Just a little rambling about nothing in particular

I haven't blogged in a long time, so I figured I better sit down and do it. Notice my ever-changing profile photo. It is really, really, hard to take your own picture and actually like it. I've probably taken 20 pics of myself and I look at them and go "ewwww!". I think this one is pretty good though. I'm ordering my Stampin' Up starter kit tomorrow so I am getting ready to start my second blog "Stamptacular Stuff" and I thought I ought to have a profile pic for that without kids in it.

Anyway, you moms out there may be interested in this. We're all trying to feed our kids healthy food, but it's really hard. Most kids want to eat Mac and Cheese several times a week. Well, I found this great thing! WalMart sells Kraft Whole Grain Mac and Cheese. It's 50% whole wheat and my kids have not mentioned a thing about it. Ya gotta try it. Aren't I a Bloggin Dork--taking pictures of mac and cheese?

Today is the kids' hundreth day of school. It's a big deal these days. They do all kinds of counting activities and have a party and everything. I'm going to help DS's class make 100 pancakes. Should be fun. I'll take some pics of it. His teacher also sent home a paper called "100 things that make you amazing". Great idea in theory. I love DS with all of my heart, but filling that out was really hard. I finally gave up on filling in every blank and wrote "I LOVE YOU" really huge across the open slots! Whew!

What's up with all the homework kids have anyway? As a teacher, I was never big on it unless we couldn't finish something up at school. The kids that wasted time usually had to take stuff home. But I didn't assign homework just to give homework. DD#1 brings home a math worksheet every day but Friday and also has to read (with me, since she can't read yet). DS brings home two math worksheets, practices spelling, and is supposed to read 20 minutes (again, with some help). It's quite the ordeal! Thank goodness we don't have any extracurricular activities.

Goodbye Gordon B. Hinkley

We just heard during a commercial break that Gordon B. Hinkley, prophet of the LDS church, passed away this evening at the age of 97. I'm sad to hear the news because I so greatly admired him. He is the first prophet that I feel like I really got to "know", although not in person. I loved his sense of humor, his quick wit, his young spirit, and his willingness to be in the public spotlight. He will be greatly missed. I am happy, however, that he is now reunited with his wife. Rest in peace.

Girl's Night

Today is one of those days where all I really want to do is nap and watch TV. And, to add to the excitement, I have to teach Relief Society (women's class, for those who aren't LDS) tomorrow and I haven't started my lesson yet! In fact, part of the reason I am writing this is to put it off a bit longer. I think it's best that way though. The kids are still up so I wouldn't get much thinking done anyway.

Speaking of kids, DD#2 is totally potty trained! Yay! She even stays dry at night most of the time. She is also doing great in her Sunday class even though she doesn't play with toys the whole time anymore. It's a little bittersweet seeing her grow up.

Last night Kari and I went to see the movie 27 Dresses. It was a really cute chick-flick kind of movie. Cute guy, fun story, what more can you want? I've been singing "Bennie and the Jets" all day because it was in the movie. Poor husband. Anyway, we had a good time. Then we went to Chili's to grab some desert. I got home at midnight. Hmmmmm.....maybe that's why I just want to nap and watch TV today!

Tastes Like Chicken

Yesterday Kari and I went for our weekly lunch (it's usually on Wednesday if anyone wants to come!). We always try to invite people to come along, but rarely does anyone keep coming. Are we that annoying--lol? Anyway, we love Chick-Fil-A in Draper so we decided to head up there. The parking lot was jam packed. I ended up having to park over at Target. It turns out that they were having a 5th Birthday celebration. We ended up at a booth despite the crowd (thanks, Kari) and we got water bottles and free cheesecake! It was fun.

Then I headed over to JoAnn Crafts to buy some little round tins for my newest endeavor. I'm going to sell Stampin' Up! Yay! I'm so excited now that I've finally made the decision. The tins were for a project I want to display for customers and also so that I can use them for a make-and-take at my first home show. I probably won't be up and running for a bit. I'm signing up under my cool friend Dannie in California (of http://www.danniesdesigns.typepad.com/, which is in my sidebar). I'm waiting until February first because they are running a promotion where I'll get a free stamp set in addition to my starter kit. Then I need to make up some samples and get my new stamping blog started. I'll use the blog to showcase stamping projects and tutorials. I'm going to call it "Stamptacular Stuff--ideas to inspire". Then I'll have a show here at my home where I will draw a name of someone to receive the hostess benefits. So, if you're here in Utah, I'm sure I'll invite you over to see. It would be great to have this turn into a little business for me, but mostly I'm doing it just because I love to create stuff! Check out the catalog and you'll see why I'm so excited to get my hands on this stuff! The link is right under the picture. I haven't figured out how to make the picture, itself, a link. Any advice anyone?
http://catalogs.shoplocal.com/stampinup/index.aspx?pagename=shopmain&fsid=52e79700-86df-4fcd-bcee-8872d470388a&storeid=1038724&circularid=12339

