Little happenings at home

The time has come for Livia to move out of the crib and into a big girl bed. I have been looking for months for the perfect solution at a price I could handle.

And we finally decided to go with twin over full bunk beds. Sam and Liv will share a room until the baby is big enough to share a room with Livia.

So this:

+ 6 1/2 grueling hours

+ one 4 year old "assistant"

brings us to this:

(2 happy and excited children) Sam praised me for doing such an awesome job the whole time I was assembling the beds.


And a few random tidbits of our last couple of days:

With church at 1:00, sometimes Livi doesn't get a pre-church nap. Those days can be rough... for her and us. And possibly the nursery leaders as well....

Well, yesterday was one of those days. So after about 4 or 5 timeouts during Sacrament Meeting, I gave her the option of taking a nap in Mommy's Sunday School or going to Nursery. She perked right up and opted for Nursery.

But she truly was exhausted after church. Dinner time rolled around and after 2 timeouts she finally decided to 'be nice' and sit down and eat.... well, at least she sat down. With a nice little glazed over look in her eyes.

Hence this:

Yes, she really is sleeping. We were worried about her falling off the chair so I finished dinner and took her into the living room and she slept on me for 15-20 minutes before I tried to wake her up. She kept trying to go back to sleep so I asked her if she wanted to eat dinner or go get in bed. She wanted bed. I thought she would wake up enough as I changed her diaper and put her PJs on, but no, as soon as I got her close to her bed, she crawled right up to her pillow and blanket and went right to sleep... at 6:30. And slept til 7:30 am.

We like 13 hour naps.


Last week, Livia's little neighbor friend, Jameson, was over playing and they got a hold of the uno cards and two packs of flash cards. As you can see, they were ankle deep in their learning...



And then there's Cowboy.... this cat can sleep anywhere! This is where he took his Sunday evening nap. We even closed the lid to see what he would do... nada. Just kept dozin' away. We thought about turning on the water to see what he would do, but decided that's just plain mean.

At least he's not in the way.

And today.... guess who picked her own clothes....
Oh, well, she'll most likely get some sort of fashion sense before too long. At least she's dressed and having fun with something girlie.

Wait, never mind. She's now moved onto Chick Hicks and the King cars. She really needs a little sister....

little science guy

This morning Sam came down after watching some cartoons and the following conversation took place:

Sam: Do you know what inertia means?
Mom: What does inertia mean?
Sam: It's if you are buckled in, you don't keep moving forward!


At least he's learning something from watching PBS! I think I was about 20 before I understood the concept of inertia...

acknivities....

In my recent attempt to stop being a lame-o mommy, I've been trying to do some sort of activity every day with the kids.

Problem... I'm not that creative.

We did have a pretty good week last week, and we went to the park for 2 hours today, so I'm feeling ok about my latest success. But I am almost out of new ideas already.

So here's your assignment! Share some activities/crafts/treats you do with your kids that I can copy! (And keep in mind I am typically car-less during the day.... not much leaving-the-house-other-than-prego-walking-distance going on here.)

Here's a little summary of last week, in case you're interested:

On Sunday we baked some chocolate cupcakes for daddy.



Of course they only liked the batter and the frosting.

Then we made froot loop necklaces.

Oh wait, I mean I made them and the kids ate them. (Ok, Sam did about half of his.)

Here we did some outside playing since the sun was mostly shining.


One day we made chocolate worm cookies.



I didn't want to open the white frosting, hence the demon-eyed worms.


They can be so sweet when they get along. Here is Sam "reading" books to Liv.


And they love to color. The whole book sharing thing is quite new though...


I will say, I have seen a big improvement in their behavior and my attitude since focusing more on the quality time issue... which is why I want to continue.

So please help me with more ideas!!

looking back at 2010

Here's our summary of 2010 according to our 2010 family scrapbook pages that my family does every year.

macey's makes me happy

I love bargains, so every week I look through the grocery store sale ads hoping to find an awesome sale with very little effort on my part. (Couponing sounds awesome, but way too much work.)

For the last several weeks the Macey's ad has had a recipe for a crock pot meal for a family of 6 that costs only $14. All of the recipes look delicious, and I'm a super big fan of the whole crock pot idea, so I clip it out and pile it on the bakers rack. (Then Jason 'cleans up' and throws it away.)

This week the recipe is for Pork Barbacoa. Yeah... that sounds super yummy. So I thought I would put it on my menu and hope I remember to buy the pork before Sunday.


Today I needed to make a quick run to the store for dinner tonight and they had samples. (Also pathetically a super fan of samples!) I asked if it was the recipe from the ad... which it was, so I decided to get the pork that she pointed out to me.

It was then she told me that she had a bag prepared with almost all the stuff that I would need to make it. I then realized that the $14 wasn't just an estimate of about how much it would cost... they put the bags together with the majority of the supplies and you buy the bag for exactly $14.


So I bought all this for just $14:


Considering the pork was over $15 by itself.... I think I got myself a screaming deal! I figure it would have cost just under $30 to buy all of these items individually.

And since my family is small, this will provide 2-3 meals for us.

And yes, they do this every week with a new recipe. Next week is spare ribs. I think I found an easy way to plan our Sunday dinners for a while!

Here's the recipe if you want to make it... or better yet, go to Macey's and get it for $14!

the wonder of color wonder

May I just say that Color Wonder truly is a wonderful thing!

Santa brought a princess one for Liv and a Cars one for Sam. At first I was a little uptight about it since they are more expensive than regular markers and coloring books. But I recently decided that I have to keep in mind they are 2 and 4... so who cares!


They LOVE to color, both with crayons and their 'special' markers. It is one thing they actually do pretty well together... they realized pretty quick if they combine their markers they have twice as many colors to choose from!

And it now occupies about 25% of their free time... giving me that much more as well! Money well spent Santa!

And I don't even have to make them wear something over their clothes....