in case you were worried that your family was weird…

…allow me to introduce you to mine.

a week ago, I was in costco w/ the two youngest. they happened to have a display of swimsuits for sale (you know, because we all start thinking about swimming in early march). layla had finally outgrown the size 3T swimsuit she’d worn the last two summers, and I knew I’d have to get her a new one before this summer. so I looked.

speedo. $12.99. cute. relatively modest… so I let her pick one. they had one- and two-piece styles, but I steered her toward the two-piece ones since they are just easier to manage for getting on and off and going to the bathroom and such. so we got her one and she was so excited.

when we got it home, she tried it on right away and ran around the house in it. so of course, micah wanted to go get his on, too. so they turned the little pooh couch into a swimming pool and the furniture into diving boards, and spent the next half hour jumping into the pool. at least the sun was shining!

layla’s favorite snack right now is graham crackers. when I was a kid, my mom taught me to dip my graham crackers in milk – kinda like a cookie. layla picked up somewhere that you should dip your graham crackers in WATER. I find this concept disgusting, but oh well. and she’s taught micah to do it too now. so I find these cups of water w/ soggy bits of graham cracker crumbs sitting around. GROSS!

mario kart anyone? micah loves playing mario kart. LOVES it. he plays for a little while every day, and I’d be willing to bet that he is now better at driving most of the courses than I am. well, at least all the courses except the bowser’s castle ones. he’s scared of those ones, so when he gets to it, he makes me drive it for him. I don’t really understand this, because it’s not like he goes and hides somewhere or does something else until the race is over. he sits there and watches me drive it! but somehow, it’s too scary for him. and, yes, he’s sitting in a tinkertoy barrel. I’m not sure why. does it matter?

a few months back, the kids went through a phase of wanting to watch ‘the incredibles’ all the time, and layla became obsessed with superheroes. she’s constantly drawing super suits or trying to dress micah up in his superman costume from halloween. she’s got these animal masks, and has decided that they make good superhero masks, and distributes them throughout the family, so we can be a bunch of super animals. while making lunch last sunday, I was suddenly forced to become ‘supermouse’. she made me pose like *this* and took my picture. oh yeah.

layla came home from sunday school with her usual sheet of paper with her ‘challenge’ for the week. this one involved whipped cream, so she was insistent that we do it. haha. she’s so religious! the whipped cream had something to do with Jesus’ transfiguration and reminding you that his clothes became very white… kinda like whipped cream… I guess. at any rate, we had some fun w/ the whipped cream.

yes, he’s on the toilet… but dave didn’t want him to be left out.

there’s nothing odd about this, but I thought I’d throw it in anyway. the weather is starting to not be frigid, and occasionally when it stops raining, the kids can actually play outside.

project life–week 9

typical start to the week:

typical end as well:

the “other pictures” from the week:

micah’s artwork this week – in the first one, I was impressed that he added eyebrows, hair, and ears (his own idea); and the second one is the first time he’s ever given a ‘person’ arms and legs! (I have much fondness for watching kids progress through the typical stages of drawing):

and in this one, layla had taught him how to draw a monster truck and this is his version:

and that’s week 9.

more to come, as well as a report on my 2010 and 2009 albums, which I am almost completely done with!

meal plan monday

lent starts this week, so we’ll be having dinner at church before the services every wednesday night! I love it because I don’t have to cook, and it’s fun to see friends over dinner as well… of course I have to negotiate bites w/ layla (who generally doesn’t like soup, which is generally what they serve), and I get to put a bowl of soup in front of micah so he can look at it, refuse to eat it, and eventually eat it myself… oh well, such is life.

• monday: soup and grilled cheese sandwiches; fruit cocktail
• tuesday: chicken and rice casserole (we never had it last week); peaches
• wednesday: soup supper at church
• thursday: tater tot casserole
• friday: pizza; green beans
• saturday: hamburgers; oven fries; carrot sticks
• sunday: waffles; bacon

DOH! just realized I forgot to buy the buttermilk for the waffles. oh well, I’m sure there’s something else I’ve forgotten as well.

2011 week 9 in pictures

sunday:micah, playing w/ babies. so cute. he wanted it all wrapped up in the blanket.

monday:exciting discovery on the way home from the bus stop… the forsythia has buds!

tuesday:video chat w/ gramma laurie.

wednesday:shane’s first band concert.

thursday:found layla a new swim suit at costco. she was so excited about it, she wore it all afternoon, including out to get the mail.

friday:layla really wanted to make her own scrapbook, so I let her have an album I had on hand and helped her cut down a bunch of papers, and helped her find some pictures to use. she was really excited to work on it with me.

saturday:demonstrating how she eats graham crackers – dipped in WATER. yuck!

and this is why I scrapbook.

