Cake Walk

The kids school bbq is tomorrow and we had lots of projects toprepare.  Sky had to build the Tower of Babel and chose to do it out of cake.  Ryan had his Flat Stanley project and I baked up a storm.  I have had the baking itch for a few days.  It's so hard because I love to bake, but I don't need the sweets hanging around here!!  So when I was asked to make some stuff for the cake walk I was so excited, now there was a destination for my goodies.  I made 2 dozen strawberry cheesecake cupcakes, an english toffee cream pie and cake pops.  They all turned out really well.  I can't wait until tomorrow!  The staff from the school have already tried to stake claim on the cake pops.  It should be a fun day!

My Birthday

Wednesday was my birthday.  Every year it comes and goes.  Usually fairly unrecognized, which is really ok with me.  I have never been good with being the center of attention or "relaxing" and allowing others to do for me.  After all I am a mom and my job is to take care of others and to do for others...it just feel un-natural to not do everything.  Crazy I know!  Anyway, my husband and children did such a good job of making me feel loved and special this year.  They started the day by letting me sleep in a little.  They snuck in and took the baby before she was able to wake me up, how they did this I have no idea.  The kids made me breakfast and Pete took them to school for me.  My dad came in from Pismo to take me to lunch and stuck around for the day.  Pete came home from work early, which was a miracle and he took us all out to dinner.  All and all it was a great day!  Thank you to my awesome family for making my day!!  Oh yeah and Emily started crawling on my birthday and cut her first tooth.

Our Garden

Well our garden is well on it's way.  We have strawberries, tomatoes, green bell peppers, red bell peppers, cucumbers, butternut squash, watermelons, white onions, red onions, green and gold beans, basil and oregano.  We planted weeks ago and we already have a bunch of strawberries coming in.  2 of our tomato plants are flowering and you can smell the onions.  I can't wait to go out to my garden and pick stuff to use in our dinner!! :)

5 Months Old

Emily you are 5 months old today.  I know I say it every month...time is flying.  You are growing so quickly and as much as I am loving watching you I am sad that it is all happening so fast!  So about this month:

• You weigh 17 lbs and are 25 in long.
• You are so involved and aware of what is going on around you.
• You are VERY mobile.  You scoot, roll and army crawl all over the place.
• You are already getting up on your hands and knees and rocking back and forth.
• You like bananas in your little "food net", but you aren't so much interested in eating anything else, any other way.
• You love to nurse.
• You are SUCH a good and mellow baby.
• We went to Disneyland this last month and you got to ride lots of rides.  Your favorite was "It's A Small World" and you hated "It's A Bugs Life".
• Your new favorite toy is your jumper.
• You like to be held.  You are a snuggle bug.
• Mommy has nicknamed you Peanut.
• You love your sisters and brother and happen to think that Ryan is hilarious!
• When you actually do get upset and cry all we have to do is sing "If Your Happy and You Know It" and you calm right down.  It works everytime!
• Your face lights ups when you see daddy.
• You have this hilarious thing that you do with your tongue.  You suck on it and your top lip and I can't even begin to describe how cute it is.
• You are teething and drooling like crazy.
• You have developed this new "yell" when you are done with a toy or done with being on the floor and you want to be held.  It's pretty funny.

You are an absolute blessing to our family.  Daddy was just saying this morning that he cannot get over how perfect you are.  We could not have been blessed with a better baby.  You are the center of our world and we love you so very much!!

Dog Food

I started making Duke's food myself.  It is one of my new cost cutter ventures.  Now if your dog eats regular dry dog food or if you have multiple dogs I don't know that this would save you very much money, but it is healthier for your dog.  Duke is spoiled and we were not only buying dry dog food, but canned food as well and it wasn't outrageous, but it was more expensive than what we are doing now.  Every penny counts right?  My mom and dad use this recipe and they got it from one of my mom's sisters.  The dogs LOVE it!!!  The grocery list is as follows:

• 1 leek
• 2 large carrots
• 1 large (softball size) turnip or 2 smaller turnips (you can also use radichios if choose)
• 1 large parsnip or 2 small parsnips
• 1 large sweet potato or yam
• 4 large white potatoes
• 1 whole chicken - I buy the fryer twin packs for 88 cents a lb
• 3 cups rice - you can use white, brown or red.  The brown and red hold up longer than the white
• cottage cheese

Boil your chicken for 1 hr.  Take out of the water and let sit to cool. 

