The Official 1st Blogiversary

I don’t know what possessed me to start this blog on February 29th, 2008.  It was probably not intentional.  So, while it has been around for a handful of years, now I can officially say, Happy 1st Blogiversary to me!

Seemed like a good time to come out of hibernation. You laugh but I really do hibernate….

So since this only happens once every four years, I’ll give you four updates about each one of us.

LILY:

1. Is pretty much potty trained! Well, 95% but still, hooray! She has the funniest i-need-to-go-potty dance, reminds me of Elvis.
2. She is a talker.  She likes to lay on compliments to others but gets mad when you return the compliment (um, girl?).  She will say to you, “I got to tell you a question” and you say what? and she will say “What is your favorite color?” to which you will reply and most likely you would be wrong, it is always the color you are currently wearing.  She also likes to tell made-up stories, usually involving a pony named Fluttershy who wants someone to play Angry Birds with her.  All the ponies seem to be too busy doing more important stuff like making cupcakes and laughing. Finally Spike the dragon agrees to play Angry Birds with her and saves the day. Hear it for yourself:
   
3. She is almost 2 1/2 yrs old, she knows how to navigate my phone pretty well, she loves Disney Princesses, My Little Ponies, Little “Ein Skeins” (Einsteins), and Dora.  She can read most of the alphabet too, and loves going to the library and kids museum.
4. Still has curly red hair.  And two cowlicks which make styling it all the more difficult.  Her hair is growing out funny in back and a few sections look almost mullet-esque so I think I’m going to have to chop it to even it out.  She has discovered that she likes to play with mom’s hair.  She loves to brush it and put clips in it and try to braid it… It has been funny because Aedan has wanted to get in on the action too and now knows how to braid my hair…

AEDAN:

1. This boy got so many Lego sets at Christmas and of course no sooner than when he finished building them all he starts getting excited about Star Wars and Star Wars Lego stuff.

Aedan in the Robots exhibit, Rockford Children’s Discovery Center Museum.

2. He is a great reader.  He is so funny with his writing and drawing lately.  Apparantly he was fed up with our rules so he made up some of his own:

Rules: 1) never close my door 2) don’t distroy my legos 3) keep hands and feet to self 4) never mess up my bed

3. He plays really well with Lily but knows how to get her to do things he knows she shouldn’t do.  And of course she is just thrilled that he is giving her attention so she happily obliges.  He has accepted the fact that he will have another little sister and tells me he is so excited.  He’s been super helpful.

4. We still have a hard time getting him to eat most meats and foods that are mixed.  He is SO SLOW too.  It doesn’t help that Lily is super fast and eats just about anything, makes him even crabbier.

Aedan fussing about eating his food and Lily’s impression of Aedan fussing about eating his food.

JACKIE:

1. 33 weeks now.  Still a girl.  Baby has been breech for a while now and is VERY active so of course my bladder is loving it.  I sure hope she turns.  Had some contractions yesterday but if she is like my other two, she will be fashionably late.  Is it crazy to say I almost hope I can schedule an induction again?  It is so nice to be able to plan it and I honestly don’t know what I’d do if I went into labor on my own.  Oh well, looking forward to that epidural! Below is me sometime early January. That jade bracelet I put on in my first month of pregnancy and my wrists got swollen quick and could never get it off.  Had to break it off shortly after this picture.
2. I usually get a burst of energy now but sadly it doesn’t seem to be happening.  I’m slowing down, physically and definitely mentally.  My short term memory is shot. I’ve been trying to get things ready despite myself, mostly worried about freezing meals and getting kids ready for Spring and such, not so much about gather baby stuff.  I hate the term nesting.  I’ve also become hateful of undeserving things.
3. Being creative seems to take a lot of brain power but I do have my moments.  Aedan once commented that he wished I could come to his Kindergarten holiday parties so I decided I would find a sitter for Lily and surprise him by coming to his Valentines Party.  I signed up to do a game and thought a VDay game of twister would be silly.  So going for minimum cost and effort, I cut out paper hearts and machine stitched them onto a unused white shower curtain of ours and made a spinner out of cardboard.  It was fun.  I also made Neal a VDay present, again low $/effort, and decorated some recycled jars to make personalized snack containers for his desk at work.  Gotta push my mind somehow people.
4. Things have been busy for me in my church assignments these last few months.  Inspite of my swollen fingers, I decided to play my cello for Christmas Day and it went ok.  It was more for me and my kids, forcing myself to not forget how to play and my kids needed to know that it is ok to be brave and do  things that make you nervous (or maybe in my case, embarassed).  There have been some Sundays where I’ve found myself playing the organ, teaching a Primary class, teaching Sharing Time, and teaching Singing Time, all back to back.  It has been crazy. 

