I Couldn't Make This Stuff Up!

Sick or not a couple of wishes

I'm sick, so sick that I really just want to stay in bed the last 3 days. It's a nasty cold and cough. I hate being sick and today I just feel sad for a variety of different reasons, some family things and just things going on in the world. Being sick in bed gives you lots of time to think and the things I think about are just making me sad I guess.

Regardless of that though, today is Pam and John's 40th Anniversary and that is special and something to be celebrated. I didn't feel up to staging a photo with the kids holding signs saying Happy Anniversary today though so you'll just have to know that we love you. We will celebrate this when we're together next time I promise.

Today is also Phil's birthday so Happy Birthday Phil!

Happy Birthday Natalie Rose!

Four years ago today our little family of 5 was completed with the arrival of Natalie Rose. She is everything we could have hoped for and more.

She's not feeling great today, fighting a cold and feeling "yucky" as she says. She's a little more grumpy with this cold, but she's still got her smile. We'll celebrate a bit today but more when she's feeling better. We let her open one of her gifts this morning before Tim went to work. I loved watching the big kids sit beside her as she opened her gift. Then once her gift was opened she immediately asked Maddie which animal she would like to have to play with. Benjamin jumped in and helped her get her toy open, so she could play with it. They are three peas in a pod and they go together so nicely.

Here's some of my favorite pictures from the past 4 years. Happy Birthday Natnat, child of mine!
Hours old in 2005 1 year old2 years old 3 years old last year. 

Halloween and Apple pictures

Natalie's home sick today. She slept in until 8 yesterday morning, so I kind of saw this coming. She's not in bad spirits but she's really stuffy and running an every so slight fever on and off. So we're in for the day. I'm hoping she feels better for her birthday tomorrow but we will wait and see and maybe postpone her birthday by a couple days.

Since I'm home I worked on getting all my recipes from this blog moved over to my recipe blog. I got that done and now am going to work on cleaning the house up. My floors desperately need to be mopped after the apple event this weekend. The recipes will post daily so watch my recipe blog for that.

Here's a photo of the kitchen that Tim painted. I can't remember if I ever shared that or not.  

This is our apple saucer and the apples a boiling away.
 
 Here's some pictures from Halloween. We hit Natalie's preschool party and then went Trick or Treating with Matt and Kelly and their family. It was nice to go as a group and the kids had a great time. Natalie rode in her stroller like a princess for most of the night, dashing to the house as the door opened each time.

I think that's it for today. Hope your day is a good one!

54 days til Christmas

Yep I said it. 54 days until Christmas. 55 days until we leave for Hawaii. November 1st and only two months of this year left. It's going to go by in a flash I can feel it. In honor of this being the month of Thanksgiving with each post I'll try to post a daily gratitude. Maybe I'll even get the kids in on it from time to time. We have a lot to be grateful for and it's never a bad idea to remind yourself of that.

Today we took 140 pounds of apples and turned them into 30 quarts of applesauce, 5 apple pies worth of apple pie filling, and a crockpot full of apple butter that's still cooking down now. It was a lot of work but I'm glad we did it still. I'll get some recipes posted this week.

We made it through the Halloween madness yesterday. More on that tomorrow with some pictures. For now here's our daily gratitudes. Hope your weekend was a good one.

Benjamin- "I'm thankful for technology."

Madeline- "I'm thankful for Daddy, Mimi, and brother and sister and dog and fish."

Natalie- "I'm thankful for our Christmas tree."

Today I'm thankful for the people that gave us the free apples and that many years ago I bought our apple saucer to make the job much less painful.

Captain America and Snow White Princess

Yesterday was dress up day at Natalie's school. Her and Isaac made quite the pair. Captain America and Snow White.
  "Open, shut them, Open, shut them, give a little clap clap clap! Open shut them open shut them, put them in your lap!"
Isaac kept telling their teacher, "I love you!"  
 
When the teacher asked Natalie who she was she said, "Snow White Princess." The second photo is her turning her bling bling light on her crown on, very impressive! 
Here's a couple of clone trooper Wyatt.

They were all so cute. This is a wonderful fun age. Their teacher was fantastic and called each of them up to share their costume and asked who they were and then asked "Are you really a storm trooper, captain america, Snow white?" Each child shook their head and when the teacher asked who they really were they would say there name. A wonderfully clever fun thing for all the little ones.

Today was full of running around and getting the kids where they needed to be. Natalie got to have Isaac come and play for the afternoon while Kelly and Matt were at an appointment with Wyatt. She was so happy and they played nice all afternoon.

