I’ve been Tagged

I’ve been tagged by three separate bloggers in the past couple weeks! I love making such good bloggy friends, and I love it when they give me awards. Sometimes I’m not good about responding. Today I want to get them all into one post, and tag some more great bloggy friends!

*Sadly I cannot find the other two nominations! I know who they were, I just cannot find their blogs….and well Joel is chomping at the bit to get cows moved today! I’d better get a move on so I don’t upset him! LOL So if you tagged me, please please let me know again in these comments and I’ll dedicate another post to it!!!! *

Jess over at Welcome to the Zoo tagged me with this lovely award! You might remember I helped Jess out a while back by getting a bunch of cloth diapers donated and mailed out her way! She’s such a sweet lady!!

The Rules:
1. Thank the person who gave you this award.
2. Share 7 things about yourself.
3. Pass the award along to 15 bloggers who you have recently discovered and who you think are fantastic!
4. Contact the bloggers you've picked and let them know about the award.

First of all Thanks Jess! You’re such a sweet mama and I’m glad to know you! I’m glad we’ve become friends!  I’ve decided I’m going to share 15 things about myself, and then tag 7 mommies!!! Mainly because of time constraints I’m doing it this way!

1. I hate doing laundry. Well not so much washing/drying just folding. I also hate to put it away. It’s not uncommon to come over to my house at any time and see a basket of laundry or folded laundry just sitting on my floor. In fact there are two baskets sitting in the living room now, and folded laundry just sitting there! :(

2.I love baseball season, and Joel is coaching. Which means I’m doing books. . . I have no idea what I’m doing when it comes to books! OOPS! I’m getting there though! Joel just laughs at them!

3. Sometimes I schedule my blog posts. Really I don’t know if I’d ever blog if I didn’t schedule things.

4. This blog post was interrupted mid way because Joel woke up from his mini nap, and declared that it was time to leave. NOW. to move cows.

5. Yes we have cows, No we do not live on a farm. Unfortunately. Hopefully soon though.

6. I love watching Food Network. I wish I could cook like that, I’m sure I could if I tried, but I don’t try. Plus some of the things they make I know my family wouldn’t eat.

7. I also love watching HGTV and all the design shows. I wish I had a $2000 budget for every redesign I’d love to do! Sometimes I secretly think I could do it for way less!

8. I’m a horrible housekeeper. Oh wait we kind of discussed that in number 1, didn’t we?

9. The reason I’m a horrible house keeper? My friends live in my computer. My sanity lives in my computer. I get on the computer to get socialization. I know if I actually got my housework done I could make real friends outside my computer…..Don’t worry Joel and I argue about this all the time, so don’t tell him I actually admitted that. (BTW Joel if you’re reading this, which I’m sure you are….just totally ignore this one!)

10. I love to cook, but can only do it if the kitchen is clean. Want to know when my kitchen gets clean? Yup right before I cook it…

11.Secretly I’d love to have  a clean house. I go to bed thinking of ways I can be a better housekeeper, better wife. Sadly when I wake up though those ideas are gone.

12. Why do all these random things have to do with cleaning….probably b/c my house is trashed and I know it! :(

13. I love to read. Books. But not steamy romance novels. Nope I like Jr & HS fiction. Why I have no idea. I can’t seem to read slutty novels or even science fiction novels.

14. I can crochet…..but I hardly ever finish anything. I’ve only ever finished 3 things. A blanket for Kaitlynn…..(that I started for MacKenzie), and the hat & sweater I did for my niece.

15. I also love to sew! But see number 14.

16……….I know I said I’d only do 15……but I forgot to tag people! :( OOPS!!! See how forgetful I am!

I’m going to tag these amazing blogs, not only because they’re my friends, but because I love reading what they write!
Katie from Katie Talks About
Amanda from “popp”ing out one letter at a time
Melissa from My 2 Blessings
Gayle from The White House
Joanna from Baby Gator’s Den 
Kelli from Betters Days Ahead

Cleaning house……or not

I’m so bad at cleaning up things it’s not even funny. Whenever I find a new website that I like I throw it into my bookmarks menu. There are some folders, but usually I’m in such a hurry to get moving that I just throw them wherever they go. IT’s bad. Really bad. Like to the point where I NEEDED a link, and can’t find it! :(

So I’m going to spend the next few hours just organizing my tabs and bookmarks! Please tell me I’m not the only one who needs to clean house on their computer?? Oh yeah & I need to get pictures put on to CD’s as well! My computer is running so slow it’s not even funny!!

