Gardening

We spent our Saturday putting together the square foot gardens. I am super thankful that this year we have a back yard to put them in.

Lana was a very good helper and great at planting all the seeds.

Tanner was a good helper handing dad his tools and playing with the tools when not in use.

He was also a pro at getting himself uber dirty. I cannot comprehend just how dirty this boy can make himself in such a short amount of time. This is taken before noon.

Paul took care of all the hard work and dirty gross parts. Without him, our gardens would not exist!

Garden #1

Garden #2

The first sign of spring

The hammock has been hung!

Making my own laundry detergent

So I've been wanting to try this for a while but A.) I've had apprehensions about whether it worked just as good as "the real stuff" and B.) do you know how hard it is to find Arm and Hammer Washing Soda in a small town? I finally had to order it online. FYI, it still amounted to way less money than actually shelling out $20 for another container of detergent.

A friend of mine made some and said it was super simple and easy and that it worked just a good as her other detergent. She pointed me at the Duggar Family Recipe and I figured that if this detergent works for a family of 20 something kids, then it's got to work for my little family of 4.

Duggar Recipe for Liquid Laundry Detergent

4 Cups - hot tap water
1 Fels-Naptha soap bar
1 Cup - Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda*
½ Cup Borax

- Grate bar of soap and add to saucepan with water. Stir continually over medium-low heat until soap dissolves and is melted.

-Fill a 5 gallon bucket half full of hot tap water. Add melted soap, washing soda and Borax. Stir well until all powder is dissolved. Fill bucket to top with more hot water. Stir, cover and let sit overnight to thicken.

-Stir detergent and fill a used, clean, laundry soap dispenser half full with soap and then fill rest of way with water. Shake before each use. (will gel)

-Optional: You can add 10-15 drops of essential oil per 2 gallons. Add once soap has cooled.

-Yield: Liquid soap recipe makes 10 gallons.

-Top Load Machine- 5/8 Cup per load (Approx. 180 loads)

-Front Load Machines- ¼ Cup per load (Approx. 640 loads)

*Baking Soda will not work, nor will Arm & Hammer Detergent - It must be sodium carbonate!!

TIPS FOR LAUNDRY SOAP: We use Fels-Naptha bar soap in the homemade soap recipes, but you can use Ivory, Sunlight, Kirk's Hardwater Castile or Zote bars. Don't use heavily perfumed soaps. We buy Fels-Naptha by the case from our local grocer or online. Washing Soda and Borax can often be found on the laundry or cleaning aisle. Recipe cost approx. $2 per batch.

This was the most labor intensive part of the whole thing (and it wasn't even that hard). I happened to have Ivory soap in my cabinet, so I just used that.

Melting the soap took the most time (and that was maybe 5-7 minutes at the most).

.

Trying to find the Arm and Hammer Super Washing Soda was the biggest pain in the butt, until I figured out I could order it online for still relatively cheap.

Then I mixed them all together and VOILA! I guess we shall see tomorrow, it's supposed to thicken up. I've already got a few loads of laundry in the queue to test it out. Here's to squeezing a few more bucks out of the paycheck!

Poking marshmallows with toothpicks

So we are home this week with Lana on Spring Break. We didn't have anything planned, just a non-eventful "staycation". Monday was beautiful, except Tanner wouldn't let me run my errands. He threw a fit before I even got him out of the car in the Target parking lot. (Something about me not letting him bring his ginormous Little Tykes car into the store.) I just buckled him (and Lana) back up and went home. I made the kids play outside in the back yard and then later that afternoon we played with the neighborhood kids at the playground.

Tuesday I thought we'd try again. We were almost out of the house. I was in the bathroom doing Lana's hair when all the sudden I noticed how quiet it was in the house. Tanner?? Tanner??!! What are you doing???!! I come out to find him covered in a white powdery substance. No, not anthrax. Turns out Tanner discovered a open box of baking soda. Looking back I should've taken pictures but I was more concerned about getting it vacuumed up before the kids tracked it all over the house. Tanner already knew he was in trouble and headed straight for his room and closed the door. Luckily the rest of Tuesday was uneventful.

Today it is too cold to really enjoy being outside so we've spent all morning inside. The kids were getting a little crazy and I needed a few minutes free of crying, whining, tattle-tale-ing, screaming, etc. So I pulled out a bag of those nasty mini fruity marshmallows that the kids love so much, some toothpicks and let them go to town.

Lana made all sorts of contraptions.

• Rockets
• A compass (she didn't know what it was called, she called it the thing that points the direction)
• A rocket with a compass
• Shapes of all sorts
• A snowman
• And a whole bunch of hammers

Tanner enjoyed poking the marshmallows and making hammers (he was the one who first figured out the hammer shape and then Lana ran away with the idea).

And then of course, he devoured his creations! 30 whole minutes of peace and quiet. Totally worth cleaning up Tanner's spit out, mushed up marshmallows he left for me on the floor.

Decisions, decisions

My kids are not fantastic decision makers. I blame it on myself. I will admit that I struggle with being indecisive. Anyway, to help my children in their decision making (and to save my sanity), I only give them two choices. "Choice #1 or Choice #2. You choose". Today after church while we were waiting for lunch to get out of the oven, Lana turns to Paul and says,

"Daddy, let's play toys."

Paul pauses and says, "How about you bring me a book and I'll read to you."

Lana obviously did not want to read books because her response to that was, "Daddy, do you want to play dolls or play bears? You choose."

Ha! My kids really are listening!

A memorable birthday

#28 should go down in my birthday history as one of my most memorable birthdays I've had so far.

The original plan was to head to the Baton Rouge Temple for our Stake Temple day. Unfortunately Mr. Stomach virus (who shared the love with us the week before) decided he was not finished with Lana on Thursday night and still Friday morning. So we stayed at home. Before Mr. Stomach virus showed up we had a babysitter lined up for Saturday for Paul and I to go out. Well, our sitter called Friday night with Strep and we most definitely didn't want that in our house in addition to the pukes. So we call around and finally get another sitter lined up. Saturday morning comes around and Lana is still sick. Back up babysitter canceled. By the end of the day I think we were all a little stir crazy and Lana hadn't been sick since the early morning hours and was keeping down food. So to get us out of the house for a bit we decide to head to Outback to try and salvage my birthday. The food was mediocre and poor Lana was just dragging.

Fast forward a week to Friday. Paul calls me up and says the babysitter will be there in 45 minutes. We are going out. And we did. We went and saw Avatar and it was awesome. I haven't seen a movie that I enjoyed that much in a while. Better yet, no sick-whiny-crying kids at my side for 3 glorious hours! Thank you Paul for that fantastic post birthday surprise!