Finding Joy in the Journey

I been waiting for this for the last 7 years . . .

2011-04-24T17:06:00.001-07:00

. . . it's NEW CARPET!!

Yes, I know that that may not seem so exciting to you guys but trust me, if you were living with pink carpet, you'd be happy too!!

This is the before pic of the familyroom. We actually had replaced the pink carpet in this room about 5 years ago-since it was so badly stained. This carpet actually wasn't that bad, but the quality of it wasn't that great, and I just wanted all the carpet downstairs to match. Notice the two clean rectangular spots where my couches were? Nice.

Moving along on the tour, here is the horrible, 20-year-old pink carpeting I was talking about-just in case any of you haven't had the priviledge of seeing it in person. This is the stairway. The first thing you see when you walk in the front door:

And just to the right of the entry way is our living room:

Ripping up the old carpet. Goodbye! I won't be missing you!

(Sophee decided she needed to take this picture of the carpet guy. I'm sure he was thrilled being photographed on the job) You see all the spots on the picture? No that's not a dirty lens, it's 20 years of dirt being released:

We had issues trying to figure out what to do with the piano. The only way to get it out of the room would be to take the legs off and put it on a special board on it's side. Meaning, we needed a piano mover. Unfortunately, the guy who moved the piano in for us 7 years ago was no longer in town, and there are no other piano movers near here. I was beginning to think that I'd have to call someone to come down from Vegas and pay a big chunk of change to have them hang out here for half the day just to move it. I called my piano tuner (in Kingman) out of desperation, to see if he knew of anybody that could help us out. He said there was no one around here, but suggested that we could probably just get a bunch of guys and have them lift it and move it to one side of the room, while they carpeted the other side-then vice versa. Thankfully, the room is big enough, so that's what we ended up doing.

First off, the guys moved the piano right up to the window on one side of the room. That was the easy part, as it only had to be moved a few feet, and it only had to be 'barely lifted' as to take the weight off the legs:

So the carpet guys laid the carpet on the opposite side, and stretched it into place. Then they rolled it all the way up to the legs of the piano. Now for the fun part!! The guys had to lift the piano up about 6-8 inches off the ground, over the new carpet, and completely across the 23 feet of livingroom! We had 6 guys lifting, and judging by all the groaning they were making, I'm sure the piano was extremely heavy!! This is the best picture I could get, as I didn't want to get in their way:

And here is the finished product!! The familyroom:

*It's kinda hard to tell the difference here, but it's slightly darker than the previous carpet, and much softer!

It's a cut-pile berber. I just call it the 'shaggy' stuff. Here's the stairway:

I decided to take advantage of the fact that the piano was already on the other side of the room and rearrange things. Since our living room is very long and narrow, I created a little 'hallway' of sorts with the couch when you first walk in-since we had plenty of room to spare. Here it is (this is to the right of the front door) I'm still in the process of decorating. Don't judge me:

Looking in from the opposite of the room:

Another angle:

Awww, it's a thing of beauty. Even if my husband was cursing it during the move across the room:

(Hey, he was the one who insisted on the baby grand when we went piano shopping!)

I am so thrilled with the new look!! Now the only pink carpeting left downstairs is the diningroom, which I plan to rip out soon. Since we plan on tiling that room, I'm just going to paint the cement until we're ready to do that.

And lest you think I might miss that lovely pink carpeting, don't worry, we still have it in the bedrooms upstairs. UGH! Well what can you do?? It will have to wait until we have thousands of dollars just laying around in the bank.

Sophee's 7th Birthday

2011-04-21T16:37:00.001-07:00

Sophee had her 7th birthday last month. She campaigned hard to get me to let her have a 'real party, with friends-not just family members'. The other 2 girls jumped on board the campaign wagon, knowing that if I'd give in to Soph, then they'd get a 'real party' too.

So, I caved. Her birthday was on a Tuesday, and the party wasn't until that Saturday so we let her open her presents from us the morning of her birthday, and I took these cupcakes into her class:
They are chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting and half a peanut butter cup (Soph's most favorite candy ever!) *On a side note, I did make a few 'back up' cupcakes in case anyone in her class was allergic to PB.

Here she is the day of her party:

The 'conditions' on which I gave the girls for their b-day parties this year were:

#1-it had to be at home

#2-it had to be simple

#3-I was not going to buy a bunch of crap to put in 'goody bags' that would just get thrown out anyway.

So, we came up with the idea that we would have a 'cupcake dance party'. I put all Soph's favorite dance songs onto a playlist and had the music playing when the girls walked in. We pushed the couches out of the way to make a bigger 'dance floor' and I got some cheapy play microphones (4/$1) at dollar tree and gave each girl one to 'rock out' with as they came in. The girls had a 'dance party' until everyone arrived, then I sent Kory out for pizza (Little Ceasars $5 pizza I love you). I figured if I had to have these kids for a couple of hours I might as well do it at lunch time. Just feeding them would take up at least 20 minutes. So we did pizza and juice boxes. Easy peasy. Are you seeing a theme here yet??

Next we decorated cupcakes. I wasn't exactly sure how many kids were going to show up, so I made a ton of cupcakes. Here's all the sugary goodness:

Decorating the cupcakes served 2 purposes. The first being entertainment-of course, and the second was that I put their finished product (4 cupcakes for each child) onto a cute paper plate and wrapped it for them to take home (along with one of the helium balloons used for decorations, and their play microphone) that was their take home 'goody' without me having to spend a lot of money on them. See how resourceful I am?? I know, it kills me.

So here are the girls in action. We had 8 girls show up, so the table was full!!
(I had to stick Audree and Josh in the diningroom).

They all had a blast, and loved decorating their cupcakes! Oh, and we played a few games too:

Then came Sophee's favorite part, opening the presents:

I just had to include this picture of the cute dress Sophee's school teacher got her:
(BTW, she is growing out her bangs to look 'just like Kaylee')

Ok, back to the party. Here is Sophee with her brownie/ice cream cake that is filled with-once again-Peanut Butter Cups. The ice cream cake was a decision I made to make my life at the party easier. With this cake I didn't have to dish up any ice cream, or figure out which kid wanted only cake, or only ice cream, or both. Yes, I know, I'm a genius. Apparently it turned out to be very yummy. I wouldn't know though, as I'm still off chocolate.

When we were filling out invitations Sophee insisted that we invite her school teacher. I agreed that we could give her an invitation but warned her that her teacher probably wouldn't be able to come, since teacher's don't want to spend all their Saturday's off at every students b-day party. (I was trying to prepare her for the disappoint when her teacher didn't show up but . . .)

Sure enough she did show up . . . at the end of the party. Apparently she lost track of time doing some gardening and when she realized what time it was she rushed over, in her grubbies and all, but we didn't care-Soph was super excited that she came!!

Sophee and her teacher, Ms. Dunzweiler:

What a great way to end a great party. The good news is that Audree thought it was so fun she is thinking she'd like to do the same party. Whew!! That will make my life easier. As for Kaylee, well, she's still in the planning stages. Anyone have any ideas on how to have a cool teenager party at home??

I'm stumped, and quite frankly, a little terrified at the thought of having to entertain a bunch of 13 year old girls.

As Requested . . . a new yummy & easy meal

2011-03-22T07:39:00.000-07:00

My SIL was asking me the other day when I would be posting some new, easy dinner ideas.

I have a few good recipes to share, but rather than trying to take pictures of the cooking process myself I decided I would just share the link to the recipe with you. Just click on the name of the recipe below.

Teriyaki Chicken Pita pockets:
(Photos and recipe from Controlling my Chaos Blog)

There are detailed instructions, with lots of pictures, but don't let that confuse you into thinking that it's not a super simple recipe-because it totally is. And boy is it worth it!! Yum.eee. We all loved it!

As a bonus, the author of the blog includes a really cute little recipe card that you can print out at the end. So go, try it. You'll love it.

P.S. Next time I make this I will definitely use at least 4 chicken breasts, just so that we can have leftovers.

Don't look behind the couch ;-)

2011-01-28T13:44:00.000-08:00

Shortly after I took down all the Christmas decor I decided that my house needed a deep cleaning. I got a wild hair and decided to actually move the couches and vacuum behind them.

Here are the 'treasures' that I found:

Thanks to a certain child (ahem, Sophee) and a certain husband (who shall remain nameless) I ended up with almost a full Wal-Mart bag of fruit snack wrappers! I know, it's embarassing, but I'm just keeping it real. It had probably been at least 3 or 4 months since I last moved the couches. For the record, I do tell my family-many times daily-to throw their garbage in the trash can. It just doesn't seem to be sinking in. It's just easier for them to wait until I'm not looking and then throw their wrappers over the back of the couch, or stuff them in the cushions.

I also decided to remove the cushions and vacuum out all the crumbs. I know, crazy huh? I don't know what got into me.

Once I started though, Audree decided it looked like fun and decided to help out:

Sophee, on the other hand, decided that this looked like more fun:
(Notice Audree still working hard-yep, that's my girl . . .)

"Mom, watch what I can do!! Take a picture".

In the end, Audree pointed out to Sophee that since the majority of the mess was hers she should have to help. So, here she is, doing her part:

Of course, I didn't get any pictures of Sophee using the hose to suck up her shirt, and her skin.

It's just all fun and games for that kid.

Merry Christmas to you . . .

2010-12-22T11:57:00.000-08:00

. . . from the Burgess family!

I thought we'd share a bunch of photos from our Christmas card 'photo shoot'. Enjoy!!

Kory doing what he does best, just goofing off:

A little bit of randomness:

Cousins:

Let's see if this will work. Hmmm . . . not quite:

Slowly getting through:

Well. I think that's as far as Josh will get:

Halloween 2010

2010-11-13T11:54:00.000-08:00

Wahoo! I'm actually posting about Halloween before Thanksgiving. That's pretty good for me.

This year Sophee was a little devil (how fitting-and yes, she picked that out all on her own) and Audree was a 50's girl:

Josh was the 'Karate Kid':

And Kaylee was MIA because she had gone over to her cousins house to get ready.

Since Halloween was on a Sunday we just went to our church's Trunk-or-Treat carnival this year on Saturday night.

My SIL was in charge of a few games and decided that we needed a petting zoo. So she came up with a "Shih Tzu Zoo", and gathered up 6 Shih Tzu's, include ours-and gated off the 'mothers lounge' and we lifted the little kids over the gate to go see the dogs. This was actually a huge hit!! Coal is the black one with the red bandana:

Here are the girls searching for treasures:

And playing miniature golf:

The purpose of this game is to 'catapult' fake spiders onto a giant spider web:

I had planned to get pictures of Kaylee but I didn't see her and her cousin too much. You know, she's at that stage were she is too cool to hang with the fam.

When we first walked into the carnival Josh spotted the booth were someone was making balloon animals and headed straight for it. Of course that had the longest line and he stood there, patiently, for at least half an hour to get himself a spiderman balloon-which I didn't get a picture of-darn it.

Afterwards, we came home and the 'bargaining' began. Oh look, there's Kaylee. She was a 'punk ballerina'. She had some black gauze all wrapped around the top of her but had taken it off before I got a picture.

Making the trade:

The kids had a really great time at the carnival and didn't seem to mind too much that we didn't trick-or-treat on Sunday. Infact they had forgotten all about it until some kids came over that night and rang the doorbell while we were having dinner (we forgot to turn off our outside lights). Then Sophee realized she was missing out on it and cried for a little while. Poor Girl.

The rest of the kids were fine with it.

I'm so glad it's over though! Now onto the Thanksgiving!

Family Home Evening with our cousins . . .

2010-10-29T16:30:00.000-07:00

. . . carving pumpkins!!

I love the above pic. It just captures the craziness that is when we get the youngins' together. Add a sticky, gooey mess of pumpkin guts, somewhat sharp objects and hey, now we're having a good time!!

I had pretty much decided that I wasn't going to do our traditional 'carving of the pumpkins' this year. Then my super fun SIL called and invited us to come over to Grandma's with them and have a BBQ and carve up some pumpkins for FHE. Oh the guilt!!
I caved. Mainly because I'm trying to be better about having FHE every week. That, and the fact the I didn't have to actually plan a lesson or make dinner? I was so there!!

Here's Dad, Audree, Sophee, and Josh (Kaylee was on her way from soccer practise):

I usually only buy 2 pumpkins every year, then we split into teams-one team with me, and one with Kory-that way it's not so chaotic with just 2 adults trying to simultaneously trying to help carve 4 pumpkins. The kids don't seem to mind at all, it's cheaper, and I think they like having a little 'competion' with the other group.

Sophee and Josh with their pumpkin:

Kory, Audree, and Kaylee's pumpkin is on the right:

The whole gang showing off their creations:

It was fun to get together with family for FHE. These are memories in the making!!

Us girls love our shoes . . .

2010-10-29T16:12:00.001-07:00

Especially when they're super cheap!!

I had to run and get a couple of things at K-mart the other day. The kids and I happened upon a huge shoe sale. They were clearing out a bunch of summer shoes for over 75% off. Wahoo!!

Here's Sophee's $2.50 sandles. They have a little heel to them, which she absolutely loves. Check out these gingham checked shoes. I totally love them. Haven't worn them yet though.
They were $3.50. Even Kaylee likes them. That's a good sign when your teenager approves. I think it means I'm cool.

Audree opted for some simple white flats. $2. Thank-you-very-much.

I also happened to get these brown heels (which is actually something I needed):

A side view of the cute buckle:

And the best part? They were only $2. I'm such a bargain shopper.

Kaylee also got some shoes, but was not home when I decided to snap some pics.

Poor Josh. We tried really hard to find him something, but there wasn't a very big selection of men's shoes on clearance.

