Cleaning Up January 21, 2012

Apparently there are some videos going around Facebook right now about beef production. I haven’t watched them. I’m chicken and I just can’t do it. But, the point has been made from the resulting discussions, and I’m going to try to make some changes around here.

I’d already decided this was going to be the year that we’re going to have a garden, that I’m going to try to stop buying as much pre-made food as possible.

The garden is in the planning stages. I’m intimidated but cautiously optimistic. The big obstacle is going to be the fact that right about prime garden establishing time is pretty much  new baby time, so it could be a little trickier than I had hoped.

I’m doing fairly well with the buying of less and making of more, but there are some weeks when exhaustion wins out and I cheat.

The next big project is going to be trying to get our meat/egg/dairy habits changed. Right now, I buy meat from the store without much thought about it. I am aware it probably isn’t the best, but [I thought] it was all that was available. I found out about some websites from a friend and checked them out tonight. Through EatWild I found out that  there are several local ranches that sell their beef, and there is one that sells in a local store. Next trip into town I’m going to check out the beef and see how well it will fit into our current grocery budget. We don’t eat a whole lot of beef, so I think that I can probably manage to switch to organic for that. The milk and eggs thing is a little iffier. I’m fairly positive at this point that it’s going to have to be a choice we make, and honestly, if I am going to go this route, if I’m acting in the interest of my family, we’d go with organic milk and eggs before I would switch to organic meat. We consume a lot more milk and eggs than meat, and while I dislike the fact that the practices of these meat packing plants are so awful, my priority will always be my kids and family first.

The Elf December 3, 2011

This year I broke down and bought an Elf on the Shelf.

 

We’ve read the story a couple of times, but the concept doesn’t quite click yet. I think Adeline is still just a little too new to the concept of Christmas to really get it yet. I think we’re going to keep up with it though, and then next year it will be really fun.

 

Our elf’s name is Carol (or it might be Carrot, there’s some argument there) and she is a she. So far, she’s only told Santa not to step on the dog. I’m not really pushing the “report on the behavior” thing.

 

So far, Carol/Carrot has decorated the Christmas tree and played the xbox.

The tree is decorated!Playing the xbox.

I Win at Thanksgiving November 26, 2011

Holidays have been tricky things for me for most of my adult life. I tend to have very specific expectations, and when the day doesn’t live up to those expectations, I end up bitterly disappointed. This year for Thanksgiving we originally planned to driving to Phoenix to spend the day with my dad, like we have most years in the past. We ended up changing our minds and deciding to stay home.

 

It was the best decision ever. This was the best Thanksgiving I have had in years and years. There was absolutely no stress at all (other than the whole hard drive crashing on my brand new Toshiba laptop but anyways). I made an entire Thanksgiving meal, by myself. Jake alternated hanging out with the kids and starting decorating the outside of the house for Christmas. We watched football. The food was awesome.

 

Hanging Christmas lights

Twas the night before November 23, 2011

I love holiday eves. The night before has so much promise, and the anticipation is so much fun.

 

We had originally planned on driving to Phoenix to spend Thanksgiving at my dad’s, but ended up deciding to just stay home. I bought everything to make a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, and spent a good chunk of today doing most of the baking-well, I made an apple pie (crust from a box) and the rolls, and I got some cinnamon rolls ready to be baked for breakfast tomorrow. I have a detailed schedule written out for tomorrow to finish the baking (a pumpkin pie) and then I’ll put the turkey in the oven and try to manage to get everything else cooked in time to eat. We decided not to choose a time to eat, just whenever it gets done.

 

Jake had taken days off since we had planned on going to Phoenix, so we are going to go camping for the weekend. This will be our first ever family vacation. I’m equally excited and nervous, I’m not much of a traveler or a camper so…

 

There’s a lot to do right now between the holiday and the trip, but I’m  just kind of going with it and not stressing out. It helps that Jake’s been off work for the past few days and has been here to help me.  The most difficult part of the trip is going to be getting our Christmas card picture done. We had done some a while back, but of course I didn’t upload them to flickr, and wouldn’t you know the harddrive on my computer crashed. (We just won’t talk about the fact that the two-week-old Toshiba I bought from Best Buy is now useless…)

On the road AGAIN November 9, 2011

Yesterday a little before dinner time, we got home from our trip to Show Low. We decided to stay an extra day, because, well, we could. We’re still adjusting to this freedom of a)not being broke and b)Jake having actual vacation days. So novel!

This morning, the kids and I loaded up and headed to Phoenix. Adeline is sickish though, so the original plan of us staying at my dad’s has been adjusted to us spending the night in a hotel and then deciding in the morning if we are going to be able to do any visiting. If not, it is back home with us. I’m not going to be responsible for sickening an entire household again! (Which is what happened last time we visited them.)

I had my 21.5 week appointment with Mary the Midwife today.  Everything looks really good. Hazel kicked the heck out of the doppler when we were listening to her heartbeat. I don’t remember Adeline or Lucy ever doing that. She’s a crazy little thing, and I can already see her movements from the outside. All I can do is hope she runs out of space to move so much before she gets big enough to hurt me with her acrobatics in there.

