I'm Loving It

A couple of months ago my mom gave me a recipe on how to make cherry pie filling. 

Today since we only went to church for a half hour I figured it was a good time to make that pie filling. 

Nothing like being productive. 

Until, I realized that you are suppose to have something called Clear Jel. And, and...wait for it...you can't buy it in the store. So after looking around on the internet I found a website that sells it. 

Best part? They sell so many other awesome spices that I started whooping and hollering at the table, and you would be correct if you thought that Blake thought I had lost my marbles. 

Who gets that excited about spices? Well, you are looking at her.  In my order I got: 

Cardamom pods for this recipe I am dying to make. I also got fenugreek seeds, fenugreek leaves, adobo spice (for this), dried lemon grass (for this) and vanilla bean sea salt for the top of Blake's cookies that he makes.

Mostly I have had to stop buying the Dried Young Coconut from Costco because I consume it by the bag full. If you haven't tried it you should. It is like a little slice of Filipino heaven.

Speaking of food...I must have a serious problem...

I have made this street taco recipe twice in the last 2 weeks. 

Doubling it both times.

We eat it with cilantro and onions a little lime juice and cheese. 

They are delicious. 

Although, I do add Cayenne pepper to mine while I am cooking it. It gives it that little oomph. 

If you care. 

Which you might not.

Not food related but awesome none the less:

The Plaid Barn is a cool website if you like crafting.

Or if you just like to hoard craft things. 

They only sell one thing a day but it is at a reasonable price. I have bought a few things from there including

Buttons.

Makings of clips/earrings/bobby pins and some other stuff.

And in an attempt to look a little more rounded, 

I also just finished the second book in the Beyonders series. I liked it. I thought it was a good follow up to the first.

I also think me and these shoes could be friends. 

They like me even if I have one to many street tacos and can't fit into my jeans. Or if I sit and look lovingly at my buttons and not at them. They are cool like that.

 It was painstaking at times, it was slightly annoying at others but I did it.

I made the pattern myself.

I hand stitched in the zipper and the hem.

And since I can't turn down a cute slip I made one of those too.

I thought of making my own bee too but in the end I just opted to buy one from Etsy.

I am quite proud. I wore it on Sunday and got a lot of compliments on it.

Granted there are things I would probably do differently but I suppose that is all part of learning.

However, if you asked my kids what I was doing wrong has nothing to do with the dress and everything to do with my posing.

And since I evidently have no shame...

these are some of the poses they suggested:

Jump in the air.

Look like you are flying.

And my personal favorite as requested by Laney.

"do this!"

Your wish is my command. 

 I may be a little embarrassed now. 

But...I suppose not enough to remove it.

Feel free to laugh at my expense, I kind of asked for it.

A Series Of Unfortunate Events

First off...what the crap is up with the new blogger? Moving around pictures is about to give me a stroke. Super annoying. 

When I was pregnant with all of my kids I would have dreams about my teeth falling out or crumbling. I would dream that I was chewing gum and the gum would get stuck in my teeth and when I tried to pull the gum out of my mouth my teeth would get stuck in the gum and my teeth would come out with it. 

It was disturbing, no matter how many times I would have it. 

Ever since, loose teeth or teeth falling out gives me the willies.

Kids wiggling their teeth is guaranteed to make me feel like I am going to pass out or dry heave.

When it is your own kid that is doing the wiggling it is hard to be OK with it.
It's even harder to get on board with the whole losing teeth thing.

Imagine my delight that it has taken Gavin this long to loose one. 

Granted he was pleased as punch that the tooth fairy was finally going to come. 

We did it Grandma Dana style and wrapped a piece of floss around his tooth. I manned up and held the tooth while Blake yanked on the floss. 

He said it didn't hurt. 

I almost passed out from listening to the skin break.

Then when I thought we were in the clear another tooth got loose. 

It was barely hanging on...which is almost as bad as it can get. 

If there were sound affects for these pictures you would hear me going 

 "Gross. Eww. Hold still let me take a picture, fast. Gross. Stop moving it.." 

Now we are two teeth gone. Gavin is $5 dollars richer, and I think I am in the clear...at least for a couple months.

Laney. That poor girl can't catch a break.

Last week for snacks we were eating strawberries and all of the sudden she broke out in hives all over her face and body. 

The only thing I could figure was that she was allergic to the strawberries or maybe the pesticides. Then the next day we went to ballet and as a reward for being good I gave the kids some jelly beans. 

