Oh, Crazy Days

Good gracious! This past week has been crazy. Since Easter it seems like the Easter Bunny had thrown up all over the house. I'd clean up Easter messes (grass, trash, eggs, etc) and almost immediately there was more! I must say, that is one of the most frustrating things in the world. I clean and clean but nothing ever stays that way for long. I finally got a lot done yesterday and took before and after pictures to make myself feel better so I could see more of a difference.

Living Room BEFORE

Living Room AFTER

Toy Room BEFORE

Toy Room AFTER

Kitchen BEFORE

Kitchen AFTER

Eating Area BEFORE

Eating Area AFTER

Boy Bathroom BEFORE

Boys Bathroom AFTER

Of course, that didn't last long either but at least it's better. I also got a lot of laundry done and put away. Now if I could just wrangle up these crazy, roudy boys I'd be good to go. Lately it seems like they are fighting more than usual and Jameson has been really cranky and clingy (oh and DROOLY! I think he's teething) so it seems like I can't really get anything done. The boys also haven't been getting any magnets because I can't get them to clean up AND do their chores every day. It's SO frustrating. FINALLY today we got some things accomplished! Although the attitude on all 3 of the bigger boys is just ridiculous... hopefully next week we can work on that and figure out what is going on with them. They are all making me insane.

Hoppy Easter!

Jameson got to celebrate his first Easter with his brothers and daddy in the morning and then later with some friends. All the boys had a great time eating their candy, playing with toys, hunting for eggs, decorating cookies, dying eggs, and eating other yummy treats! HOPPY EASTER!

Accomplished!

Wow do I feel accomplished today! Easter is tomorrow and I was stressed trying to clean and get as much stuff done today as I could. The morning should be relaxed since it will just be my little family but I have a couple friends coming over in the afternoon and I'm super anal about having food, treats, and a clean house when people come over. So this is the list of the things I got done today:

• Baked cupcakes from scratch
• Made chocolate ganache icing from scratch
• Decorated cupcakes
•  Made meatballs (the sauce will go tomorrow and warm it all in the crock pot)
• Ran to the store for a few things I needed (flour... eggs...)
• Folded and put laundry away
• Baked sugar cookies from scratch (the boys help make a few cut outs)
  
  

  

• Straightened the house 
• Cleaned the kitchen
• Clean the boys bathroom
• Swept the floors

While I was at the store the middles were napping and I had Jameson with me so I set Logan up with stuff so he could finally paint the garden stone that he made and has been begging to paint for a week now. He's such an awesome little artist!

And of course I did the usually taking care of the boys, making food and feeding them, baths and all that fun stuff. The Easter Bunny also came to our house tonight! I love the holidays!

Why do I blog?

It occured to me the other day that I have very few followers on here... and even less comments on my blog posts. That got me thinking, WHY do I keep blogging when no one seems to be reading? I guess it's kind of an outlet for me now. Initially this blog was going to help keep me in check and get me to keep up with household things... and it definitely has done that... but it's also done more. This has turned into a place I can show off some of the awesome things my boys do and just get some of my life out there and off my chest. As much as I started this blog to be in touch with other people, I've realized now that this blog is for me. Even though I would like to think my life is interesting enough for others to want to read about it and comment on it, I know it's not. So here I keep on bloggin' for myself and whoever else may be interested in my life and my quest to be a better mommy.

Creative Kiddos

For Logan's birthday this year he got a cute little art thing to make cement stepping stones. We hadn't done them yet, there was 4 and I thought each of the boys could make one and I decided to try it today. It didn't go as well as I'd hoped :( The box only came with 1 mold to mix the cement stone in and so I had to improvisee so that CJ and Wyatt could do one too and figured I'll do Jameson's another time. Logan and CJ really had fun doing theirs... Wyatt didn't understand much but it was still cute. Probably sometime tomorrow we will paint them because it said to let them dry for a few hours.

 Then I was in the mood to bake after dinner and had gotten stuff to make a ganache and decided to try it out. I made the ganache (which I realized I had the wrong chocolate - unsweetened- so I had to work with it and it finally turned out pretty good) and then I topped some sugar cookies that I made from scratch. I had some extra ganache and tried to make some truffles but they didn't look so pretty and since the ganache wasn't as sweet as it probably should have been they didn't come out the way I'd wanted. But you live and you learn and next time my ganache will be PERFECT and I may do them on the cookies again because they came out super tastey! We dropped some off with the neighbors so I don't eat them all lol.