I just love me a good clearance sale.

Josh-isms

2010-10-16T13:34:00.001-07:00

Today I was in a mood to get my disgusting floors cleaned. I realized a long time ago that when a 'cleaning mood' strikes, you better go with it right then and there or that mood might not be back for awhile. Although, I really prefer to mop when the kids are either in bed or at school (since our kitchen is the 'hub' of the home, mopping while 8 little feet are running around underneath me really isn't a great idea). But, alas, the mood was here and I had to take advantage of it. So, after vacuuming all the carpet downstairs, removing all the little rugs to be washed, moving all the chairs onto the carpet, sweeping the tile, and finally starting to mop I guess Josh noticed that I was working a little harder than I normally do on a Saturday.

He then came up to me, just before I was finished and said, "Mom, if you clean this whooooole house you can have a dollar!" Me: "Really bud? I can have a dollar?"
Josh: "Not until you're all done."
Me: "Thanks bud."

I'm still waiting for my dollar. I guess maybe I didn't do a good enough job.
_____________________________________________

This next picture is a little blurry because it's a picture of a picture. But, I need you to see it so you'll understand the next story:

That's Audree's face in the picture. Our stake primary presidency came down and did an activity with our primary kids at the beginning of the year. While here they took pictures of all the kids. Then, some super creative lady photoshopped the kids' faces into this picture with Jesus. When Mother's day rolled around this was the little gift that the kids gave their Mom's. It was such a precious idea! I got one from Kaylee (who was in the primary at the time), Audree, and Sophee. Poor Josh missed out because he's not in Primary anymore.

So after church that day, as we were heading home I was admiring my new gifts from the girls. Josh wanted to see what they were. He grabbed Audree's picture, took a lengthy look at it, and said, "Heeeeey! When was Jesus here?"

Poor kid, no matter how many times I tried to explain how you can 'photoshop' things he just wasn't getting it. He still feels like he got jipped out of seeing Jesus.

Hometown Parade

2010-10-08T20:18:00.001-07:00

It's a nice, quiet evening tonight. Kory and Audree are down at the soccer fields watching Kaylee's game, Josh is at the football game with his respite worker, and Soph and I are just kickin' back at home watching Bugs Bunny. I just pulled a coffee cake out of the oven and the house smells all cinnamon-y. Mmmm. I'm just loving it. So, since I have a free moment, I decided to do a little post.

Today is the High School's homecoming football game. Since Kaylee and her cousins would be participating in the Homecoming parade I decided it might be fun for the kids and I to go and watch. We ran and got slushy's and then set up our chairs along side the road. Here are the 'patiently' waiting cuties:
Here are the girls waving some banners that the football team was passing out.

Josh got a football tossed to him. He was pretty excited about getting that. Oh, and he decorated his t-shirt in the school colors all by himself:

Here comes the Jr. High marching band:

There's Kaylee-second row, second one in, wearing the black shirt with the big "S" on it (for SADD club), and white t-shirt hanging out the bottom:

Her first parade! I'm such a proud Mother!!

Audree turns 8 !!

2010-09-16T16:02:00.001-07:00

Our sweet little girl just turned 8!!

She requested that I make 'ring' cupcakes-again. So I decided to change things up a bit and make them into cupcake cones. Yummy! I hadn't has these since I was a little girl. Oh, and since she has a super sweet tooth, just like her Mother, she helped me dip them in colored sprinkles after we frosted them.

Here's Audree getting ready to blow out her candles. We just had a simple little party at home since we would be having the baptism with all the family members later on in the week.

The following Sunday was the big day!! Grandma and Grandpa Evans even got to come, and Grandpa snapped this shot of Audree getting her hair done before leaving for the baptism:

All ready and patiently waiting . . .

Audree was baptized by her Dad. We are so proud of the decision she made to do this!

Kory and his 3 girls. They all seem so angelic now. Life is going to be interesting once they all hit their teens ;-)

Our family:

All in all it was a great baptism. We had all the family members that live in the area here-plus my parents. We are so grateful that they made the trip up to share Audree's special day with her.

Girls' bedroom make over . . .

2010-08-20T16:02:00.000-07:00

We've been slowly re-doing the rooms in our house for the last 4 1/2 years.

Because Audree and Sophee were pretty young when we started the process, they never really expressed a desire for me to re-do their room (unlike Kaylee and Josh who nagged about it constantly until I finally dropped everything and did their rooms). So for the past year or two they've been bugging me about the fact that their room 'sucks', and everybody else's room looks good.

So a few months ago I had the girls pick a color that they both could agree on. Originally it was blue. Then Audree changed her mind and said that she wanted it to be green. So, I set out to find some bedding that had both blue and green. The cheapest thing I could find was about $60 a piece, and that didn't including shipping. I really didn't want to spend over $120 on bedding. So I waited. And waited. And the girls nagged, and nagged about how I promised we could fix up their room. Luckily, with it being 'back to school' time I was able to find some cheap twin bedding that had both of the specified colors.

Here are the before pics:
(I didn't bother picking anything up before taking these pics-just keeping it real for ya'.)

Here are the 'after' pics:

(Taken before the girls got home, just to make sure that it looked good and clean.)

That cute little tree is a sticker. When I showed the room to Kory he was so impressed with it-until I admitted that I didn't actually paint it myself.

I plan to paint some flowers on the grassy hills, but my SIL is supposed to help me do that, and she had some things come up at the last minute. So once that's done, I'll post more pics.

I made the curtains from a $3 bed sheet and a couple of spools of ribbon. They are just stapled to old pieces of wood I had laying around, and mounted with brackets.

The little shelves were once used to house some of my stamps. They used to have doors on the front, but a certain child of mine colored on the front of them with a permanant marker, and I couldn't get it off. So I just took the doors off-they would've just been in the way.

Something should probably go on that bare wall over the bed. But, Sophee likes to put her feet up on the wall at night when she's tossing and turning and trying to get to sleep, so I've decided to just leave it blank for now. I'm sure when the girls get older, and accumulate more stuff, we'll have to put up a few shelves.

I made these memo boards out of some material I've had laying around, and some ceiling tiles I grabbed from the tire store:

Hopefully I will actually finish up with the flowers soon. The beds also need a face lift-but that probably won't happen until we get new carpet and have to take them apart.

The girls are beyond thrilled with it-and that's good enough for me. For now.

Back to school

2010-08-19T08:05:00.001-07:00

Well, since it's almost time for me to go back to school, I should probably post about the kids' first day back before all my homework causes me to be MIA.

For those of you fortunate enough to live in the blistering heat of AZ., you get to send your kids back to school at the beginning of August-Wahoo!!

So here they are-all ready to go on their first day.

Sophee & Audree: Sophee is now in 1st grade. At the end of the school year last year she asked me if she could be in her same teacher's class for 1st grade. She was a little disappointed when I told her that she couldn't, and that everyone gets a new teacher every time they move up a grade. Weeeeeellll, come to find out, her teacher ended up moving up a grade, and she get's to be in her class. Sophee was super excited. Especially since this teacher is soooo awesome with the kids.

Audree is a big 2nd grader now, and as I walked the girls to their classrooms the first day, she quickly bounded off to her class without the need of me :-(. Sophee, on the other hand, asked me if I could stay in her classroom with her all day.

Next, we have the ever cool Jr. High student, Kaylee:

Kaylee is in the 7th grade this year. She is super thrilled not to have PE on her schedule (for this quarter anyway). She is in advanced band, and honors language arts, and seems to be enjoying all of the 'socializing' she gets to do.

And last, but not least, Josh:

Josh started High School this year. I can't believe my baby boy is in High School. I'm getting old.

So far things seem to be going great for him. All the Special Education kids get to 'work' in the cafeteria to earn a free breakfast. Josh is thrilled with the idea that he now has 2 jobs-one at the High School, and one at the Tire Store. He is also thrilled to be able to take PE again-as they have an adapted class for the SP.ED. kids. Through out high school he will get the opportunity to learn more life skills-like cooking, doing laundry, etc. He keeps telling me and Kory, "I'm going to learn to cook dinner for you guys". Boy, that would be heaven!!

Anyway, there you have it. I will be starting my '3rd year as a Sophomore' (as Kory puts it) next week. In march I will put in my application for the Dental Hygiene program. Wish me luck!!

Happy Birthday Josh & Sophee!!

2010-07-27T15:28:00.001-07:00

For those of you that know my family really well, you probably know why I'm posting about Josh's birthday this month-since his birthday is actually in July. Sophee's birthday on the other hand, was in March.

It was just made apparent to me, as I was scrolling back through my previous posts, that I forgot to put up anything about Sophee's birthday.

There goes my 'Mother of the Year' award. Well, enough wallowing about it, let's get on with the post.

My baby boy is now 15!! Sniff, sniff. Where has the time gone? I can remember the day he was born like it was yesterday, and today I just dropped off his registration for High School. I can't believe it. We had a low-key party (just how I like to keep birthday parties) with some cousins.

Josh opening presents. He's a huge fan of nerf guns and Toy Story.

Every year for his birthday Josh asks for cupcakes. Cool, that's easy enough for me. No fancy cake to decorate. We have recently added root beer floats to Josh's birthday menu too, since we took root beer floats down to the shop for his birthday last year-now he considers it a tradition.

That's kind of how he works. You do something one time, and Josh gets it in his head that that's how we have to do it all the time.

Make a wish!!

Happy Birthday Josh! We love you!

_______________________________________________

And on to Sophee. . .

I just have to say, that is the cutest hair cut on her.

Okay, here's my baby with her birthday cake.

Once again, we had a small party, with just family. That's how I roll. Here are some of the Burgess cousins:

Soaking up the moment of cake, ice cream, and presents. Boy, for a 6 year old, it doesn't get any better than this!!

Happy un-birthday to my baby!!

Family Reunion

2010-07-27T14:24:00.001-07:00

Since my little sis, Ally, already posted about this family reunion on her blog, I figured I'd better step up and make sure I did a post too-just to make sure my cute kiddos were represented. Also, my Dad took over 500 pictures of the 3 day event, so we gotta' put these pics to good use. (He's the self proclaimed family historian, so 500 pics is nothing when your capturing memories :-)

In mid July we traveled down to my Mom's house in Southern AZ. When we left for the trip @ 5:30 in the evening, it was 123 degrees. The next day when we got to my Mom's it was barely 93. The following 2 days were only in the upper 80's. My kids were in heaven being able to play outside!! Here's Audree and her cousin Jarom:
And this is what my family does best, congregate in the kitchen and eat:

Sophee and Jessica:

This is Kory's favorite pastime whenever my family gets together:

Sophee was such a willing participant to be photographed:

The grand kids enjoying Grandma's homemade pizza:

(This is only about 1/2 the grand kids. There are 17 with another one on the way).

How many kids can you cram onto a teeter totter??

Good food, good times. And hey, Kory was even awake this time . . .

It was so cute how Josh 'teeter tottered' with Joel. He was super careful not to send Joel flying through the air-especially since he's got over 100 pounds on him.

What family get together would be complete without one of us girls getting their hair done?

Hey, we're a thrifty family. Plus, it gives us girls an excuse to hang out in the kitchen and just talk some more. Kory gets a little sick of just 'talking' all the time-hence the many naps.

My brother Stephen just got home from his mission a couple weeks before the reunion, it was so great to be able to see him again. He's still just as goofy as ever.

While the women were happy to just talk, make jewelry and bows, do crafts with the kids, and eat, the men had to do something with all of their testosterone. Enter the shooting range:

We also got to celebrate my Mom and Kory's birthday-which happens to be on the same day!!

Here's their cute cake:

Kory sharing the spotlight-a rare occurrence-with my Mom:

The fabulous Evans women (minus my cute SIL Candace):
Me, Erika, My Mom, My SIL Becky, Allison, and Emily-who is expecting her 1st baby-WAHOO!!

The funniest birthday gift of the night definitely had to be this book for Kory.

It's called "What's your Poo telling you". Thanks Becky, it was good for a bunch of laughs and anytime the kids have friends over they run and grab the book to 'show it off'.

All in all we had a great time. I can't think of anywhere else I would rather be than hanging out with my family-they are truly my greatest blessing and I love them sooooo much. Thanks guys for all the memories. Let's do it again next year. My house. I'll supply the food, housing, and entertainment-which will be in the form of sanding and refinishing kitchen cabinets-Wahoo!

Mark your calenders now!!

Boy was I surprised!!

2010-06-22T09:09:00.000-07:00

Kory and I celebrated our 16th anniversary last Friday, and boy did he have some some serious surprises planned for me.

Thursday night he took me out to go clothes shopping (Yay!!). He had previously tried to buy me a new outfit-on his own-without much luck since I have 3 different sizes of clothing in my closet, he didn't know what size to buy. So, he figured he would just have to take me with him.
We dropped the kids off at his Mom's house (since Kaylee was at girls camp), and went shopping, then on to dinner. After dinner was over Kory started driving towards our house. When I told him that we still had to go pick up the kids, he said that his Mom was going to watch them for the night so that he could take me out to breakfast (before he had to go to work) on our anniversary. I didn't mind that one bit, and was excited to have a quiet evening to ourselves-plus, I loooove going out to eat breakfast, so I wasn't going to argue.

Friday morning we got up early (since he 'had to be to work' after breakfast) and got ready to go.
When I got out of the shower I noticed he wasn't wearing his work clothes, so I asked him why, and he said he was going to change into his work uniform after we ate. Ok. That was a little odd, but, whatever. I was getting breakfast, I didn't care what he was wearing.