NEAL:

1. He’s been travelling a lot.  He just got back from a trip to Japan, Korea, and China.  He goes to Colorado, Wisconsin, and I think Chicago this month.  We survive without him but barely.  He is so busy with this new position and seems like he is constantly having work added on to him.  But we are so thankful for this position and will be even more thankful once we can cash in on all the flight and hotel rewards racking up….
2. He is busy with doing school part time too.  My mushbrain can’t even comprehend doing all he does now.  He is doing well there too.
3. He’s been spending some good quality time with Aedan these last few months.  Before Christmas he made a goal to build every one of Aedan’s lego sets with Aedan before Christmas came.  That turned out to be a hard goal to meet.  Since Christmas they’ve been busy playing Lego Star Wars together and they’ve started reading Hugo together.  They even got to go on a Daddy/Son outing to see Star Wars I in 3D in the theaters opening day. 
4. He’s had a bit of a break from doing major home improvements these past few months which has been nice.  We are far from done with this place but that is ok for now.  He decided recently that it would be good to refinance our home with rates being so very low now and so we just got an appraisal done.  It feels weird to refinance after only 2 years of being in the home but rates have dropped enough that it was very worth it.  Next on his honey-to-do list is put the crib back together.

Aedan’s LEGO Birthday

I know my posts are all out of order but so is my mind…

There once was a boy obsessed with Legos and a mother who was a little too eager to get away from chores….

This little boy decided ages ago that he wanted a Lego birthday party.  The possibilities were endless - apparently a lot of boys are obsessed with Legos who also have moms who want to avoid housework, and of course blasted the internet with their cool ideas.  This little boy and his mom planned and prepared for this party with great care.  The first creation that came out of their craftiness was Lego minifigure crayons, made by recycling old stubby crayons lying in wait for their second life.

Next came home made Kool-Aid Play dough stamped with love.

A banner to deck the halls was made.  Candy Lego bricks were made to top the not-so-homemade cupcakes (cop out, yes, but not entirely ashamed).

A Lego brick shaped piñata was made from scrap cardboard, newspaper, and crepe paper.  Sadly a final product shot was not taken but the reader has to have room for imagination, right?

The party was staged.

The beverages were dressed for the event.

The boy had fun adding some personal touches to the decor.

The party was packed with smiles galore.  And goodies too.

 

Games entertained even the princess of the party.  Gifts were well received to say the least.

A couple months past 5 now, but Happy Birthday little man!  Looking forward to many more (Lego or not)!

Happy 4th!

I realize I have loads to catch up on but that’ll have to wait for another rainy day I suppose… We are having a rainy 4th here so not much going on but in an attempt to make my day a little more patriotic, I’ll post this.  Luckily I had a little 4th of July fun previously otherwise I would feel put out! 

A hostess gift using some of my favorite jars and tootsie rolls and topped off using this tutorial.  I actually used a 4x6 flag for the material and thought it was cute but then I wonder if that is unpatriotic of me to cut up a flag, no matter how cheap it w as…

Red, White, and Blue Deviled Eggs.  It just might become a tradition here!  Shell the hardboiled eggs and empty out the yolks and dye the egg whites in water and food coloring.  Real quick!

Happy Independence Day to you!

Geeks R Us

Things have been busy here but nothing major to report.  Okay, I can maybe think of a few things but you’d think we were nerds.  Here’s the first one to report: I, under the tutelage of the masters Mr. and Mrs. K and with the help of some other fabulous ladies, learned how to make my own picture frames.  It was awesome, a little tiring, but I think it was worth it. 

We cut and routered our own boards,

 

glued and stapled and clamped the pieces together,  

  

fitted glass and backings and wired them for hanging,

 

and finished our frames (minus the paint),

enjoying every step of the way.

I came away with 4 total, all 8x10 frames.  I need to decide on a paint for mine now but I have them hanging up anyway.  I wish we had a lot of the tools required for such a task as this would be fun to make more.  Someday maybe.

