April's 3rd Birthday Pictures

Yes, her birthday was in April.

I've got another page or two in the works.

If you ever want to come over and go through my scrapbooks it's a happy hobby of mine.

The 170's!

I made it down to the high 170's!

This is excellent.

I am very happy with myself.

Close to 220 in the last few weeks of pregnancy in early August so that's about 40lbs-ish of loss.

It's taken me about six weeks to lose the most recent two pounds so it's slow going now.

I'll get back to 160 probably in the Spring.

I was 150 in high school and in great shape so I'm happy with 160 after five kids and fifteen years since high school.

I owe a lot of my success to a very supportive bunch of ladies I met in an online weight loss support group for Christian moms.  We face a lot of the same challenges with our lives and lifestyles so it's great to have them to talk to and to be able to cheer each other on.

Curry Chicken

    A few weeks ago my husband had curry chicken at a restaurant near his office.  He came home and told me how much he liked it and asked if I could make it for him.  I told him I had no clue how to make curry chicken but I had curry and chicken so if he could find a recipe online that looked like what he ate I would be happy to try making it.
    My husband works for a company owned by a Chinese couple and my husband told the wife that he was looking for a recipe for curry chicken.  She brought him a box a few days later that contained bricks of curry stuff and told him how you cook them.  This was a lovely gesture on her part and my husband was excited to try it.  One slight difficulty, the box had instructions all in Japanese.  So my husband tried it and liked it well enough. I didn't love it or hate it but the spicy taste and the onions involved made it a dish I have to be careful of while breastfeeding our new baby. I just wasn't thrilled with it enough to want to eat it again.  None of the kids liked it.  Since my husband said it didn't taste like what he had at the restaurant we decided maybe the lack of English instructions had somehow foiled his attempt at curry chicken.
    I googled the only words I could read "ankee chicken" and google said "Was I looking for Yankee Chicken"  ummmm... no.
    So next I googled Japanese style curry chicken, lo and behold, on YouTube there was a lady using the box just like my husband had used and there were SUBTITLES! for the instructions she was giving as to how to make the dish.  Hers was pork though, not chicken.  Then I found a lady speaking English and cooking curry chicken just the same way my husband cooked it.  I watched both videos, my husband cooked it the way it was supposed to be cooked.
    Since the kids won't eat it and I was only okay with it we have decided it just isn't something we will be making again.  Maybe we can find the recipe for the chicken dish my husband had in the restaurant another day.
    Here are the links to the videos in case you want to try it.  I still have an unopened package of the curry stuff if you're interested.
    Here's the lady with the subtitles, watch the end of the video to see the little kid react to the dish the same way my kids did.
    Here's the lady speaking English, her food looks just like what my husband made and she assures us that her family likes it so maybe yours will too.
    I found it very funny that the kid's reaction in that first video needs no translation.

Costco Card Stand

Brilliant!

Saw a guy do this when I was in line in Costco.
Take the divider bar thing that you put between your groceries and the ones for the person ahead of you.  Put it upside down on the conveyor belt.  Stand your Costco card in the upside down divider bar.  It works like a business card holder and then you can get the stuff out of your cart and onto the conveyor belt without having to stop and dig out your card when it gets to be your turn.  Makes the Costco checkout thing just a bit faster and on a Saturday afternoon that makes a big difference.

Cute Sweater - Second Generation

I wore this when I was this size.

I have small fuzzy memories of this small fuzzy sweater.

The Birthday Cake

Here is the Elmo cake that I did for Andrew's birthday party yesterday.  He loved it.

Andrew: Elmo cake!  MY Elmo cake!  Got EYE-balls.

Yeah, the happy face says it all.  A lovely success.  He wanted one of the eyeballs for his piece.  I love that it turned out so well.  I'm going to keep looking for those form cake pans, they're just so much fun to do!

The Sisters

Here are some cute pictures of the girls that I took while we were out at the park on Andrew's birthday.

Krista

Kylie

April

Jessica

Andrew's Birthday

Under the sun lamps just a few days old.
This is one of my favorite pictures of Andrew when he was brand new.
It seems like such a long time ago or possibly just last week...
They grow up so fast!

Ready for the park, just need shoes.

The swings are his favorite.



Trying out the tunnel.





Just like the big kids.



I was so glad the weather turned out nice for the afternoon so we could go to the park on Andrew's birthday.  It was great to get out in the fresh air and sunshine.  Andrew loves the park!

Walking in front of reflective surfaces

I went to Target the other day and walked in front of the large windows to the front office in the front of the store and saw how I look from behind and beside.  I don't have any full-length mirrors around my house.  I was not thrilled with the view.  I am going to have to do something about this.

Venting and Complaining

Can I have a do-over on today, please?