Then wash and cut all your veggies.  I recommend starting with the stouter veggies first - the carrots, turnip, parsnip and leek.

  Put them into a pot of water ( I used the water I boiled the chicken in, might as well make chicken stock while I am at it right? ), while you are waiting for it to come to a boil cut up your potatoes and add them in.  Bring just to a boil then turn the water off.  Let sit for a few minutes then drain. 

Allow veggies to cool.  Cook 3 cups of rice.  Once your chicken is cool enough you can pull it apart and shred it.  I bag everything seperately so it will stay longer and not become mushy.  Put everything in the fridge and when it is time to feed the dog just put a 1/2 cup veggies and a 1/4 cup of everything else into a bowl, mix it together and serve.  This recipe is enough food for a little over 2 wks, 2 feedings a day for our dog.

Ah HAH!

Ok...so I know that I should have taken before pictures, but I am still getting used to this whole blogging thing and to be honest I wasn't even thinking about blogging about this until I got home.  Today after I picked the kids up from school we went to Pete's office to clean it for him.  He is so crazy busy he has NO time for much anything else besides work and when he does find a little bit of time it is all devoted to his family.  Now he has been in this particular office for a little over a year now.  In that year the office has been "tidied" a few times and "cleaned" a couple of times, but never deep cleaned and the windows have been done once.  That being said I headed into my venture armed with my new cleaners that I made this afternoon.  Since I just cleaned my house I thought I would test them out on Pete's office.  Besides if they can get his office looking sparkling clean after not being cleaned in at least 6 months than imagine what it could do for my house!  The biggest project of course were the windows.  There are 15 windows, and they are not small windows, and they were dusty, dirty and water spotted.  I took a deep breath and went to work.  After spending 2 hours on the windows ALONE they went from looking out them and seeing spots to looking out them and thinking they were open.  It was amazing.  No streaks, no marks and no spots!!  The rest of the office looks incredible too, but man those windows look awesome.  I am so in love with my new cleaner!!  Vinegar and water.  For a total of $3.25 I have enough cleaner for the entire year!  I can't wait to clean my house without chemicals and have it sparkle. :)

Saving Money

So I am finally going to start making my own cleaners.  No more trips to Target to buy cleaning supplies for the house!  Not only will it rid my home of the chemicals, but it will save my family money.  We have switched so much of our lifestyle over to all natural and organice processes, but not the cleaning aspect.  It is probably the most simple and least expensive yet it has not been done.  I was cleaning the other day and was armed with my gloves and had the windows open to vent the room I was cleaning to reduce the inhalation of the chemicals and it hit me.  WHY AM I DOING THIS TO MY FAMILY?  If I have to cover my hands and air out the room due to the products I am using then something is obviously not safe.  DUH!  So no more expensive and toxic cleaners for this family!  I will also start making our own laundry detergent and NO MORE FABRIC SOFTNER!  Have you read what's in that?  We will use vinegar instead.  We will be using vinegar, water, baking soda and lemon juice to do our cleaning.  A quick trip to the Dollar Tree to buy a few spray bottles and we are on our way. 
I will also no longer be using plastic bags to store food or to pack components of my kids lunches.  I pack 3 lunches 5 days a week.  Sandwiches are put in a sandwich bag, fruits and other snacks are put into smaller bags.  At least that's how it used to be.  From now on all food will be put into a tupperware. 
I will, in the near future, try my hand at making our own soaps, shampoos and conditioners.  After calculating what I spend a year on all of these items I will be saving our family about $1500 a year.  And if my garden takes off like I hope then we will save even more on the grocery end. :)

