Callie-isms

So a couple of funny things Callie's said. She was looking at my belly one day and talking to me about the baby and said, "But how's the baby gonna get out? There isn't a little door on your belly!"

Also on Saturday morning it was time to have a prayer over breakfast & Jeremiah had gone to wash his truck & Jack didn't want to eat so I told Callie that she & I would just say the prayer together. So she says, "Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for this day..." Pause. After a moment she said, "Mom, it's your turn - you say what's next." I told her to go ahead & keep saying it so she says another part & pauses again. So I quietly told her what to say & she said "Say it louder." So I told her no, she should say it & she whispers, "But you said we were saying the prayer together! It's your turn!" So I'm whispering to her that I just meant that we'd say it without Daddy & Jackson & that she can finish it all by herself, but I think she even paused once or twice more waiting for me to take my turn after that. I thought it was so funny!

nesting

I'm totally nesting! I just can't stand the clutter & chaos around my house any more! Nobody believes me when I say I'm messy, so here's proof! Okay, this picture is in the middle of having pulled everything out of closets, cabinets, & drawers, but still, sometimes a room or rooms in my house will look almost like this!

We just have too much stuff! So I've been taking each room by storm, trying my darndest to part with my crap! I need someone to help me - seriously! I think, I can't get rid of these pipe cleaners! What if when my kids are 6 we do a project that uses pipe cleaners? Holy cow! Pipe cleaners are like 60 cents! I need to just get rid of them & buy them again when I need them (and throw the rest of the package out when we're done with the project). My clutter is made up of similar examples, ranging from crayons & pipe cleaners to more expensive things. If I haven't used something in 3+ years why do I have a hard time getting rid of it, no matter what it cost? Obviously it's not something I need in my life any more! And we're not destitute like when we were first married, so if I really need something again in the future I could always re-buy it, right? Easier said than done! So even with my renewed get-rid-of-it-attitude, there's still a lot things that we need that I just don't know where to put. Like where are we putting this new baby once she's a few months old & has outgrown her welcome in our bedroom? I think because Jeremiah's so good at tetris he's okay with just cramming a crib in our "office" (pictured above) & calling it a day, feeling like he's solved my "where to put it" issues, but that doesn't make a calm, relaxing home environment. And that's why I'm SO glad that his youngest brother Jonny just moved in! He's staying with us until he starts school in April so I insisted we clean out the office & let him have a bedroom while he's living with us. I'll be a little sad to take down my sweet workcenter, but I need to get over it like I need to get over a package of pipe cleaners. I don't use it that often & I don't see myself doing a lot of scrapbooking or any type of crafting in the next few months with a new baby, so it's for the best. After Jonny moves out & the baby is 2 or 3 months old we can have the baby in the office, which of course will no longer be an office. We may move the computer back in, but at least it will be housed in an armoire instead of the open desk it's currently on (which I just can't keep clean! It was never a good idea for a messy girl like me to have an open desk)! Enough of my rantings! Soon it will all have been just a bad dream.

Mrs. Milman's Chocolate Frosting

So I watched Martha Stewart a couple weeks ago & they made Mrs. Milman's Chocolate Frosting, which looked so easy & delicious! I've tried some other MS recipes before & some of them have turned out & some have not, which I think is pretty common with her stuff. But since I watched Mrs. Milman making the frosting I thought I could do it. And I did! Don't you love a success story? But unfortunately I was expecting the frosting to be fudgy & delicious & instead it was a ganache & had more of a dark chocolate flavor even though I used milk chocolate chips instead of semisweet. If you like that great, but it was a let-down for me. At least the cake & cupcakes looked pretty! If you make it, it makes a TON! I generously frosted a 3-layer cake, plus 12 cupcakes with it & still had enough for at least 6 more cupcakes, maybe more.