     Round 1: First off it started at around 4am, not a good time to start the day.  Took a while to get the baby back to sleep and by then I couldn't sleep because my brain was in one of those holding pattern things it does where I can't shut off the hamster wheel.  Subject of crazy brain circles? - teething tablets.  Yeah, Andrew is teething and it's frustrating because he is just cranky and miserable.  So my brother told me to try teething tablets and this morning at about 4:45 I looked them up on the internet.  First thing I see is a recall alert for Hyland teething tablets and I know he mentioned that name so suddenly I'm trying to figure out if I should call him and tell him not to feed them to my nephew anymore.  I talk myself out of this because I'm pretty sure he would be cranky to be up that early (I know I was) and nothing could be done about the pills anyway.  Also, I don't want to make him think I'm judging his parenting because I think they are doing fine but I'm sure I would end up coming across all "you're poisoning your child" so I just posted the link to the recall to their page, my page, and the page of another friend who also said Hyland was the way to go.  Then I tried to go back to bed but mostly tossed and turned until 7:30 when I was awakened by my husband who was frustrated because our 7 year-old wouldn't get up and was going to be late for school and also because he couldn't find his shoes.  I tried to calm him down and did the whole "where did you last see them" thing with him because he does tend to just kick them off someplace.  The shoes were found behind the couch with a bunch of other stuff the same 7 year-old had stuffed back there instead of cleaning the room.  sigh.  Husband calmed down some and took 7 year-old to school.  Have to deal with her later.
      Round 2: Husband returns to finish getting ready for work and cheerfully informs me he will have to work this weekend.  I bite my tongue on cranky remarks and remind him that it's his sons birthday today and this weekend would be a good time to have a party or something.  Also, I ask him if he ever got a cake mix (I've asked him to do this a few times over the last week).  No, he wasn't really thinking of the birthday, never did get a cake mix, and is still planning on working this weekend.  He leaves for a quick trip to the store to get a cake mix.  Comes back, drops off cake mix, leaves for work.  April is okay with TV, Andrew and Jessica are still sleeping, I have vague hopes of going to sleep for just a few minutes.  Baby starts to cry and phone rings, buddy of Jared's couldn't find Jared's cell number, can I give it to him.  Yeah.  Crying baby wakes up big brother and the day has really begun.
      Round 3: Deal with diapers and food.  Baby is cranky and Andrew is cranky.  Get things settled down and go to check my e-mail.  Find angry message from person not to be named about me sending a reminder to vote that somehow offended this person.  Crap.  The reminder was simple hope you vote and had a smiley face at the end.  A SMILEY FACE!!  How is that offensive?  I checked the message I sent just in case I had spelled something wrong and put in a swear word accidentally or something.  Nope.  So I should have waited 24 hours to respond or something but I was already like 5 hours into my day at 9am and I wrote back that I wasn't questioning this persons life or intelligence and had sent the same reminder to A LOT of people.  So I'm hoping this person is just having one of those days, I certainly am, and will be fine again next time I see them.  Deal with some of the mess, start some laundry, feel beginnings of a headache and it's not even 10am.
      Round 4: Sister-in-law writes to inform me that while they did say they were going to buy the Hyland brand of teething tablets they found out about the recall and bought Little Teethers (after consulting the pharmacist) instead.  I missed that part.  Now I feel like an idiot but I'm even more glad I didn't call before 5 to tell them not to poison their child.  Spend a few minutes calling myself an idiot and questioning whether I should ever use the internet again because apparently I have problems.  20 minutes of research on the internet lead me to believe I am indeed an idiot because I can't figure out the pros and cons on the safety of the teething tablets.  Medical jargon confuses me.  People say they're great, but I'm undecided.  Headache continues.  I give up.
       Round 5: Suddenly realize that if husband isn't going to be home on Saturday I have to get Andrew's pictures taken today (you will never be able to follow the logic on this one so don't try) so I call the studio and get an appointment for 5:30 this evening.  Only available time is during dinner time for Andrew.  Politely take appointment while kicking myself for not making two appointments and then cancelling one because this kind of thing happens all the time around here with husband's schedule and punctuality issues.
      Round 6: Baby refuses to take morning nap.
      Round 7: Lunch is very late and kids are cranky.  I am hitting the edge of what I can handle.  I type blog entry to vent it all out.  Now I have to get back to work, I still have to be the mom.

Halloween

More costume pictures.

So cool.

We went to the Toys R Us thing and I have to recommend it, well organized and fun for the kids.

I love that in all the pictures the guy took for us April is entranced by Geoffrey.

A pretty good pic of me and my spider.

Halloween Costumes

Krista and Kylie.

Krista is the Tooth Fairy.

Kylie is Medusa, she picked it herself, she wanted the Uma Therman one from Percy Jackson.

April and Andrew.

April wanted to be a PINK witch.

Andrew got to wear the frog costume this year.

Going on close to 20 years of frog costume wearers in my family.

Jessica is the spider, I am the web.

Kind of hard to see my strings.

I'll try to get a better pic.

Thanks to:
Lois - The snakes and the hair piece for medusa.
Mom - The entire frog suit.
Lynn - The bodice for the witch.
Jared - The spider leg socks.

Scrapbook Page

Here's the other page of the ultrasounds I did.