Disneyland

We have been talking about going to Disneyland for EVER!!  Disney started their Give A Day Get A Day program and we thought what a cool idea.  Let's give a day of service which will be a good experience for our kids and then we can actually take them to Disneyland.  Well we were 1 week outside of our date of service and Disney announced that they were no longer doing the program.  That they had reached their limit of 1,000,000 tickets.  So even if you had already reserved your day of service, done your day of service or showed interest you were our of luck cause there were no more tickets.  Needless to say I was heart broken.  We had already discussed with the kids what we were doing and they were very excited to be going to Disneyland.  As you can imagine it is quite expensive to take a family of 6 to Disneyland, or pretty much anywhere for that matter...LOL.  So Pete and I talked and decided that we were going to do our day of service anyway, because again, it would be a good experience for the kids and maybe give them some appreciation for the problems they do have and the ones they don't.  And we decided we were going to take them to Disneyland anyway.  We thought maybe we would go next month and then I mentioned to my husband Sunday morning that our good friends Ryan and Steve were leaving that night for their Disneyland family vacation.  Pete looked at me and said "Do you think they will mind if we crash their vacation?"  I totally thought he was joking, then again I should have known better because Pete is always popping up with big plans last minute.  I know that life will always be exciting with my husband :)!  So, I called Ryan and asked and she said "Absolutely not, that would be a lot of fun!"...well maybe not that EXACTLY, but something pretty darn close.  We jumped online and made our hotel reservations and bought our tickets and I hurried through cleaning the house and taking care of a few loads of laundry.  Between noon and 6:00pm we had planned, booked and prepared for our 2 day trip to Disneyland.  The kids had NO IDEA what was coming.  Well, Zayna did only because she was at Ryan and Steve's and overheard the conversation between Ryan and I.  Skyler was at her dad's and Ryan was at Grammy and Pops' house.  Ryan came home about 3:00 and was SO excited when we told him.  Skyler walked through the door at 4:45, one hour before our departure time.  When she came in there was a stack of bags by the front door.  She looked at me and asked "Are we going somewhere?" and I said "Yes, we are going on a trip".  That is when my son, who was relaxing in his recliner and watching a Scooby Doo movie, turned his head around and said "Yup we are going to Disnyland".  I thought Skyler was going to come out of her skin.  It was so neat to surprise them like that.  So we left Sunday night got to the hotel and attempted to crash with full anticipation of the next day.  We got up early Monday morning and had breakfast at Goofy's Kitchen.  The kids had lots of fun there.  They were able to meet Pluto, Goofy, Chip (from Chip and Dale), Alice and Baloo.  They danced with them and helped Goofy mix some stuff up. 

 Next we headed off to Disneyland.  We rode rides from 10am to 10pm, it was a LONG day.  Emily even got to ride some rides.  She rode Peter Pan's Flight, It's A Small World (which was her absolute favorite!!!), The Hauted Mansion, Finding Nemo (Emily didn't really care for this one) and the Train.  Everyone really enjoyed The Matterhorn, Thunder Mountain and Space Mountain (well except Ryan).  Ryan didn't so much like the fact that he couldn't see the track on Space Mtn.  He cried when the ride was over, but he was ok. 