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Our next “big” news is that we cancelled our cable early May to save some money and while we have a digital converter built into our tv, we don’t get great signal without the aid of an antennae.  Neal found a tutorial online on how to build your own out of pretty ordinary things.  Behold, the fruits of his labors:

It is pretty monstrous.  And it worked. The idea was to place it against a foil lined backing and raise it up on a stand and Neal found a projector screen plus stand in a dumpster and planned to use that to really soup it up.  Well we had a few issues, one being that it is huge and we have no room for it downstairs by the tv and the other being that our plan to put it in the attic was foiled due to no chance of hooking it up like we wanted.  Oh well, it was a valiant effort Neal.  We are currently borrowing an antennae from Neal’s labmate and are enjoying a few free channels for the time being…

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Aedan, at age almost three, has become a little techie himself.  He can use the computer mouse to a certain degree, playing games on pbskids.org by himself.  He can also navigate around Neal’s iPhone pretty well, getting to the desired apps like the whoopie cushion noise generator (groan) or the bug squishing game.  His latest favorite has been a spelling game and what do you know, hooked on iPhone works for him!  He can actually spell or at least recognize certain spellings (I’m not sure if I would completely call it reading though), words like FERRY, BARGE, BLIMP, CAR, TRAIN (are you seeing a pattern yet?), PLANE, TAXI, SHIP,…. It is so weird to feel proud that he knows how to spell because of a game on a phone.  What is the world coming to?  I didn’t even touch a computer until something like 5th grade.  Oh well, it is still amazing to me.  I’ll try to get a video of him soon.

How to have a Happy Mother’s Day!

The Kitchen Post has lacked a lot of recipes and food related items lately – not because we haven’t been eating good food but because my pregnancy has left me with very little desire to enjoy food as much. Well, I’m prepared to share another recipe with you but I would definitely recommend that you don’t eat it, pregnant or not.

A month back I had help throw a baby shower for this amazing new mommy and instead of doing baby shower games (aren’t we all tired of those games?) we decided to do a fun project instead. Something to pamper the mom-to-be but also to pamper any woman because, let’s face it, we all like to be pampered whether we have an excuse or not. So my co-host and I happened upon Martha Stewart’s Sugar Scrubs, a natural hand/foot/body exfoliator plus moisturizer using easily obtainable ingredients. The brilliant thing about this is that you don’t need lotion after using it! This is the project that is being heard all around our little world over here – so many people are reproducing and gifting these babies and we are so excited that they were a hit!

I used grape seed oil but light olive oil is good too. The essential oils I used for these particular jars are lime, lemon, and peppermint, and I combined the lemon and lime for one. For the shower we had grapefruit, lime, peppermint, orange, and lavendar with so many combos in between: grapefruit mint, lime mint, peppermint lavendar, orange mint, orange grapefruit, etc. On my to-do list is cinnamon, clove, cinnamon clove (can label as pumpkin spice and color orange), a ginger-cinnamon-clove combo labelled as gingerbread, exotic fruit scents like passionfruit, pineapple, maybe add coconut. The peppermint can be relabelled candy cane for Christmas time. The possibilities are endless.

These were a blast! Martha only provided a few labels so I made up some more to accomodate every creative outlet we could take on this evening. Essential oils were purchased at local health food stores and our minds are still spinning with the many possibilities of scents you could create.

Decorating the jars is also a lot of fun. For the shower we use pint size mason jars that I had on hand but the cutest are the new contemporary Ball mason jars with silver lids and bands.

I’ve also made brown sugar scrubs with vanilla extract for the scent and no food coloring. Not as cute as the colored ones but I find it is not as abrasive and hey, if you want you can eat it :) I used some on my feet last night and they still feel oh so smooth and soft! Happy Mother’s Day!

Sugar Scrubs

modified from MarthaStewart.com

2 cups white (or brown) sugar
1 cup carrier oil (olive oil, grapeseed, sunflower)
8 drops essential oil(s) (vanilla extract can be used with brown sugar, the color wont look good on the white)
1 drop food coloring (or to your liking, stay on the lighter side if you don’t want to stain yourself!)
Special equipment: plastic pipette, canning jars

Directions
1. Stir together sugar and carrier oil in a bowl, mixing well.

2. Using pipette or if oil has a dropper lid, add essential oil, 1 drop at a time. Add food coloring, and stir until color is even throughout. Spoon into canning jars.

***EDIT***

3. Download my clip-art labels, enlarging or reducing to fit top of canning jar if necessary. Print onto ink-jet bumper-sticker paper (which is designed to withstand water). Cut out the labels, and affix to clean jars. Design idea from Martha Stewart.com and font used from AbstractFonts.com. I will add to this file as it doesn't include the lemon mixes and I just bought Tangerine and Black Coconut scents so I need to update again soon. If you use these with the Ball jars cut a little margin outside of the label image so that it fits the lid and the image still shows completely after putting the lid on.