Wordless Wednesday

Catching up.

Baseball season officially is underway. Which means we’re going to be busy for the next 6 weeks or so. Even more busy than we were last year because Joel is head coach for Dahrran’s team.

So what have we been up to the last two weeks? Well let’s see. My step brother graduated from High School, which I baked cakes for. Dahrran had his last day of school, and so trying to entertain them all has been a challenge. We’ve had a bonfire at Grandpa’s house.

Here are just a few pictures from Graduation day. Jake is the last of us kids to graduate! We’re so proud of you bud!

    

I promise to catch up on the blog, and get back to regular programming soon. Hopefully this summer doesn’t kick my behind. I’m going to cherish every moment. Next fall Dahrran will be in second grade, MacKenzie will be in Kindergarten, and Kaitlynn will go to preschool 4 days a week 1/2 days! I won’t know what to do with myself!

Carry on, back to your regular scheduled blog reading now.

Nifty Nappy Giveaway Winner

I’ve taken days longer than I’d expected to get this winner chosen, but now I give you winner number 414.

Carolena is a super sweet new blogger with a cute little girl named Elenore. You’ll love all the pictures on her blog!

Congrats Carolena, you have 48 hours to respond to my email!

A little update on us!

So this week is Graduation week at our house. No I do not have children graduating, but I do have a step brother graduating High School. He is the last of us kids to graduate high school. So I’ve been a busy beaver this week. I offered to bake cakes for graduation, and I didn’t realize it would be such a task.

I’ve used 8 2lb bags of Powdered Sugar in two days. We bought 4 bags to begin with, and I figured it would be enough. As you seasoned cake experts now laugh at me! We then bought out the little convinces store. I then ran out again. Dad brought over what he had. I ran out again. So this after noon we went back to get a couple more bags. FINALLY I am done making cakes!

So since I didn’t get around to closing the Nifty Nappy Giveaway, I’m going to leave it open for another week!!! Why not? Plus I’m not going to have time to post tomorrow as tomorrow is graduation, and on Sunday I’d like to just relax! It will now end Thursday May 20th.

As far as everything else goes. We had our last calf born the other night. It gives us a grand total of 2 bulls, &  4 heifer calves.  3 black, 2 red, and one smoky grey. So that ends calving season…….and begins/continues breeding season! YAY!

My house is filthy! Worse than the pictures I posted before. There is CLEAN Laundry everywhere. My step sister is in town and before she can even go to bed tonight I have to get 2 loads of unfolded & 3 loads of folded laundry!

So I’d better get my but in gear. It’s 11:34. I’ve been awake since 7:30am with only 3 hours of sleep.

Wordless Wednesday – OR NOT

Cloth Diapers for a friend. I know I haven’t posted this yet. And I promised an email to all the mama’s that helped me out, with pictures. But I’m sorry this is going to have to do!

Jessica is a great mom to two beautiful kiddos. But just a few short months ago her life changed. She was called to be the caregiver for her two small nieces. Did I mention she has two kiddos, and her oldest is only 4? Her nieces are young as well. This mama has 4 little kiddos under the age of 4 living at her house. She’s one strong mama.

One night she mentioned that she’d love to be able to cloth diaper both girls to help save on their diaper bill as well as save some of the trash going into their can. This is when my brain child was born. I decided I was going to put a box of diapers together even if I had to send her all my diapers.

Thankfully there are a ton of great mom’s out there on Twitter & they answered my call on #clothdiapers search! I asked them to send one diaper they wern’t using and I would send them all on. Some mama’s were able to spare 3 or 4 diapers! In total we were able to get her 18 more cloth diapers, as well as some wipes, fleece liners, and a gift card to Top to Bottom Baby Boutique.

