Slimer, Take 2

It was about this time last year that we tried making homemade slime, and it was MEMORABLY bad. I still had an entire bottle of Sta-Flo starch though, which I will NEVER use to actually starch a shirt, so I figured we'd give it another go. It went SO SMOOTHLY this time! We tried dumping the glue first and THEN adding starch, which worked much better - the original consistency was rope-y like pumpkin guts but as the kids played it got really stretchy and gooey and PERFECT. They grabbed toys PRIOR to getting down to the business of play, so there was much less yelling on my part.

Oh, yeah - Caroline pretty much only wears a swimsuit these days. Don't be surprised in future posts.

You can practically HEAR the sound effects!

 

 Caroline explaining how long her slime-snake is

Eli's version of "cheese!"

 

Patrick's work of art - a slime-encased velociraptor.

The goo has been holding up well kept in a Tupperware, the kids have played with it 3 straight days, so definitely worth the effort! In case I ever want to do it again, and for anyone interested, the recipe is:

 2 bottles of CLEAR glue (roughly 1-1/2 cups, or 10 ounces) and 1-1/2 cups liquid starch.

I'd say easy peasy, but never underestimate the power of a CraftFail ;)

Easter 2014

Happy Easter! Also known as, "We Survived!" Easter itself wasn't the problem, though it contributed to it... here was our day:

 

Sundays are already tough, with Joe working Saturday night and sleeping all Sunday while I tackle the kids into their church clothes and into submission during Sacrament meeting, so Easter Sunday, with high expectations, was especially challenging. I had high hopes, though! I started the night before by hiding the kids' Easter baskets - a HUGE "Thank You!" to both sets of grandparents, who provided Easter basket goodies for everyone. It was such a relief to not have to shop for that myself, I mostly just give myself a pat on the back if I successfully meal plan and shop for basic groceries, forget dragging the kids along and sneaking in Easter treats! So I did the bare minimum by putting the grandparent-purchased goodies into baskets and then hiding them, but my bare minimum was plenty for my kids - they were so excited to find them! Eli was especially excited, he went and found EVERYONES and then just showed them. Caroline was appreciative, she's not good at finding things but VERY good at getting emotional when the item (in front of her face, typically) remains elusive.

Ethan's fuzzy hair has finally grown back! I love it! I also love baby bellies, they're so squishy!

Patrick being a goof with his Skip-It

Caroline looked like a bomb went off in her hair....

...Let's move in for a closer look! GAH!

 

After Easter baskets (again, THANK YOU grandparents for minimal candy! We enjoy sweets, which everyone got, but nobody went into sugar coma on your watch) we made bunny pancakes. Just for fun, because they're easy.

After pancakes, before getting dressed, we dyed eggs - quickly! I'd boiled them the night before and mixed up the dye alone, in secret, and then encouraged as little decoration as possible. We're going for "done is best!" After eggs we got dressed for church, which had to be extra-fast because I had to be to church EARLY to practice for ward choir, which was performing during sacrament. It's tough for me to get out the door on time with 4 monkeys, but EARLY? Now you're just being cruel! Kari saved my rear and took Ethan and Caroline, I just had the two older boys who behaved themselves while the choir practiced. Unfortunately, the kids didn't feel the need to behave while the choir PERFORMED - Ethan escaped the bounds of the pew and tried to run up on the stand, got intercepted by a sweet teenager with quick hands, and proceeded to scream through the song. When I wasn't at the piano, I was in the pew wrestling Ethan - I seriously had to pull some squeeze holds on him while snapping at the boys to SHHHHHHFORCRAP'SSAKE for the thousandth time and drag Caroline to the potty amid the ruckus. It was the most difficult Sunday I've had since early last year when Ethan was small and nursing, my other kids were small and restless (and couldn't be left alone in the pew while I went and nursed), I was still single on Sundays, and each Sacrament talk was dedicated to parents being better about having their kids be reverent in church. THAT Sunday I cried in the hallway; THIS Sunday I was just frustrated. Improvement! Caroline unfortunately had a 2-hour meltdown during Sunbeams, the 3-year-old class, but I couldn't help her or take her home because I was teaching sharing time in Primary, which occupies me BOTH hours of the last 2 hours of church, so by the end of 3-1/2 LONG hours of Easter service we were READY to go home, relax, and have a fun afternoon.

Finally! fun! Hunting for Easter eggs

Tricky spot!

Eli's offering his help (which she eventually accepted, she was sure a spider was in there and going to bite her)

Their hauls - 4 eggs each. Again, keeping it quick and simple! Even easier, Ethan was asleep during the hunts.

They all peeled one egg to eat - Caroline didn't like it, but Eli loved it! Maybe I'll pack him hard-boiled eggs in his lunches when he goes off to school.