Date Night

We had a great date tonight courtesy of Kyle's work. It was his work's late Christmas party (they have an employee one in December and another in January that the spouses/dates go to). It was at The Roof restaurant in Salt Lake City. It's a fancy shmancy buffet on the top floor of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. I should have taken my camera. The sun was settting as we started dinner. Last year it was snowing a bit too. The food actually reminded me a bit of the food we had at Goofy's Kitchen when we were at Disneyland in March. It had super good food too, but it was very expensive. I would go there again though. The kids had a blast and the good food was a nice break to the usual vacation food. No kids tonight! Thanks, Kari, for having them over! I would say my favorite part tonight was the creme brulee. YUM! It just melts in your mouth. I went online and found this picture so you could get the idea of what the view was like.

Craaaazy Snow Day!

I have had enough winter! Check out these pictures of my "day out" on Tuesday. My old ward was having a "Munch and Mingle" in the church gym and I was going to go pick up some Bajio to enjoy. As I was driving through Lehi it started to snow. It was a pretty heavy storm, but you could still see. I met Kari at her house so she could help me carry the food and drinks into the church. At her house I started wondering if we should really drive up to the church. It was really blowing outside and was sooooo cold. I wondered if anyone would actually be there. We decided to brave the storm and go anyway. Well, I started to regret my choice. The visibility was close to zero most of the time and totally zero the rest of the time. I had to inch along the road and hope to not hit anything. They were just neighborhood streets, so don't think I'm living too dangerously. The picture below was taken from Kari's car. You can't even tell that my van is just ahead of her. It was only 16 degrees out! And there were still about 20 women and their kids there! Aren't we nuts???

For My Parents and Friends

I went into my blog settings and changed it to allow anonymous comments. I'm hoping that this will fix the problem my parents have had with passwords and all that stuff. You can leave a comment now without signing in! Yay! Just click on the comments link to the bottom right of this post. Click on the circle next to "nickname" or "anonymous" and it will let you leave your comment without having a password.

A little bit of sunshine!

I actually went grocery shopping today without a coat on. Compared to how cold it's been, 46 degrees felt like a nice spring day! By the time I was done, it had cooled down a bit though. Then I was wishing I had brought it. And I wonder where my kids get that habit from!
We went to lunch at Burger King today and then spent time cleaning up the basement some more. What a chore! It's rewarding to see it looking so much better but it is so dusty and cold and there is so much junk that we have to haul upstairs to throw out or give to DI (it's like Goodwill in the Midwest).
I found a fabulous new (to me, anyway) digital designer. Her name is Shabby Miss Jenn. Check out the link in the sidebar. I've just got to get Winter Ponies (even though the horses would probably be useless to me) and Fondest Memories. So cute!
Have a great Sunday everyone! I'm going to enjoy not having to do anything at church (except take care of my kids). Then we're going to have Family Home Evening. Kari introduced me to these really cool FHE on DVD things. It has sing-along songs for the opening and closing song and a really cute cartoon lesson with follow up questions. I'm looking forward to eventually having them all and letting the kids be in charge of FHE once in a while. Enough of my ramblings!

Our Potty Party

Today was the big day for my DD#2. She finally finished her potty chart (well, almost anyway) so we took her and the kids to Chuck E. Cheese. She was so happy! We had pizza here at home though. No more Chuck E. Cheese pizza for me. I'm glad she had fun, but it was sure chaos in there. They need a bigger building or something. It was so super crowded and it was really hard to keep track of the kids in such a packed place. We left after about a half hour and went to Arctic Circle to get ice cream. We had her in a pull up the whole time and when we got home she was still dry. Yay for her! I've noticed that her attitude in general has changed through this process too. She sees herself as a big girl and is starting to act bigger too. Here is a picture of her with her jar of m&m's (she gets some when she uses the potty) and a picture of her and her sister at Chuck E. Cheese's. Getting a picture of her where she's looking at the camera with a normal smile on her face is about as easy as herding cats! (see below) This week I'm going to wean her off of the M&M's reward and make her stay dry till lunch to get some gum and then until dinner to get another piece. Hopefully after a couple weeks of that, we'll be totally done!