Sugar cookies with chocolate ganache

 The boys really love to play outside and they love playing with the sidewalk chalk a lot. The weather has been great for playing outside this past week or 2. It hasn't been cold but it hasn't been really hot and humid either. Yesterday the boys were out front playing with the chalk and Logan saw a box we had laying around and decided to make what he called "a puppet show". He ripped of some stuff on the open part to make it bigger and then decorated a scene inside with the chalk. Then he went and got some toys and some of his art from school to put inside the box to make his "puppet show". It was really cute and I love how creative he is!

 The day before yesterday was the Kindergarten Fiesta Parade at Logan's school. It was really fun to see all the different and creative floats! I couldn't help but wonder how many were done completely by the parents though. For Logan's I helped a lot, especially since I had to use hot glue to keep a lot of the stuff together, but it was all his ideas. I think his came out really cute! It's hard to see in the pictures but he made a Fiesta Train and he put in his little zebra named Rainbow and his Woody toy from Toy Story to ride along.

Shop-a-holic!

There is a history of shopaholics in my family for certain. My mom was, by far, the biggest shopaholic there is. I grew up in stores like Ross, Marshalls, Tuesday Morning, and all sorts of other thrifty shopping places. I will openly admit that I LOVE to shop! However, I HATE to spend money! Most of the time I don't go out and do any real shopping the way I grew up. When I go to walmart I'll pick something up here and there but that's usually the extent of shopping for me. Recently I realized that I was in need of clothes to wear to go on my observations for school. Some of the things that I have that would be appropriate don't really fit me, well, most of my clothes don't really fit me, and I don't have a lot of formal clothes to wear. For my observation today (Wednesday) I knew I needed to get at least 1 or 2 outfits so yesterday I took Logan and Jameson with me to Ross (man, I love that store) and went shopping for the first time in what feels like forever. There was a TON of stuff that I wanted to buy but because I hate to spend money I tried to keep my spending under $50. I finally decided on 2 super cute dresses and 2 cute shirts (they'll go with some black pants thta I can fit into, i think...). I still have more things I want to get and need to get but I'm so happy to have a few new things and I'm so ready to clean out my closet and fill it back up again! :) I really have to becareful because I know I could totally go crazy and shop and spend money every day! I won't spend a lot of money but if I did it every day like I want to it would totally add up!

one of my pretty new dresses

An OverAll Awesome Day!

I do believe Hell froze over today... I got up and took Logan to school and when I got home and took the baby from my husband he got out of bed to go to the bathroom and had said he was going to set his alarm for 9 to do homework. I asked him about the lawn because he said he was going to fertalize the back and mow in the front today... So he got up and out and did the lawn before starting homework and has been up ALL day! Having him up was so nice and I was so productive because he was being productive! I've found that when he is sleeping all day then I get grumpy and don't want to do anything since he's not doing anything, but when he is up then I feel bad sitting and doing nothing so I get up and do things. I got a lot of laundry done, dishes done, kitchen cleaned, clothes put away, the boys rooms cleaned up, and started dinner all by 11am! It helped that Jameson was asleep pretty much that whole time too so I was able to do stuff.

After a productive morning I went to get Logan from school and after his homework was done we got started on his first ever big school project! All the kindergarteners have to make a float for FIESTA that they will pull in a parade at the school. Logan decided he wanted to make a train so ... we started on our

Fiesta San Antonio Train!



CJ helping Logan with his Fiesta San Antonio Train



Then we had dinner and Logan had a baseball game. He did AWESOME! This is his 5th season of tball and for the first time ever he did a SLIDE into HOME! I was so excited I honestly almost cried! I think today was the first time I have watched him play baseball and he was really enjoying himself! Next season for Fall Ball he'll be doing coach pitch (if he sticks with baseball) and it should be a lot of fun watching him learn and play and see him actually have to try out for a team. The game today ran late so it was a rush to get home, shower, and into bed but who cares if you are going to sleep a little late when you've had such an awesome day?

Busy Busy Bumble Bees!

The past few days have been busy. A friend I hadn't seen in many years came to visit Friday. Saturday we had Tball game and then a birthday party and another party on Sunday too. So lots of busi-ness this week-end and then stressing over school work. The house has been pretty clean, although the other night I had to take away a ton of toys from the toy room. They weren't even playing with them, just taking toys out and dumping them or throwing them. So that was it with those and into the laundry room they go!

This morning was the first time in over a week that I was awake enough to work out. It felt really good and I got about 15 minutes of Zumba done and I hope to do at least the same tomorrow.

Tuesday's are my school nights so Hubby gets all 4 boys to himself! He does a really good job with them most of the time. Before I left for class I let him get dinner started and I set the boys up to do an art project. Logan had found a brown paper bag and asked if he could make a puppet. I didn't have any other small bags but I had a big one and figured they could all decorate that one together. Since noone would really be able to keep a close eye on the boys we decided they could use stickers to make their puppets. They came out pretty cute and I got to see their artwork when I got home from school.