As we drove to breakfast, we passed by Denny's, Big Bear, and IHOP. Hmmm. I guessed we must be going to eat at the casino's. Nope. Not that either. We started to head towards Vegas.
I was really confused. So I said, "We're going to Vegas?". And Kory said, "Yep." At that point I figured Kory had made some plans for us to spend the day in Vegas. Ok. I could handle that. I quite like shopping in Vegas. Buuuut, we soon passed the exit to the mall, and I began seeing signs to the airport. I finally figured out that we were going to go out of town but where?

Imagine my surprise when we get to the airport, get out of the car, and Kory not only pulls our suitcase out of the car, but our passports too!!!

We were going to Puerta Vallarta, Mexico!

So, by Friday afternoon, this is the view we were looking at from the balcony of our room.

The room, and the super soft bed. Notice the robes neatly folded on the bed?

The resort we were at was called "Dreams Resort", and it was all-inclusive. Not so good for my diet, but hey, it's not every day that your husband whisks you off to a fancy resort in Mexico for your anniversary.

That evening we went to the 'Mexican Fiesta'. They had tons of yummy food, this is just the dessert table . . .

The entertainment for the evening was a Mariachi band, mexican dancers, and a guy that made up bunch of different balloon hats for everyone. After finding out that we were there for our anniversary the guy makes us this hat, and calls it the 'hoochie coochie' hat:

When we got back to our room that night, this is what we found on our door:

Kory said he didn't ask them to do that. We did mention that it was our anniversary when we checked in though. I thought it was so sweet.

They also left us a little fruit basket and note welcoming us to the resort:

The next morning we took a little walk down the beach to go eat breakfast at their beach side restaurant. I love the wooden walk way:

Here we are, just waiting for our food:

Yes, that's a toaster on the table. They brought out a basket of breads, and you could make your own toast.

Here's Kory's breakfast. Poached eggs, I believe:

Here's my fruity waffles:

After breakfast we decided to take a cab and go back into town to do some shopping. We wanted to do that first, since it was pretty humid there. The temps where in the low 90's, but the humidity was super high.

Here's one of the shops along the ocean:

We came across these sands sculptures, and thought they were really neat. I believe the one on the left is Jesus and John the Baptist:

There was also some more 'abstract' sand sculptures. I couldn't tell you what these are supposed to be:

This is a church in the middle of town, it's very lush and green there. Then end of June, July and August are actually their rainy months, so we got sprinkled on a few times while we were there, but it wasn't bad at all-just humid.

While eating lunch that day we spotted this creature. I think it's an iguana:

Since we were at another one of the resort's outdoor restaurants for lunch, and it was kinda' hot, they brought us some wet cloth napkins that smelled like peppermint to wipe our faces with:

Kory ordered the fajitas:

And we both shared a slice of cheesecake for dessert:

We had a great time just lounging on the private beach:

Here's some pics of the sun setting:

Us hanging on the beach, waiting for the sunset:

Jelly fish in the sand. They looked like ice cubes. I was so afraid I was going to step on one:

The sunset:

It was a super great, super surprise trip! I have the best husband ever. Thanks babe!! I love you!

Go me!

2010-05-28T13:36:00.000-07:00

3 new posts in one day people!!

Check it out!

Kaylee's Birthday

2010-05-28T13:22:00.000-07:00

Kaylee's celebrated her 12th birthday yesterday. Since it was also graduation for some kids, and Kory had to be at the Jr. High for the ceremony, he decided that he was going to go into her classroom and sing Happy Birthday to her before he went on over to the gym. Poor Kaylee. Her Dad just loooooves to embarass her, and when you're a tween, it's not too hard to do.

Anyway, I decided that maybe we should get her some flowers to go along with her Dad's fun little surprise-just to make it worth be embarassed over. Here's Kaylee with her 12 roses:

Since so many of our family members had graduation ceremony's to go to that night we just had a 'low key' family party.

In our family, we have a rule that our girls have to be 12 before they can wear make-up. So, guess what she got?

New clothes:

Shoes to match her new dress:

Flowers, make-up, clothes, shoes, cake and ice cream (oh, and subway for dinner-Kaylee's fav) what more could a girl want?

12 candles would be nice!! Oops, we only had 11 left, maybe Mom will be a little more prepared next time.

And what might Kaylee be doing today? The day after her birthday? She's shopping in Vegas with her Aunt and cousins! Thanks Grandma and Grandpa Burgess and Evans for the B-day money!!

Josh's 8th grade graduation

2010-05-28T13:07:00.000-07:00

Josh graduated from Jr. High on May 27, 2010. It was pretty bittersweet for me. I have so loved his teachers, and they've been wonderful to him but, he has been talking about going to High School for at least 6 months now, so I guess I just have to face the inevitable!

Here's Josh with his teacher, Ms. Russo (in the purple), and one of his aides, Ms. Jameson:
(the date is totally wrong on this pic)
Josh getting an award from Principal Young for perfect attendance:

Getting his diploma from the principal (a man in our ward who is so good to Josh-we just love him to death):

Since Dad is on the school board, Josh got to shake his hand-then give him a hug:

After the ceremony, in his classroom. Grandma and Grandpa Burgess got to come!

He's officially a freshman now. Sniff Sniff. I'm getting old.

Too many lids, not enough bowls

2010-05-28T13:02:00.000-07:00

After not being able to cram any more plastic ware into it's designated drawer I decided it was probably time to clean it out. Am I the only one who ends up with this many extra lids-with no bowls to match?
One good thing to come of it was that I figured I probably had other junk hiding in my kitchen cabinets and cleaned out almost all my bottom cabinets and drawers. Wahoo for de-cluttering!!
(It's one of those 'jobs' that my kids could careless to 'help' me with-so it went pretty fast).

Scroll down!

2010-05-18T16:12:00.001-07:00

Scroll down to see the 'After' pics of the dining room!

Entry way-before and after

2010-05-18T14:48:00.001-07:00

Here's the entry way after striping all the pink wallpaper-unfortunately I don't have a picture of it in all it's glory-wallpaper and all:

After my parents came to help do a ton of projects. This was in Oct. 2008:

Oh so pretty, no more nasty fingerprints:

And then, finally, after the beadboard:

TA DA!

Dining room-Before

2010-05-17T11:36:00.000-07:00

Since most of my before pics are on our old computer, I'm going to have to do seperate posts for the 'After's'. Either that, or figure out how to e-mail the pics to myself, or download them to a disc, and I just can't be bothered with that right now. It's too much work.
So, here we go. Before pics of our 'formal' dining room that was being used as a craft/computer/catch-all room. This is just off our entry way. Isn't it lovely?

Yes, the walls are horrendous. We had ripped the top half of the blue and pink wall paper off, but the bottom half was not coming off very easily. So, I decided we'd just put up bead board-later. Which translates to 2-3 years later in Burgess time.

Loved that this was the first room (after the entry way) that our guests were able to catch a glimpse of. A little 'white trash' look going on there:

My chandelier is cute though, oh, and the blinds were fairly new:

The pic below is sort of a 'half way' after. When my parents came to visit a couple of years ago we just painted the top half because, as you know, I was going to get around to putting up the beadboard 'later'. That computer armoire housed all my scrapbooking supplies. I do love the baseboards in this house. I'm trying to point out the good things. It's a little hard to notice against the pink carpet!!

You all are just going to have to wait a little bit for the real after pics because, wouldn't you know it, as soon as I get up the energy to actually do this fabulous 'before and after' post, I can't find my camera to download the new pics I just took. I'll have to wait until my kids get home so I can ask them where they put it!! This way I'll keep you on the edge of your seat, just waiting for that grand reveal . . .

Dining room-After

2010-05-17T11:00:00.000-07:00

What brought on the whole 'it's time to finish this room' project was that Kory's mom gave us her old dining room table and hutch. It's not exactly my style, but it was free-so we made it work.
Anyway, now that we are actually going to be using this room to eat in, the 2 scrapbooking cabinets had to go. So, I had to empty them all out. Onto the dining room table:

This is true Burgess remodeling fashion-complete mess and chaos:

Here's my first helper. I say 'helper' because I actually had to do most of the work-since Kory ended up having to work the next few Saturdays after we started this process. Kory did one wall, and a few trim pieces, and I had to do the rest.

Here are my other 3 helpers, complete with 'safety googles'-since they were helping me hold the paneling while I was cutting it:

Another shot of the half finished walls, and notice, no trim around the window:

Ugly walls:

First wall done. This is the wall Kory and I did one Saturday afternoon on a whim-before we had to move the china cabinet in front of it. We didn't want to have to move that cabinet twice!

Then only a couple weeks later, after many cuts, glueing, caulking, nailing, sweating, multiple trips to Lowes, filling in nail holes, and painting, here we go-the finished product:

I loooove a cute basket:

Not so sure about the vertical hanging of this peg shelf. But, I'm too tired to mess with it at the moment:

Here's my attempt at 'countryfying' my china cabinet. I quite like it if I do say so myself:

Some close ups. I just love the white and the red together. And I'm totally loving the pitchers. I think they are my newest item to collect:

The tea pot was originally a cream color, so I spray painted it red. The ribbon in the plate and vase was baby blue with polka dots, so I changed it out to red-of course. I'm so crafty like that!

Roosters:

A view from the kitchen door. Notice the framed out window? Yep, I'm good.

I'm not loving the backs of the chairs, so I plan on making chair covers, a table runner, and a window valance-one day. Which translates into 1-2 years from now. Especially since it will require a trip to Vegas to get the fabric, and then a trip to a repair shop to get my sewing maching fixed.

But for now, I'm just enjoying the fruits of my labor. Because sooner or later I'm going to need to address the bare walls on the right, and that carpet's totally going to need to be ripped up!

This is so fascinating to me . . .

2010-04-08T18:56:00.000-07:00

Have you guys seen the TLC show "Hoarding: Buried Alive"? I am so fascinated by it.
Kory was asking me the other day why I watch it, and I think it's because it's like a train wreck. You just have to look. Here's a little sampling of what you might see on the show, and no, thankfully this is not a pic from my house:

After watching this show, it makes you feel sooooo much better about the tiny little messes and clutter you may have laying around your house. Infact, it'll make you want to get up and start throwing things away!!

I do realize that most of the people on the show have reasons as to why they do it. Infact, most of them start hoarding after the loss of a loved one, but not always. It's kind of sad to watch people not even be able to throw out trash-like real trash! (used napkins, paper, old food that is rotting away in their fridge.)

Anyway, if you don't have the TLC channel you can go here and check out a couple of minutes of some of the episodes. You will be shocked!

Let this be a lesson . . . part 2

2010-03-24T14:41:00.000-07:00

Do you remember when this happened?

It was only a couple of months ago. For the whole story, you can read about it here, but to recap I was cleaning out the fridge, on the Sabbath, and I broke the bottom shelf of my fridge. I figured that was my punishment for breaking the Sabbath.

Well, apparently we are having a run of bad luck because this is what we found one morning, while in California, as we were about to head over to Disneyland:

Someone had broken out the front passenger window of our van in order to steal our DVD player's, DVD's, and GPS system that we had left in the car-overnight. This is the lesson to be learned-Don't leave nice things in your car while on vacation. We usually don't. We usually remember to take that kind of stuff in with us but in all the excitement I guess we just forgot.

Although the 2 DVD players only cost me $80 (after Thanksgiving day sale) this was only the second time we had ever used them. Luckily the GPS system was free (a promotion from Kory's work). After we got home we realized that the thief also took Sophee's jacket and a floor mat. A FLOOR MAT! Really? What are they going to do with that?

Kaylee's theory is that the reason for all this was because, since we left for our trip on Sunday, and had to eat out, we were breaking the Sabbath and this was our punishment. Hmmm. You'd think we'd learn.

Anyway, I hope our little misfortune will remind you guys to always bring in your valuables!!

Disneyland 2010

2010-03-19T15:57:00.000-07:00

This year for Spring Break we went to Disneyland. We took Kaylee's BFF, Mallorie, and also went along with Kory's brother, Kerry and his family. We let Kaylee and Mallorie go off on their own so that they didn't have to do all the 'baby stuff and wimpy rides' that we were doing, so we don't have too many pictures of them.

Here's Josh, Sophee, and Audree with Tigger:

Audree bought an autograph book last time we went and filled it half full with character autographs, this year she was on a mission to fill the rest of the book. So as soon as we saw a character that she didn't have, we stopped to get pictures and autographs.

Shopping. This was Sophee's favorite part. She kept saying, "I don't want to go on anymore rides, I just want to go shopping". That's my girl :-)

On the tram to get to the park. This was our first ride in and the last ride out. Here's Kory and Josh:

In the boat for 'It's a small world' ride. They recently updated this ride by adding many of their characters (such as Cinderella, Mulan, Timon and Pumba, Peter Pan, etc) as puppets. The kids had fun pointing out all the characters they recognized.

Sophee and Jared holding hands so they don't get lost, even after we were already standing in line. It was just too cute:

Kaylee and Mallorie decided to 'grace our presence' on the 'It's a small world ride' since we happened to bump into them on the way over:

Cousins in Toon Town:

The well right outside of Minnie's house:

Roger Rabbit's ride, Sophee and Hannah:

Audree and Zach:

This was the end of our first day. Kaylee, Mallorie, Audree, Josh, Jared, and Sophee:

Sophee, Hannah, and Audree waiting for the Pixar parade to start:

The "A" in the California Adventure sign. Audree, Zach, Josh, Sophee and Hannah:

Kaylee and Mallorie:

Waiting in line for the 'Nemo' submarine ride. Sophee, Audree, Jared, and Hannah:

Heading over to the California Adventure park, half way through our last day there. Sophee was getting very tired of walking and needed a little lift from Dad:

Audree and Josh in a cage on the 'Casey Jr.' train ride:

Josh, Audree, and Sophee just outside of 'Mr. Toad's wild ride':

For lunch one day we went to the Rainforest cafe. It was super yummy food, with super large portions. Here's the Volcano Brownie cake Amber ordered for dessert. She shared it with all of us-it fed 11 of us!

