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!

St. Jude's Trike/bike-A-Thon

Let me just preface this post with: I am a crappy school mom. Thank goodness I get to "practice" with Lana and that this is only pre-school.

Lana came home with the St. Jude's Fundraising packet about 2 weeks ago. I put it on the bar top in the kitchen and forgot about it. I guess it got buried with old mail and such and then thrown away because when I pulled the reminder flyer out of Lana's backpack yesterday the packet was no where to be found. Way to drop the ball for the cancer foundation (which multiplies the guilt by at least a million). After Paul talked me out of banging my head against the brick wall for being the crappiest school mom of the year, I got out a big envelope, threw in some cash and signed a quick permission slip on the top to allow Lana to ride in the Trika-A-Thon.

Thank goodness I did because this girl had a blast. She was so excited when I told her that she would get to ride her bike at school with her friends. Tanner and I stopped by to watch her make her laps and snap a few pictures.


Tanner was not really happy that everyone else was riding bikes and he wasn't. Sorry Tanner. Maybe next year bud.



I fixed Lana's helmet after I took the picture. I guess the teachers didn't want to take out her pony tail so they just propped the helmet on top of her head. Nice.




These were just the kids from the Pre-K 4 classes (pre-k 2 and 3 went earlier). It was a little crazy at first and I was almost positive that someone was going to get run over or we were going to have a 10 bike pile up or something. But the kids did great. Most of them watched where they were going and Lana got through unscathed (phew!). I guess they really were listening to the bike safety lessons!

Lana's Valentine Day Party

Thursday was Lana's Valentine Day party at school. She came prepped with her Lightning McQueen (for the boys) and Disney Princess (for the girls) Valentine cards. I made her write out each one with her classmates names and also her name on there for practice. Some were barely legible but at least she could say she did it all by herself. It was obvious that the parents of a few of the kids did all their Valentine stuff which to me is a little disappointing. Lana had more fun putting the cards together than she did handing them out. She also decorated a hand sanitizer bottle with stickers for her teacher Ms. Monika.



Tanner and I were a little late so we missed the cupcake action (I'm okay with that, trust me.) The kids had made two, one for them and one for their parent. I guess Lana was pretty ravenous because she ate mine before I got there.



Here's Lana holding her Valentine's stash.



Happy (over-rated) Valentines Day!

Snow Day!

The forecast was calling for 5-9 inches of snow beginning Thursday night and into today. When we went to bed the snow was just starting to stick to the grass. I guess it changed back to rain after that because when Paul woke up at 4am and looked out the window there wasn't any additional snow on the ground. The snow picked back up after that and it snowed up until about 1:30pm. I think here at our house we only got about 2-3 inches of snow. Not "Snowmageddon" by any means but it was enough to make the kids happy, wet and cold!


The back yard.


Some random guys truck who happened to be parked outside the front of our house. I would have taken a picture of the front of the house but really I just didn't want to get dressed and then snowed on just for a picture.



Tanner's "cheese" face.


I know Lana's gloves are gigantic on her, but for $0.99 at The Children's Place yesterday I'm not gonna be picky.



Even though it was a Snow Day and schools were closed, Paul still went off to work at 7am (but came home by noon). The kids and I have been lounging around watching movies (I've been catching up on my Hulu shows) and eating junk food. Is there a better way to spend a snow day?

Michelle vs. the laundry room

Today I have done 6 loads of laundry. All of which are folded AND put away. (I still have a few remnants of last week's laundry sitting on top of the dresser, so that's saying a lot.)



A couple of weeks ago I spilled some OxyClean on the floor. At the time I reasoned with myself that as soon as I got all the laundry off the floor then I could sweep, vacuum and mop. Then the kids got sick so I pulled the rug on top of the said OxyClean and more piles of laundry were dumped onto the floor. Some of which were "emergency" loads ie. the ones I pick up with a plastic bag (or gloves, or something not covered in gross-ness) so other non-emergency loads were pushed to the back of the line on the floor. And my laundry room has been neglected until today.




