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Friday, August 19, 2011

Our One Yummy Watermelon


We've had lots of watermelons growing, but they would all get stunted. This has been our sole watermelon.

And it was YUMMY!


Thursday, July 7, 2011

A few photos

Life is super crazy. Kira is becoming more difficult to deal with as she approaches three years old. She's been making me crazy. I actually had the thought the other day, "I wonder if I had another kid... would it make raising her easier?" HAH! You know it's bad if I'm thinking that.

And just FYI... the answer is NO! NO! NO! So don't get any ideas about that.

Anyway. Tonight Reid was washing the car, so I caught a nice picture. Then I went and took a couple of pictures of my garden.




Wednesday, April 27, 2011

I knew working at Waffle House would pay off...

Aside from me being a great short order cook, I finally found another benefit to having worked at Waffle House...

The worst part (to me) about making weiner schnitzel is the egg dip. You have to deal with the egg whites and their slimey parts dripping everywhere and the bread crumbs who don't stick to it very well. Icky!

I've thought about the solution for years. Why did it take me so long?

At Waffle House, when someone orders an omelet, they put the eggs in a blender to make them puff up and be smoooooth.

So I finally stuck my eggs in a blender when I made schnitzel on Monday for Mike's belated birthday dinner.

Wow. Wow. And Triple Wow! It was soooo nice!

No icky egg whites. No drippy muck. No gooey blobs in my breadcrumbs. Just smooth, clean schnitzeling!

Woo Hoo!

Thank you, Waffle House!!!

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Single Parent Camping

I'm heading out with the kids in a little while to Eisenhower State Park on Lake Texoma. Mike is in Boston. I'm taking them alone.

Oh my. I hope I live to tell the tale.

Friday, February 4, 2011

Bedrooms

Here are the pictures from the kid's rooms.

View from Kira's bedroom door. She has been sleeping on a mattress on the floor in my bedroom for the past few months, so having her on the trundle frame works out well for now. The futon is in transition... not sure were it will end up. (This used to be Zach's room.)

The view from her bed to her closet. She was so excited to see all of her clothes hanging up in her closet. It was really cute.

Zach and Cole's room. I decided to put the bookshelf between their beds like this to help them feel separated. We'll see if they like it after a few weeks. Cole's bed is the one in the "nook". Zach didn't want to be back there, but Cole seems to like it. (This used to be Reid's room.)

View from the door/hallway into Reid and Jacob's room. Jacob is sleeping on this twin bed. It's the day bed part to Kira's trundle bed. (This used to be Jacob and Cole's room.)

View from the foot of Jacob's bed. This is Reid's queen size bed. It's really nice that this room is big enough to accommodate his bed.

I think the boys are reasonably happy with these arrangements. Reid and Zach previously had their own rooms... so they're not *happy*, but they seem to be alright with it.

Kira has been a bit freaked out in the middle of the night. The first night she totally freaked out when she woke up. Then last night, she stayed in her bed, but was calling for "Daddy". Hopefully she'll get used to it soon. I know I'm enjoying being able to get up in the middle of the night to go pee without worrying about waking her up! :)

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Whew.

Today I rearranged all the kid's bedrooms. I had been planning the moves for a while because I wanted to get Kira out of our bedroom.

As a baby, she slept in her crib in our closet (it's a big closet). Then a few months ago, I took down her crib and she's been sleeping on her crib mattress in the corner of our bedroom. Recently I put a twin size mattress down there for her (she is a restless sleeper, so I wanted her to have a bigger bed).

My biggest decision was whether to put her in a room with one of her brothers, or to put her in her own room. I finally decided that she needed to be in her own room.

That meant that Reid and Zach would have to share a bedroom. They've each had their own rooms since we moved into this house. However, they both said they'd rather share a room with Kira than with each other.

So... my final decision was to put Reid and Jacob together, and Zach and Cole together. So that's what I did today. Reid and Jacob are in the biggest bedroom. Zach and Cole are in the next biggest and then Kira is in the smallest (but still quite large) bedroom. The furniture arrangements seem to be working out for now. I'll take pictures tomorrow after I get everything completely done and post them here.

My biggest concern with this arrangement is that Kira will be upstairs. Mine and Mike's bedroom is downstairs. This really only concerns me because she does tend to wake up at night. Not nearly as much as she used to, but I worry. I think for the first few nights I'll sleep on the couch in the game room so I can try to teach her to stay in her bed.

We'll see how it goes.

All the furniture moving today has just about worn me out. But I'm really happy with the results. Hopefully Reid and Zach won't harbor too much resentment for their mother because she's taking away their private mini-palaces. :)

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Closer to Normal...

We're getting closer to normal around here.

Zach woke up sick to his stomach this morning and has thrown up a few times today. But Kira is feeling almost normal. It's amazing how hard life is when she's sick. And while I don't want to downplay Zach's illness, it's just nothing compared to dealing with Kira. He pukes and then goes and lays down on the couch. Easy.

And just for the heck of it, I want to post a picture of our eternally patient kitty:

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Humpty Dumpty...

...sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the King's horses, and all the King's men
Couldn't put Humpty Dumpty together again.


Kira's illness has thrown me for a loop, knocked me off my wall, kicked me in the patooty.

Man. I'm exhausted beyond words.

But thankfully she's slowly feeling better.

Hopefully Kira's health will be able to put the pieces back together and my world will return to normal.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Only Three Months...

It's been three months since I posted here. Yeah... I'm doing good to keep my head above water...

But I did want to share this bit of a story:

Yesterday around 4pm, I was sitting in a chair finishing up the VERY last row of Cole's surprise crocheted blanket for his birthday (WHICH IS TODAY... HAPPY BIRTHDAY COLE!!!) when Kira climbed in my lap looking all tired. I thought, "She had kind of a bad night... I guess she might fall asleep and take a nap." No sooner did I think that when she puked all over me, the blanket, the floor, the chair... did I mention me? Big, chunky puke, too. Whew. She had a few residual pukes, we got her cleaned up, wrapped her up in a couple of towels, put her on her bed, and she promptly passed out. I cleaned up all the puke off me, had to tie off the blanket I was making, and got everything in the washer.

During one of my many, many trips to the sink to rinse off the washcloth I was using to wipe up the chunks, my eldest child asked, "Can we do a driving lesson?"

Sidestory:

See... he turned 16 a little over a month ago and he's certain he's going to die if he doesn't get his license: NOW! We've been working on completing the driver's ed course as quickly as possible. He has it in his head that we should be done tomorrow so that he can go and schedule a driving test and have his license by the middle of next week. I've tried explaining to him that that might not happen for him as he plans, but all I get in return are heavy sighs.

Back to the main story:

I say, "Kira just puked all over the place and I'm dealing with that right now." His response, "So, what, 10 minutes?"

Yeah... the conversations I heard in dark corners at church between moms who were so happy that their sons were moving off to college are becoming clearer to me. I know that teenagers think the universe and everything in it revolve around them, but really? 10 minutes?

I love my oldest. Truly. Deeply. But wow. I don't know that I'm ready to fight the gravity of his planetary greatness for the next two and a half years.


Anyway...

Kira is beginning to feel better. Literally 24 hours later. How do stomach viruses do that?

I just hope and pray that it doesn't start spreading to the other kids. Although, if I was a bettin' man... I'd probably bet against me on that one.

Oh... and the blanket is still sitting waiting to be finished before dinner when we attempt to celebrate Cole's birthday amid the lingering smell of stomach virus in the house.