Resolutions

I am sure a very typical topic right now is New Years Resolutions.  I normally don't make them because they just get broke within a week or so.  However, this year I am trying them out for good.  But I actually started them back in December, before Christmas!   I didn't want them just to be, because everyone else is making resolutions! 

1.  Spend little time on the computer when my kids are home/awake.  I don't want them to think this is all I do or all they should do.  I love that my kids have INCREDIBLE imaginations and want them to keep that.  I also see it as a waste of times sometimes.  If I am not doing work with Thirty One, I am usually on facebook or pinterest.  I also like to check out blogs that I follow.  However I can do all of these things before the kids wake up, during nap time, or after they are put to bed.  And in all honesty it is not just the kids, it is for Dad also.  I want our time together to count!

2.  The obvious resolution, loose weight/get healthy.  I have struggled for YEARS with my weight and to accept who I am.  Dad has been an amazing help to me with the accepting part.  However, I have went from one extreme with my weight to another!  In high school I had an eating disorder and was very skinny.  I started this "diet" with a friend and it became a competition!  Then I got pregnant with J and C and was a really healthy weight/body.  That is when it stopped.  I am overweight now, and I hate this.  I am not ready to post pictures or numbers with this journey.  Maybe when I get down to where I need to be I will.  I also want to live a healthy lifestyle for C(all my kids).  I read a report years ago saying that there may be a link with eating disorders being hereditary.  I know this may be a slim chance, but not one I am willing to risk!  I want her to see herself as an amazingly beautiful/healthy girl!

3.  Stay to my schedule!!  I start a new schedule every other week and it falls apart before the end of the month!  rrrrr

4.  Promote to the next level with Thirty One.  I am so close, I want to help my team grow their own teams so much!  I can't wait to see where God leads all of us this year!

What are your resolutions for 2013?

Saying good bye

is never an easy thing to do.  As I wrote before we spent Christmas in the hospital with Dads family and Papa.  Papa was not doing good and we knew it was only a matter of time.  Papa went to meet Jesus last night.  He was surrounded by almost all of his kids. 

His struggle is now over, but that does not make our grief any less.  I truly think that children have a better knowledge of death and the other side, then what we give them credit for.  When we told the kids this morning(Dad didn't get home until well after 11pm and to sleep after 3am), J informed me before I could even finish the sentence: "Mom he isn't hurting anymore, I bet Jesus welcomed him with a big hug."  I am crying as I write that last statement because that is what I imagined also.

Saying your final good-bye sucks.  But it is selfish to think you are keeping them here for them.  They are in pain, suffering and have no life to live.  We needed to let them go for them.  This earth is not our true home.  Now he is home.  I will love you forever Papa, and will always remember you infectious smile and laugh and how you always had to "pick" at people.  You wanted to tease from the very first time I met you.  That is how I will remember you!

Preparing for Santa and a very distracted mind

I have been up for the past 3 hours finishing up the wrapping and "Santa" stuff.  My mind has wandered with each present.  What will J think of this new robot, will C like the bed that I made....typical mom stuff! 

However we have also had very heavy hearts lately.  Papa(Dads dad) is in the hospital now.  We know that he will be passing any day and have been trying to get everything prepared for this.  There is never a good time to say good-bye to a loved one.  We are trying to give our children a very normal Christmas experience.  We do not want them to remember Christmas as the time of year when Papa passed, but as the time of year when he got to meet Jesus himself.  Jesus is the reason for Christmas anyway, right?!  With each passing thought, more tears came and I fought them off.  I would remember different anecdotes about Papa from the time I knew him, and the times that I was told about.

If anything that comes with death, it teaches us one thing.  Live your life!  If you see mistakes from the life that has passed, change them in your life.  Don't live with regrets.

So on I went with the rituals that have been in our house for the past (almost) nine years.  Get the presents wrapped, lay them under the tree, get the cookies eaten and the milk drank and finally write the note from Santa.

I am excited for tomorrow morning to see my children come running out of the bedrooms.  Crazy hair, stinky breath and disheveled clothes...but with Huge smiles on their faces!  That is what I am hanging onto right now!

 

Yup, Roxie even got a basket of goodies from Santa!  She will dig right into this in the morning!

Cookies for Daddy!

We decided we had enough time out in the snow for a bit, so we wanted to make Dad some of his favorite Christmas goodies!  These are possibly the most simple snack there is!  All they are is Ritz crackers, peanut butter inside, dipped in melted Chocolate bark and sprinkles on top.

 

J and C were in charge of putting the peanut butter in the crackers.  There was no way this would get done with D and K!

 

I dipped them in the chocolate (again D and K would have eaten more then getting done).  And then D and K got to put the sprinkles on them.

 

Notice D's lips.  They are purple!  He decided to eat the sprinkles instead of putting them on the cookies!

Cookie day with Grandma

We spent the day at my parents house with my nephew making Christmas cookies.  The kids had so much fun and definatly had a little too much sugar!  I had 3 out of 4 kids passed out on the way home.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This boy!!!

I can not leave him alone AT ALL!  Everytime I do is when he seems to get into mischief!  This time was baby powder!  Dad got home and I went out to help him bring in his lunch box and stuff.  Literally 10 minutes I was gone!  I come inside and he is sitting there not moving so I went to check on him...................

 

 

This was a brand new bottle of baby powder and it was gone!!!  He dumped the whole thing on him.  Dad had to leave the room because he was laughing, I did good at not laughing until he was cleaned and talked to!  Little stinker!

2 days extra for break

The kids(mainly J) were super excited that they now get 2 extra days added to Christmas break.  With the blizzard that hit yesterday it was obvious they would not have school.  But today a lot of the roads are still not cleared.  I love having them home even more!  We spent the last two days having so much fun!  I only wished Dad could be here with us to enjoy it all.  He unfortunately has to work.

