Taking a break from homework and housework to blog for a bit. I've been trying to be more "green" lately. We recycle just about everything we can possibly recycle and I've been making a conscious effort to use less harsh chemicals to clean. Today while I was putting off doing my homework I cleaned my bathroom with a mix of vinegar and water. That's it. A bottle of half vinegar and half water and a bunch of paper towels. OK, so the paper towels are not very "green" of me but at least I'm trying! :)

Ew! Our bathroom was NAS-TY! I'd say when you can't remember the last time it was cleaned it has been way too long! I will NOT go that long between times again. Blech! But you know, the vinegar cleaned better than my usual cleaner. I didn't get to the tub and shower yet but did wipe down the counters, walls and floor with it. Now it's all sparkling clean but smells like sauerkraut. EWW! Oh well. It looks pretty anyway. Hopefully it will air out overnight and will just look pretty and not be stinky. Tomorrow I'll have to finish the rest.

Now I've got a week's worth of homework to do in 2 days. Not from procrastinating, just poor planning on my part. I planned a mini-vacation to New York to see my friend Katy right during the busiest time of my class. Final paper week! So I've got to hustle to get it done early so I don't have to mess with it while we're away from home.

I'm really looking forward to going to NY though. Katy lives in Brooklyn and we haven't seen her in way too long so we're going to drive about 4 hours (or 6 or 8 depending on how well the kids do in the car) to see her. We'll leave Saturday morning and come home on Tuesday. I've got a TON of stuff to do in the meantime so I'd better get busy! I hope to post about our trip when we get back. Check Facebook for pics and status updates from NYC.

7:15-kids awake. Diapers, breakfast. A upset. E gives her pats. So SWEET! Find wasp in E's room. Kill it w/wasp spray. Read the can when finished and see it says not to use indoors under any circumstance. Freak out about fumes and open the windows as much as possible.

8:15-school w/E. LOTW-Rr, color-red, shape-rectangle, song-Row Your Boat, words-rain, rainbow, rabbit and robot. He LOVES it. "Easton so 'cited!"

8:45-E and A play eggs in the LR floor. E asks sis "Do you see orange? Good!" :)

9:10-watch Curious George 2 with E while A takes a nap. Watch a little, play a little cars, play a little tickle fight, watch a little more.

10:35-diaper and daytime clothes for E, shower and clothes for me.

11:20-E asks for "more preschool". Set him up with a snack and pom pom rectangle page. He really likes it and says "Easton put it!"when he puts one on.

11:30-Sis up from nap. Change and get her dressed for the day. Play in floor w/E and A for a bit. Find ants in kitchen. Same place as last year. Spend the rest of the day feeling like I've got bugs crawling on me. UGH!

12:15-lunch for everyone. Change both kids and put A down for 2nd nap. Upload pics to computer while E plays cars. He says he's "just busy mama." A doesn't sleep. She feels hot and is probably teething. I give her Tylenol and a bottle.

1:00-get diaper bag ready and kids out the door on time. Pick up J from work so he can watch the kids during my consultation w/oral surgeon about my wisdom teeth.

2:00-appt goes well. Dr Amos says he DOES NOT recommend taking them out at this time. The pain I've been having is most likely due to a very small cavity that is not yet able to be picked up on xray or from an old filling that is failing. This great news saves J 2 or 3 vacation days, me a lot of pain and our bank account $2315. Nice! We go to Sonic for Happy Hour Cokes to celebrate.

4:00-arrive home. Unload kids and stuff from car. Change diapers and hang out in the living room for a while. A is still fussy and feverish. E asks for a "teever" and keeps putting his hand in his mouth. 2 teething, cranky kids who missed their afternoon nap due to my appt.

5:00-J is working later tonight to make up for missing time earlier in the day. I give the kids fruit and veg for dinner. Both are whiney and cry throughout dinner. Time for Motrin.

5:45-sit down on the couch to feed A her bottle. E gets into my purse and into the lotion. By the time I catch him, he's smeared lotion over his face, the cabinets and a lot of the contents of my purse. Clean him up and get both kids changed and into jammies for the night. Both are already rubbing their eyes and still fussing.

6:00-J comes home. Hooray! We read stories, brush the kid's teeth and put them to bed by 6:45. Whew! Collapse in a heap on the couch and look around at my messy house but am too tired to do anything about it.