Speaking of large portions, Mallorie ordered the Nachos. We had previously told all the kids that they needed to eat all their food, so they would be full until dinner. Then they came out and set this in front of Mallorie:

Kory and I about died laughing. Her eyes about popped out of her head at the thought of having to eat all that. Fortunately Josh and Kerry helped her out-and there was still some left!!

Cutie Patooties:

Not feeling so cute after spending the entire first day in the park (waiting for the tram):

They made the most of every minute there, got a little sun, and their feet were hurting badly at this point. Poor girls.

Sophee showing off her Mickey ears. They light up:

A self portrait of Soph taken while waiting for our pizza to arrive (I kinda' think she looks like her cousins Jessica and Lacey in this pic):

The little girls wanted to go see the princesses and get autographs and pictures with them. Amber and I went and stood in line at least a half an hour before they even opened just so that we wouldn't have to wait around all day. (Last time we went I stood in line, in the middle of the day for over an hour-not fun). Here's Aurora with Sophee, Audree and Hannah:

Cinderella:

Snow White:

Jessie:

Kory also ran into Buzz lightyear while I was off shopping with Kaylee and Mallorie. Of course Josh wanted to stop!

The last morning of our trip we took the kids to Goofy's Kitchen at the Disneyland Hotel.

It was a buffet, with really good food, and entertainment for the kids. Every half an hour they play music and let the kids go dance with Goofy in the center of the restaurant. They also have a hand full of characters that will come right of to the table to talk with you and let you get pictures with them. The kids were so impressed that they actually came to us, and we didn't have to stand in line to see them!!

Audree giving Goofy a high five:

A group picture with Goofy:

Us and Pluto:

Belle:

Chip:

No Disneyland breakfast would be complete without Mickey Mouse shaped pancakes:

Kaylee and Mallorie dancing with Goofy:

Mulan:

Josh joining the girls on the dance floor:

Wahoo for Goofy!!

It was a fun trip. Can't wait to go back again!!

Why didn't I think of that sooner?

2010-03-04T16:02:00.001-08:00

When it comes to putting away the clean laundry I have good intentions.

I have a pretty good method in place for the kids clothes. Once the clothes come out of the dryer they are immediately transfered to my giant folding table (a.k.a the pool table), where they are folded and put into each child's individual basket. When the basket gets full, the kids are in charge of taking it upstairs and putting their clothes away. Then they return the emptied out basket back to it's original spot on the pool table for me to fill again the next day.

The problem is what to do with the clothes for me and Kory that need to be hung up. The folded stuff isn't a big deal, I pretty much do the same thing with our folded clothes as the kids do, but when I come upstairs hauling all the 'to be hung' clothing, I usually set those on my cedar chest while I start putting away the folded clothes. Then something inevitably happens, and I'm called downstairs to handle a crisis. Either that, or I'm just in a hurry, and I leave the clothes on the cedar chest 'to be hung up later'. Yah, right. This is what my cedar chest looks like 90% of the time (yes, those are all clean clothes):

This is what is supposed to look like:

Then, a couple of days ago, it all the sudden dawned on me. 'If I could just hang up those clothes as they come out of the dryer then most of the work would be done for me before I take them upstairs'. It wouldn't take any more effort to hang them in the closet then it would to lay them on the cedar chest.

So, enter the cheap $10 hanging system (which my kids already think is a fun, new, 'rolling' toy, and I'm sure it will be broken in a couple of weeks):

Seriously, why didn't I think of this years ago?

So what do you guys do to make laundry easier? My sister actually does a load of laundry every day-then she's never behind. Me? I get a little depressed doing it everyday (I've tried).

It works better for me to have 3 scheduled 'laundry days' a week. Although if I could get it together enough to do it everyday, I might not have piles like this all the time.

Let this be a lesson . . .

2010-01-29T15:40:00.000-08:00

Sunday night I got all ambious and decided that the fridge had been sitting in it's disgustingness long enough and that it needed to be cleaned and washed out. Yes, it was Sunday. I was breaking the Sabbath. That was my first clue that I shouldn't have been cleaning out the fridge.

I always try to use just luke warm water when I'm washing the glass shelves. Ideally, the instructions suggest using cold water on cold shelves, but when you have gunk stuck to the shelf it's a little hard to get it off with cold water.

I had gotten 90% of the fridge cleaned when I started on the bottom shelf, you know, the big piece of glass that covers the crisper drawers. It's so big it barely fits into the sink. As I was scrubbing away, I thought to myself, 'Knowing my luck, I'm going to end up breaking this thing-since this is the piece that would be the most expensive to replace'. Not even 5 minutes later this is what happened:
It just shattered-everywhere. Into my hands, down my shirt, into the sink, windowsill, and on the floor.

You think maybe the water was a little too warm?

It kills me. I've been cleaning out fridges since I was 12 and have never had this happen.

So, I drug out the shop vac and proceeded to clean up the mess. Unbeknownst to me, the valve on the vacuum that covers the hole where the air blows out was missing and I ended up blowing saw dust (from my last project) all over the kitchen. That really made this experience all the more enjoyable.

I finally had to have Kory come and hold a wadded up towel in the hole while I vaccumed everything up. *Don't ever loan out your shop vac to your husbands work-it will come back missing pieces.

Although I guess I should just be happy that I got it back!

Once I had cleaned up the fiasco I had to hop in the shower because I had tiny little shards of glass and sawdust all over me. I got a couple little scratches on my hands, and some on my chest, but that was it-thankfully.

Here's the fridge looking all nice and pertty. It's a little hard to tell it's missing the bottom piece of glass, but let me assure you-it is.

I checked online for a replacement piece of glass and it will cost $85. That's without shipping.

I think I will just have a glass cutter here in town do it. Maybe I should get plexiglass?

So, what have we learned from this?

1). It's a bad idea to clean out your fridge.

2). It's a bad idea to clean out your fridge on the Sabbath.

3). Even if you think the water is really not warm enough to shatter cold glass-it probably is.

4). Make sure the cap the covers the blower on your shop vac is securely in place before you start it up-especially when the vac is full of sawdust.

Going Shootin'

2010-01-25T14:58:00.000-08:00

I've been married to an avid hunter for 15 years now, I own a gun (a birthday gift from my hubby), and I've never been shooting-until now.

That's my man, looking all professional with his gun (along with my BIL & SIL):
A couple of weekends ago Kerry and Amber (below) went out shooting on one of their dates.
When I heard about that, I figured it was Kerry's idea. But no, it was actually Amber's idea-and she loved it! So, somehow we got invited to go out shooting with them.

*Please excuse the horrifying pics of me below. It's hard to 'suck it in' and show your best side when you're holding a deadly weapon.

I actually did pretty well shooting shot gun shells with this gun-once I figured out how to use the scope. It's harder to hold a gun then I thought. It gets heavy after awhile.

This is Gordon, cheating, by using that interesting little device that holds the gun for him.

Here's Kerry and Kory. Kory's sitting in a little contraption (don't you just love all my technical terminology) that shoots clay pidgeons, and Kerry's getting ready to shot.

And now, the scariest part of the evening, shooting a hand gun:

That baby is loud, and really 'kicks'. If you don't hold on really tight that thing just might get away from you!

So there you have it, my first shooting experience. Not bad. Kinda' fun. Guns still make me nervous.

And now that all the Christmas decorations are put away . . .

2010-01-04T13:50:00.000-08:00

I figured it would be a good time to post about our Christmas.

We had a special visitor come to our ward party. Sophee refused to sit on Santa's lap, so here's Audree:

Kaylee also refused to sit on Santa's lap, but we made her stand next to him so I could take a picture. (Note-she's not afraid of Santa, she's just too cool to sit on his lap).

Josh couldn't wait for his turn to ask Santa for a bike.

Then Dad joined in on the fun:

Here are some of the Burgess cousins. Those are Kerry's kids with ours. Sophee figured if she could be at least 2 people away from Santa she would be in the pic.

Christmas Eve presents turned out to be P.J's again. This might be a new tradition for us.

I must say, before we move on, that I am aware that there are a lot of pics of Sophee-Yes, I know. She's the baby. Plus, she was the most willing to pose. I also just realized that the date on my camera was off by a day-so no, we didn't open everything on Christmas Eve.

In our family we recycle all the boxes we can find shortly before Christmas (I'm doing my part to save the planet), then use them to wrap our gifts. Here's Sophee saying, "Capri Sun! It's not Capri Sun!"

Sophee and her loot. Don't you just love the pose? I tried to get her to sit there normally, but this is how she rolls:

An earring holder from Grandma & Grandpa Evans, and a new outfit:

Posing in her new clothes:

More new clothes:

Here's Audree with her presents. Notice the 'Touch n' Brush'. This child asked for that for her birthday-before they came out in stores. I thought it was such a funny thing to ask for, but she was way excited about it.

Cute cupcake earrings from Grandma and Grandpa Evans, and new clothes:

Kaylee in her new clothes, complete with sneaker earrings from G & G Evans:

*And here's the part where I realize I did not get a picture of Kaylee with all her presents.

I know I told that child to gather up her stuff so we could take a picture! Yes, she's a middle child.*

Here's Josh and all his presents. Santa actually came through with that bike. Whew, because Mom and Dad sure heard (non-stop) about how he was going to get one.

Taking the bike for a spin:

Looking good:

And just so that all my kids are represented in this post, here's my 5th child:

We had a nice, quiet Christmas Eve dinner at Kory's parents house-just us and his parents, since all his siblings had other plans. Then we spent Christmas day at home, just enjoying each other, and rocking out to the new 'Band Hero' the kids got. Then, to wrap up the holidays, for New Year's Kory and I left the kids with Grandma & Grandpa Burgess for a couple of days and went up to Vegas with his brother to just hang out, shop, see a magic show, eat lots of good food. It was a great Christmas/New Year's holiday for us.

We hope everyone else had a great holiday too!

Welcome to my home

2009-12-11T12:19:00.003-08:00

I finally put up my Christmas stuff. It's nothing to shout about, but I'd thought I'd share anyway, since we don't get a whole lot of visitors.

So come on in! My stockings are actually hung in the hallway, and not over the fireplace. Kaylee is a bit put out about that one, but I didn't want to put nails in my mantle to hang this cute board. Yes, if you're counting, there are 7 stockings. We had to put up a stocking for Coal. He is family after all. (Plus, when you buy your stockings at the dollar store, it's not a big deal to throw in an extra one for the dog).

I made this snowman a couple of years ago. He's been loved a little too much. Every time I turn my back the little girls feel the need to pick him up and dance with him.

A few dollar store Christmas signs:

We put up our big tree in the family room, since that's where we spend most of our time, so I put up my cute little alpine trees in this corner in the living room:

Here's the family room. I completely gave free reign to the kids and let them put up all the ornaments on the tree. Needless to say, we have a lot of ornaments that are all clumped together:

Here's a bigger view of the family room. Complete with a cute little black dog:

Thanks for coming to visit!!

When Sophee gets angry . . .

2009-12-11T12:05:00.000-08:00

Last month Sophee's teacher let her borrow this book:
Or maybe she specifically sent it home with her for a reason. Hmmm. Possible.

Anyway, we read the book that night. It's a cute book. Basically the story line is about a little girl who gets really angry when her sister takes a toy away from her, and how Sophie runs and runs until she finds a nice little spot to calm herself down. Then she goes back home and everyone loves her, etc. It was a nice 'warm fuzzy' moment book.

So we finished reading it, and were gathering up blankets and things for bed when my Sophee says, "This book should say 'When Sophie gets angry, really really angry . . . She beats her sister up'!"

Yes, maybe her teacher did mean for her to take the book home and read it.

If your little boy loves hot wheels . . .

2009-11-25T19:50:00.000-08:00

You really have to check out this site! It's a tutorial on how to make a 'car cozie'-a place for him to keep and play with all his cars. It's so adorable. Go check it out.

Look what I made!!

2009-11-11T16:14:00.000-08:00

We recently had a 'Super Saturday' craft day at our church for anyone interested in making some super cute crafts. I was in charge of coming up with some fairly inexpensive things for the ladies to make, so here's what I did, a simple way to display the proclamation (only $2):

And some temple blocks for $5. If you're interested in printing some temple pics out just go here scroll down until you see 'temple printables' then click on it. They have a bunch of different temples to choose from, and a lot of them also come with the saying 'Families are Forever':

The following pics are of things I just made, that I wasn't in charge of. Obviously they are way too cute of projects for me to come up with.

Here's a festively decorated star. I love stars and have quiet a few scattered around the house to add to my "Texas Decor" (as my sister says):

"Home Blocks". Inside the 'O' it says " . . . is where our story begins" :

I love this next one. Our Homemaking leader actually found this online here. It comes as a kit that you paint, then assemble. It was the most expensive item that we offered-at about $28, but I think that's an awesome price for such a durable nativity set!! The metal pieces are already cut out and sanded for you. I love that I now have an 'almost' indestructible nativity set. I say 'almost' because, as my loving SIL pointed out, with my kids there is no such thing as 'indestructable':

And last, but not least, some seasonal blocks. It's a set of 3 blocks that you can rotate for different holidays:

Aren't these just the cutest projects you've ever seen?

Halloween

2009-11-11T15:57:00.000-08:00

This year for Halloween Kaylee was a vampiress. This is her at the church carnival. She claims she couldn't smile because of the fangs, but I think it had more to do with the fact that I was trying to get a picture of her while she was 'hanging' with her friends.