 

This was at the very beginning of the blizzard yesterday.  There is a road in between our house and the house across the way.  You can not even tell where it was!

 

So we decided to bake! I turned on Christmas music that we listened to all day!  While I was mixing up the first batch of goodies I heard something.  I looked down at the floor and I see D attempting very diligently to sing the 12 days of Christmas(you can see he was on number 3).  It was so cute!

 

This is the beginning of Pumpkin Chocolate Chip muffins!  Which are gone already!

 

 

 

The goodies we made on Thursday.  So yummy!

 

 

I love this picture!  I don't know the total of snow we had here, but I know around us it was from 12 to 16 inches!

 

D tried so hard to help me shovel.  He couldn't get it scooped up so he would push the snow on the shovel with his hand and then push it!  It was so funny and cute to see his determination.

 

 

Time for hot cocoa and marshmallows! Yummy

 

The aftermath of the hot cocoa! :)  And yes we ended the day watching a Very Brady Christmas!  Don't judge, I love the brady bunch!

 

 

 

Our Christmas

I am like a big kid on Christmas.  I love watching the kids faces as they open each and every present.  I love our traditions that we have set up over the past 10 years.  I love staying up soooo late on Christmas Eve, so I can help Santa bring in presents(and eat cookies, shh). 

I love this year we will have a very white Christmas!  Last year we did not and it just didn't feel like Christmas.  I have grown up with snow every winter since I was born.  I am sure there were a few winters here and there that we had green(or more brown) Christmas.

We started a tradition when J was a baby.  Instead of a huge Christmas supper(ham, potatoes, beans...) we have a huge breakfast!   Anything and everything you can think of: cinnamon rolls, egg roll, French toast, bacon and sausage.  Breakfast is always a big deal in our family(when we have time for more then just cereal) because all of the kids help in some way.

Our kids have adapted well to when we open presents.  Because of Dads job, we work around him.  If he works on Christmas day, then we wait and have breakfast for supper and open presents at night.  If he has off that day we do the normal, open presents at the crack of dawn and breakfast.  I have never had issues with someone trying to sneak a peek (knock on wood).



We will have to see if Roxie will leave the presents alone (she has a few under the tree also).  I know people think that is silly for us to get her a present, but she is part of our family also.

A big tradition we started last year was to make a birthday cake for Jesus.  My family did this when I was younger and I loved the idea of it.  After all, Jesus is the reason for the season!  Without the birth of the Christ Child, where would we be?!

I can't wait to see everyone Christmas pictures and hear about their days.  Merry Christmas to everyone out there!!!

A PINing experience

As you remember I am writing once a week on a different thing I try from Pinterest.  You can read the last one here.

Oh this was an interesting one.  It is fried potatoes.  I am not a fan of white potatoes, but everyone else is.  So I wanted to find a recipe that would appease me and them!  I found this one and it looked really good.

Let me say, these look HORRIBLE...BUT they tasted amazing!!!  We topped them with a little bit of sour cream.  The kids went back for more, that says a log!

So the recipe I used was, wash potatoes.  I do not peal them.  Chop them up into 1 inch cubes and boil for about 20 minutes.  Mash together like you would Mashed Potatoes, just not as much liquid.  You want them to be drier.  I put a very healthy sprinkling of Sweet onion and mesquite spices, a little bit of butter(about 1 tbs) and about 1/2 cup of milk.  Mash by hand until nice and crumbly.  Make into patties and place in frying oil until crispy. 

We topped ours with cheddar cheese and sour cream.  Soo good, but man they look horrible!

Oh the weather outside is frightful....

Let me give a quick disclaimer: I* am only this excited because I do not have to drive in it!  I have had two accidents because of snow, so I stay inside!  However, Dad does have to work, so I am sure I will be kind of anxious until he gets home.*

That being said, we are suppose to get 16 to 20" of snow starting tonight.  We are suppose to have a snow thunderstorm and blizzard conditions!  My kids will be so excited, J already is because he has a chance of starting his Christmas break tomorrow instead of Monday!

Everyone please use common sense and be careful, but baby bring on the snow!

What have we been up to?

We have been CRAZY busy, as I am sure everyone else has been!  I feel like I have been running non-stop, and that I will be until the new year!  So here is a quick update on different things from last week.

J and C go to youth group on Wed. nights.  They have so much fun and love it.  This week they learned about why we are celebrating Christmas and they had a new memory verse, John 3:16.  They also had craft time and made Dad and I Christmas cards.  Tell me these are not the most precious cards!!

When I got home from picking them up at youth group, Dad stayed home with K and D.  The picture below is what I walked into.  It was cute because they were both watching a new movie and totally zoned out, but we realized they were so wore out.  This was the day before the onset of some nasty colds.  'Tis the season!

And of course all of the Christmas baking!  My Scandinavian roots were coming out!  These are Rosettes, and only able to be made with a Nordic iron.  I remember my Mom and "Aunt" (a lovely neighbor) making these every Christmas season.  The second picture are cut-out cookies and spritz cookies.  Super easy and oh so yummy!!  I started a diet and exercise program the day before(I know, dumb move) so I had to behave! 

 

This is always and will always be one of my favorite sites!  The kids all fight over who gets to sit with Dad at night time.  He actually has had all 4 of them in that chair! 

 

And finally, it was one of my daycare girls birthday this week.  K wanted to help make her cake so this is what he did.  He took a little food coloring and made a smiley face with it!  He was so proud.

 

I can't wait to post next week, with all of our Christmas pictures!