Not included in the above list: the 20 or so songs we sang today, the 50 or so messes my kids made (only slightly exaggerated), and the 2 or 3 times I had to put E in timeout for pulling the cat's tail or smacking his sister or the approximately 239 Cheerios I have stepped on today. I vacuumed them up but they'll be back tomorrow, trust me.

7:20-heat up dinner for me and J. Thank goodness I don't have to cook or do homework tonight! Will attempt to upload some pictures and blog tomorrow.

We're rededicating ourselves to getting into shape. I HATE getting up early but we can't seem to work it in any other time so we're gonna try getting up at 5:15 tomorrow so we can get in 30 minutes or so before breakfast and getting our day started. We're also starting a 30 minutes a day of cleaning in the evenings. We set the timer on the microwave and clean for 30 minutes. We do as much as we can within that time and then when the timer goes off we're done. It's amazing how much you can get done in that short amount of time and how much of a difference it makes in making your house look better. An hour a day to a better life. he he That sounds like a great idea for a book. :)

Boy, it is really feeling more like WINTER than Fall here lately! I'm glad I get to wear my red wool coat but not at all glad that it's cold. That makes no sense but I do love that red coat. :) I'm freezing. We're supposed to get our first freeze tonight. Down to around 31!!! Holy cow, that's cold! My hands are like icicles as I'm trying to type this. I think I need some hot tea and a warm bath to warm up.

In other news, it's apple butter time around here. I've already made (and blogged about????) one batch of apple butter. I'm proud I (mostly) got over my fear of canning. All that hot water and glass and boiling apple butter...yikes!!! But I did it and it turned out great so I'm going to get together with two of my friends and make about a bushel's worth of apples into apple buttter. Should be an all day deal but I'm really looking forward to it.

I got an A in my Nutrition for Education class. I got the maximum amount of points on my final Power Poing presentation and got a 99% in the class! Do I wish I'd gotten that one extra point so I could have had 100? Heck, no! I was just thrilled to get what I did! Only 10 more classes to go til graduation!!! Hmmm...maybe I could get a new car for graduation! Our Malibu will be paid off around then and we DO need a bigger car now that we've got 2 little ones. What do you say, honey? :)

Today Easton decided to take the straw out of a cup of water he was drinking out of and play with it. He ended up scratching his eye with the straw. Now it's really red and irritated and he keeps blinking his eyes and rubbing at it. I'm easily grossed out about eye things because of all the gross eye stuff I've been through so I could barely look at it without feeling like I was gonna throw up. Poor baby! Audrey's got a check up tomorrow and I might call ahead and ask if the doctor can take a look at E's eye just to be safe.

Audrey's getting shots tomorrow. I HATE taking my kids to get shots!!! I made Jason go with me and hold Easton down one time just to see how awful it is. Not very nice of me I know but should I get to have all the fun? He was coming with me to the appointment already anyways so I just thought I'd share. You're welcome, honey. Now he knows why I am all teary-eyed when I come home from the doctor's appointments. Ugh! I hate that!

Today we did about 5 loads of laundry. Who knew it could take so stinkin long to fold a load of kid's clothes?!?!

That's about it for us. Nothing too exciting. Gotta get off of here and make some tea. I'm FREEZING!!!

(Santa, if you read my blog I could sure use some soft, fuzzy socks and a new pair of warm houseshoes, OK? All my fuzzy socks are really getting worn out and I had to trash my slippers because I'd worn a hole right through the bottom of both of them. Thanks! P.S. Sorry I didn't keep my house as clean as I wanted to but I'm sure with all those elves you understand, right?)

Busy all day today! I did laundry, got the kids dressed, gave Easton a bath after lunch (he had spaghetti-o's...the boy REALLY needed a bath!), did more laundry, made apple butter, did dishes, canned the apple butter, played with Audrey, put E down for a nap, did more dishes, played with Audrey some more. All of that and I am still in my pajamas. How is it that I can get all that done but can't find time to take a shower? :)

We now have a full freezer. Both our inside freezer and the deep freeze are F-U-L-L! Jason and I spent all day yesterday cooking. We made breakfast burritos, bean and beef burritos, 7 mini loaf pans of lasagna, and 2 kinds of calzones. I tried to think of things that would be easy and quick. The burritos and calzones will be great for Jason to pack in his lunch for work and the lasagna is my tricky, sneak-in-the-veggies lasagna that everyone around here loves. It feels good knowing we won't have to worry about cooking for a while.