She also got ready at her cousin's house, so she wasn't in the group shot below.

Audree was little red riding hood, Josh was a storm trooper, and Sophee was Snow White.

Going Camping!

2009-10-18T22:11:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday afternoon-after I finished up with my Chemistry lab-we loaded up the van and headed to the mountains to do some camping and get some much need rest & relaxation.
Here we are, on our way-we even took Coal.

Dad decided that we were going to stay in a little cabin, instead of a tent, which worked out really well. Flushing toilets, running water, now that's my kind of camping. Here's the cabin, it had two little rooms-one with double bunk beds, and the other with a little kitchen and table:

By the time we got there it was already about 5:00 so Kory immediately started the fire and we cooked our dinner. The kids were really thrilled about roasting hot dogs and marshmellows over the fire.

Shortly after we got there Sophee asked me, "So where are all the animals?". To which I replied, "I don't know honey, they don't just show up as soon as people get here". Not even a minute later she walks outside and yells, "They're here! The deer are here!" Sure enough 2 deer had wandered into the camp and got within a few feet of us. The kids were pretty excited and got a little rowdy, which quickly scared them off.

Later on they came back and I was able to get a couple of pics. Here's Kory with one of them:

We only saw 1 male deer, but he didn't stick around for very long. The second night that we were there the kids fed a couple of female deer some bread right from their hands.

We went on a couple of little hikes around the camp and found this teepee. The kids thought that it was pretty cool:

We spent a lot of time sitting around the table playing games and doing puzzles-no electronics for us, even our cell phones were dead.

Sophee:

Audree:

Kaylee:

Joshua:

My pictures seem a little fuzzy. Maybe that's because it seems that there are always some grubby little hands all over the lens.

Anyway, we had a really good time just taking it easy-and the weather was completely perfect! Even if we weren't totally 'roughing it'.

Pumpkin patch . . .

2009-10-18T21:58:00.001-07:00

. . . sort of. As much as a pumpkin patch as you can get in the desert.

Anyway, my kids had all of last week off due to Fall Break. I, unfortunately still had to go to school, so we were pretty limited on the activities that we could do.
Last Monday morning my SIL calls me on a whim and talked me into going to Vegas with her.
We took the kids to this little pumpkin patch that was in a casino parking lot. They got to ride some carnival type games:
(That's Kaylee up front next to the #4).

Audree, Josh, and Sophee in the bounce house:

Sophee coming down the big slide:

Audree coming down the big slide:

Feeding the goats:

Posing for some cute pumpkin pics. Sophee:

Audree:

Kaylee:

And Josh:

It's only been 2 months

2009-10-10T12:22:00.000-07:00

Okay, I realize it's been awhile . . . and I only have 2 college classes. I should be able to keep up with running the household and only taking 2 classes right? Well, maybe, if it weren't for the fact that one of those classes is Chemistry.

Chemistry is not my forte.

Chemistry is like learning a totally different language.

Chemistry is butt kicking hard!!

Okay, so there's my excuse.

Please note that I have taken the time to put up 4 new posts below!
Now I'm good till the end of the year, right? Or at least until I'm done with Chemistry. If I survive!!

Sophee has finally lost it!

2009-10-10T12:15:00.001-07:00

. . . her first tooth, that is.

She's been waiting for this for at least a year now, thinking she'd never lose her baby teeth.

Once she figured out that her tooth was a little loose she started wiggling it non-stop, and it came out a day later!

Check out the new toothless grin. So cute!
She is so proud of herself, and the dollar that she got from the tooth fairy.

Cousins come for a visit!

2009-10-10T11:56:00.001-07:00

Back in early September my sister and her husband took a much needed vacation to Vegas, and we got to spend a few days playing with 4 of our cousins. It was so much fun! You would think having 8 kids in the house would be chaotic, but they all played together so well, that no one ever bothered me, or whined to me about being bored. Meal time, on the other hand, now that was a little crazy, but we had such a good time.

My little nephew, Joel, was quite fascinated with the doggie door. This was his access in and out of the house, as he could not open the sliding glass door by himself. (Just a note: I would have gladly opened the door for him, but this was his preferred method).

Just checking out how it works:
Pushing his nose up againist the glass for the picture.

And making his escape.

Sophee, Jessica, and Lacey decided that they needed to make Audree a birthday card, so I got out some 3 x 5 cards that I had bought on clearance and some crayons and handed them each a card to color then went off going about my business of cleaning things up.

A little while later Kaylee came and found me to tell me that the girls were 'totaling wasting all the 3 X 5 cards and making a huge mess at the table'.

I told her that it was okay, since I only spent 35 cents on the whole pack of cards, and if it was keeping them entertained for that long that it was well worth it.

Here are just some of the creations they made:

A closer look:

Then girls then proceeded to use a kleenex holder that I had in the bathroom as a mailbox to deliver all the letters. I thought it was quite cute, and it kept them entertained for hours.

Who can beat that for only 35 cents?

Anyway, the kids had a great time and can't wait to get together with their cousins again!

Audree turns 7!

2009-10-10T11:43:00.000-07:00

Just a few days before Audree's birthday we took her to get her ears pierced. She's been wanting them pierced for awhile now, but just worked up the nerve to have it done. She was super brave, even though there was only one lady working there, and she had to have each ear done separately. She picked out gold heart earrings with a diamond in the middle.

What a cutie pie!

We just happened to be watching my sisters kids for the weekend, so we took them all to McDonalds then came home and opened presents.

Then had cake. Audree actually requested that we have cinnamon rolls for her birthday so we had those for breakfast, then I went ahead and made some cupcakes for after lunch. What's a little extra sugar on your birthday? Those are some plastic rings on the cupcakes.

Then, with the money that she got from both sets of Grandparents I took her to the store and she picked out this:

Thanks Grandma and Grandpa!

Oatman

2009-10-10T11:34:00.001-07:00

Back in August my SIL, Kim, and her two boys came to visit. They wanted to go to Oatman to feed the burros, so armed with some carrots from Grandpa's garden, we went. Unfortunately it was kinda' rainy, and the burro's were retreating so we only saw 2 the whole time.

Since the burros were no where to found we walked around, ate ice cream, and took some silly pictures. Here's Kaylee:

Sophee:

And Audree:

Kory and Josh were at a swim meet, so they weren't able to go with us. Here's some of the Burgess cousins:

It was a quick trip, but it's always fun to get out of the house every once in awhile.

Back to school!! Wahoo!!

2009-08-10T16:04:00.000-07:00

Today the kids went back to school. All 4 of them. I almost don't know what to do with myself-almost. Don't worry about me, my classes start up next week.

Here's the group: It's interesting that they are going to 3 different schools, yet they all have blue school shirts.
Let me tell you, coordinating 3 differents schedules is a bit challenging. I actually have to pick Josh up 20 minutes early so that I can be back home for the little girls to get off the bus. I'm hoping to get Special Ed. transport for Josh soon-we'll see.

Here's Sophee, the Kindergartener:
Don't let that sweet smile fool you.

Audree the 1st grader:
Now the 'big sister' at school.

Kaylee the 6th grader:

Now officially in middle school-with 7 different classes and teachers, including band, where she will learn to play the flute.

Josh the 8th grader, big man on campus:

He is actually going to a different Jr. high this year, we feel he will get more one-on-one attention there. Hopefully it'll work.

Only in Arizona

2009-08-10T15:52:00.001-07:00

The other night Kory and I were out on a date. As we were driving down the main drag we kept passing by people who were out enjoying the weather.

It was about 8:00 p.m. and 99 degrees.

Apparently when the temps drop below a hundred people come out at night and celebrate how 'cool' it is by hanging out in there front yards, taking a walk, or sitting in there truck beds.

I guess I am not truly a native because I don't believe in 'hanging' outside when it's above 90 degrees. Oh, and just to clarify, nobody has a cute little porch like this in our town-or grass for that matter. Oh how I would love to live in a city with tons of houses that had cute little porches.

Josh's first swim meet of the season

2009-08-10T15:43:00.000-07:00

Saturday Josh had his first swim meet. We were lucky enough to have it here in town. Josh swam the 50 meter breakstroke, and the 50 meter freestyle and got 2nd place in both. He was so thrilled to get two medals and he has improved soooo much. We are super proud of him.

Happy Birthday to me!

2009-08-06T13:38:00.000-07:00

I celebrated my 33rd birthday this past Sunday. It actually turned out a lot nicer than I expected. As an adult I've come to expect that nothing special really happens on your birthday-especially when you're a Mom, and in charge of making your own cake-it's just not all that fun.

Anyway, Thursday night my SIL, Kris, called me up and asked me if I would like to drive up to Cedar with her that weekend to pick up one of her daughters from EFY, and we could do some shopping in Vegas, see a show in St. George, and spend the night there, since she had to be in Cedar at 8:00 a.m. to pick up her daughter. She twisted my arm pretty hard, so I gave in.

We got to Vegas Friday morning right at about 10:00 and did a bunch of shopping-I got some cool new clothes (which was all I asked Kory for anyway), ate lunch, then headed to St. George around 4:00.

Once in St. George we checked into our room, then quickly made our way up to the Tuachan Theater where their local high school was putting on the "High School Musical 2" play. We took Kaylee and Sydney with us because we thought this would be a fun summertime experience for them. It turned out to be really cute and we all enjoyed it. Unfortunately I forgot to bring my camera, but the girls got signatures from a lot of the cast members afterwards-including Troy, wahoo!

Saturday morning the girls and I slept in while Kris ran up to Cedar (about an hour from St. George). Then she came back to pick us up and we went out to breakfast at Denny's. I love breakfast. I love to eat out. Period. If only I had lots more money-I'd eat out all the time.

I got back home Saturday afternoon to a nice and clean house. Kory was just heading out to take the kids to McDonalds so Kaylee went with him and I had a peaceful nap, in my quiet, clean house.

Sunday morning-my actual birthday-I made myself some refridgerated cinnamon rolls, and announced that that was all I would be making that day, and everyone had to fend for themselves. After church we had lunch, then I laid down for another peaceful nap. At about 5:30 the kids came pounding on my door telling me it was time to get up. When I came downstairs I found that the kids had cleaned the house-again-and my husband had made dinner! This pic was taken after we had already eaten most of it-it was BBQ chicken, potato salad, and rolls. This was such a sweet gesture-since Kory rarely ever cooks.

Shortly after sitting down to eat my Mother and Father-in-law showed up with my niece and nephew and a pan of brownies, then, not even 5 mins. later my Brother and Sister-in-law, Kerry and Amber, showed up with their kids and a nice little gift for me. I was pretty surprised-especially since I was sitting there in my nightgown. According to my in-laws, they had to crash the party since we never invite them over.

Kory even remembered dessert and bought me an ice cream cake. I so love ice cream cakes.

Wow! Shopping, eating out, seeing a play, having my house cleaned for me, and dinner made by my husband-it turned out to be a pretty great birthday after all!

Come on. Really?

2009-07-17T17:25:00.000-07:00

I'm dreaming of this:

Instead I have this:

It's 5:30 p.m. I just got back from running errands with my 2 little girls-which I would never do at this time except that I had to wait until my son was at work-and I just called time & temp.

It's 122 degrees here people.

Yes, it's true. The thermostat in my car actually said it was 124, but that tends to run a little high. As I was walking back in the house I could literally feel the sun burning my legs.

The kids and I went swimming this morning at 10:00. The water felt good-if you managed to stay in the shaded part of the pool.

Who lives like this? I do. I've never really liked the thought of living out in the boonies, but right now a cabin up in the mountains is sounding pretty good.

4th of July

2009-07-13T13:37:00.000-07:00

I'm a little late on posting this. We went to my Mom & Dad's house for the 4th of July. It was a wonderful 85 degrees there the whole weekend. A girl could get used to that. Especially when back home it was over a 100 degrees! Here's the kids in front of the house:
Kory showing of his 'BBQ skills'.

The fam gathering around to throw those little popper things on the ground.

Soph doing what she does best, striking a pose:

More throwing poppers on the ground. Whew! Do we know how to party or what?

Cousins at the baseball field, waiting for the fireworks to start:

More cousin pics:

The Fam:

Earlier that morning some of us adults were getting ready to go explore some local caverns.

As we were walking out to the car we noticed this, only a foot or so from where we were walking,

and only about 10 feet from where our children had been playing earlier that morning:

It was a rattle snake. Although we hated to kill it, we couldn't just leave it there where the kids were playing. The snake was about 4 1/2 feet long. Here's the rattle, gross huh? Anyway, we were so lucky to have found it before one of the 8 kids did.

We drive through Wikieup on almost every trip out of town, always stop at this gas station, and never get a picture. So, since I actually had my camera handy this time we got a pic:

Master bedroom-before and after

2009-06-30T10:07:00.001-07:00

This is my master bedroom-before. If you can't tell, the wall with the window is plain drywall, with little remnents of wallpaper. The opposite wall is mint green. Here is the beautiful wall I got to look at every night before bed . . . for three years. It used to be wallpapered, but most of it was ripped off before we moved in.
Same wall-it's just long.

The main reason we haven't done anything about this room is because I wanted to finish some projects downstairs first, since that is what most people see. No one ever goes into your bedroom-especially when it's upstairs. Anyway, it was quite the undertaking. These 2 ugly walls had to have all the little pieces of wallpaper scraped off, some parts patched, then sanded, then dusted down before I could even do the primer.

Here's an 'in-the-process' picture, I had just primed the 2 walls:

*and yes, I do know that my sheets don't fit my ginormous mattress. It's like 18 inches thick!

