I could get out of the house and visit once in awhile (like I need an excuse). Normally, I really enjoy these committee things. This one has been different. Not so fun.

First of all, this committee has about six ladies on it, three of which are nurses. Now, if you happen to be a nurse, you know there comes with it a take-charge attitude which happens to be a good thing when you're responsible for people's lives. Not so good on a team when there are two others JUST LIKE YOU. Lucky for them, I have pretty much just sat back and watched everybody else do everything. The other two nurses, however, are in this subtle, passive-aggressive power struggle that has been so much fun to watch. Tonight was no exception.

The theme is something about gifts... not even sure what. And, of course, we're giving away gifts. But the gifts are SO LAME! They were thought of by 50 year old women if that says anything! Who wants a doile! NOT ME!!!!

So, besides watching the drama and descretely ridding myself of extra thread, I must admit I'd really just like to stay home this weekend. God must have something for me this weekend because I don't want to go. Not even a little bit. Well, except for going out to dinner with my friends. But other than that, I really DO NOT WANT TO GO!!!! We'll see how it turns out. Glad to have gotten that out. If you never visit my blog again, I totally understand.

On a much brighter note, the house is ready for a for sale sign. Maybe I'll put that up tomorrow. I've been saying that for, hmmm, about two and a half months now.

When life gives you peanuts....

We made peanut butter today. It was for a math project. We divided 100 peanuts into ten sets of ten and then learned about halves when we opened them up and separated the peanuts. For your information (because I know you're wondering) 100 peanuts makes about 1 cup of peanut butter. I've learned I will not be one of those make-your-own-peanut-butter moms. It was quite a bit of work. But it was fun for today.
So, you put the peanuts in the blender or food processor and add about 1T oil for each cup of peanuts and then add oil as needed to smooth it out. We're pretty used to natural PB without sugar, but this didn't quite taste the same. Could have used something, maybe some honey.
We decided to make cookies instead of PBJ sandwiches. Much better, if you ask me!
This was a very quick and easy recipe.

1 C PB
1 egg
1C sugar
1 tsp vanilla
Chocolate chips

Add first four ingredients together and form into little balls. Squish some chocolate chips onto the top. Bake at 350 for about 9-11 minutes or till slightly cracked on top. Don't overbake. Yummy!