Patrick enjoyed the yolk. Post-picture, though, he went inside and spit it out on the carpet.

That's why pictures are nice - it only captures the MOMENT, not the time around the moment. Looking through some old pictures, when Caroline was a baby, often my house was DESTROYED - toys! books! shoes! cups! house projects! And I think "Holy cow, I did NOT have it together then, did I?" Then I watched some old home videos, kids running around and pulling out toys! books! shoes! cups! and I realized I just had 3 very small kids who excelled at destruction while I was recovering from the trauma of sleep deprivation. The pictures were fun to look at and easy to judge, but the movies made it all come to life and sometimes life is tough. Like my actually Easter versus the pictures of my Easter post. But all in all, Happy Easter! We survived!

Harness the power of the bunny

A few years ago when we lived in Thornton and I worked at Bed, Bath and Beyond I came across a "small dog harness" and thought perhaps it would be small enough that it would fit our large bunny and we could take him on walks. I bought it, but it didn't fit, so I planned to take in some of the seams and it would work like a charm. Cut to YEARS later, to today, and I had the sewing machine out and had recently gone through my craft bin and re-discovered my good intentions of walking our bunny, so I made some magic happen! Took in every seam there was and then headed to the bunny cage - sure enough, it fit like a glove! We took Easter on some "walks" around the backyard just to get him used to the harness - mostly Easter sat and munched grass and I made sure each kid got a fair turn holding the leash while he went nowhere. Worked great! Hopefully as he gets used to it he'll be more into exploring and would actually be fun to take on a walk, but for today taking pictures was fun enough!

 

Goodnight

While tucking Caroline in tonight we were snuggling and having a nice quiet moment. She gently said, "Mom?"
I said, "Yeah, sweetheart?"
"Your face smells like hotdogs."
Thank you, Caroline. I love you, too.
( We HAD eaten hotdogs and bratwurst for dinner).

An Accidentally Perfect Day

I wrote a post (in my head? Or did I publish it?) a long time ago about having the perfect day... not perfect like I'm sitting on a beach without a care, but perfect like, "here is my life, and today I lived it perfectly." TODAY I HAD A PERFECT DAY! And it happened on accident.

In order to have the perfect day A LOT of things have to come together because there are A LOT of things I strive to be better in - none of them take a particularly large amount of time, so I figure, "if I do this every day, even just for 20 or 30 minutes, I'll be SO AWESOME!" And yet 20 or 30 minutes, when applied to 12 different things, actually takes quite a bit of time; I might get 1 OR 2 of those done, certainly not ALL of them. I strive to eat more fruits and veggies, drink more water, work out, dress cute (hair & makeup included), clean the house, cook delicious meals, play outside, read my scriptures, read with my kids, scrapbook, and have some personal down time. WHEW! Tough to be perfect...

Cut to Pinterest. Lots of interesting ideas and articles, and I try to work on the ones I pin (or maybe I try to only pin the things I know I will get around to working on...), so there was one particular pin (blog) that's a 4-week challenge to get your house organized. Each day includes getting up, dressed, daily devotional, making a short "to-do" list to accomplish any weekly goals, getting rid of 7 things, doing a 15-minutes chore, then doing a project. I usually turn the 15-minute chore into a project as well, since I've got time as a SAHM.  In order to complete these things I need to get up earlier, which means I need to go to bed earlier, which has been it's OWN challenge, but I've really enjoyed my newfound productivity! We already had a morning routine (maybe "goal" is a better word...) to read scriptures at breakfast, and getting up early, getting dressed, and being on top of it has really helped that goal reach "routine" status. Who knew routine would be the standard of excellence?  ANYWAY.

The point of this tangent is that the challenge has accidentally helped me fulfill my perfect day! A weekly goal was to go to the gym more than once, so today I made it to the gym! While I was there I drank plenty of water, then made it a priority to eat good fruits and veggies since, hey, I went to the gym, I might as well act like it. I made yummy homemade meals for every meal (well, lunch was leftovers, but they were homemade! and yummy!), and during breakfast we read our scriptures. After breakfast and the gym I put myself together with hair, makeup, and nice clothes. The weather was beautiful so I pushed my kids on the swing in our backyard. During the day and evening I took time here and there to read books with my kids; no hour-long read-a-thons, but still plenty of reading and couch-snuggeling was done. While kids were playing I tackled a chores: dishes, laundry, and moved all our living room furniture (couches, tables, even the piano!) to vacuum INCREDIBLY thoroughly - I KILLED housework today! (Laundry is a bit of an exaggeration, though, I've taken to doing a load a day instead of designating one laundry day where I am swimming through baskets of dirty clothes. Considering how GREAT my laundry is these days, I don't mind being in it every day!) The kids went to bed on time without much fuss so I have lots of time this evening for scrapbooking and down time with Joe (probably to watch some Walking Dead).