Today we planted two kinds of tomatoes, green peppers, jalapenos, cucumbers, basil, cilantro and lavender in pots to keep on our deck. I did most of the work sitting down in a lawn chair to hopefully keep Miss Audrey from coming early. I've really kind of overdone it the past three days, even though I promised myself I'd take it easy. It's hard to just sit around when I see all this stuff that needs to be done.

Tomorrow Easton and I are going to a cookout that our neighbors invited us to. Jason has to work so it will just be Easton and me but I'm really looking forward to getting to know our neighbors a little better.

Jason's Camaro is on a trailer and on it's way to our house. I'm really excited about FINALLY having it here in WV with us. I can't wait to see Easton and his Daddy working on the car together when E gets a little bit bigger. :)

And that's about it for us. Tomorrow I'm taking it easy and not doing a darn thing. Really. I promise! I'm totally grossed out by my hugely swollen feet right now so I think I'm going to put them up and watch a movie. Posting here may be sporadic at best in the upcoming weeks but I'll try to update here if anything exciting happens. Look for Jason to do a post here (maybe even with pictures) when we finally get to meet Audrey.

Photos of Baby 2's room.
Before:






After:











Finally finished! Now all we've got to do is get the crib mattress from Jason's work, get some curtains to replace the tan temporary ones we put up in these pictures and we're done! Woohoo! Boy, that feels good!

Did you ever have one of those days where you just couldn't manage to get anything done? That was my day yesterday. I got half a dozen little projects started but none of them finished. I hate that! I did have a pretty productive weekend overall though. I got three paintings done to hang in baby 2's room. Jason sprayed the clear coat on them yesterday and I thought they'd be dry enough to hang last night but no such luck.

I was going to take some pictures of the baby's room but want to get it all done before I do that. If I can find the picture hangers today and get them on the paintings, I should be able to do that today. I really hope so anyway. I've still got lots of things to put up on the walls but don't want to do any of that until I see for sure where I want those paintings. I am not usually a painter but I saw this cute little graphic online somewhere and decided to try my hand at painting some cartoon-looking birds sitting in a tree. Usually I shy away from painting things. Sure, I can paint a picture frame or put polka dots on something but that's pretty much the extent of my artistic abilities. Still, it was a fun project and I'm pretty happy with the results overall.

Since I don't have pictures of the baby's room like I promised, here's a family picture that my mom took while she was here. Hmmm...our first picture as a family of four. :)

Spring cleaning time continues at our house. I took in a huge tote of Easton's old baby clothes to the consignment shop, 2 huge boxes of books to donate to the library and 2 huge trash bags of clothes to donate to the Salvation Army. And the best part? All I had to do was call at the library and the Salvation Army and someone came out to my car to pick them up. Boy was I grateful for that! These days just lifting Easton makes my back ache and by the end of the day I'm usually hunting for the Tylenol and the heating pad. It feels good to be able to get rid of some of the extra "stuff" at my house and put it to good use somewhere else. All this cleaning just in time to have Baby 2 and get even MORE stuff! :) Guess that's the way it works though, right?

It's gonna be THAT kind of day! Easton is into everything these days. I totally get that he's trying to figure out how things work and that everything is fascinating for him and he's not doing any of this to get on my nerves or cause trouble. I get that. I promise! But when you've cleaned up raspberry preserves out of the carpet, vacuumed up crushed Kix cereal off of the floor, scrubbed the carpet where someone has watched the milk drip out of their (supposedly leakproof) sippy cup, changed the sheets in the crib because someone decided to throw a poopy diaper in his bed before I could get it rolled up and into the trashcan (GROSS!), picked up the papers that needed to be filed because someone pulled them off in of the table, stepped on squished bananas on the linoleum, put the alarm system sensor back on the window where little hands pulled it off for the millionth time, cleaned up the basket of books someone dumped all over the floor and didn't put away and all of this is before 9:00 am...you know it's gonna be THAT kind of day! This is the kind of day when I'd usually put E in the car and go run errands just to get out of the house. Unfortunately, Jason's got the car today and I've got to finish up my final paper for one of my classes so no running around for us!

