Dooce = Hilarious

I'm a big fan of Heather Armstrong's blog Dooce. She posted one today about baby farts and Oswald the Octopus that was so funny I thought I'd wet myself.

Please, please go read this. You'll thank me for it later.

**Disclaimer - her language is a little salty, but we're all adults, right?

http://www.dooce.com/2009/07/30/jons-44th

Trouble

Today Brenna pulled all the books and papers out of our bookshelf. As I was cleaning that up, I noticed she was missing. Here's how I found her under the table - after sucking on brother's blue marker. It's a good thing she's so stinkin' cute. (No worries - it was Crayola Washables, non-toxic! It came off with a little soap, water and chocolate milk. :-D )

Old School

I had a great time Thursday night catching up with some gals who knew me 'back in the day'! Ah, high school...when my hair was much longer, skirts were much shorter (believe it or not, I was a cheerleader then!) and my occupation of choice was slinging hot dogs at The Dog Shed - good memories! I feel like I've changed so much. It's been a quite a journey going from Cheerleader B to the Mighty B I am today. But I suppose that it's also true that the more things change, the more they stay the same!

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One thing we discussed was our new found love for saving money. We're all stay at home mom's, so every penny counts! So I thought I'd share some of my favorite websites that help me make better decisions. Hope you enjoy these Ashley and Tasha!!

Hot Coupon World - This site can be a little overwhelming because it's got SO much information. Just take it bit by bit and find which forums are most useful for you - I recommend the CVS forums!

Money Saving Mom - Also has a lot of useful tips on saving!

Simple Mom - This has become one of my favorite blogs. Lots of great information on just about every topic. She's doing a series now called Back to Basics that I'm really loving.

Do As I Say...

Today while driving to the grocery store...

Riley: Move Jackass!
Me: Riley! You shouldn't say that! That's a bad word!
Riley: Just you can say it Mommy?

Oops...Someone has a lead foot and a foul mouth apparently! I'll be watching that MUCH closer now!

The Game

Towards the end of the photo shoot, I was trying to get a good picture of the two kids together (their Build-A-Bear animals had to be in the pic too). Brenna thought it was hilarious to crawl off every time the girl snapped her picture. We finally got an awesome picture of both kids - except for my arm shoving Brenna back into the picture.

Peek-A-Boo

Brenna got her one year pictures taken today. Riley got his picture done in this same cube - she's suppose to stand up and peek out, but all she would do is poke her head out and laugh. My little gopher girl. More pics to come...:-)

That Amazing Thing Called Faith

You know how you always hear or read something just when you need to hear it? That has happened a lot to me ever since I started subscribing to the Pulse FM daily emails. This was today's. Thought you might need to hear this too. :-)

GO WITH THE FLOW

1st Thessalonians 3:7

“Therefore, brothers, in all our distress and persecution we were encouraged about you because of your faith.”

Stop being anxious about things that may never happen. If we really trust God, we don’t need a backup plan. Faith means that we have peace even when we don’t have all the answers…and guess what? We DON’T have all the answers.

Life will always be stressful if we are constantly trying to rearrange it. For example, yesterday I spent a couple of hours in a traffic jam going to the Elkhart County Fair. I can’t get upset about something like that-everybody is going to the fair, that’s just how it is.

But planning for obstacles inspired me to leave a little earlier, which keeps me from hurrying. Grow in wisdom, and place a high priority on keeping your peace in spite of any “traffic jams” you get into today.

Brenna's First Birthday

Make a Smilebox photobook

So Cute.

To Do List for July 12 through 18

For this week:
1. Clean out Brenna's Closet
2. Clean out Riley's closet
3. Swap treadmill and scrapbooking desk (they are trading rooms!)
4. Call the picture people and Olan Mills regarding pic appointments (I prefer the picture people, my mother in law wants Olan Mills - so I found coupons for both places!)
5. Measure closet for shelving
6. Clean fish tank (We are getting Riley some fish this week...)

I may add more things to the list, but this is all I can think of that I want to accomplish right now. It's been a long AND WONDERFUL weekend! Will post pics of Brenna's birthday party soon!

Tutu Pretty

It's Brenna's birthday weekend - let the festivities begin!
(I had this tutu made by Tiara's Tutus. It's handmade and incredible quality.
I'd strongly recommend her!)

Free Roastburger!

A while back, Brittany posted a coupon for a free roastburger. That coupon is back! Find it here!

Where do you keep...?

I have been trying to organize our house little by little lately. So far I've organized two cabinets - and they've stayed organized! This project is really bringing to light all the little areas in our house that holds our homeless stuff ; all the little things you need but don't really have a home for. I'm convinced that SOMEONE out there has found a great place for these items. So I'm going to find out and pass the knowledge on to you!

My first topic is: bread.

Currently our bread is tossed into the top part of our pantry on top of our canned goods. (Small pause while you marvel at my food storing abilities...). During the winter this isn't really a problem. I normally keep it over to the side on top of the soup cans since I don't use them often. During the summer the bread seems to breed like rabbits - hot dog buns, hamburger buns, english muffins, bagels, white bread, wheat bread - and I end up with 40 packages of bread on top of everything - getting smooshed and eventually molding before I pull it out again. There has to be a better way!

I went straight to the experts at Bread.com. According to the Federation of Bakers, wrapped bread (our standard, grocery store shelf variety) should always be kept in it's wrapper and tightly closed. When stored this way, it should stay fresh for several days. If it will take longer than a few days to finish your loaf you should NEVER put the loaf in the fridge! The average temperature in a refridgerator is approximatly 41 degrees - the perfect temp to make your bread stale! Place your bread in the freezer where it can live amongst the frozen veggies for up to 3 months. To thaw, just toast for about ten seconds.

You can now sleep better at night knowing how to properly store your bread. How do you store your bread??

Everyone Needs a Little Smile Sometimes

This video cracks me up. Very popular at our house.

Getting It Done

I don't know if anyone has noticed, but it's only July 5th and I've nearly finished my to-do list! I had given myself a month to finish this list and it's only taken about a week. With some focused effort I could have had all of the items crossed off (except the books - peace and quiet comes in such small increments at my house! I'm sure many of you fellow momma's can relate! I hope I don't offend any Jane Austen fans, but I cannot finish Sense and Sensibility. It's painful for me to read. Just so boring.) Anyway, the things that are left seem to be multiple step things - I need to do something else before I can finish them, so they are taking a bit more time.

Putting my to-do list down somewhere instead of keeping it all in my head was the simplest thing, but I accomplished so much just by taking that step. In the book, "Getting Things Done", David Allen suggests making lists of all of your 'to-do's' - daily, weekly, monthly, even those things you'd like to do at some point in time but have no concrete plans of doing it right now. His reasoning is that when you have all of these things floating around in your mind, you can't really get anything done because you're constantly bogged down. Your mind will only remind you that you need to do these things when you can't really do anything about it. His great example was to think of if you have any flashlights in your home that need batteries. Now think of when you are most likely to remember that you need batteries....right! When you go to use the flashlight!

So my goal is to make this a weekly habit. Every Sunday, writing my to-do list for that week. I even made a cute little button for it - so feel free to steal the button and join in! What's your to do list for this week? Here's mine:

1. Get tire fixed on car.
2. Backup pictures on discs.
3. Clean house for Brenna's Party
4. Shop for Brenna and her birthday party!
   
5. Gather financial paperwork for records.
   
6. Birthday present for my good friend.
   

This One is for You Mom

Good Morning Rock Star

Brenna woke up this morning with some serious bed head.
Must have been a sweet party in her crib last night!

(yawning - being a rock diva is exhausting work!)