Today I conquered my laundry room. It will probably not last for very long, but I would just like to document that today, my floor is OxyClean and laundry free. PS, I would never show a picture of my dirty laundry room. It would give you nightmares.



A big thank you to Peyton Manning for winning the AFC Championship (sorry you lost the Super Bowl, but I did enjoy watching the Saints win!) so that Nabisco would send me a coupon for a free bag of OREO's. Yum! Of course, I will have to wait to eat them until I can taste food again and also be able to breathe out of both my nostrils. The kids so lovingly passed on their sickness to me.

That's a little pathetic

Having only 2 posts for the month of January I mean. Really, that is a blogging low for me. I don't know if it was because I'm all blogged out or if it's just because nothing interesting enough to blog about has happened. Sad.

Here's a few Tanner episodes: Last night Tanner found a bottle of baby powder right before he took a nap (this is one of the downsides of his big boy bed, his new found freedom to roam when no one is looking). Luckily it was travel size. He spread it all over his room. And I mean all over his room. Bed, chair, changing station, bedside table, lamp, carpet. Even after I vacuumed everything there was still a cloud of powder hanging around in his room. It gave me a headache from smelling it all night long. We finally decided to put the humidifier in his room in hopes that would help some and thankfully it did.

Then this morning I caught him with a jar of Vick's Vapo Rub. Luckily I got to him before he smeared it onto anything more than his hand and a little on his face, but still. This child is causing gray hairs in me quickly. If he's not causing havoc with that type of stuff, he's calling people on my phone. (Yes, he knows how to unlock it and call Paul. Multiple times.) If he is quiet for more than 30 seconds I know he is into something. I've had to fish him out of the toilet a couple of times last week. The first time he was making bubbles with the shampoo bottle and the other time he decided to "go potty" ( lucky for me he can't take off his diaper yet) and he fell into the toilet, bum first. It tried not to laugh too hard but it was so funny. All he would say as I pried him out and changed his now soggy diaper was, "I fell potty mommy". I have now locked the kids' bathroom just to keep him out.

Lana is doing pretty well with school and all. Her confidence has grown a lot. She now volunteers in Primary as well. It's so fun for me to watch her answer questions or raise her hand to be a helper. She's come such a far way from not wanting to say a word or do anything. Yesterday at church they had a matching game for sharing time and she got up there and was able to make a match with no one's help and earned herself a cookie. I was so proud of her!

It looks sad that the paragraph about Tanner is much bigger than the one about Lana, but I am thankful I only have one crazy child and not two. Lana is out of the terrible two's stage and is a good girl (for the most part). I'm not sure Tanner will ever be out of that stage...he is such a stinker but he is also super smart and cute. It's hard to stay mad at him for long.

Big Boy Bed

Tanner finally has his own big boy bed. I have been in denial about how quickly he is growing up, as I think of him still as my baby. But he is a baby no longer (well, except for the whole still wearing diapers thing...but we will tackle that obstacle later...or maybe he will miraculously potty train himself! Ha!).



It's nothing fancy, just a bed. We're still on the lookout for a nice headboard.



And no, I still haven't hung anything on any of my walls. I know, can we say slacker?




Regardless of having nothing on the walls and mis-matched bedding (he doesn't care), Tanner now has a bed and hopefully he will be excited to sleep in it and be a good boy and stay in it all night long. (fingers crossed!)

Happy (Belated) New Year!

The reason this post is so belated is the New Year has been relatively uneventful. A few of our neighbors were lighting off fireworks at the park across the street so we didn't have to go far for a show. Thankfully they were doing it early (like 9pm). Tanner was absolutely terrified of the loud noises (which is ironic considering how loud that child is) and Lana enjoyed running around with her neighborhood friends. After we were done, Tanner passed out at around 9:30pm and Lana finally passed out at 11pm. Paul passed out about then too. I at least stayed up watching a movie until midnight.