The colors didn't scan quite right but it's mostly there.

As you can see, it's the later ultrasound so it's more gender specific than the last one.

Jessica is indeed a girl.

Scrapbook Page

Kylie and I worked on this one together.

I'm behind in my scrapbooking so it's ultrasounds from January 2010.

Motivation

      I've hit that phase right after the postpartum has mostly ebbed where I'm just kind of low on energy and motivation. I'm not sure if it's something to do with hormones, iron deficiency, some kind of vitamin imbalance from not getting out much, sleep cycle issues, or a cocktail of all of them enough to cause paralysis of the will power. It's the phase where I just don't feel like getting up in the morning. I literally wait for the baby to start crying before I drag myself out and every day I think to myself that if I had gotten out of bed when I woke up I could have exercised, gotten some housework done, maybe had a shower. I give myself guilt over not getting going fast enough so the rest of the day seems to be rushed with me trying to catch up to the kids and the house that are ahead of me in the avalanche of life.
      Some things I do to try and "fix" this are; taking vitamins, riding the exercise bicycle, working at some of my hobbies like scrapbooking and journal writing, setting goals, making lists, giving myself pep talks, praying, reading scriptures, and playing music I like. These usually do it for me but during this down phase they just don't have the same zip and it seems like so much more work than enjoyment to get to them. I am not sure if it's still part of the depression because one of the signs of depression is lack of interest in what you usually enjoy but this is less a lack of interest as a lack of time to get to them and hence a discouragement over that. In other words, I'm just so busy with the new baby and the work of life in general that I don't have time for me so I get discouraged and don't take time for me. Vicious cycle? Sort of.
      I would much rather have this phase than the deep sadness and random crying jags with horrible fear of death or harming my kids phase that is what it is for about eight weeks after I have the baby. There's no fighting that phase. This phase has light and hope and moments of happiness in it that create a kind of balance if I can keep from becoming guilt ridden and discouraged. People that have never gone through real depression think this is what depression is but the real stuff, well, it's so... I don't know, there aren't words.

Snow

Usually there is "warning snow", a few days of snow that falls and does not actually make big puffy drifts on the ground but rather melts and goes away.  Not this time.  Big puffy inches of snow overnight.  Durn.

Brown Desk

           I have a desk. It's a brown desk with one small drawer. Husband and I bought it back in the early days of marriage for a whopping $15 at a thrift store. We have both used the desk often.  We are tall people and the brown desk is a bit short for us. The single drawer is at just the right height to hit our knees if we move our legs under the desk.
           Recently my parents reorganized a few rooms in their house. They offered me a computer desk for the irresistible price of "free if you haul it away". It is a nicer desk than my brown desk. It has no drawers but it has more shelves. It is gray/grey.
           So, what to do with the knee-bruising brown desk? I moved the brown desk over a few feet, transferred all the computer stuff to the gray/grey desk, moved the brown desk into my kids playroom, moved the brown desk into the hallway, moved the brown desk into my brother's room (currently in China, brother, not desk or room) and now I can shut the door and not see the brown desk. My brother will be unhappy when he returns to find the desk taking up most of his room.

Anyone want a used brown desk?

Poem - The Question

This is from The Book of Virtues on Google books:
The Question
Were the whole world good as you –
–not an atom better
Were it just as pure and true,
Just as pure and true as you;
Just as strong in faith and works;
Just as free from crafty quirks;
All extortion, all deceit;
Schemes its neighbors to defeat;
Schemes its neighbors to defraud;
Schemes some culprit to applaud-
would this world be better?
If the whole world followed you––
followed to the letter–
Would it be a nobler world,
All deceit and falsehood hurled
From it altogether;
Malice, selfishness, and lust,
Banished from beneath the crust,
Covering human hearts from view–
Tell me, if the world followed you––
Would this world be better?

      I had a bit of this poem memorized from somewhere "If the world followed you, followed to the letter, tell me, if it followed you, would the world be better?"  I wanted to add it to my facebook page as my current favorite quote.  Not knowing the author, I did a bit of googling and found that it's from a longer poem and no author is listed.  Now I'd love to know who wrote it but in the mean time I just think it's a good poem to live by.

Kylie's Shower Thermometer

I put Kylie in the shower yesterday evening and as she was standing there telling me if the water was still too cold she was all bent over and had her behind stuck out in the spray of water.

Me - Is that good?  Warm enough?
Kylie - Yes, just right.  I can tell because I have a thermometer in my butt.
Me - (trying not to laugh) A thermometer in your butt?
Kylie - When my butt feels the water is warm the rest of me can get in too. (she backs in under the spray)
Me - (leaving the bathroom laughing)

Addicted to farmville

Jared and I started playing farmville on facebook together as something fun to do as a couple.  I was too pregnant and sick to enjoy going out and we needed a date activity we could do with the kids around.  We were excited to find something we both enjoyed because most of the time our hobbies don't really thrill each other.
Now I am an addict.
I wonder if any of my trees need harvesting...