Boy, have we been busy around here! My mom left today and we got more done in the time she was here than Jason and I could have done in a month! We got the office moved to one end of our living room, painted the baby's room (mom did the painting), organized my scrapbook stuff, sorted through lots of books and got a big box ready to donate to the library and some to send home with my mom, shopped for baby stuff, put together the nursery (crib, changing table and storage cube organizer). We also did some organizing in the kitchen, put up a shelf above our new office area, added some storage above the washer and dryer and in the attic above the garage (Jason did that). We finally got our master bathroom cleaned (thanks, Mom!), moved a bookshelf into some of the extra room in our walk-in closet, cleaned out our coat closet, and vacuumed and steam-cleaned some of the carpets. We also got lots of little projects done that had been on my "to do" list for months. Boy, that feels great!

Thanks Mom! You just left today but I already miss you! I know you're ready
to get back to your own house and routine and work but we sure miss you here!
Glad you're coming back in 2 months. We can't wait!

P.S. Thanks so much for the new bread machine!!! I'll use that baby more than any other kitchen gadget I have and you know that's saying a lot! :)

I cooked a lot of my favorite recipes while mom was here. I figured it was a good chance to do one of my favorite things...cook for someone I love. Over the course of her visit I made:

the Tyler Florence chicken enchiladas w/rice and beans

a glazed lemon cake

several loaves of country style white bread

BBQ ribs in the crockpot, mashed potatoes and veggies

quiche

pancakes

meatloaf, mashed potatoes and veggies

artichoke chicken pasta

my favorite cake - Yellow cake with milk chocolate icing

grilled chicken

BBQ chicken pizza and pepperoni pizza w/mushrooms and olives

Club ranch paninis with ranch dip and veggies

spicy broiled shrimp, spinach salad with warm bacon dressing and parmesan bowls

It might sound like all we did was work and eat while she was here and that's partly true. By the end of the day we were all so tired from all that work that it was a struggle to stay awake to a respectable bedtime. By the time 9:00 rolled around, we were all thinking "Good. Now's not too early to go to bed. I'm exhausted!"

I had so hoped to get to take mom to D.C. while she was here. I am very disappointed that we didn't get to go. The first part of her visit we were so busy getting stuff checked off our list of things to do that we didn't do much of anything else. By the second part of her visit, I was having lots of back pain and some Braxton-Hicks contractions and was kinda afraid to get that far from home and do that much walking. I didn't do any heavy lifting or climbing ladders or anything like that. (Well, OK except for that one brief minute I climbed the ladder with Jason right behind me so I could peek at all his hard work in the attic. But that was only for a split second to admire the flooring he put up there...I was very safe I promise and I won't do it again, OK?) I'm still having a lot of back pain but I am taking it easy and sitting down a whole lot more than before and the Braxton-Hicks have stopped for now.

Only 9 more days until we find out if Baby2 is a boy or a girl. We've got boxes of Easton's outgrown clothes stacked up in the newly painted yellow room all ready to be washed and hung up if we're having a boy. Or we'll wash much less of them (just the yellow and green unisex stuff) if it's a girl. Either way, we'll be thrilled. I just really want to know who's in there!!!

I forgot about a really annoying pregnancy symptom I had last time. Insomnia! Yesterday I was up at 5:00. Today it was 4:00 am. For no apparent reason! It is driving me crazy! I am a "needs her sleep" kinda gal so this really really stinks. Usually it starts out with (of course) having to get up and pee (which I do about every 1 1/2 to 2 hours...annoying!). But then my nose is stuffy and I can't sleep (another annoying side effect) or Jason is snoring or I start thinking about all the things I have to do when I get up and why I should be SLEEPING! Or sometimes just for no apparent reason, I just flat out can't go to sleep. I hate it!

But in other news, my mom is here for a visit and man, have we got a lot accomplished already! She's only been here one full day and we've already got the office almost all the way emptied out and half of the stuff on our to-do list done! Later today we're taking E to story time at the library, going to lunch with Jason, then going to Walmart for groceries and then Lowe's for shelving. One of the thing still left to do on our list is put up shelves in several places throughout the house. I love all this organization! Now if only it could stay that way!

