Movies

I am not an anal person by nature. I am not a neat freak. I do not enjoy cleaning in the slightest degree. I let my house get way beyond the point of needing to be cleaned, in hopes of someone else stepping up to the plate, so I don't have to. But this....

Drives me completely batty!!! This is Natalie's latest obsession. She likes to take the DVD's off the shelf, and stack them either on the couch, floor, or a near by stool. She will spend up to 30 minutes stacking and putting back these DVD's. And in toddler time....30 minutes is like hours!

Now here is where my anal, obsessive-compulsive tendencies seep through. I have every single one of those dvd's in alphabetical order. The top 2 shelves are parent movies, and the middle 2 shelves are the kids movies. All 4 of those shelves are usually full. Every evening, Jared tries to help clean them up with me, but it just irritates me more. He doesn't put them back where they go, he just shoves them in, so then I have to go back, and redo it. I do this every day. I really hope this phase doesn't last too long. I am getting really tired of it. Maybe I should try and find a way to turn off that "anal about movie location" attitude. But then, you look at that sweet face, and how can you get mad at it? That is her saying 'cheese' by the way. Isn't she adorable? I think so. :) Just don't mind the messy hair. She pulled it out during nap time. *grr*

First day of School

Well, technically it was Cody's 4th day of school, but that is only because I am a major scatterbrained slacker, and kept forgetting to take his picture. And, did you notice....no pink shoes!! Actually I am pretty sure he would have been wearing his bright pink shoes if he didn't happen to lose them 2 weeks before at his grandma's house. I honestly have no idea how a pair of shoes can get up and walk off all by themselves, but they did. Seriously, we spent 45 minutes looking for those dang shoes, and they were NOWHERE! Even now, we still can't find them. So, he had to settle for his army shoes.

It was however, Jacob's first day of preschool. :) WAHOO!!! I promise that shirt was clean when he put it on about 5 minutes before I took this picture. That kid can't keep anything clean for more than a few seconds.

Here is the duo. Don't they look so excited to go to school? Jacob was terrified. He was hugging my arm as tightly as his little arms could grab. I walked him to the door, and went inside with him. He got teary-eyed when he found out I was leaving him there, and I wouldn't be staying. Made me a little sad, but not sad enough to stay. :) I told him I had to go get milk at the store, and I would be back for him in a little bit. Since he was only there for an hour the first day, it wasn't too bad. I went to walmart, and grabbed some milk, and some christmas presents for him, and went back to pick him up. He was so excited to see me, and finally admitted that he had lots of fun at school.

Since I took the boys school shopping for backpacks, little miss copycat wanted a 'pack-pack' too. So, I did what any doting mother would do, and went to the thrift store and found her this little cute purse for $0.25. She carries this thing around with her constantly! She has her little cell phone in there, and a bag of cereal, and usually you can find her trying to stuff her sippy cup in there as well. When she can't fit something in there, she will usually yell as loud as she can and eventually throw it across the room if you don't help her quick enough. I don't know where she got her temper. ;)

Sun Oven

I have a new toy. Being of the LDS faith, we are encouraged to have some food storage for those "what if.." moments in life. Of course, we have been taking our sweet time getting there, but we are trying. We get a little bit each month, and our storage is growing nicely. One day, Jared happened to mention to me, that if we had no power, we wouldn't be able to cook very many things before our propane tank on the BBQ grill was empty. We really don't want to have to store a year's supply of propane or charcoal for many different reasons, so we were trying to come up with something else. We have watched numerous food storage videos, and presentations, and kept coming in contact with the Global Sun Oven. We did our own research, and when our church congregation put a group order together, and this was on there, we jumped at the opportunity to save some money on it.

Of course, just like any child, as soon as it came, I openend the box to "play" with my new toy. This is what I made:


These happen to be extremely yummy whole wheat cinnamon rolls. I got the recipe from my grandmother this summer while up at her house for her 60th wedding anniversary. I adapted it a bit, since the recpie calls for white bread flour. I wanted to make them a little healthier, and my wheat bucket is just staring at me to be put to use. I got out my wheat grinder, and ground up the necessary amount of flour that I would need, and put everything into the bread maker. I really should try the conventional way sometime, since if we were without power, I wouldn't be able to use my bread machine....oh well. One step at a time. :)

I then situated the sun oven out on my driveway, and got to baking. This is what it looked like after they were done. I forgot to take a picture of them outside, so I reenacted the scene on the table, out of reach of little grabby hands.

I have to say, these were sooooo good! I have never glazed these cinnamon rolls, because to me, they are plenty sweet without them, and my kids and I don't need the extra sugar. ;) If you would like to have this recipe, just leave me a comment, and I will email it to you. Even if you don't like wheat bread and things, you can still make these with white flour. They are just as good. I promise. I have made them both ways.

Favorite shirt

I know everyone has a favorite shirt. Well, mine was recently retired with a little nudging from my sister. :( I had that shirt for 12 years. It was thin, had some little holes, and oh so comfy. It was a sad, sad day when I finally got up the courage to throw it in the trash. I got a little teary eyed as I watched the garbage truck take it away. I know it is only a shirt, but the memories from that shirt, those are what I felt I was throwing away. Silly me didn't even take a picture of the shirt to remember it by. Oh well....life goes on right?

Here is my shirt on my birthday last year. You can kinda see it. I think I wore this shirt home from the hospital for every one of my births.

Pioneer Day

When: July 24th, 2009
Where: Telegraph street and the park
Temperature: 100*
Activities: parade down Telegraph and games and booths at the park.

Participants:

The cutest darn pioneer you have ever seen. (minus the bonnett. she wouldn't keep it on.) Don't mind the messy shirt...she had a cupcake at the park, and I forgot to take a pic before we left..