My new goal

Soooo, it is no secret to my friends that I don't like to do the dishes. I have had many people over the years help me out with this small issue when I have been on bedrest or just plain sick.

(Thank you again!!)

I love it when my family comes to visit because they help with the dishes (thank you too!)

Well, I am sick of having dirty dishes. Wouldn't you be?

Seeing a sight like this will make anyone run and hide.

    We went home for a visit at the beginning of July and when we came back the kitchen was all nice and clean (because I cleaned it before we left, that is a must) and I decided I needed a fresh start, a new relationship, with the dishes. If I just do the dishes once a day, it won't turn into a scarry mess. I had a fresh start so it was pretty easy. My goal wasn't to keep any dirty dishes from getting on the counter and wash them right away, that would have fizzled out really quick. My goal was to just do something once a day. I have to admit that before I would go for 3-4 days sometimes longer without doing any dishes, hence the above picture taken in October last year.

  So I started my goal the 2nd week in July and I was doing pretty well, I was keeping up on the dishes. It made the house look so much nicer. I was proud of myself that I was acutally keeping up on them! Then........I got sick, I got strep throat. It put me in bed and on the couch for two days, four days before I was feeling normal. I was sick on the weekend, which stinks for receiving health care, but really good for Daddy to take care of the kids. He takes great care of the kids, but not so good at taking care of the housework. Then I left for the family trip that didn't happen. (There were dishes in the sink, but I didn't have time to do them and W said that he would do them since he wasn't coming with me. I was going to be gone for a week but ended coming back the same day and he hadn't done them yet). I was in a bad mood because I wasn't supposed to be home and didn't want to unpack or clean up. I was supposed to be at my dad's house! Then we worked all day outside........ so the kitchen suffered. I feel like I am back to square one and the kitchen is a mess and I am slightly overwhelmed and annoyed with the dishes. But I know I can keep up on them, I just need to do the work and get back to "keeping up" rather than "cathing up". I just hope life doesn't get in the way too much so the kitchen can look like this more often.

And when I can get a good habit of keeping up on the dishes, then it will be time to involve the children and we can all share in the fun!

The last day off

This is what we did on W's last day off. We built a work bench for the garage. It measures 4'x3'x10' and it took us about 10 hours to build it. It is huge and sturdy and awesome! It is really going to clean up and organize the garage. I will post pics when we get it all done. :)

I think my favorite part about building it was working with my best friend.

He is so amazing and I think we work really well together.

Have you ever seen a cooler dude?

 I love this kid! He was waiting for us to get the van packed to go on our trip that never happened. He is such an awsome kid.

Then the poor kid ran into the tree in the front yard. When I asked him what happened, he said "I went the wrong way around the tree." I didn't know there was a wrong way around a tree, but apparently there is.














But, it never dampened his spirits. He is still the same happy kid. Just with a beat up face :)

Choo choo!

I have a house full of little Engineers!

We are loving summertime fun, I can't believe school will be here so soon.

I LOVE it when little boys get along and big brothers help little brothers.

Little stinker

While I was taking a picture of my flowers (for my previous post), this is what this little stinker was doing. He was out there with me, I took the pics, and then we went in house. I remembered I wanted to take a picture with my cell phone so I ran out to snap the pic and left E in the house. I was out for a total of 2 min and this is what I found when I came back in.

Good thing he is cute, I just love his smile.

The fun things growing in my garden

These are a few of my favorite things.......

I have two friends that each had a new little baby boy. One of my favorite things is to make little baby shoes. I think I have made about 40 pairs, but haven't taken many pictures of them.......so I wanted to change that and took some pictues. Tada!!! I LOVE how they turned out.

Dinner

You know a Mom is not quite into her day of being a Mom when she is focused on other things and a) she makes Mac & Cheese for dinner and b) screws up said dinner and no one wants to eat it.  Who screws up Mac & Cheese??? Hmmmmmmm. It's a good thing there is tomorrow to try again.

The bike is almost done!

Improvements are on their way. W's bike is going to look AWESOME with this new seat! 4 years into the making and I think I am more excited about this new seat than any other improvements he has done. It was the biggest eyesore. Well, not anymore!!!!

Lego Creators

What S and M have been up to.

(Sadly, I didn't check the camera after S took the picture. M took a great pic, but I should have made sure both pictures turned out. They were really proud of their creations and want to send them to the Lego Magazine.

Bad Mom

M got a cool new watch for Christmas, a cool lego watch even. Well his dang Mom washed his pants last week and forgot to check the pockets in his pants and WASHED his watch. Ugh! I almost always check pockets, but I was in a rush and of course the one time I didn't check his pockets, I ruined his watch. He really liked that watch and acutally wore it and took care of it. So of course I had to buy him a new watch and luckily I found a cool one on clearance at Walmart.

It has a velcro strap, a light, a timer, a stopwatch, an alarm, AND is water resistant. I think it will all work out. He thinks it is pretty cool too. Whew!

War on weeds

It's no secret that I don't like to pull weeds. I didn't grow a garden last year because of those pesky plants. I just didn't have the motivation, want to, desire, energy, etc....There were a lot of other things that I wanted to do with my time, like quilt. But when everyone was harvesting their gardens, I wish I would have put the work in. :( I missed those benefits of growing a garden. So this year we planted a garden! It has been good to get the boys out to help and I don't have to keep such a close eye on E, like a year ago. When we are all in the back yard, he can't go anywhere and he is pretty self entertained. Anyway, I think we have won the war on weeds because of my good friend's idea to put carpet in the garden. Our church is getting new carpet so I dragged W went over there and took a couple of rolls. WEEDS can't grow through CARPET! Especailly this stuff :) I even took some from the garbage from a local carpet store. Now my garden is carpeted and looks so nice. The kids love walking all over on it and my tomatoes, carrots, peppers, and potatoes are happy. I still need to address the raspberries and strawberries........Don't mind the grass that needs trimmed really bad. We haven't done the lawn since we have been back, that will be for tomorrow. :)

A new sink faucet

Our sink started dripping a little while ago. W tried a couple of times to fix it, but he had determined that we needed new stems in the faucet. Our local plumbing store didn't have the right ones for our faucet so we were going to have to special order them. It took us a while to get around to getting the new ones ordered, meanwhile the faucet continued to drip drip drip. We probably lost about 3 full bath tubs of water. Well we got the new ones ordered and come to find out they were going to cost $42 a piece! That's $84 to fix the dang sink faucet! Well we scratched that and looked for another alternative........

W found this little gem at Home Depot for $37, on clearance from $119. Score!!!! We have a new facuet that doesn't leak. Way to go Papa Bear! It doesn't quite match the rest of the bathroom, but who cares for that price. We hope to redo the bathroom one of these days and we will match everything to this. :)

Best hamburgers in the world!

Look what my neighbor brought over!!! W said they were the best hamburgers he had ever had. I definetly need to make these again for us. I have such a sweet neighbor! They are Nilla wafers, mint cookies, colored frosting, colored coconut, and sesame seeds on top.

Independance Day!

What a dirty 4th of July. Nothing better than getting dirty with cousins on a holiday. Happy Independance Day! Fun, food, family, and fireworks. Thanks Melissa and Jake for a great day. Too bad Denae and her crew had to leave early, we had lots of fun with them too. ;)

Some of us took a more laid back version of the holiday.

The 1st one of many, hopefully ;)

Because M thought it was awesome that some of our freinds have their "own website," I thought we could try out a blog again and be awesome too. Maybe this time I will be better at putting stuff up. To show friends and family the fun things we do, here we are.........