 Then we left the park and went to Tony Romas for dinner.  We were exhausted, which caused the sillys to set in.  Ryan (my friend), myself and Steven were in tears we were laughing so much.  I think at one point I actually started to cry, literally cry.  We had so much fun.  Then off to bed, no one had trouble sleeping Monday night.  Tuesday we woke up and headed off to iHop for breakfast.  After that we went to California Adventure.  We watched the 3D movie A Bug's Life, Emily HATED that movie!  Then we were off to Soarin' Over California.  The Lee family went in and rode it and then when they were done they watched Emily for us so we could ride it as a family.  It was SO neat.  You actually feel like you are flying.  I have NEVER had an experience like that in my entire life.  I don't know how they do it.  I did get motion sick and almost lost it, but was able to keep it together.  It was worth it!!  Next we walked around and found some food and then parted ways with our good friends.  They had a reservation at Ariel's Grotto and we wanted to ride one more rollercoaster before we left.  We were headed towards the biggest roller coaster in the park.  California Screamin'...we got there and Ryan stood up to the marker and he was BARELY by a hair big enough to ride the ride.  Pete and I told him over and over that it goes REALLY fast and it goes upside down.  We kept asking him are you sure you want to ride this ride and he kept saying yes, yes, yes.  Skyler, Zayna and I got in line first while Pete, Ryan and Emily waited for us.  When we got to the front of the line Zay's tummy wasn't feeling too well (our diet hadn't been the best the last couple of days) so she left through the exit and hung with the other 3.  So Sky and I rode the rollercoaster.  It scared the daylights out of Skyler, but I thought it was AWESOME!!  When we were done we ran down and told them all about it.  Ryan couldn't wait to get on.  Skyler decided she wanted to ride it again, so off she went with Pete and Ryan.  2 minutes later Skyler came running back, she didn't want to get on it again, she changed her mind.  Right then Zayna decides she wants to get on it so she takes off running to catch up with Pete and Ryan.  Minutes later Pete and Ryan come running down the ramp.  IT WAS AWESOME!!  When they first got off the ride Ryan said "That was not cool" ( only because that is his new thing right now ), but when they got to me he said "That was kind of awesome" with the biggest smile on his face while he was jumping around like a jumping bean.  I asked where Zay was and Pete told me he had no idea.  She came down the ramp at that point with the biggest smile on her face!!  She wasn't able to catch up with dad and Ryan so she rode it by herself and LOVED it.  She took off and rode it again.  Ryan wanted to ride it again too, but it was time for us to go.  We had an awesome 2 days of family fun.  My husband didn't work, was hardly on the phone and we got lots of time with him!!  I am so blessed and so thankful for my family!!!  I can't wait for our next adventure together.

Julie and Julia

Ok...so I am a little slow on the whole movie thing.  I have had the movie for a month, but have been waiting for my hubby to have the time for a movie so we could watch it together.  That hasn't so much happened because he just doesn't get that kind of time.  So I decided to watch it today while the house was quiet.  First of all I didn't realize that it was based on a true story, I thought that was kind of cool.  Second I thought that it was a cute movie, but not as good as I had expected it to be.  And thirdly I found it extremely discusting how everyone in the movie talked with their mouths full of food.  The husband was the worst.  Honestly he everytime he ate something he was shoving it into his mouth as if he hadn't eaten in days and he talked while he was shoving food into his mouth.  Kind of spoiled it for me.

Heart of gold

So this morning wasn't so different from most mornings.  The girls were at each others throats, which is just about an everday occurance.  They can be so mean to each other sometimes.  It drives me crazy the attitudes they display and the tone that comes out of their mouths!  So after a cat fight this morning we got in the truck and left for school.  I had made green chocolate chip cookies for Skyler and Ryan to take to school for their classes.  Skyler asked me how many I made for her and I told her 19, because that's how many kids are in her class.  She proceeded to inform me with great attitude and discust in her tone of voice that they have a new girl in class and so there are 20 kids now.  I was supposed to know this how?  Couldn't she have told me that last night when I was making the cookies?  What is up with the attitude?  Shouldn't she be grateful that I even MADE cookies in the first place?  All of that aside I told her that there would be plenty of treats there and not everyone would want to eat a cookie so she should be fine.  She continued to huff and puff and argue with me.  Then came the heart of gold.  My oldest daughter sitting in the backseat,didn't get a bag full of cookies to take to jr. high instead she had 2 small cookies in her lunch, offered her cookies up for her sister so that she would have 20.  She took the cookies out and gave one to her sister.  And I know for a fact that even if she had only one cookie she still would have given it to Skyler because that is who Zayna is.  She can be catty and attitudy sometimes, after all she is a teenager and a female, but mostly she is kind, loving and has a big heart of gold!  She is constantly giving to her younger brother and sister without regard for herself.  She selfless and she is a great example.  I love you my Ziggy Zayna and I am SO proud of you!  Thank you for making my day. :)