Pinkalicious

One of Callie's favorite books is Pinkalicious. "Pinkalicious eats so many pink cupcakes that she wakes up the next morning with pink skin and hair. The color just won't wash off, and the doctor diagnoses her with Pinkititis and tells her to eat green food to get better. Still, when her parents aren't looking, she sneaks just one more treat–and turns red. Startled, she starts to choke down her veggies and finally returns to normal. When everything seems okay, Daddy asks what happened to the other cupcakes, and Pinkalicious's little brother bounds into the room with one in hand, happily showing off his new pink skin." (amazon)


So Callie had been asking all week if we could make some pinkalicious cupcakes and last night we finally did! She hoped to eat enough to wake up with pink skin this morning, but alas, her skin is normal today. She woke up & said, "My skin isn't pink - that means I didn't eat enough pink pupcakes!"

12 on the 12th

I saw this idea in Simple Scrapbooks & I love it! The point is to pull out your camera on ordinary days & include everyday photos in your scrapbook. So on the 12th day of every month I'm gonna take 12 pics of the things we're doing that day. At the end of the year I'll use the pics to make a simple album of our everyday life!

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Saturday, January 12th

Jack wakes up like clockwork most mornings! Usually within 20 minutes of 7:00 he's climbing into bed with us asking to watch cartoons.

I've been sleeping in & skipping making breakfast for Jer on Wednesdays like I usually do, so I finally got out of bed this morning & made him a decent meal.

Callie & Jack are so good at playing together! They love playing with Callie's dollhouse.


Today is mail day. I save it up until it's a huge chore & then spend an hour standing at the counter sorting, stacking & then ripping.


Having a picnic on the floor in the kids' room since it's too chilly out for one in the yard. We eat grilled cheese, clementines, goldfish crackers, strawberry milk, and fruit snacks.


I thought Jack was playing with his pirate toys in the living room. When he came back into the bedroom with wet hands I knew exactly what was going on (since this happened a few days ago too!)!

Jack is usually in time out at least a couple times a day! He's just at a tough age!

Getting out of the house by myself for the first time all week! I went to Penney's, Maurice's, Safeway, & Smith's. We're so glad Safeway had French Toast Bread! They run out of it quickly!

We wanted Panda Express for dinner but since they just opened here in Kingman on Wednesday, the wait was insane! The drive-through was backed up to where you turn into the parking lot & the line inside was long & twisted. Since we didn't prepare anything else for dinner I hit In-N-Out on my way home from errands.

The kids only get baths 2-3 times a week since they have such dry skin. They love bath time though & are so excited to use some new bath paints (which end up not really working)!

Jeremiah prepares a lesson for YM. He's in the Stake YM Presidency & has to give part of the lesson in Ward Conferences for the next several weeks!

While Jeremiah works on his YM lesson I work on stuff for YW - besides a lesson, stuff for New Beginnings.

Bob

I've been considering cutting Callie's hair (well not me personally) into a bob for quite a while but I kept thinking that I'd regret it as soon as I did it. I'd talked to her about getting it cut though because she cries just about every time we brush it out. I don't know what it is with her, but she wakes up most mornings with MAJOR bedhead! She must sleep really hard because her hair is usually super ratted when she gets out of bed. Ever since I'd suggested it (a few weeks ago) she'd been saying we should get it cut. Well then on Thursday night she had a piece of gum and you know where this is going! She's never been so naughty with her gum before! She had her hair basically in a bow beneath her chin stuck together with the gum! And it was all over her pants & sweater too! I got her hair separated & since it was late let her go to bed. Yesterday instead of even trying to deal with it & brush it out, we got her hair cut. I'm so glad now that it's cut. I think it's absolutely adorable! I'm sure there will be times where I think about how cute her long hair was, but for now we love the bob!

Jackson

This little guy is so funny! It seems like half the time he's using his "pirate voice" and it's more than just the voice - it's the funny expressions he makes when he's using it! He was having breakfast using his spoon as a sword in between bites so of course he had to use his pirate voice! Oh, & he uses the "pirate voice" even when he's talking about non-pirate stuff - like hunting or dinosaurs or Swiper or monsters or anything boyish! :) I love my Jackson-Boy!