I’m working on my family album for 2009 right now. pictures are printed, papers organized, it’s ‘buckle down and get it in the book’ time. this is where I just kind of plow through without coming up for air.

at any rate, I’ve given layla a 7x7 album that I had, which was out of the wrapping, for some reason. I have no plans to use it, so I figured it would be a good place for her to start, since she REALLY wants to make an album of her own. so today, I let her choose some papers to use, and I helped her cut them to size.

so we’re sitting there together, I’m working on my album, she’s working on hers. we’re sharing supplies, and chatting.

and I suddenly had this vision. this flash-forward to when she’s all grown up and has kids of her own. and we’re sitting there together, I’m working on my album, she’s working on hers. we’re sharing supplies, and chatting.

and I looked at her and started getting more than a little choked up.

so she asked me what was wrong. and I told her about this little vision I’d had, and that I was excited that we could share this, but that it made me a little bit sad because she was growing up and before we knew it, she wouldn’t be a little girl anymore.

and she said…

that’s okay mom. because you can just look at the books you’ve made, and see all the pictures, and remember me when I was little.

*sniff*

chicken fried steak with a side of stress…

so, I posted yesterday that I was going to make the pioneer woman’s recipe for chicken fried steak for dinner last night. thought I would report on the results…

ultimately, it was good dinner. a very good dinner. it was yummy. I cleaned my plate. the end.

whether or not I will add this to my regular repertoire, remains to be seen.

I was not a fan of making this dish.

partially, it was bad planning. I thought I had things well-prepped. in fact, I did have things well-prepped. I’m not sure how much more well-prepped I could have been.

I read the recipe and saw that it would take approximately 25 minutes to cook. so I didn’t want to start too early. dave was planning to get home around 6:15, so I started cooking around 5:45. everything was pretty much ready to go before that. my veggies were in the steamer, ready to turn on. my potatoes were peeled, cut, and just starting to simmer. egg bath and flour plate were ready to go, just waiting for the meat.

so, in all honesty, I really don’t know what went wrong. somehow or other, it took me almost twice as long as it was supposed to to make this, and the whole experience was quite stressful.

here’s why:

• I know I’m not a super-expert-foodie-type, but I fail to see how 2 1/2 minutes of browning on each side will fully ‘cook’ a 3/4 inch piece of cube steak. maybe if you like your meat rare, but I’m one of those types of people who likes to avoid food poisoning, so therefore, I cook my meat. ALL THE WAY. so I browned the meat for close to twice as long as it called for and what was running out of it was still red. I wasn’t overly concerned, though, because it was meant to be kept warm in the oven while I made the gravy… I just turned the temp up a little on the oven. no worries, by the time I put it on the plate, it was not pink.
• perhaps I put too much flour in the gravy at the start, but I COULD NOT get the gravy thin enough. I kept adding and kept adding more milk, but it still resembled somewhat solidified cement when I spooned it onto the meat and potatoes.
• it made a colossal mess of holiday-dinner proportions. this is just a personal thing, here, but I hate messy cooking. I’m the person who tries NOT to slop and spill as I’m cooking, and if I do, I try to wipe it up right away. if I use a lot of bowls, pots, or knives while I’m cooking, I try to wash them as I go, so I don’t have a huge mess to take care of after dinner (I have to reserve my cleaning up energy for cleaning things like toys and children and the rest of the house…). this was enough of a high-maintenance dish that I could do little more than dump stuff into the sink. plus there was the splatter factor, which meant that I had to wipe down everything (including the handle on an upper cupboard that was covered in gravy, somehow). oh, and then there was this little incident:

• by the time I finally got everything to the table, I was uptight and unpleasant, which resulted in dave and I getting into a rare fight. so not worth it. I hate it when I’m mean to him.
• after resolving this, the food was cold and had to be microwaved.
• micah refused to eat anything but the carrots on his plate (of course), and layla ate her veggies, her potatoes, and 2 bites of meat that she managed to scrape the “goo” off of, and then complained and refused to eat the rest because I had the audacity to put gravy on her meat.

but still, it was very yummy. so I may be stupid enough to try it again some time… more fully prepared. there was nothing hard about it. I can brown meat. I can mash potatoes. I can make gravy… I think that it just has a high orchestration factor that I was not expecting… you know, because I was not blessed with the gift of foresight.

I want YOU…

…to try Project Life!

as you know, I’ve started using PL for this year, and I LOVE it. if you didn’t know that, you can read all about my love fest with PL here. I happen to like doing the photo-a-day method, with each page featuring a week of our life, and the completed book will be a a concise chapter of our family’s life for the year 2011. I think it’s awesome. it alleviates SO much guilt I was feeling about NOT scrapbooking or doing anything to organize, document, preserve, and display all the pictures I take of my family and the stuff we do as we live out our daily lives. I’m doing it as it happens. I print pictures EVERY week. and put it in and journal about each one, so I don’t get behind. altogether, I’d say I spend MAYBE an hour per week on this project. I LOVE doing it this way.