And tragically, I have killed yet another bread machine. I think this is bread machine number 4? The others have all been well-used before their demise, so I guess I get my money's worth out of them. But if I don't spend too much on groceries and shelves and baby stuff, maybe I can get a new one today. When I have a working one, I use it at least once a week, sometimes more. We love hot, fresh bread here at our house and I also make a mean pizza dough. I wish it was garage sale time, I could probably score one for cheap if I got lucky. But I'm too impatient to wait till then so let's hope I can find it in our budget to replace this bread machine soon.

What am I doing today? Trying to get up the nerve to face the mountain of clothes that is waiting for me in my bedroom. No, not dirty laundry. Clothes that are hanging in my closet that I can no longer fit into. Some I haven't been able to wear in over 2 years. I really, REALLY want these clothes to be boxed up, labeled and put somewhere I can't see them every single day. But do I want to do that myself? Uh, NO! I want the clean-out-the-closet fairy to swoop down, wave her pink, sparkly magic wand and POOF! It's done. (Didn't know her wand was pink and sparkly? Me neither til just now.)

Seriously. I have at least 3 sizes of regular clothes and probably two or three sizes of maternity clothes that don't fit right now. I'm glad to have been given so many maternity clothes but most of them are too small or the wrong season. UGH!!! Anybody want to help me? I think I could muster up enough willpower to dive right on in if this ordeal did not involve me trying on many, many clothes just to find that they DON'T FIT!

Now what to do? Keep these clothes and hope I'll eventually fit into the smallest sizes? (Probably not very good for my iffy self-esteem/body image right now.) Donate all but a very small portion to Goodwill? (Oooh, think of the tax-write off and all that extra space in my closet!)

It's hard being pregnant! Nothing fits right!!! Even the maternity clothes that "fit" don't exactly fit right and if they do, it's not for long!

But now's a good time to do it...Easton and Jason are taking a nap and the house is quiet. What I really want to do is go find somewhere to get my hair done but it's FREEZING outside and I don't want to get out. Maybe getting my hair done will be my reward for getting this closet cleaned out. And my homework done. And the dishes done. And the laundry. Bleh!

I keep thinking I'll wait until I have time to upload my pics from Christmas before I write this post but it's not looking like that's gonna happen any time soon. :) Our Christmas was GREAT! We had our annual Christmas breakfast casserole with some spiced cider to start out our day. We look forward to this tradition every year and it was nice to be able to share this with E this year. Then we went into the living room and let Easton go after all the presents from Santa. He enjoyed opening his gifts but was a little overwhelmedwith all of the new things. He'd open a gift and then crawl off to play with something we've had for a while. Then he'd come back over and check out a new toy for a minute and then it was off to check out an old favorite. He did say "Wow!" a lot and "ho ho ho" which was pretty cute.

Santa brought him a Fisher Price kitchen/living room, some toy food, a baby doll (to help learn "be gentle to the baby" and get ready for our new arrival in June), and a big bag of 100 balls for our "ball pit" in the living room. Aunt Leslie and Uncle Terry and cousins sent a Handy Manny toolbox that sings "Let's Get To Work". That kinda freaked him out the first time he pushed the button and the tools started jumping up and down and singing but now he loves to crawl over to it, push the button and sit there and dance to the music. Nanny and Papa Kyle got him a MegaBlock Dump truck and a Bounce and Spin Zebra. He's still not quite sure what to make of that zebra but I'm pretty sure it will be a huge hit once he figures it out.

Easton got so much new stuff that we decided we needed to rearrange the living room to make more room. We boxed up all the Christmas decorations (WOW! Before Valentine's Day! lol) and pulled all the furniture out away from the walls so we could decide where we wanted everything. I looked over at Jason and said "Hey, wouldn't this be a great time to paint?" I thought he'd just look at me like I had lost my mind but he actually agreed. We both decided if we didn't take advantage of this chance to paint now, we probably wouldn't do it until WAY after baby number 2 comes along. So we loaded up into the car, went to Lowes and bought some paint and supplies. We painted the living room "Cake Batter" (a light cream/tan). 3 of our bedroom walls are painted this color and we love it so we decided to carry that color throughout the house. Our living room is almost done. We just have one wall left to do and then Jason will start on the hallway.