Snow Party

Here are some pics of all the fun we had in the snow! The first 3 are on Christmas. Then a couple of days after Christmas some of Jer's extended family came over for a little snow party. We roasted hot dogs & marshmallows over a fire & had chili & cocoa & the kids played in the snow for hours! Sadly enough, the snow wasn't the right condition ever to build a snowman! Can you believe it?!

Just a note about this one: If Jeremiah's so worried about his son being tough, why the heck did he let him go outside this day in a puple snowsuit?!

Christmas

We had a wonderful Christmas! We flew to Spokane on the 21st & were so excited to see all of Jeremiah's family - especially his youngest brother Jonny who'd just returned from a mission to Argentina a week before! This was the first Christmas Jeremiah's entire family had been together for about 10 years due to all the boys being on missions at different times! On Saturday all the boys went snowboarding. On Sunday after church we had a HUGE family get-together to celebrate Jonny's homecoming. Here's a picture of both sides of Jer's family (his parents each come from families of 7 kids)! That's a lot of people, huh?! And there were at least 35 missing from the picture! So most of these people went to one of Jeremiah's Aunt's house for the homecoming party! It was quite the get-together!

On Christmas Eve we went to Grandpa & Grandma Divis' house with about 1/2 the people from the picture! It's tradition to go there every year. I love that Jeremiah's family has lots of traditions! After dinner we all squeezed into the living room so Grandpa Divis could read us the Christmas Story from the Bible. Callie sat with him & told him when he was done that he "forgot about when they went to find a place to sleep & the man said you can't stay here - there's no room!" We'd been using our Little People Nativity set at home to talk about the Christmas Story! :) Anyway, here's Jeremiah's parents' house:

The living room was insane Christmas morning! But there were 15 people there for Christmas so that's a LOT of presents!

Jack loves his handy-man set that his cousin Sophie gave him! (it's Jeremiah's new tool belt that he's wearing)

Jeremiah's dad MADE this crib for Callie's new doll! Can you believe it!?

I had sent most of our presents up ahead of time & Jeremiah's mom did the wrapping for me but she had the stuff for the stockings put away unwrapped & Callie found some princess bubble bath in there on Christmas Eve & was so excited that she'd found it! I told her that I'd planned on giving it to her for Christmas but since she'd been getting into things she shouldn't have & found it that she couldn't have it any more & she was DEVASTATED! She sobbed for like 10 minutes & even later after she hadn't cried for a while she was still a little worked up about it & eventually cried some more! So Jer's mom told her that maybe Santa would bring her some instead. Although later that evening she asked about it again & I told her the same thing & she told me that she didn't want Santa to give it to her, she wanted me to give it to her. Well Santa put it in her stocking after all & she was SOOO excited about it! She was more excited about that stinkin' bubble bath than she was about the 2 things she'd actually asked Santa for (a new dolly & a Barbie to be best friends with the 1 other Barbie she has)! :) Even now when somebody asks her what she got for Christmas she tells them princess soap (soap, bubble bath - it's all the same to her). She does love her doll though. She'd seen it (a Bitty Baby) in the American Girl catalog months before & it was the only thing she asked for up until about 2 weeks before Christmas when she added the Barbie. She loves to change her baby's diaper & clothes & she sleeps with it & is just a great little mama!

Well we really had the best time in WA! We stayed until the 31st & I honestly could have stayed longer. Of course it's always nice to be in your own home, but I can't even say that I missed my bed that much! The one we slept on was very comfortable! :) The only nice thing about being home (regarding sleeping) is that I don't have to go down the stairs in the middle of the night to use the bathroom (we were on the 3rd floor)!