I have about 100 pounds of apples waiting for me out in the garage. They will have to wait until Sunday but I was so so happy to get them. I probably won't feel the same about them Sunday night but it always feels good to get the apple sauce and butter into the freezer. The house will smell wonderful and I love that they were FREE! Such a wonderful blessing to us!

Tonight we're relaxing and having family movie night and watching Ice Age the dawn of the dinosaurs with a fire and hot chocolate. Life is good, busy but good!

1/2 price shoes and Free Apples!

Today was a good day. This evening we hit Payless shoes and used a coupon to buy a bunch of things 1/2 off. Our whole purchase! Woohoo! You can get your coupon here but it's only good through Friday so you have to use it fast! It's good one everything, socks, shoe laces, purses, everything in the store except the things it excludes on the coupon! Totally great!

This evening at Gymnastics I noticed one of the parents had brought apples. I overheard him talking about still having apples. I asked if I could still get some apples. He told me he would ask his wife to give me a call. She called me tonight and offered me the 4 boxes she has left for free! Woohoo!

We're going to be making a bunch of applesauce and apple butter this weekend! I'm very happy with our savings today!

Tomorrow's another busy day so I'll try to catch up on the blogging maybe sometime this weekend. We'll see how the appling process goes.

I hope your week is going well!

Buzz Lightyear, Max, Kitty, and a black widow

Yes three costumes and one scary spider. The kids dressed up for movie night at the school last friday. Benjamin's costume ended up having to be exchanged for a different option because he's too big for kids costumes now.He wanted to be Max from Bakugan.  Natalie is going between being a kitty and a nice witch. Maddie is sticking with Buzz Lightyear. We've gotten our monies worth out of that costume. Mom bought it for Benjamin years ago and many kids have worn it and it still looks great. Those Disney Store costumes really do hold up well.

Tim is on the mend. He was up and about yesterday but stayed home one more day for a rest day. He went to work today. Yesterday afternoon before the kids got home I told him there was a spider up in the corner by the front door. He said yeah and was totally going to blow me off but decided to get up and look. Good thing he did because it was a black widow. Yikes! He took a picture for me and then squashed it. I don't know how it got in but I suspect it snuck in from Natalie leaving our door from the garage open a crack as we rushed out the door yesterday morning. That's what I'm telling myself.

Maddie freaked out when Tim showed her the spider and wouldn't go into any room alone for an hour. Benjamin thought it was cool!

If you're local to us I will let you know the kids have started a new fundraiser. This is the first fundraiser we've participated in in a long while because 100%of the profits go to the school. Some of the PTO ladies got together the local businesses and got different discounts from them. There is about 20 different deals on it. Well worth the $5 we are charging for them. A couple of the ones on there are for Viera's doughnuts and Roasters Coffee for $1. If you're interested in one of these let me know and thank you for supporting the kids' school!

That's all for today!

One sick Daddy

Sunday morning about 1am Tim woke up throwing up. He had a fever and was miserable. He's been feeling awful. I came downstairs and slept in the guest bedroom and Tim's been confined to the bedroom. I don't want any chance of him coming in contact with the kids and getting anyone else sick.

Life is busy and then on top of that it's only Monday and I'm already tired. I'm not looking forward to this week. There's lots going on and then Halloween on Saturday with all it's glorious dress ups and candy highs. Ugh! Okay rant over, I'll move on and get on with it.

I think that's it for today, I've got nothin'! Sorry more tomorrow.

A few things

The last couple days have been busy with school stuff and the kids activities. Benjamin is enjoying taekwondo and the girls are loving their gymnastics. I'm helping PTO with a fundraiser that starts next week and then last night there was a movie night at the big kids school. They dressed up in their costumes and we watched Casper at school. They had a good time and I helped out PTO again at that selling concessions and things and then clean up. Benjamin jumped in to help clean up, he did a great job. He made the comment as he swept the floor, "Just think the janitors have to do this EVERY day!" I'm glad he realized someone else has to clean up after him each day.

Today we worked around here and rearranged the Wii room upstairs so it's more functional. We're going to order blinds for that room pretty soon and make it more usable because the sun beats in there almost all day.

Pam asked me if I had taken any photos of Bellagio's ceiling. Of course I did, though the photos don't do it justice. It was beautiful! Hi Barb! Always a photo bomber!

So I think that's about it for today. Hope your Saturday was a good one!

Scentsy anyone?

I'm having a Scentsy catalog party mainly because I was needing some more fragrance cubes. If you are needing anything let me know. I'll close the party the end of the month. If you want to look at a catalog I can get one to you or you can look online HERE. Thanks!