BUT… you don’t have to.

I follow becky higgins’ (the creator of PL) blog, and today she had a post featuring some of the many different ways people are using project life, to fit their own needs.

read it. seriously. there is so much flexibility and you can use it to suit your needs/wants/dreams, whatever they may be.

and here’s the thing. you can be as creative or not creative as you want to be. you can be as artistic or not artistic as you are. you don’t have to be exceptionally well organized. you don’t have to have a lot of “stuff” or space or tools or even TIME, or all those reasons people usually give me about why they want to do something with their pictures but don’t.

and here’s the OTHER thing. are you a hardcore scrapbooker? did you used to be? do you have a lot of “stuff” and tools and the like? yup. me too. remember, I used to be a creative memories consultant. in NO WAY am I knocking traditional scrapbooking. I have spent many hours (and dollars) on traditional scrapbooking and I have loved every minute of it. I still, very much, love and recommend creative memories albums and products. but realistically, I know that all of those excuses people have always used for why they can’t/won’t scrapbook ARE LEGIT. back when I only had 1 kid, I didn’t think they were. hahaha! there’s a lot of stuff I didn’t think was legit when I only had one kid. LOL. stuff like picky eaters and drawing on the wall, and potty training nightmares… (not that my kids do ANY of that stuff… ahem.) my point is this. you can use as much or as little of that “stuff” as you want. you can crop and mount and embellish your photos and layouts as much as you want… but you don’t have to. you can spend time and plan and get all artistic if you want… but you don’t have to.

consider it. seriously. you won’t be sorry.

meal plan monday

seriously? it’s monday AGAIN? I have to think up a week’s worth of meals AGAIN? ugh. well, we’ll start w/ today cuz that’s easy:

• monday: leftovers/scrounge (L & M are currently eating oatmeal)
• tuesday: leftover spaghetti; green beans; sourdough
• wednesday: baked chicken; rice; peas & carrots
• thursday: pork chops; rice; salad
• friday: pizza; green beans
• saturday: chicken & rice casserole (thanks, holly.)
• sunday: pancakes; sausages; oj

project life–week 8

alrighty, here we go again with another installment of my progress on project life, and my family’s progress through 2011… they go hand in hand,you know.

the start of the week is pretty typical:

the end of the week is pretty typical too:

on friday, I met a dear, DEAR friend of mine, margaret, and her husband for lunch. by dear, DEAR, I mean we shared a preschool classroom for 4 years, she was a bridesmaid in my wedding, and she was my upline consultant during the two years I tried to pretend I was good at selling stuff, but really just bought myself a bunch of creative memories supplies. at any rate, we haven’t seen each other in a few years (as in, she’s never met micah) and it was SO great to get together. of course, the reason we were getting together is because I somehow managed to run out of page protectors that fit the old size 12x12 creative memories pages. of course they don’t sell them anymore, so I had to crawl pathetically to her, hoping she could come through. she did, of course, and I bought 5 packages! I brought my camera and everything, knowing that a picture of her and I together was exactly what I wanted to be able to stick in the friday slot for this week. of course, I forgot to do it. oh well.

saturday, we took another trip south to visit kat and cole. as usual, it was a blast and there was much inappropriate conversation about body functions and such. I think there was a little wine involved too… so I have a collage from that for saturday. of course, there was more to be included than would functionally fit on a 4x6 print, so I decided to make a 8x10 collage of our ‘discussion of proper toilet paper protocol and wiping technique’ adventure.

I had been thinking about how to handle the ‘other’ pictures that I take throughout the week. if I take 10 pictures at the park or a party or something like that, it’s easy; I make a collage of it and use that as the POTD. but some days I take 10 pictures of completely isolated events. just stuff that happens around here.  or some days I do that AND we go to the park or a party… you get the idea.  it’s usually pretty easy to decide what the POTD should be, but what do I do with the rest? I take them. I have them. they’re here on my computer. what what should I do with them? no, not everything needs to be printed, or documented, or displayed, etc. but a lot of them are significant to our lives. or maybe they’re funny. or maybe they’re just cute. or maybe they’re just not quite as significant as the one I chose for the POTD. what then?

so I decided to go ahead and start making collages of some of those ‘other’ pictures. I’m doing 8x10’s that I can mount on scrapbooking paper and stick in 8.5x11 page protectors. (honestly, I only chose this size because I happen to have a costco box of page protectors, and costco prints 8x10 – there really wasn’t any artistically inspired decision making here.)