Disneyland

The kids & I drove to CA & picked up Jeremiah from his hunting trip at the Ontario airport so we could go to Disneyland for a day. The kids had a great time - especially Callie! As we were driving into the parking lot she could see the California Screamin' roller coaster (at DCA) up ahead & said she wanted to go on it. We told her it would be really scary (not that we were even going to that park) but she told us that she's a big girl & she's brave. So we asked her if she was brave enough to go on the pirate ride (since she's been talking about how scary it was ever since our last trip to Disneyland a year before) & she said, "I'm brave but not THAT brave to go on the pirate ride!" Anyway, we had a really fun day with the kids & my parents. First of all, it's a good thing being pregnant at Disneyland because I ate lots of treats & didn't have to worry about holding in my belly! :) And since there's a lot we couldn't do with the kids anyway, I didn't miss out on too much. Jeremiah & my mom took Callie on The Matterhorn while my dad took Jack on the Autopia. Callie came back from the Matterhorn & told me that she'd loved it even though it was scary but not too scary! We saw Alice & the Mad Hatter without much of a line so we waited for a picture. Callie was a little nervous about it so I told her she should ask Alice if she wanted to ride the teacups with her! That made Callie excited to talk to her. When she asked, Alice of course told her she couldn't but told Callie that her favorite teacup was the light blue one & that Callie should try to ride in that one so of course when we went to the teacups next Callie was determined to find the light blue one & made sure we all knew that Alice had told her to ride in it because it was Alice's favorite! :)

This is Jack riding his horse side-saddle! My mom kept trying to put him on the saddle the right way but Jack thought it was great hanging off the side!

Outside The Princess Shoppe. Callie for some reason LOVES Princess Aurora, even though she rarely chooses to watch Sleeping Beauty.

Callie is a girly-girl for sure! She found these cute "glass slippers" in The Princess Shoppe & had to try them on!

One more funny thing was that after the fireworks when it started "snowing" Callie stuck out her tongue to catch the snowflakes & ended up getting a big one! It's actually soap though so she made the funniest faces as she tried to get the soap off her tongue! She still loved trying to catch the "snow" after that, but this time with her hands! :)

O Christmas Tree

I hadn't had a real tree in YEARS (since I was maybe in grade-school) so I decided this year to get one! I've hated my artificial one for the last couple of years but we keep thinking "we'll be in a new house next year" so I haven't wanted to buy a new one yet, not knowing for sure the space & ceiling height. I'd even thought I wouldn't do a tree at all this year since we'd be going to WA for Christmas, but that isn't very fun when you have little kids! So while Jeremiah was out of town (hunting, of course!) I took the kids to Home Depot & got a $20 little 4-ft tree. I'm SO glad I did! It was fun having a cute little good-smelling tree. I almost want to do it every year, even after we end up getting a new artificial one. And another thing, I love a nicely decorated formal Christmas tree & I've been thinking about the hand-made decorations that are soon to come & I know I'm anal but it would just be hard for me to do that to a formal tree! So I think that the decorations we used this year (got them mostly on clearance after Christmas last year) will go nicely on a family tree with all our sentimental & handmade stuff. I predict that next year we'll likely be too house-poor to buy a big new tree anyway! The kids had a great time helping decorate the tree. And then after we were done the kids rearranged ornaments every day until we left for WA! I also kept finding toys stuffed deep in the branches (Jack), and one day even his shoe! And another day Jack showed me that his toys were swimming - in the tree stand! And to know that it'll still be years of trying to keep little hands out of the tree branches! I know some people just don't decorate the bottom, but that wouldn't stop my children! Almost daily I found them with stools or anything else they could find to stand on to rearrange stuff higher up! And the tree wasn't very tall in the first place!

good times

I took Jeremiah to the airport this morning (yes, he's out of town AGAIN!- hunting!), so the kids & I spent the day in Vegas. I really didn't want to spend the day in Vegas w/the kids, but I had a lot of returns I wanted to take care of- the downside of living in Kingman & doing online shopping. Well it turned out to be a GREAT day! First of all, did you know that it doesn't matter how old your return is at Kohl's as long as you have the receipt?! I was stoked since the stuff I was returning was seriously like 6 months old but I couldn't ever find my receipt till like a month or two ago! So I was already in a great mood when I scored this amazing parking spot at the mall! (I'm the red one in the 2nd space!) Obviously I was excited about it - I took a picture from the curb of the mall entrance!