Road trip! November 6, 2011

We came up to Show Low to visit!  Last minute decision. It is going to be a crazy week with travelling. 

There is snow!  Adeline is having a blast. I am cold and very thankful for the pellet stove and the fire place at my mother in law’s house.  Crazy kids would stay outside all day if we would let them. There is supposed to be another storm tonight or tomorrow so we might even get to see snow falling.  That is fun stuff for us flatlanders. 

I can see the future… November 4, 2011

I’m probably jinxing myself with this, but I think we are getting to the end of this rough phase we’ve been going through for the past few months.

Adeline had a classic case of the Terrible Twos, and Lucy was just being age-appropriate, but I find months 12-18 particularly challenging. (Seriously, if I could just give birth to 18-month-olds I totally would. I will take a herd of tantruming two-year-olds over a toddler who doesn’t have any concept of the word no or personal safety. I despise repeating myself, and that is all.you.do with a toddler.)

 

Lucy is responding to no now and following simple directions. Adeline’s language is totally exploding, from her pronunciation to her use of proper speech. Tantrums and melt-downs are becoming fewer and farther between, and I’m able to talk her through them a lot easier now too. The one issue that seems to be getting worse is that the kids seem to be fighting with each other a lot more, but I think that’s just to be expected. There’s a lot of grabbing and jealousy-if one has something, the other one suddenly NEEDS it. It is hugely aggravating, but eventually I’ll either figure out how to deal with it better or they’ll start getting along.

 

I am getting super excited about the holidays this year. Adeline really gets it, and it is going to be so much fun. The hardest part is going to be reining ourselves in. She’s so awesome, it is hard to not just get everything we think that she might like. Lucy shows a lot more interest in things than Adeline did at 17 months, so I think she’s going to be really fun this Christmas too. The only problem with her is that we already HAVE everything, so I’m having a hard time figuring out what her fun and special gifts are going to be. We do clothes and shoes and practical stuff as gifts, but I want to give them fun stuff too, and toys that they will be able to call their own. With three girls that are going to be so close in age, holidays are going to get tricky.

 
Supposedly three is harder than two, but I’ve also heard that it is way fun because it is when they really start wanting to be independent, which I am all for. I feel like I have this great easy break coming up between Lucy turning two and the new baby hitting the Age of Doom. I’m sure there’s some phase waiting around the corner to ambush me, but for now, I’ll take it!

Crazy Town November 3, 2011

My house is totally in shambles right now and it is driving me insane. I decided a while back that things needed to be more organized, I had opened a closet and had the contents fall on my head one too many times. Somehow though, things are worse? After I spent a ton of time planning, and a ton of money on various containers and cabinets, there’s more chaos now than there was a couple of weeks ago.

There are a couple of obvious obstacles that I just can’t seem to overcome. First of all, we still actually live here and the members of this household actually seem to expect me to feed them and keep the house somewhat sanitary despite any projects that I want to get done. Second of all, the children. Always wanting to play and eat. So pesky. (Not really.) Also, it is so nice outside right now, so we’re spending our mornings outside and so that leaves me naptime (when I like to nap too thankyouverymuch) or the time between nap and dinner. And the time between nap and dinner? Is not a good time around here. Mornings, everyone is great, getting along, playing nicely. Late afternoon? They are either trying to kill each other or themselves.

Tomorrow is grocery shopping, which involves about 4 hours and a 100 mile round trip, and I am already dreading coming back home to this disaster with MORE CRAP that need to be put away, and that will eventually create MORE WORK for me because I’m going to have to end up cooking most of it.

I have six days to get this mess handled, because in six days I’m going out of town, and I’m likely to just refuse to come back if order hasn’t been restored around here.

Halloween 2011 November 2, 2011

This is only the second year since we’ve had kids that we’ve done Halloween. Adeline’s first Halloween was also the day we found out we were expecting Lucy, and we went to a friend’s to hang out.

Last year we didn’t do anything, Adeline was too little to care and we lived in a scary part of town, not somewhere that walking around with two little kids after dark was a good idea.

This year, though? We did it. Decorations, a carnival, a pumpkin, trick-or-treating, the works.

Our decorations, two yarn spiderwebs and some paper bats.

On our way to the carnival.

Adeline rocked the bean-bag-toss.

Lucy helping dada carve the pumpkin. She wasn’t a fan of the mess.

Lucy the Cowgirl, minus the hat she refused to wear.

Apparently trick-or-treat doesn’t start until late here, so we only went to six houses. Adeline got a kick out of all the kids coming to get candy. I think the whole dressing up part totally went over her head. But she had fun with her butterfly cos-spoon and is still talking about Have-a-bean.

Catching Up November 1, 2011

Phew. It’s been a while.

So. To update. 20 weeks into my third pregnancy (surprise!)…and, well, that’s pretty much it. What? I’m tired, alright? I don’t have the energy for much of anything right now!

We’re still up and down with the dog situation. I had started walking her, but somehow that created MORE problems, so for right now that’s a no-g0.

Right now I’m mostly just working on the fact that I’ve spent the past couple of months in a pregnancy induced fog and more or less just been doing the bare essentials. I’ve finally got the energy for little projects here and there though, and we’ve been doing some traveling since I’m getting my prenatal care in Phoenix.