I've tried numerous times to create a "perfect day," and here one came at me without me giving it too much extra time or thought.  For that, THANK YOU PINTEREST for directing me to ladies who motivate me, and THANK YOU MOTIVATIONAL LADY (aka Crystal Paine) for creating a 4-week challenge that has really helped me grow. Even Joe stopped today and said, "You have really been better about housework." I waited to see if he would dig himself into a hole with that beginning, but he didn't. "You weren't terrible before or anything, but I've noticed how on top of the laundry and dishes you've been. That's awesome." Yay!

Now I'll stop yammering and post pictures of the kids. Amelia was over and they were playing babies and pajamas, I thought it was too cute that Eli was in on the action, too (I really love it when Patrick's not around! Eli's a different kind of kid)

Naked as a ... cowboy

Coming Along

I've been lying to you all.

My blog looks like all we do is home remodeling projects, but the reality is that with 4 kids the hours spent in minor construction really are MINOR compared to the hours we spend as parents. I'd love to report that all this hard work has been paying off as beautifully and steadily as the hard work has payed off on the bathroom, but it's just not that easy to measure. Sometimes it's not even easy to understand. I certainly can't take a picture of it (notice the lack of picture here?). Since it's harder to convey I find myself simply skipping over it, which really saves me time in the short run (yay!) but I think I will miss those introspective posts as I look back here, years from now, and think "Construction projects? Really? Where are the posts about kids and parenting and life as a couple?" So here's a quick remedy, to get me through 'til the next bathroom update.

I feel like I've been coming into my own.  In Thornton I always felt behind... behind on our bills so I took on a part-time job... behind on the housework because I was drained from very small children and working 2 nights a week... behind on figuring out how to raise my kids right because I was too exhausted being pregnant... just always behind. There was a cloud that I looked forward to lifting,  but didn't really know how to lift. Through the last nearly 2 years here in Pueblo I feel like it's finally lifting, and I am coming into my own!

Part of it has to do with not being pregnant, seriously. That just takes SO MUCH ENERGY, it is truly something special to have my body to myself, children who sleep through the night, and a light at the end of the tunnel.

Part of it has to do with being half of a whole in our marriage - in Thornton Joe and I both felt that we were living as single parents, we so rarely saw each other. We did the best we could and really tried to make the best of things, worked to enjoy the small moments, and I focused on the future - well, we have now reached the future! We DO see Joe! The kids DO get to play with their dad, go to the park and the zoo with him, have dinner (and often breakfast and lunch!) together as a family... we are WHOLE! Finally! The time has not only paid off for the kids, it has given us much more opportunity to enjoy each other. Sure, we totally drive each other craze sometimes, but for the most part it's over small things and over short periods. We get over it quickly and get back to enjoying each other, and our time together with the kids. I love being whole :)

Part of it involves me having time, energy, and access to things I love. I love playing the piano and I knew I had missed it over the years, but I didn't realize how MUCH I had missed it until I was given my beautiful piano and I am able to sit down every day, even if only for a minute or two, and play. I had a talent for it when I took lessons, and being able to create beautiful music was one of the things I loved about myself. But how can you love it when it's no longer there? I lost a lot of confidence as years slipped by and I no longer exercised my talents; my identity changed from "musicians who is fairly bad at housework" to "girl who does housework fairly badly and who no longer plays music." What a yucky identity! No wonder at the lack of confidence. Getting that piano brought me back to music, brought me back to myself, and it's a much bigger gift than Joe and my dad ever anticipated; it's no wonder it made me cry (even when the birth of my children did not).

Finally, part of it involves me accepting the identity of a mother. Yes, it's been 6 years now that I've been a mom, but it's different to be a mom to a baby, then to a toddler - first there's a lot of physical and not much mental effort. Now? WHOAH! It's really been different to have to MOTHER these kids! Ethan's my last physical mothering, and the rest are mental? Heaven help us! I've worked to not get completely run over, we do home preschool and read scriptures together and our guiding house rules are "show love and show respect"... but there's just SO MUCH. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed. I just want to work really hard all week, be an awesome parent, and be DONE... but the reality is year and years and years. How depressing. UNLESS... unless I accept that this could be awesome. Accept the challenge, look for opportunities to make it better, and CHOOSE this identity. Know that it's more important that cleaning the house (again) or staying up too late for fun (again); it is the most important job in the smallest ways. Joe has a job that has important aspects to it at work and is, of course, important to provide for us as a family, but it does not have eternal consequences. Accepting the role of a parent is accepting a job that has eternal consequences. And I finally get that! And I accept it! The small moments of clarity help provide strength for the longer stretches of tearing my hair out when the kids are driving me insane.

So all of this is GOOD, it really feels like I am coming along as a person.  I feel like 30 is going to be a very good year :)