I got the creative bug again--just couldn't help but do another fun little project. I found some really cute, glittery chipboard flowers the other day and thought they would look really cute with stems on them in a glass vase. Then I decided to keep those until spring and look for something Valentine's related. I found just the thing today at Roberts. So cute! I'm totally into rhinestones lately, so I added those to the chipboard hearts and flowers. I put this on my computer desk so I can enjoy it while I work (ok, it's not work exactly).

Here's the cat herding clip that referred to above. Enjoy!

He says his name is "Ralph"

The barfs are back! This time it's my DS. I'm bummed because it was going to be lunch day with my friend Kari. Oh, well. We're going to go pick up a game for DS to play all day and then we'll go through the McDonalds drive through so that at least I can have a nice, greasy lunch. I really haven't had anything eventful to post about lately--hopefully there will be something more interesting to read about (anything but vomit, right?) soon. Yay! My friend (Kari) just called and offered to bring me Panda. Isn't she wonderful? It's great to have friend that take care of you!

Problem solved

This morning I went to Wal-Mart and bought a carpet cleaner for $98. It is fabulous! It only took me about 10 minutes to clean the barf smell out of the carpet. I can finally use my computer without gagging!

DD is still doing great with the potty training! She even went while she was at preschool. I think the difference between this time and the last time we tried (about 6 months ago) is that she is emotionally invested this time. It's something she really wants to do. Yay!

The Evil Funk

DD#2 is still doing great with potty training--yay! She had a couple of accidents today because she hasn't gotten used to the fact that sometimes she needs to go even if she doesn't want to. But, she is totally offended at the idea of wearing a diaper, so that's great. We have to explain to her at night that it's ok for her to wear one while she's sleeping and that she can put the panties back on in the morning.

I can't report on the Sunbeam experience though because she had to stay home. Yesterday I was spending some relaxing time playing on the computer when she came down all sad and whiney. She said her throat hurt. She started to cough and proceeded to barf, hitting my computer desk, chair, and the floor underneath. Yuck! I cleaned it all up but can't get rid of the awful smell! I'm happy to say that it didn't happen again. She is perfectly fine today, but I didn't dare take the chance of her going to church and getting sick again or spreading the germs. DH and I tag-teamed it for church. I went to sacrament, he taught the second hour, and I taught the third. Good thing the church is really close! And my lesson went so well. Yay!

Don't touch me!

I was hanging out upstairs with DD#1 (this means dear daughter for those who don't know computer slang--I'm trying to save myself some time). She was looking in my jewelry box and found DH's (dear husband's) wedding band. It was in there because we have both put our gold bands away for safe keeping and are wearing silver ones instead. Anyway, she asked me what the inscription said. I told her it says "love is eternal". She said "Oh. I thought it said Don't touch my wife". So funny! She says DH told her that once, but he doesn't remember. Either way, I love it when my kids suprise me by saying something so unexpected.

My baby is using the potty!

People are used to me blogging more. I guess I'm just worn out after all of the Holiday festivities! My husband had Tuesday off so we went to eat at Chili's and to see "I am Legend". Although the movie entertained me, it was a one-timer for sure. The CGI zombies were just too far fetched for me to buy into. I think I even laughed a couple of times when I was supposed to be scared. Even so, it was nice to have a date with my hubby.
Yes, my baby is finally using the potty. She's taking alot of the initiative (once we got her started) so I think this might be successful! Yay! What a major milestone in a mother's life. She gets Skittles whenever she goes, and we also have a chart that we mark each time. When she fills it we will take her to Chuck E. Cheese to celebrate. This is day three and she has done so well. I'm going to take her to pick out her own panties as a reward tomorrow. She's been wearing her sister's. I think she'll probably finish up the chart next week sometime.
I realized something last night that filled me with a bit of dread for Sunday (besides the fact that I'm teaching the lesson in Relief Society). I realized that my baby is 3 and it's January. That means that she won't go to nursery anymore. She'll be a Sunbeam and go to class with the big kids. Holy cow! She seems so little to me because there's no one littler in our family to compare her to. The reason I'm worried is because she loves nursery, so I think she's going to be ticked off to not be playing with toys anymore after Sacrament Meeting. Hopefully the novelty will excite her and the idea of going to Primary with her big sister. We'll see! I'll be sure to give a full report this weekend!