Well, she rashed out again. This time only on her face. 

So it seems that for the time being Laney is not allowed to have anything strawberry or with strawberry flavoring.

Like any good mother the only way to reward your kids for good behavior is to make them have an allergic reaction.
That'll teach ya.        

Things They are a Changing

I really like our house.

Granted it does not belong to us, but that shouldn't matter...right?
I have a theory. I think that if you don't enjoy where you are you won't really enjoy anything else either.
As we have lived in the house a few things have changed. Most of them I have just done on my own, without asking. Perhaps not the best approach, but I figure that you can't get mad at someone for making things better.
Maybe you can.
I haven't had any complaints yet.
Lately I have been feeling a little sorry for myself. I didn't like our decorations anymore, we don't own a house that I could redo, a lot of my friends are changing things and I was feeling stuck. So what quicker way to redo something?
Paint.
It might be my BFF.
I am not even kidding.
Before.Baseboards before.After.Although the living room paint really looks like the color in this picture with Canon.This is the color of the dining room. Basically the same color just a lighter shade. I repainted all of the baseboards and around the windows. I also took down the old lady valences that were above the windows. I changed out our green lamps for white ones that were in our room and moved the pictures that were on the wall down stairs to upstairs.
When I was done I just sighed.
It feels better.
It feels clean.
Our kids are pretty used to me painting things. Penny had the hardest time. She just continuously said
"Mom! wook." "Mom! me." "Mom! head."

The living room color is this if you wanna know.

Pre Accident

For Easter this year we decided to go up to Grandma Dana's house, for three reasons.
1. We weren't having an Easter Party.
2. The kids didn't have any sports that weekend.
3. We love Grandma Dana's house. We went to a Easter egg hunt.The kids were encouraged to hunt to their hearts content. And they did. But mostly we just enjoyed being there.
There are a lot of good things about Grandma's house.
At Grandma's wearing whatever you want is OK. Dare I say encouraged. Going down slides at neck breaking speeds is a must. Stuffing your mouth so full of candy that the gag reflex kicks in is not frowned upon.At Grandma's they have bees made out of flowers. You get to love on your cousins beside some abnormally large swans.You can switch out your favorite "Brown Baby" for a new improved version, "Ariel" and no one will judge you.In general Grandma's house is pretty swell. Plus you get the added perk of hanging with some cool folks.And sometimes you make a face....only a Grandma could love.

Sticks and Stone Can Break Your Bones

It would be nice if our kids didn't take Spring Break literally.

On Monday Laney didn't have school so she stayed at home with Canon, Penny and Addi (my niece that I watch). They were out side playing like kids do. Playing in the dirt, moving rocks around, finding snails, stuff like that. When I heard Laney screaming I knew that she was hurt. I went to go see what was wrong and looked down at her hand and before my eyes her little hand started to swell. Turns out that rocks the size of cantaloupes are not good to drop on little hands. We drove to the doctors office to have it x-rayed. When they showed us the x-rays, it didn't take a genius to figure out that it was broken. We just didn't realize how broken. They sent us to Primary Children's hospital that night to have surgery. After waiting at the hospital for 3 hours they said that they couldn't set it like they had hoped and that we would have to come back tomorrow to have surgery. On Tuesday we got a call saying to come in at 10 and they would start the surgery. Laney was not the most happy about the situation. Not that I blame her. Her thumb was broken on the top and the other bone was split down the center and she hadn't eaten anything but a few chicken nuggets for 24 hours. They gave her some medicine to help calm her and after that she was pretty happy. While watching Dora she started to yell out things that they were saying on the TV. She was drugged and didn't care that she was being loud. Fortunately they don't get many kids in the Orthopedic hospital so having her there was a little extra treat for them. She finally went into surgery at 1 and came out 45 minutes later. Originally they were going to "shish kabob" her bone with a pin but they couldn't make the bone stay in place so they put two pins in in an X formation. This way the bone stays put in between the two pins. She has a hard cast on her thumb and a soft gauze cast that runs up her arm. Originally they told us that the cast would have to stay on for 3 weeks but because the break is worse than they had thought she has to keep the cast on for 5 weeks. When you are a kid your bones heal faster. If she was an adult than she would have to have the cast on for 9+ weeks. She is not the biggest fan of her cast but they did give one to her stuffed bunny to match,which stayed on for about 5 minutes.