After:

The color is a buttery yellow goldenish. This long wall needs help. I haven't hung anything up yet because I haven't found anything that 'speaks to me' yet. I'm thinking maybe a picture collage. Any ideas? Oh, you know what would go great above my dresser? A large mirror! Too bad I had one and my husband gave it away in the move! Darn it!! Never let your husband move your stuff without you.

Just threw this pic in for fun. This is my light above my bathroom sink. Isn't is lovely? Did I mention my house is probably about 30 years old? Can you tell by this fixture?

Yes, it will be replaced. I'll post pics when we get around to doing that.

After:

A close up of my homemade sign. There's that darn light fixture again. Just can't get enough.

I'm not worried about the next blank wall because I'm going to be putting up a beadboard & molding headboard that will take up most the space. It'll be so sweeeeeet:

After:

Sewing lessons

2009-06-22T18:41:00.000-07:00

So my SIL talked me into doing some little sewing lessons with my niece and Kaylee this summer.

Their first project was a pillow case. The girls had fun making them, and I think they turned out really cute. Here's Kaylee with hers:

As usual, whatever the older child does, the younger ones feel the need to do the same, so when I was in Phoenix last weekend I picked up some fabric for Audree and Soph to do these pillow cases:

And just a side note, when you ask your 6 year old to plug the iron in for you because you're in the middle of helping the 5 year old sew her pillowcase, it would be a good idea to make sure that the iron is in the upright position. As I was sewing with Sophee I started to smell something burning. I turned around and saw the iron laying down on the board. This was the result:

Oh well, if that was the only accident we had, then I can't complain. At least it was on the ironing board and not their new pillowcases.

Sophee Says . . .

2009-06-22T18:35:00.000-07:00

Sophee says to Kory, "I know how to spell Mom!"

Kory: "Oh really, how do you spell Mom?"

Sophee: "M-O-M".

Kory: "Good job! Now can you spell Dad?"

Sophee: "Sure! It's B-O-B".

Hmmmm. Not sure where she got that one, but it was good for a laugh.

I love this guy!

2009-06-18T16:32:00.000-07:00

In honor of our 15th anniversary I just wanted to tell you all what an awesome husband I have!
I met my sweetheart in High School, when I was only 14 years old and I have been in love with him ever since. He's my best friend, the best Dad ever, and he always treats my like the princess I believe I am. One of my favorite things I love about him is that he has 'no opinion' when it comes to decorating the house. I love that! I have free reign of the entire house, and how it gets decorated. The poor guy just agrees with me, then ends up helping out with my latest 'projects'. Here he is painting the ceiling (after I convinced him that the popcorn just had to be scraped off-whew, that was quite the messy undertaking).
This is Kory's birthday last year. Every year the kids and I make him rice krispy treats (his most favorite non-melting treat) and take them to him at work.

Another project. Cutting down the trees in the backyard. Look at those cute goggles. He was only wearing them because I was worried about something flying into his eye while using the saw.

Another thing I absolutely love about Kory is his sense of humor. He makes me laugh on a daily basis. Here he is wearing one of the girls' hairbows.

This is Christmas morning-playing the Wii. Doesn't he look so cute in his jammy's? The Wii was actually a gift for the kids, but Kory ended up playing it all morning with them.

Just a fun pic:

Here we are in Brianhead. Kory loooooves skiing and snowboarding. He taught Kaylee how to ski this year. I was so impressed with all the patience he had with her.

Happy Anniversary! I love you babe!

Let Summertime begin!

2009-06-10T16:12:00.000-07:00

Where we live, it's officially summertime when you're able to go swimming in an un-heated pool.

That would be May for us.

So, to start off with, first we have Kaylee's 5th grade graduation. This August she will be in Jr. High. That's a scary thought. Here's their cake: Kaylee with her 'Diploma'.

Kaylee had a little swim party for her 11th birthday, and since she's soooo into music these days I decided to make her an i-pod cake. Here's Kaylee with her 2 best buds:

Kaylee and her friends just 'chillin' in the pool.

It's a beautiful thing when all your children know how to swim. No more floaties! This just happened for me last month. Here's Audree demonstrating her skills:

And here's Soph:

Josh showing us his jumping skills:

Here's Audree. She's my only nose-plugger, and it drives her Dad insane. I was a nose-plugger for the longest time, so I have sympathy for her. I should also mention that this beautiful pool and yard belong to my BIL & SIL. They are so great to let us barge in on them all summer long and use it whenever we want. By the end of the Summer they're ready to lock their doors and gates.

Squeezing into a cooler-just for the fun of it.

Kaylee:

Audree:

Sophee:

There you have it-the beginning of our Summertime. What could be better than squeezing into the cooler? Wahoo! Let the party begin!

What the . . . ?

2009-06-09T15:41:00.000-07:00

How did the non-animal person (me), end up with this living in my house?
I would like to introduce you to our new Shiz Tzu puppy, Charcoal. Or just Coal for short. He is about 4 months old.
Yes, he does look like an alien in these pics. For some reason his eyes do funny things in the flash. If some of you read my daughter's blog, you already know this, but for those of you who don't this was a birthday present for her 11th birthday. She has been begging and begging and begging for a dog. A little, indoor dog mind you. Just for the record, in case you haven't figured it out, I don't really care for pets, outdoor or indoor, but especially indoor animals.

After a trial run with an outdoor labrador in the past (he kept jumping all over the little kids and knocking them down, plus it's just too hot here) I decided that we were never going to have a dog again. Well, being that my husband is completely wrapped around his daughter's finger, he decided-againist my will-to get her a little puppy. I had nothing to do with this.

One alien eye here. It's really hard to get a good pic of a black dog.

So, now we are buying dog food, treats, bones, a dog crate, collar and leash, we were lucky enough to get a doggie door for free, paying for vet visits and shots, bathing him and wiping boogers out of his eyes, and soon we are going to have to pay someone to groom him. Lovely. Oh, and Kaylee is buying a new cord for her Dad's computer. It seems to have been eaten by a scrappy little dog.

Looking a little scruffy here.

Although I hate the idea of having an indoor pet (my family members are all probably shocked and appalled upon reading that I have allowed an animal to live in my home) he really is a good dog. Really. And pretty cute too.

Sophee's dance recital

2009-06-09T11:20:00.000-07:00

Sophee had her very first dance recital at the end of May. Her group did a cute little 'flower fairy' dance. Unfortunately I was having issues getting it recorded, and I only have part of it on my camera. My SIL recorded it, and I'm hoping her's turned out better than mine. I could tell Sophee was pretty nervous, but she still did well. I'm proud of my little 5 year old for getting on stage and dancing in front of a full house!
Hamming it up!

The best thing for dinner

2009-05-20T14:32:00.000-07:00

Can I just share with you one of my favorite dinners? It's Breakfast! Breakfast for dinner. I absolutely looooooove Denny's French slam-anytime of day. Infact I'm getting the urge to grab my purse and head down there right now. To bad I know my 5 year old wouldn't sit still long enough for me to enjoy the meal. Not only that, but it's 2:45 p.m. and she's still in her panties. In the meantime I guess I'll just have to settle for drooling over this picture. I made some french toast the other night for dinner, and even had my homemade strawberry syrup with it. Okay, I didn't set out to can a bunch of strawberry syrup-it just happened when I didn't add the pectin to my strawberry jam mixture. There you go. Nothing like the pic above, but still good.

There's just one little problem with my love of breakfast (other than the insane amount of sugar-yes, I'm a sugar addict, but I'll save that for a later post). Here's the problem; while my kids and I love breakfast for dinner my husband is not a big fan. Well, okay, he's not a fan at all. I really can't blame him-after working a long, hard day he wants to come home to meat and potatoes. Yes, he's a manly man. Infact, I have learned early on that I need to call him and tell him when I plan on making breakfast for dinner so that he can run and grab himself a burger-that way I can avoid a little crankiness :-) (love you honey).

I could honestly schedule breakfast for dinner once a week. When I was a little girl my mom would do just that, every Saturday night, and us kids totally looked forward to pancakes or french toast. Infact, I had a friend in Jr. high who's mom did the same thing, and she even took it a step further by making waffles and letting her kids spread chocolate frosting on them. I spent the night there once and got to experience chocolate covered waffles-yummmy. I tried to convince my mom to let us do the same, but she wasn't for it. I have never actually tried that, probably because my waffle iron bit the dust years ago, but I think I would if it weren't for the fact that an open container of chocolate frosting wouldn't last long in our house. Yes, I'm that kind of mother. I give my children ice cream for breakfast-once in a blue moon.

You have to watch this

2009-05-12T14:58:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I've only watched/listened to this about 10 times since first seeing it yesterday. I'm so impressed with Jon Schmidt's piano skills. All three of my girls love Taylor Swift's 'Love story' so I have heard it many times. Maybe that's why I like this song so much.

As requested. . . recipe for chocolate eclair cake

2009-05-12T10:42:00.000-07:00

This is one of my favorite desserts. I got the recipe from a Utah ward cookbook about 10 years ago. Everytime I make it someone asks for the recipe, so here it is. (picture courtesy of flickr).

CHOCOLATE ECLAIR CAKE

1 box of graham crackers (3 sleeves)

2 small packages of vanilla pudding

1 (8 oz.) container of cool whip

3 1/2 C. milk

1 1/2 containers of store bought chocolate frosting

In a 9 X 13 pan place a layer of whole graham crackers to completely cover the bottom of the pan. Mix together the pudding and milk. Fold in the cool whip. Pour half of the pudding mixture over the top of the crackers. Add another layer of graham crackers. In a microwave safe bowl heat up the frosting for about 30 seconds-to make it runny enough to spread easily over the crackers. Spread onto the graham crackers you just laid down. Pour the rest of the pudding mixture over the frosting, even out, and place one more layer of crackers on top. Frost the top layer with the warm frosting. Chill for at least 6 hours.

*I 'improved' the recipe by adding the layer of chocolate frosting in the middle. If you don't care to do this than you will only need 1 can of frosting. If you're a chocolate lover like myself than you wouldn't even think of leaving it out.

*I would also strongly suggest that you make this dessert the night before you plan on serving it-or first thing in the morning. That way the graham crackers are nice and soft.

Yum Yum! Enjoy.

Feeding the ducks

2009-04-06T13:59:00.001-07:00

After spending Saturday and Sunday leisurely watching general conference, and being spiritually uplifted, my children were ready to get out of the house-can you believe that they weren't all that excited about watching conference? As I was watching the first session on Sat. and listening to this lovely sister's talk on reverence, and how we need to teach our children reverence, Sophee comes up to me and screams, "I WANT TO WATCH SPONGEBOB!" about 5 times. Lovely.

Anyway, we decided that we would take the kids to feed the ducks Sunday evening. Here are the only 2 ducks we ran into:
Needless to say, after about a few minutes of throwing bread crumbs those 2 birds had all they could possibly want.

And the kids moved on to collecting sea shells . . .

. . . and wading in the water in their church shoes-CHURCH SHOES! Why is that child wearing her church shoes? Oh well, not much I can do about it now . . .

As Sophee was walking in the water she slipped and fell, and got completely soaked. I thought she'd immediately start crying because the water was quite cold but no, she just embraced it and decided 'What the heck? I'm already wet', might as well just do this:

Humoring Mom and holding still long enough for her to snap a picture of all 4 of them together:

Looking at the great and spacious buildings:

So that was our little family outing. We totally enjoyed having Dad home with us for almost the whole weekend-and I think we 'conveniently' ran out of gas for the lawn mower just so Dad wouldn't have to work to hard.

Wahoo for food storage!

2009-04-06T13:52:00.001-07:00

Am I the only one whose heart skips a beat when they see this?
I freakin' love the case lot sales! I would spend thousands of dollars on the case lot sales, if only we didn't need to pay the mortgage! Darn it. Well, I did a little stocking up. Can't blow the whole grocery budget in one week. Sophee insisted on being in the picture-along with her can of pringles-and no, that's not something I stock up on, much to my children's dismay.

Happy food storing!

Airing out my dirty laundry

2009-03-31T17:38:00.001-07:00

Yesterday was laundry day. I have 3 laundry days a week. I just wanted to share with you the amount of laundry a family of 6 goes through in 3 days. Yes, this is 3 days worth. Oh, and did I mention that there is a load in the washer and dryer too? Well, there's always a load in the dryer, I can't quite get on top of that one. These piles (and what's in the washer) made up 7 loads of laundry. While I was sorting these piles yesterday my mind was wandering to the previous lessons I had on Sunday. One of them was a lesson my husband taught to the Priesthood brethen and RS sisters. It was on finances. My mind then wandered to paying interest and I started thinking about the following quote (I got this from a talk Pres. Monson gave-I don't know if he was the original writer of this or not):

“Interest never sleeps nor sickens nor dies; it never goes to the hospital; it works on Sundays and holidays; it never takes a vacation; it never visits nor travels; it takes no pleasure; it is never laid off work nor discharged from employment; it never works on reduced hours. … Once in debt, interest is your companion every minute of the day and night; you cannot shun it or slip away from it; you cannot dismiss it; it yields neither to entreaties, demands, or orders; and whenever you get in its way or cross its course or fail to meet its demands, it crushes you.”

I have heard this quote many times, and while I was standing there, feeling like I was never going to see the bottom of the laundry basket a thought occurred to me. Laundry is like interest.

And, in the interest of interest-I mean laundry, I revised the above quote to fit my analogy.

Hope you like it:

Laundry never sleeps nor sickens nor dies; it piles up on Sundays and holidays; it never takes a vacation; it takes away your leisure time; it never stops accumulating. From the moment you put on your first article of clothing, or use a towel to dry off with, laundry is your companion every minute of the day and night; you cannot shun it, you cannot dismiss it-unless you don't mind wearing dirty underwear. And whenever you miss a laundry day, and fail to keep on top of it-It crushes you!!

