My Family

I have been meaning to do this since I started my blog, but hadn't gotten the chance.  I want to introduce my family.  I am still deciding how public I want this blog to be and how much I am going to share.  I personally like to share.  Sometimes I am told that I share a little too much.  I would like to publish a book someday and be a famous author, and then I am sure people will know more about me than I would like them too. 
My husband is a fairly private person.  He is reserved in what he shares, even with family.  He is good at keeping secrets, which I find very irritating at times.  One of his hobbies is photography.  He has some amazing pictures.  I personally like the pictures of family.  He is more interested in nature.  I accuse him of not taking pictures of people, but he says it is about 50/50.  You can check out his pictures on his Flicker Page.  His online name is Thomas, so that is the name I will use for him on this blog. 
I have two children.  My daughter is almost four.  Some adjectives to describe her would be sweet, silly, adorable, and loving, as well as, irritating, obstinate, and opinionated. She can go from cute to hysterical in seconds and back again.  We love her a lot, but some times she really does drive us crazy. Her current obsession is anything related to the Disney princesses.
My son is seven months old.  He is one of the sweetest babies I have ever met.  My cousin recently told me at a family get together that she had heard the term happy baby, but she didn't know they exist. He really is a happy baby.  Just like all babies though he does get cranky when he is tired or hungry, and he is hungry all the time!  It has been fun to see him grow and change.  He definitely is starting to get a personality all his own, which is so different from his sister. I am not sure if this might end up being a bad thing, but around the house he gets called brother more than his actual name. I am still deciding if I will use their names, pseudonyms, or just keep referring to them as my daughter and son.  I will probably go with alternate names...but what?

Here is a picture of the four of us that we did for our Christmas cards, which I never got sent out. 

Game Night

I really should be going to bed, but I just wanted to take a minute and write something tonight.  It was the monthly family game night tonight, as well as my mom' s birthday party.  It was a lot of fun.  We had Papa Murphy's Pizza, our favorite.  We also played my new game I got for Christmas called Buzz Word.  It was a lot of fun.  It has clues for common sayings or things that have the same word in the answer like apple, or baby. It was nice becasue the older crowd liked it and did well, but those of us who aren't quite as old did well too.  Everyone could be involved and have fun.

My cute little sweetie asked if she could sleep over at Grandma's house with her cousins.  I told her she had to ask Grandma.  I think that it took most of her courage to ask.  It was so cute to hear her say, "Grandma, Can I sleep over?" Then as she was going back down the stairs, "I get to sleep over!"  She was a little upset that her cousin had brought her pajamas and she hadn't.  She wasn't so sure about borrowing a t-shirt.

I better get to bed now.  I am supposed to go to aerobics tomorrow and a baby shower.  My second one this week. We might also think about doing our taxes.  I have a stack of papers to grade still, as well as the house to clean.  The end of another busy week, and the next one doesn't start with a holiday.It will be March, which is here way sooner than I think it should be!


I will end with a quote from one of our favorite going to bed books:

"Goodnight stars
Goodnight air
Goodnight noises everywhere"

-Goodnight Moon by Margret Wise Brown

Presidents Weekend

It was Presidents Day weekend.  I wanted to share some of the things I accomplished

• Cleaned my bedroom
• Cleaned the family room
• Cleaned the office/ baby room
• Worked on the kitchen, but didn't get it all the way finished
• Did several batches of Laundry and put them away
• Worked on homeowork
• Played a game with my family
• Cooked dinner for my family (brothers and sisters and thier kids)
• Took a long nap

I felt very productive this weekend, and I had fun.  I think that every weekend should be a long weekend.  The only think I should have done and didn't was go to aerobics.  I didn't make it on Saturday like I usually do, so I made arrangements to go on Monday.  I then slept in instead of getting up.  It was good though to get some extra sleep, and I know my daughter needed it too.

First Snowman

Back in Novemberish, I bought my three year old daughter a new pair of boots and snow pants. We then proceeded to wait for a good snowstorm. I have been waiting all season. There were a few that were decent, but they always seemed to come at night. By the time we got home from school it was always too crusty to play in or it was gone. There was a couple of times she got to wear them to help her dad shovel the driveway.