I really, really like this idea. so I went back to the beginning of the year and started making collages of the ‘other’ pictures from each week. sometimes, I would have enough pictures to make two collages – one for each side of what would be that new page. like this particular week when I had a ton of photos of the kids attacking dave on the couch. there’s no way I could have picked one, and I already had a POTD, so I just made it into a collage of all the best ones of that:

other weeks only had enough for one side:

so, for the backs of those pages, I included some of the kids’ art work that happened to be from that week:

other weeks, I didn’t have art work (shocking!) and there was already other stuff added to that week, so the paper I used to mount the 8x10 was one of the 2 sided cardstock that is included in the project life kit. that way it looks pretty:

and one week, I put in a letter that my niece, lily, sent to layla. I am really afraid these letters will get lost somehow, and I REALLY want them to have them when they are grown up and see what sweet cousins they were when they were little kids. so this seemed like the perfect place to keep it safe, as well as include it during the week when layla received it:

so that’s week 8.  AND my most recent additions. I was having other thoughts about different things I could add, but mary’s recent post has me thinking I should not be too eager to pack it full!

2011 week 8 in pictures

sunday:an unusually nice day! took the kids to the park, including layla’s friend. dave went for a bike ride on the trail, and met us at the park.

monday:bedtime stories. love micah’s finger position.

tuesday: so, we have learned that toby is fond of yogurt…

wednesday: layla was so proud of herself for getting her bed made without any help. so she made a sign and had me take her picture.

thursday:more snow! this time, shane decided to take toby out to see what he thought of it…

friday:lovely view out my back window. gorgeous blue sky, snow dusting the trees. awesome.

saturday:this is actually another of the lost collages. we had a hilarious trip south to visit our friends. I don’t think we’ve laughed this hard in years. omg. the cork blowing game, the how to properly use toilet paper discussion, the demonstration on the dog… all hilarious.

just a few days around here…

what day would be complete without a couple loads of laundry folded on my bed… hey, at least it’s folded! (the putting away part – that’s another story.) and notice that it’s not a load of whites… I HATE folding whites. HATE IT. in fact, one of my favorite ways that my wonderful, handsome, irreplaceable husband demonstrates his love for me is when he sees the basket of whites (that’s been sitting there for 3 days) and folds it for me! (nevermind the fact that he’s out of socks…)

sophie desperately needed a bath. I hate bathing her. she desperately needed to be brushed. I hate brushing her. but I had procrastinated long enough and she wasn’t getting clean OR brushed by herself, so I admitted defeat and decided to do something about it. on saturday morning, while shane and I were out for our weekly coffee date, we stopped by petsmart to inquire how much a proper grooming would cost. I got impatient waiting in line, and I decided to go see what kind of really good de-shedding shampoo products they sold. I saw that the furminator shampoo and conditioner were on sale, the frugal/practical side of me took over, and I walked out of the store without ever knowing how much it would cost to have her professionally groomed.so I went home and put her in my shower, to give her a good scrubbing. she looks SO pathetic when she’s getting washed. I told dave to grab the camera and take a picture. so sad. but then I noticed that he was still taking pictures…

dave! are you taking pictures of my butt!?!

no……

nice.

after that, I wanted to take advantage of the sunny, not-quite-frigid day and do some yard work. dave was going to fix the brakes on the toyota, and was heading out to the auto parts store to get some new pads. on the way out the door, I shouted at him, “how much do wheelbarrows cost?”apparently, not too much. he returned with a shiny red wheelbarrow for me, and after doing the brakes, put it together. micah helped…  what a star of a husband I have! LOVE HIM!

I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening raking leaves, picking up the 4 million fir branches littering our yard, cutting out all of last year’s dead raspberry bushes, building a fire in our backyard fire pit, and burning them... this was a very good thing, because at this point in the day, it was FREEZING out, so it kept me warm. besides, the yard waste bin was full…finished off the day in the usual way… apparently dave found this to be a cute moment and grabbed the camera. with impeccable timing, micah inserted a finger into his nose… oh well, I still think it’s cute, and such is life, right?

sunday, I was going to do some more yard work, but we wound up at the park instead.

dave took micah on a bike ride, and I met him, with layla and her friend, at a park that is along the trail.

and a few other random shots…layla had a sucker in her valentine box that had white writing on it… I have no idea how she manages to do this, but it’s a physical impossibility for her to eat a sucker (or anything else, for that matter) without sliming it ALL OVER her mouth.

and in a more shining moment, one morning, layla managed to get her bed made, entirely by herself. if you’ve ever made a top bunk, you know what an accomplishment this is… especially if you’re 5! so she, of course, wanted to make a sign and have me take her picture. this is what you do if you are layla. you make a sign, and you take a picture. for everything.

and then we had some snow…

shane was super excited to get to take his cat out in the snow… especially since it was deep. as usual, toby tolerated it with little resistance, but it was apparent that this was NOT his favorite thing.

he then spent the rest of the day making a HUGE pile of snow in the middle of the yard, and hollowing it out from the inside to make an igloo. it also has a back door, a window, a skylight, and room inside for two children.