Proof

2009-03-30T12:33:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to prove to you all that my cake decorating class was not taken in vain (after seeing Soph's plain jane cake in the post below)! Really, I am somewhat capable of doing a bit fancier of a cake. I guess that's what happens when Mommy goes out of town for the weekend, then has to come home and cram for her 4 tests. Here are some of my previous cakes. I've done many more, but that was back before my digital camera.
This first one is Sophee's 4th birthday cake:

This was Audree's 3rd birthday cake:

Then this one is Audree's 6th birthday cake:

Okay, I suppose that's enough of me 'tooting my own horn'. Love you guys!!

Sophee turns 5!

2009-03-30T12:08:00.000-07:00

Sophee turned 5 yesterday. This year I decided that we would scale back on our b-day parties and just have them at home with family. The minute Sophee woke up she wanted to open her presents. Here she is, sitting on the table, with one of her gifts:

I got this little market at Sam's club on an after Christmas clearance deal, the kids have been having a lot of fun with it-all 4 of them enjoy playing with it. See the little Snow white doll she is holding? That was another one of her gifts. It was originally for one of her little friends who had a b-day party last month but the minute she saw it she freaked out that we were giving it away and begged, pleaded, and cried for it. Normally I would've just given it to the friend, then gone and bought another one, but this one was the last one, on clearance. So I gave in and told her she could have it, but would have to wait for her b-day. Note to self: Always wrap b-day presents for friends before your kids see it.

Here she is, looking a little more put together.

What a cute little 5 year old!

Since Kory's sister came into town from Seattle we had a BBQ over at Grandma's and celebrated Sophee's birthday there. Here's Grandma lighting the candles:

And here's the cake. She wanted a tinkerbell cake, and I had every intention of making her one, something way more adorable than this one, but I had a very busy weekend. So I decided I'd just buy her one. Well, Wal-mart had a cake, the same size as this one, with cheap-o tinkerbell rings on it for $20. So I figured I'd just do a very simple cake and buy her the figurines that go along with the little tinkerbell house that she got. I saved myself $8 doing it this way, and now she gets to keep the figurines-plus, she thought the cake was great! I'm so thrifty like that. (Good thing 5 year olds are fairly easy to please).

Blowing out the candles:

And there you have it. Our simple birthday party. I just recently found the pics of her 4th birthday party. I should post of few of those because the cake that I did for that was really cute.

A little cross-eyed fun

2009-03-22T20:22:00.000-07:00

Okay, I admit it. I can't cross my eyes. I thought I was the only one, but apparently Josh can't either. A couple of months ago Sophee came up to me and said, "Mom, watch my trick!" And proceeded to follow her finger down her nose like this:

I just think it's so funny when she does it, and since she knows I will always laugh, she does this little trick for me quite often. As I was trying to get the girls to get ready for bed tonight, she decides to distract me with her cute little trick. Then Audree jumped on the bandwagon:

I asked Kory if he could do it too, and here's the result. Didn't quite get the timing on this picture right.

I love this picture. What a bunch of goof balls. (Soph can't do it without following her finger down her nose, thus everyone has their finger on their nose).

Josh was feeling a little left out. Here's his attempt, yep, that's my boy.

Since Kaylee is the step child, there are no pics of her. J/K. Actually, she couldn't manage to actually cross her eyes until after I uploaded all these photos. Maybe we'll do some pics of her for her blog.

We have a new reader in the house

2009-03-22T20:12:00.001-07:00

Audree's our little Kindergartener. She has really jumped into reading with her feet first! She loooooves to read and sound words out. She is now reading a bunch of Dr. Seuss' beginner books, and has taken over my job as the 'bedtime story reader'.
This is Audree reading 'Bears on wheels' to Sophee. Please excuse Soph's half nakedness, that's just the norm-she runs around in her panties at home all day long. Must be nice.

I tried to get Sophee to put her hands down for the picture to which she replied, "I'm just showing you how old you have to be when you get baptized!" Well, at least I know she was paying attention in class today (I was her substitute teacher).

A yummy meal, and some randomness

2009-03-16T12:53:00.001-07:00

Whew! Am I ever glad last week is over with. Not only were both Kaylee and Kory sick with the flu, I had a RS b-day dinner program to practise and attend (which turned out totally awesome thanks to Jamie and Katie), and I also had 6 tests! Yes, I said 6. One in Math, 3 in Nutrition, and 2 in Psychology. So, now you know why I haven't blogged in awhile.

I suppose I'll start out with my 'Meals for Mom's like Me Monday' since it is Monday, and I've totally been slacking in this category. Here we go with ' BBQ Teriyaki Chicken'.

You will need about 6 boneless skinless chicken breasts cut into strips about 1 inch wide and 6 inches long.
Also, you will need wooden skewers that have been soaked in water for at least a few hours-this will keep them from burning up too quickly.

Mix together:
1/2 C. soy sauce
1 tsp. garlic powder
2 tsp. sesame seeds
1 tsp. ginger
1 Tbsp. honey
1 Tbsp. oil

Place meat in a large glass or plastic container. Cover with above marinade. It will look like this:

Place in the fridge for several hours (I would say at least 6) and turn meat strips a few times so that they are well marinaded. Before BBQ'ing run wet skewer in and out of chicken strip until it looks 'lightly gathered'. BBQ over medium heat until done. I would have to say it probably only takes 10-15 minutes total, if not less. Here is what the finished product looks like:

Yum Yum. I have yet to meet anyone who doesn't love this recipe, even Audree-who only eats 3 different things-will eat this. The hardest part about the recipe is cutting up the chicken-which I use kitchen shears for-and putting it on the skewers. Anyone can do it.

Okay, onto other random things. Last month I decided to get crafty and do something fun for my VT ladies. I broke out the 'ole stamps and went to town. I haven't stamped in ages. Here's the cards I made:

Then I bought some little heart shaped dishes and made some oreo truffles. Don't they look professional? They are very rich and unbelievably good if I do say so myself!

Then I filled the rest of the dish with some misc. chocolate candy:

I wrapped them all in cellophane and attached the card. Boy, I was feeling crafty last month!

Okay, the next bit of randomness includes the 'Cat in the Hat', and here she is:

Complete with a tail.

Audree's kindergarten teacher is super crafty and does all sorts of fun stuff with them. They dressed up like this for Dr. Suesses B-day.

And the last bit of randomness is that yesterday I was called to be the new Activity Day's leader. Wahoo! This will be my 3rd time as AD leader. We have a fun group of girls-Kaylee being one of them, she's pretty excited that I'm going to be her leader. When she asked what we were going to do for our first activity I said, "Well, it needs to be church-related, so I think we will all sit down and read the scriptures for an hour". Of course her reply was, "Moooooooooom!"

On that note, I was looking up some fun ideas for activities to do with the girls and I came across one on service. A lady suggested teaching the girls how to use a lawnmower (check the oil, the gas, show them how to start it, etc) then have them each take turns mowing part of your lawn.

Seriously? I love that idea! Kory was totally on board with it too. Then, after they learned how to mow a lawn, you could take them to someone in the ward's house that may need their lawn mowed (like an elderly person, or someone who can't get around real well) and mow their lawn.

Not a bad idea. What is your guys' opinion? Can you imagine the girls showing up at my house, all ready to do some fun craft, and I say, "Alright girls! Let's go outside, we're going to mow my lawn!" I can just see their faces now :-)

Kaylee's Curls

2009-03-07T18:37:00.000-08:00

This post written by Kaylee.

So the other day I asked my mom if I could go get my hair cut in layers to make it look nicer, so we did. While we were waiting there looking through the hairstyle books, I came across a girl who had her hair layered and it was wavy like mine and I liked it.
The lady cutting my hair was cutting off chunks of my hair (which made me a bit sad) but in the end it turned out really good. Here is how it looks:

Heres the back.....you may notice it is curly in the back and strait in the front, I am getting my mom's wavy hair!!!

The front.

Well there you have it, my new haircut that I love!

Chicken pesto pasta

2009-03-01T21:38:00.000-08:00

Today's easy recipe comes from the genious ladies over at the 'All is safely gathered in' blog. Go here to get the recipe. There's also a great picture of it.
It's called Chicken pesto pasta and the only ingredients are canned chicken, a little bit of olive oil, bow tie noodles, pesto sauce, and almonds. It's super delicious and my whole family loves it.
My only suggestion, unless you have a garden full of basil, is to just buy the pesto sauce. If your not sure what that is it's just basil, pine nuts, some garlic, maybe a few other things, I don't know, I'm not a chef-it's pretty good stuff. Looks disgusting in the jar, but don't let that fool you. Here's the kind I bought:

You can find it in the spagetti aisle, with all the sauces there. This little jar was about $2.50, but I will get at least 3 meals out of it. A closer look:

You gotta' try it! Plus, the bonus to this meal is that all the ingredients can be stored in your pantry. It makes for a great food storage meal. Happy cooking ladies!

Our trip to Brianhead

2009-02-26T12:21:00.000-08:00

In true Burgess fashion we decided at the last minute to take a trip up to Brianhead Ski resort (in Utah). We have some friends who own a condo up there, and they graciously let us use it. Kory had been trying to talk me into going-since we missed out on going skiing with my sister and her husband due to lack of babysitters-but I wasn't thrilled about the idea of taking all the kids up there, especially when none of them know how to ski, and we didn't have any ski clothes for them. Well, turns out my SIL was able to provide us with almost all the ski clothes we needed for the kids, so we decided to do it. Here's what it looks like to pack for a 3 day trip for a family of 6:

The packing and un-packing is always the worst part. Thank goodness for the 'stow-and-go' feature on our van. We had to tie Kory's snow board to the top.

The first morning out in the snow. The kids were beyond thrilled. The 3 older ones have been in the snow before, but didn't remember it, and this was Sophee's first time ever.

Wahoo! Snow angels! Where we live, you only get to make dirt angels. This is Audree:

Me and my fabulous man. That's the condo we stayed in behind us. You could literally just ski right out the door and down to the chair lift, then come down the hill and ski right back in the door when you were done. How awesome is that?

Sophee and Josh on the sled.

This is Sophee waiting to go down to the hot tub. She sure loved those little polka dotted boots.

The kids just outside the condo.

I love this next picture of Audree and Sophee. It gives you the impression that they might actually like each other after all.

Josh attempting to sled down the hill.

Kory taught Kaylee how to ski. Look at her coming down the hill! She caught on pretty fast, and her Dad says she's a 'natural'.

Kaylee looking so confident in her new ability. She didn't even need the poles.

Kaylee and Kory.

Well that's it. We also took the kids tubing, and on a sleigh ride, but didn't get pictures of that because my camera battery died. That always seems to happen to me. Maybe I need a back up battery. Anyway, the kids all kept saying, "I wished we lived in the snow!" Ha! Been there, done that. They probably would've changed their minds had we stayed longer than 3 days. All I know is that it seemed to take about an hour to get everyone all dressed up in their ski bibs, boots, hats, gloves, etc. But it was a great time for the whole family, and I'm glad we decided to go.

Sophee's monkey dance

2009-02-17T18:49:00.000-08:00

This is Sophee and her two friends from Dance class and preschool, Rachel and Maddie.
They had their performance on Valentines Day at the Chili cook off here in town. Here they are patiently waiting their turn while they watch the older girls dance.

Don't forget to watch the dance below. It's the cutest thing!

Sophee's Monkey dance

2009-02-17T17:13:00.000-08:00

Here's the video clip I promised of Sophee's dance. If you can't tell, she's the second one in from your left (the tallest, and oldest one there) These are 3 and 4 year olds. Kaylee pointed out (while watching the video) that she's the only one who shakes her hips during certain parts, and yes, that is part of the dance, the other girls just forget to do it sometimes. What can I say, my child is brilliant.

Valentines Day cards

2009-02-15T21:52:00.000-08:00

Remember the good 'ole days, filling out all your Valentines cards for all the kids in your class? Good times, good times. So here's my girls filling out there's. We lost Audree's class list, and Kaylee never got one, so we had to dig out the class pictures so we wouldn't forget anyone.
Here's Audree. Yes, I know, my girls desperately need their bangs cut.

This was Sophee's first year where she could actually sign her name herself. Look at her all seriously filling out her card.

I filled in her classmates name, then she would sign her name. Look at how cute she writes (let's remember, she's only 4).

Kaylee making sure she remembered everyone.

I forgot to get pictures of Josh-he was at work while the girls did theirs.

On Valentines day Sophee had a little dance number that her class did at a chili cook off, so I will be posting that video soon, I'm just too tired to wait for it to download tonight.

Whoops!

2009-02-14T08:35:00.000-08:00

So I meant to have the last post be automatically sent out Monday morning, but somehow I got my scheduling screwed up, so there's your 'Meals for Mom's like Me Monday'-only you got it early! Enjoy!