The last few days have been unbearably COLD. I don't like to venture much outside and it's way too cold to send the kids out to play (plus what a pain in the butt it is to bundle them up for the whole 5 minutes they'll stay out in the cold). Lana is supposed to start back to school tomorrow but they're calling for snow/freezing rain/sleet, so knowing the south we'll probably have our first snow day. The low tomorrow night, 16 degrees. High on Friday, 28. (Note to Mother Nature: we live in Mississippi, not Utah. Please keep those nasty temperatures where they belong. Thank you.)

I have no pictures to post because we've been up to nothing. As we speak the children are playing "ram the grocery cart and stroller together" (one of my least favorite games) which will result in both of the toys being put in the time-out closet. Oh the joys of being stuck in the house!

Christmas

Paul worked 1/2 a day on Christmas Eve and then we drove up to Jackson to Uncle Dave's house to give him his gifts. By the time we headed home it was getting late so we just picked up some dinner on the way home. I recently heard about someone's Christmas Eve dinner tradition of getting all sorts of take-out food. I think we'll try that next year. By the time we got home Lana was fast asleep so there was no reading of "The Cajun Night before Christmas" or opening a Christmas Eve present. Neither did Paul attempt the whole sleeping by the Christmas tree. I think we were all a little pooped from the drive.


The kids woke up bright and early. The first thing out of Lana's mouth was, "Yay! Santa came!". Tanner was a little apprehensive about opening gifts. I think it was because I caught him trying to open a few gifts that were stuffed in a closet a few days earlier (think unhappy mommy moment). It took him about 1/2 a day to finish opening his gifts. Lana kept asking him if he wanted help opening his presents since she blew through hers in about 20 minutes (and then she asked me to wrap some more presents because she wanted to open more).



The one thing she absolutely wanted for Christmas was a purple pony. Her specification was it had to be bigger than a regular my little pony and my specification was it couldn't be a living/breathing one. Amazingly I found one.



Tanner was all about Lightning McQueen, Thomas the Train and tools of any sort. He has been toting around his Handy Manny Hammer and banging it on the brick wall. I have been sweeping up brick dust multiple times a day. Better, I think, than having to patch holes in the wall.

Later that night, some friends of ours braved the bitterly cold evening to go see the red-neck Christmas lights with us. I'm not trying to be derogatory when I say "red-neck", I'm just tellin' it like it is. Besides, I like the red-neck Christmas lights. What would we do on Christmas Day evening if there were no red-neck lights to see??




See, they have the Keebler Elves. We tried to get them to throw us some warm, fresh from the tree-oven cookies but they wouldn't comply. Perhaps they are bitter about the whole Christmas/Elves perception.



Then we have Santa and his reindeer chasing down the angels proclaiming Jesus' birth.



And Paul getting all chummy with Santa and a random snow man.




Here you can see Santa has kidnapped a few children. Uh, Santa...I think you're supposed to be dropping off presents not taking children out of their warms beds. Do their parent's know they're on the roof with a stranger?



It takes about 30 minutes to walk through the entire yard and take pictures.



We forgot to ask the owners if they leave it up all year round or if they take it down.






This is supposed to be Tanner posing in front of the Thomas the train display. Really it just looks like Tanner has humongous ears.

Merry Christmas!!

It's a Christmas miracle!...

...Either that or I just ruined Christmas. I got so tired of Lana being terrified of Santa. She has talked about Santa everyday since I pulled out the Christmas decorations. Santa-this, Santa-that. Pointing out all of the posters of Santa in the grocery store. It was non-stop Santa. Plus our Santa Claus just so happens to be one of her Sunbeam teachers (who she absolutely loves). So...I told her who Santa really was. I know. What a crappy mother I am. Possibly spoiling Christmas for my sweet little 4 year old. But you know what? It worked. For the first time since her 6 month old picture with Santa, she is not crying hysterically. And I don't think I ruined it completely because she still believes that "the other" Santa came to her house on Christmas and brought her a purple pony.




Tanner on the other hand, would not even let go of me to take a picture with Santa. So we took a picture of him crying hysterically. You know, just for the record.