I quickly made my returns & then took the kids to see Santa! I was prepared for a little wait but there was nobody in line! I paid for a dumb picture cause they won't let you take pictures with your own camera unless you also pay for one of theirs. I'd scan the one they took but that would take more effort than I'm willing, so here's the one I took. Although it's really not any better or worse than theirs. In their picture Jack has a super cute huge grin on his face but Callie is close to having those stoned picture eyes. Callie was SO excited to see Santa & tell him what she wants for Christmas, but she wouldn't smile once she was actually on his lap. She was definitely talkative though.




Oh, & I don't know if it's just because he figured my kids are small enough to get away with this, but Santa says loudly over the kids' heads, "She wants a doll, mom." Is that weird? I thought it was.

We went to Costco because I needed to get a few things so I'd told the kids we'd eat lunch there. We were getting out of the car & Callie goes, "I'm so freakin' hungry mom!" Oh my gosh! Where does she hear that stuff? Certainly not from me! The kids had done really well so far with the running around, but Callie had a bit of a meltdown when Jack took a bite of her hotdog! She actually said she had to have a new one! Yeah well she didn't get a new one! She sat & whined about it for at least 5 minutes though. I got an ice cream bar for us to share & I told her she couldn't have any until she ate more food so she shoved TONS of hotdog in her mouth, pulled about half of it back out, & still ended up spitting the first half onto the table after trying to chew for a minute & not making any progress. Then while eating some of the ice cream bar she said, "This crap is good!" Okay, that one is all Jeremiah! He's always saying it's good crap! :) Things were going okay again till Jeremiah's dad called. I was pushing the kids around Costco & they were getting antsy so Jer's dad told me to tell Callie that if she was naughty Santa wouldn't bring her anything for Christmas. That didn't phase her - she said she'd seen Santa & already asked for a doll. So he said (since we'll be at his house for Christmas) that if she's not good he'll take her presents from Santa & throw them in the fire! Okay, you're probably thinking is this guy psycho? But I'm laughing as I'm typing this - you have to know Jeremiah's dad! Well that did it for her - she started BAWLING! It was comical. She calmed down & I think Papa reassured her that he was just kidding.

We shopped & did errands the rest of the afternoon & ended up at McDonald's for dinner since they had a play place. The kids deserved it! 2 huge complaints about my McDonald's experience tonight - one, I had to wait like 10 minutes for my order to be up, but everyone else around me got their food! The girl at the counter felt really bad & had to finish getting my food together because the incompetent kid that was supposed to do it couldn't handle it. Seriously! Have you ever had to wait 10 minutes for food at McDonald's? And when it was said & done the guy had made 6 different Happy Meals! I only ordered 2! And he didn't get MY food either! And my other even bigger complaint is that there was no changing table in the bathroom! Okay, this McDonald's is basically brand new! It's a very nice McDonald's - one of the nicest I've ever been to. You have to ask the people at the counter to press a special button that will buzz you into the bathrooms. How could they not have a changing table?! Jack had pooped while playing on the toys so I had to take him into the handicapped stall where it has its own sink & lay him on the teeny tiny slim part of the counter in front of the basin to try & change him. He cried the whole time & it just happened to be a sticky poop that needed extra care! I was pissed! But what good would it have done to complain to a bunch of teenagers making minimum wage? I'm seriously calling someone. If I think about it during business hours.

On the upside of McDonald's the kids had a great time playing! The play area is separated from the main dining area by a glass window and there was a table of teenagers sitting on the other side of the glass from us. One of the girls had ice cream & would take her spoon & act like she was going to give Jack a bite, putting her spoon up towards the glass. I think he quit opening his mouth after the first couple times, but I was totally laughing! So were they! I wish I'd gotten a picture - it was so funny! I'd also told the kids they had to eat so much before they could go play, so after taking it slow for a while they decided it was time to play & shoveled the last required bites into their mouths! I love my kids!