French dip and Au Jus

2009-02-14T00:00:00.000-08:00

If you like French Dip sandwiches, you'll love this. You'll also love the fact that you can make it in about 5 minutes-that's less time than it would take you to drive to the nearest Arby's. This recipe is super great for those nights when I have to be somewhere, and I need to feed the family fast. Here's the ingredients. Yep, it's only 4. Love that! You'll need some deli/hoagie rolls, swiss cheese, french onion soup, and thinly sliced roast beef (I believe that's an 8 or 9 oz. pkg there):

Put the all the roast beef in a microwave safe dish, dump the can of french onion soup in, and add half a can of water. Stir a bit to mix up the juice. Cover and microwave on high for 3-4 minutes. While that's cooking, slice open your rolls and butter the bottom half. On the top half, put sliced swiss. If you don't like swiss (like my daughter) just don't use any-no biggie. Then broil your rolls until golden brown, and the cheese is melted. Like so:

See, the middle bun doesn't have any cheese-that's for Kaylee. Once the roast beef is done, use a slotted spoon to scoop some up, then take another spoon and press it onto the beef, as to remove as much juice from it as possible-otherwise your bun will get soggy fast. Put the beef on the bun, dump a little of the remaining juice in a small cup and your done! You got yourself a french dip sandwich, complete with Au Jus sauce. Just as good as Arby's. This will make about 5 sandwiches.

I added some potatoe chips, just to be fancy-you gotta' have your veggies right?

Stylin' Soph

2009-02-13T17:00:00.000-08:00

The other morning I set out some clothes for Sophee and told her that we would be going to the store as soon as we got dressed and ready for the day-then I hopped in the shower. When I got out this is what she looked like, all 'dolled' up:

She dressed herself, did her hair and put on the headband and glasses. Then she picked out the necklace and asked me to put it on her. Isn't it funny how, when little kids first start brushing their own hair, they totally slick in down so that it's plastered to their head? Of course you can't do anything about it-you just have to let it be. So off we went to the store-with Soph looking like the 'Diva' that she is, and me looking like a frumpy Mom. It's pretty bad when your 4 year old looks better than you.

Chicken soft tacos

2009-02-10T09:27:00.001-08:00

This is the next recipe for the "Meals for Mom's like Me Monday" segment. Better late than never. I must give credit where credit is due. This recipe actually came from my sister, Erika.
When she was down visiting over New Year's I had planned a taco night. She asked me if we were having beef or chicken tacos. I was a little stumped. I've never made chicken tacos before. Sure, I've had them at taco bell before, but I never thought of making them at home. For the last 14 years I've been using ground beef. Boy, what a boring life. So, she told me how she makes hers and we quickly changed our plans that night and had chicken tacos.

Start out by cubing up as much chicken breast as you think your family will eat. Drizzle a little olive oil in a pan, and throw your chicken in. Then sprinkle garlic salt lightly over all the chicken pieces and stir. Cook over high heat until chicken is done.
Next, heat up some flour tortillas then add your chicken and favorite taco toppings. I used lettuce, cheddar cheese, tomato, sour cream and avocado. Yum Yum.

Roll up your tortilla and enjoy. I usually slice it in half for my kids-it's easier for them to pick up.

Notice how there's nothing else on the plate? I'm so not fancy. Usually, in a dinner plate picture someone would surely add a couple of fancy side dishes. Not me. What goes with tacos? You already have the veggies inside. I guess you could add some fruit. I don't know.

So there you go. Super easy, super fast, super good.

Enjoy!

Is it Monday already

2009-02-02T20:48:00.000-08:00

I just realized it's Monday. I also just realized that my 'question mark' key is not working-hence the reason there is not a question mark in the title when, clearly, there should be. Sorry about the bad grammar. Here's today's simple dinner idea. I just call it Sausage & Au Gratin's: All you need is a family size box of Betty Crocker Au Gratin potatoes and a big link of smoked sausage (found with all the hot dogs, etc). Mix up the potatoes in a 9 X 13 pan according to package directions, except omit the butter (the sausage has enough fat in it, we don't need anymore). Slice up your sausage, throw it in the pan, then cook according to the directions on the box. That's it. Now you officially have a 'meat and potatoes' dinner.

How can you tell when my children aren't home?

2009-01-29T10:10:00.001-08:00

Well, for starters, it's dead silent in my house-then secondly, my kitchen looks like this (yes, this is a quick trip back to the 80's while we're at it) try not to notice the color of the tile as much as you notice the cleanliness of the tile:

Such clean floors, not a crumb or fruit snack wrapper in sight:

Not a dish in the sink:

Not a toy, blanket, Wii controller, dirty sock, half eaten bag of goldfish, sippy cup, backpack, or shoe on the ground. Oh, and the pillows are still on the couch.

I took the opportunity-while Sophee's was at preschool-to get the 'main' living area of the house cleaned. Now, before you think that I'm a neat freak (which I am-if only in my mind), just keep in mind that I only posted pictures of 2 rooms in the entire house. You should see the bedrooms, but I really couldn't embarass myself (or my mother) like that.

Anyway, I figured if I took a picture of it, I would have proof for my husband. It also reminds me of a story my Mom told me a long time ago. When she was a little girl she slipped out of bed one evening to find my Grandmother sitting on the couch-in peace and quiet-doing nothing. Just sitting. When my mom asked her what she was doing she replied, "I'm just enjoying what the house looks like when it's clean." Oh how I have remembered those words many times, after putting the kids to bed, picking things up, doing the dishes and vacuuming, only to sit down and admire my work-if only for a little while.

On a side note, now that I've mopped my floor today it's pretty much a guarentee that someone will spill their whole cup of milk or juice before the evening is over-it's Murphy's law.

And, on another note, I just have to share the most awesome candle I have ever seen!

My sweetie pie husband got this for me for Valentines day. Yes, I do realize it's not Valentine's day yet, but once I found out about this I just had to have it now! It's actually a candle warmer. They're made by a company named Scentsy (both my SIL's sell these). There's actually a light bulb in the bottom portion of this, and it heats up the scented wax that sits in a little dish on top. You can totally smell it all day long-I'm in love. I'm a candle freak. I think it stems from the fact that I'm allergic to fragrance, and can't wear perfumes, so this is how I get my 'smell good' fix.

Okay, so that's it. Not only does my kitchen look good, but it smells good too. What a lucky girl I am. The house is clean! (at least until 3:00, when the kids get home from school.)

Meals for Mom's Like Me Monday

2009-01-26T00:00:00.000-08:00

Today's recipe: Montreal Grilled Steak

Okay, here's my little secret for an awesome steak :-) It's just too easy.

You can sprinkle it right on the steak (very lightly-don't go overboard) or, even better, make the marinade (the directions and ingredients are listed on the bottle). All you need is 1/4 C. olive oil, 2Tbsp. soy sauce, 2 tsp. of the seasoning, and your steak. One little trick I like to do is to stab the steak with a fork all over so that the marinade can 'seep' in. Throw it all in a ziploc bag-it only has to marinade for 30 minutes-love that! Then just cook it until your desired doneness.

If you don't have a BBQ'er you can do this in your oven, on a broiler pan, on the broil setting-just move the oven rack up a notch.

If you're going to do burgers you can sprinkle 1 Tbsp. into 1 pound of ground beef, then mix it up and form into patties. Cook until desired doneness.

McCormick also makes some other neat 'Grill Mates'. Here are the ones I have:

It's a little hard to read, but they are 'Montreal Steak' (our fav.), Hamburger, Roasted Garlic Chicken, and Spicy Montreal steak. I haven't tried the last two simply because we use the first one the most, and I'd forgotten I had the others. Wahoo! Something new to try.

Okay, there you go. If anyone else out there wants to start posting simple recipes on their blog then by all means let me know so I can try them out-I'm always on the hunt for something quick, easy, and good.

Sometimes you just have to let them go . . .

2009-01-24T10:20:00.001-08:00

. . . but make sure they have clothes on when you do.

Okay, so the kids have recently started playing outside, without my supervision, somewhere other than our backyard. I've always been paranoid to let them play anywhere else, and luckily, since our backyard is pretty big, it has been able to keep them interested-until now. The problem is that there is a limited amount of concrete on which to ride their scooters/bikes. So, I've been letting them go across the street and down into the cul-de-sac. I feel that this is a pretty safe place to play, and I can easily go check on them. Here's them heading off:

(At the time Josh and Kaylee's bikes where in need of a little repair. Kaylee's bike just needed new tubes, so we did that, now we need to get new tubes, a chain, and a brake line for Josh's bike-but they've been good about sharing with each other.)

Anyway, the other day I was scrambling to get some things picked up and dinner started and the girls decided that they wanted to go ride bikes so I willing agreed and they raced out the back door. About 30 minutes later they get back from their ride and Sophee wanders into the house in nothing but her underwear!! (It was a pretty windy and chilly day too).

How could I have missed that? Oh what would her father say if he knew? What were the neighbors thinking? She didn't even have shoes on! "Kaylee!" I quickly accused, "How could you let your sister go outside in her underwear?" (Of course this was after I promptly scolded Sophee for doing so, and told her that she always should have clothes on when going outside).
Apparently they were so excited to get out the door that Kaylee, who was leading the way, didn't notice until they got down the road. She did tell me that they put Audree's coat on her. She must've taken it off and given it back to Audree before they got in the house. So, let this be a lesson, even if you are anxious for the kids to go outside and play so that you can get a few things done in peace, please take a quick look at them and make sure they're not in their underwear!

My personal chef

2009-01-20T12:34:00.001-08:00

Many times I have said that, given the choice between a nanny, a housekeeper, and a chef, I would definitely choose a chef-without delay! Some of you that know me well know that I hate to cook. I hate it. I don't like coming up with idea's for dinner, remembering to thaw things in advance, preparing it while children are underfoot-or trying to 'help', and then having those same children complain, "This looks yucky", or "I don't like that!" It's a thankless job (or maybe it's just my cooking-go figure). To make matters worse, my husband and I have pretty different tastes. He is definitely a meat and potatoes kind of a guy. Me, I'm a little more into chicken, and really don't care all that much about meat. One of my favorite things to have for dinner is breakfast, but that doesn't really fly all that well when your husband comes home from a hard day's work and wants something filling-and manly. Serving pancakes and syrup for dinner is a crime, and quite frankly, he gets a little irritated when I do it, so I try to save those occasions for when Daddy has a meeting, or is out of town.

Moving along with my story, I got a really awesome Christmas present from my hubby this year. I've been wanting one for a couple of years now. Here it is:

Yes, it's a BBQ. Quite frankly, I would've been happy with the cheapest model, but if you know my husband, that's not how he rolls.

I'm sure some of you women out there are thinking, "A BBQ'er? For real?" Yes, for real. I've long since given up on jewelry and decided to ask for more practical things. This BBQ'er is the closest thing I have to a personal chef. Why? you may ask, well, check out who's doing the cooking! You see, men are naturally drawn to fire. If there's a chance that something could burn down-they're going to be there!

We tried out my new BBQ a couple of days ago, and since it was the first time, we decided to go all out and get some steaks (which is a rare occurence, trust me).

Check it out, he doesn't even mind cooking-as long as it's outside!

Okay, so I realize I do still have to remember to thaw out the meat, and maybe slap a little marinade on there but, hey, it's still worth it. Especially since we love BBQ'ed food. And, every once in a while Kory will call and ask what's for dinner, and when I say "Well, I don't really have anything planned", he says, "I'll go pick up some food and we'll have a BBQ". Love that!!

Then, if all else fails and your kids still say, "This is disgusting". You just say, "Daddy made it".

P.S. I plan to start doing a cooking post every Monday (hopefully-if I can stay on top of things). It will be called "Meals-for-Mom's-like-me-Monday" and it will consist of very, very, simple dinner idea's that I have tried. I don't do fancy schmancy. So, anyway, this Monday I'm going to share my really simple, really delicious steak marinade (or you can put it on burgers). So stay tuned.

Do-it-all-Debbie

2009-01-17T15:05:00.001-08:00

When I was a little girl I remember my Mom planning a sharing time about 4 different mother's who had different styles of helping their children learn how to do things (or not learn how to do things). I only really remember 2 of the mother's. One mother lovingly taught her children how to do their chores so that they would be self-reliant, and the other mother just did all the chores around the house herself. That mother was 'Debbie-do-it-all'. Only I don't think my mom named her that because that is her name. She was probably Dolores, or some other 'D' name.

Anyway, as she was drawing up the little pictures to go along with her lesson I told my mother that she was definitely a 'do-it-all' kind of a mother. I thought that she would be flattered, but she wasn't. She said that she needed to be more like the mommy who taught her children how to work for themselves. Of course I knew what that meant. That meant we were going to be doing a lot more chores around the house.

Although my house is never really sparkling clean at all times, and I do encourage my children to help me out with the cleaning but, their are just certain jobs that a mother feels the need to have done correctly. Like, for instance, loading the dishwasher (if everything isn't all strategically placed, it's just not going to fit), doing the laundry is another big job, and the other is cleaning bathrooms.

Well, today I was the good mother who showed her children how to do something, and to do it right. (Mainly because their Dad bribed them with a dollar if they would help Mommy clean things up while he was out paintballing) and after running out of simple little tasks-like putting the laundry away, I accidently let it slip that the bathrooms could use a good cleaning.

So, here are my little darlings doing their part to have a clean house. We first started off with Audree in the downstairs bathroom, then Sophee kept trying to come in and help (she wasn't going to miss out on that dollar) and it was getting just a little too crowded, so I told her she could do the upstairs bath.

When we're helping we're happy and we sing as we go . . .

Audree's finished product.

A better look:

Soph is digging right in:

Since the mirror in this bathroom is so big Audree decided that she needed to help:

Shining the faucet. Just look at how happy it makes her to help her mom! (Yah right-she's thinking of the money).

All done!

And we like to help Mother for we all love her so!

Here we go!

2009-01-17T10:22:00.000-08:00

So when Erika came to visit for New Year's Eve we both talked about starting our own blogs but weren't sure if we had enough 'blog sense' to do it. Well, earlier this week she went ahead and started one, so now-not to be out done-I took the plunge! If Erika can do it so can I. Ally, thanks for the adorable layout, oh, and be prepared for some more phone calls on 'how do I do that'?.