I'm really enjoying the new look and Easton is LOVING having more room to play. He actually has one whole corner of the living room as his play area. We cleaned up the swimming pool from this summer and brought it in the house. We filled it with balls and now it's his "ball pit". He LOVES it! He wears himself out climbing in, throwing the balls out, then climbing out and throwing them back in. I love having this corner of the living room as Easton's toy area because now at least everything has a place. Some people would say that the living room isn't the place for kids toys...they should be in their room or outside or stored away. But we spend most of our time in here so we like to have Easton playing where we are and he enjoys it too. So for now, our living room (or at least one corner) is taken over by toys. And I wouldn't have it any other way. :)

Let's see if this works...
I've never tried to upload a document to blogger before but I wanted to share this with anybody that might need it.

This is what I use to make my life run more smoothly. It's a weekly schedule and meal planner. For breakfasts, J and I do our own thing so no need to plan that. Lunches are usually leftovers from the previous nights dinner or a sandwich. I usually only have to plan one meal a day, so I edited a meal planner I found online to suit my needs. I have a place to put any errands I need to run, to-do list items, and a place to plan what's for dinner.
Anyway, just thought I'd post this in case anyone might benefit from it.

Now if I could just get in the habit of doing this EVERY week. Sometimes I get lazy and don't fill this out but those weeks also seem to be the weeks I don't get anything done. It really works IF I actually do it! :)

My Weekly To-Do List and Meal Planner http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pQ4enxuZx3cRUWYvgJMQhPg&hl=en

Please let me know if this link doesn't work. I'm new to Google Docs and not quite sure if I uploaded it right. Thanks!

So much to do! Where do I even start? I've decided to go through my many cookbooks and combine all of my cookbooks and recipes to make one cookbook with all our favorite recipes. I have all of these recipes and really only use a couple out of each of these books. (If you've given me any of these cookbooks...Thank you! But I've really got to consolidate!) Oh boy! This means I have to flip through every magazine, cookbook, or cut out recipe I've saved. And I have a TON!
There's these:





And these:





And also these:




Normally, they're all hidden out of sight under my baker's rack until I need a recipe. Then I have to try to remember which book it's in, shuffle through all of these until I find that book, flip through the pages until I find it and then I can make the recipe. That takes forever!


Plus, THIS is my to-do pile. The plastic container is where I put coupons to file, stuff to put in file cabinet, wedding announcements I've saved to remind me to buy wedding gifts, a magazine with an article I wanted to save. Just a bunch of miscelaneous stuff that I need to do.

Like I said, where do I start? I guess I'll just try to do 1 or 2 maybe even 3 small things a day until I'm done. At that rate though, I just might be done by Christmas. :) But boy, won't it be nice to have all my recipes in one big fat book?!

All of this to do plus laundry, dishes and getting my scrapbook stuff organized so I can finally go to my friend's and scrapbook. Whew! I'd better get busy!

***Update***Easton took a long nap so I was able to get through 20 (yes, TWENTY!) of my cookbooks and copy my favorites and put them into my "favorites" binder. YAY! That's a good start! Too bad I still have about 3 or 4 times that many recipes to look through! Now the question remains...what am I going to do with all those cookbooks after I've gotten all of my favorite recipes out of them? Any ideas???

Hmmm...I could give them away to people who comment on this blog. Leave me a comment if you want a free gently used cookbook.

What a great day yesterday! Easton and I had fun playing in the little wading pool/washtub thing in the late morning. It was sunny and a beautiful not-too-hot kind of day. I filled up the tub and slathered the sunscreen on us both. I stripped him down to just his diaper and plopped him and his bath toys into the tub. He had so much fun! You should have seen him splashing and laughing in the cool water. It was so cute!






I'm so glad we got to go outside and play before the big storm rolled in. I hadn't seen the weather so I just assumed it would be another quick-moving shower like we've been having lately. Nope! This one took me by surprise! It clouded up quickly and the rain started coming down in buckets. In the middle of the downpour, I heard the chairs blowing around on the deck so I quickly put on a rain jacket and went outside to rescue the chairs and take my flower/herb pots down from the rail of the deck. Well, I shouldn't have even bothered with the jacket because the rain was coming down so hard and the wind was blowing so fast it looked like it was raining sideways! I rescued the chairs, moved all eight (8!) of my pots down onto the deck and got inside as quickly as I could. Once inside, I had so much water on my glasses that I couldn't see, my clothes were soaked and the chairs and I were dripping water all over the carpet. I got the chairs into the garage, myself into dry clothes and mopped up the water on the carpet as best as I could.