That is actually how tonight started, except it was me shoveling instead of her dad. It started raining while we were out shopping. It then turned to snow. I couldn’t believe how big the flakes were. It was also very wet. We have a North facing driveway. If it doesn’t get cleaned off it never melts. Because Thomas wasn’t going to be home from work until late, I decided to shovel it. My daughter had actually gotten her shovel and started working on it before I even finished getting the groceries put away. After I came out she helped for a little bit, but then moved on to shoveling the grass. She has always liked snowman. One of the books she likes is Snowman at Night. 

She had started picking up snowballs and I could tell that she was trying to make a snowman. When I finished the driveway I showed her how to put the ball down and roll it so that it picks up more snow and gets bigger. It worked really well, except that it was also picking up all of the leaves we hadn’t raked up in the fall. I had the first ball in placed and the second ready to be put on top, but it wouldn’t go. I had made it too big. Because the snow was so wet, it was also really heavy, and I couldn’t lift it. After several tries I finally got the second ball on top of the first. Next I made the head and put that on top. My daughter then says that the snowman is cold. As I said she knows that snowman wear scarves and hats. I couldn’t think of a scarf I wanted to leave out in the snow. Before I had time to respond to she said he needed a carrot for a nose. This I could do for her. We went inside to find a carrot. When we got back we were dismayed to find that her snowman had fallen over. Like I said, It was too heavy. The weight of the upper two balls had crushed the bottom one. I was able to turn it slightly and put back the second ball. She ended up with a short, leaf covered snowman. I don’t think it was quite what she was looking for, but it was a snowman.

Today after church, she had to help her daddy  shovel the driveway again.  Once again she wandered away from the task at hand to play with her snowman.  The nose wasn't quite right, so she tried to fix it. She couldn't quite get it right.  Eventually the carrot broke. She picked it up out of the snow and started snacking on it. Eventually it fell over again.  It wasn't the best looking snowman, but she sure had fun. 

Mold

I do not like mold.  I do like finding mold places it should not be.  This could be part of why I don't like cleaning out the fridge.  Mold is smelly and gross; although it does sometimes has a surprising array of colors. Once, when I was younger, I got a container of sour cream out of the fridge.  I opened it enough to see that there were green spots and went running away crying, "Eww, Ewww, Eww."  My mother came to investigate.  She opened the container and started laughing.  It wasn't sour cream after all but leftovers in the form of white sauce with peas.  I felt silly for thinking that it was the dreaded mold.  Another experience that I think is a little surprising is when I found a piece of bread in the cupboard that was just starting to mold. rather tan get upset (my normal mode of operation, as illustrated above, I asked my sister if she had done the mold unit in her biology class yet.  She had not, and I knew the teacher offered extra credit for mold samples.  I put the moldy bread away in an out of the way cupboard.  A few weeks later, My sister said she needed a mold sample for school.  Out came the very moldy bread. She had the best mold sample.  Now the real point of this post is not reminiscence, but a current problem.  Sippy Cups!  My daughter has a problem returning the cups to the kitchen when she is finished with them.  Generally she loves milk.  We discover cups under the bed that have been there for days, sometimes weeks. We take them down to the kitchen and open them up to rinse them out.  You are hit with this overwhelming urge to barf and run from the room to get some fresh air. Lately, my daughter has been constipated.  In an effort to help with that we have been giving her fruit juice instead of milk.  Juice does not curdle and smell the way that milk does.  It molds. Even cups that are only a couple days old have these patties of green and yellow.  Most of our cups are cheap disposables.  Our nice cups got left in the office for a week and they both had black mold coating the inside.  I couldn't hardly stand to rinse them out. I am thinking about throwing them away; although, my mother-in-law says that bleach works.  I am considering getting rid of the cups altogether.  After all she is three and doesn't really need them any more. When asked when she will be big enough for regular, she responds with,  "In three days."  One of her most common responses to any question.

What does it mean to be unique?

We all think that we are unique, but when you set out to do anything on the internet- like set up a new blog - you find that someone has had most thoughts before you. I have been inspired lately by the thoughts of my friends and fellow bloggers. It seems like something that I would enjoy. I want to be able to record my thoughts as well as some of my life with those who care. That is why I set out to make my own blog. I thought this blog would have more of a beginning, but I was stumped by the first question they asked: Name of Blog? I then spent way too long trying to come up with something unique that fit me and reflected what I want this blog to be. I am tired and must hope that it will improve as it goes, and not become like many blogs I found...abandoned. (Why do people take good URLs and then do nothing with them?)

And so, the adventures begin.