All of that and the storm blew by in less than 15 minutes! We did have some very high winds and we lost one shingle. Could have been much worse though. I saw neighbors on the roof after the storm passed nailing down many more than one new shingle. Easton did well through the storm. It was his nap time and I don't like him being in his room by that big window when it's storming. I'm probably being way too cautious here but I'd rather be safe than sorry. I put Easton down for a nap on a quilt in the living room and he and I watched a movie and waited for the storm to pass. Well, I watched the movie while he rolled around and inspected every inch of the carpet. I don't know why I even bothered with putting a quilt down because he is at the age now where he is rolling and scooting everywhere!

I did 5 loads of laundry and watched the movie 27 Dresses. I'm glad I went ahead and watched it while Jason was at work because I loved it but he surely would have been bored with such a "girly movie". I love Kathereine Heigl and she was so cute in this movie!

After Jason got home from work, I made a pot of baked potato soup. We fed Easton and put him to bed and it was time for our weekly "date night". Date night at our house usually is just us watching a movie or playing cards but it is nice to have something to look forward to during the week. We watched National Treasure: Book of Secrets. It was pretty good but I liked the first one much better.




Today I'm cleaning the kitchen, mopping the floors and maybe cleaning the bathrooms. Then I'm rewarding myself by watching Atonement. We're finally getting our money's worth out of Netflix.

I don't know what it is about me lately but I have absolutely NO DRIVE! It is 4pm and I have not done one thing. Well, OK I have fed Easton 3 times and changed him and played with him and that is exactly what I need to be doing mostly but the boy is down for his 3rd nap of the day and I have not done one blessed thing except watch tv and read my book. I am supposed to go scrapbook with a friend tonight and I have to pack all my scrap stuff and pack Easton's diaper bag, do the dishes so I don't have to come home to a messy kitchen, fold 3 loads of laundry and still leave by 5. Not gonna happen.
We DID stay up late working outside last night planting flowers and moving out our pavers until about 10pm but still. I act like I'm on a permanent vacation some days and then I feel totally guilty and lazy because I didn't get anything done. Guess I probably just need to go back to making my schedule for the week and stick to it. That seems to help and I feel good about getting things done and not so guilty about slacking off if all the things are done on my list.

I tell you what...we work hard on 2-day weekends but we work REALLY HARD on 3-day weekends! Saturday we did our monthly big shop. (Walmart, Costco, Martin's) It makes for a long day. Plus we also went to Lowe's for gardening supplies. We made an 8'x 8' vegetable garden. I probably went way overboard but here's what we got:
4 Better Boy Tomato plants
1 Cherry tomato plant
2 Green bell pepper plants
1 regular jalapeno plant
1 Mammoth jalapeno plant
1 Acorn squash plant
1 Crookneck squash plant
1 Burpless cucumber plant
1 Pickling cucumber plant
2 Zucchini squash plants
1 Patio tomato plant
2 Pumpkin plants
2 Watermelon plants
Flat-leaf Italian parsley, Mint, and Sweet Basil plants for an herb garden on the deck.

So far we've only got the tomatoes, herbs, peppers and 2 kinds of squash planted. We're going to have to make our garden patch a LOT bigger to contain all those vine-y plants like the squash and pumpkins!

I'd still like to find chives, cilantro, oregano, lavender and strawberries. We didn't have too much luck with our tomatoes and jalapenos or herbs last time we tried but I think we planted too late and didn't water enough. Now that I'm home I can water regularly and weed. (I HATE weeding!) Hopefully we will be up to our eyebrows in fresh produce. With the price of things increasing so much it's nice to be able to grow your own. At least I HOPE we can anyway! Wish us luck! Especially with the watermelon which I really, really wanted to try but Jason says will never work and will take over our garden. We'll see about that. To borrow a quote from Jenni "Tell me I can't---I'll show you I CAN!" Love the attitude, Jen!

I got over my slacker tendencies and cleaned both bathrooms, did the laundry, changed the sheets on our bed, did the dishes (will the dishes EVER be done at my house? Even for a day?). Now I'm about to finally watch a movie. Becoming Jane from Netflix. I hope it's a good one.