Bottom Row of Diapers, Top row of Diapers

   

My sweet little helper!

  

The total Loot.

You can read Jessica’s post here on her box.

Thank you to all the ladies who helped me out!!!

Katie Sanchez
Chanda Pressley
Andrea Campbell
Renee Tower
Joanna Stepka
Jessica Quick
Kaylyn Buckner|
Shannon Story

Ten on Tuesday

1. Where did the weekend go? Seems like it was just Friday! Seriously! On Sat. Dahrran and I hung out and cleaned carpets. It feels so good to have the living room carpet white again!

2. I’ve never gotten around to blogging about Dahrran’s spring program. He did so good. He actually had a speaking part & didn’t forget any of it! We were so proud of him. I took a video of it with my phone but you couldn’t hear him so I decided I wouldn’t put it up! His lines were “Betty bit a bit of bitter butter. Bleck! A crow flew over the river with a rump of raw liver.” So if you can’t tell they were tongue twisters!

3. Picture of Dahrran with his teacher. Miss Densberger. She’s such a sweetheart!


4. I’m also behind on blogging MacKenzie’s 4th Birthday! Want to know something else? We haven’t really had a party for her yet. I feel bad about it, but things were just so crazy around her birthday that we celebrated with Joel’s parents and here at home but not with my dad/grandparents yet. What kind of mom does that make me. It’s been a month now! :(

5. The girl wanted a Barbie cake for her birthday. She was just in luck because one day when we were out thrift shopping I came across the pan for a couple bucks. Plus, this was super easy to do! I feel there will be plenty more Barbie Cakes in our future!

 

6. I kind of feel bad for not including any pictures of Kaitlynn in this 10 on Tuesday post.

7. Just to be nice. I’ll post a few of her….but maybe I’d be nicer if I didn’t!

8. Cold hard proof of what it’s like when I try to get pictures for Favorite Fluff Friday’s posts. Kailtynn in her Tot Wraps cloth diaper.

9. Kaitlynn is cuddled up on my lap right now. This is night number two when she is awake and comes down wanting to cuddle. Usually fussy because she can’t get to sleep on her own. I hold her in my arms and within
10 minutes she is asleep. I just don’t want to get in the habit of this. Although I tell myself one day I won’t get this so I’m going to take it while I can…what would you do? Put her back to bed, or just cuddle her to sleep?

10. A cute Picture of the kids together!

Happy Mother’s Day

 

 

  

Happy Mother’s day to my mom, my mother-in-law and my step-mom.

Crock Pot Chicken

You can’t tell me that doesn’t look delish! A friend was nice enough to send me this recipe a while back and I have to say I’m in LOVE with it! It was so yummy. With or without noodles. Here you have it. The original instructions are on the website. I’m just going to put what I used

Cream Cheese Chicken

This is what I USED:

4 Frozen Chicken Breast

Pampered Chef Crushed Peppercorn & Garlic Rub

(you can order this from me)

2 cloves of garlic pressed

2 cans Cream of Mushroom Soup

Chicken Bullion granules mixed with water to make 4 cups.

Block of Cream Cheese (add last)

Instructions:

Put everything except for the cream cheese into the crock pot. Cook on low for 6 hours, or until the chicken is cooked through and begins to shred. Shred the chicken with two large forks or I used my Pampered Chef Mix & Chop (LOVE THAT THING!!!), and mix in the block of cream cheese. Switch the crock to high and cook for another 30 minutes, or until the cream cheese is fully melted.

Serve over pasta. I cooked it then added it straight to the crock pot and mixed in some fresh grated parmesan cheese. SUPER Yummy. We serve this with peas & Garlic Bread!

Favorite Fluff Fridays – Nifty Nappy Cloth Diapers

Welcome to this week’s Favorite Fluff Friday! Are you a fitteds girl? I wasn’t. I was a strictly pocket girl. That was until I decided after starting this Favorite Fluff Fridays adventure. I decided to really  give you my true favorites I needed to try all different types of cloth diapers. We also were having some night time issues (all you diaper mama’s know what I’m talking about!) and all of my twitter friends told me I needed to try Nifty Nappy Cloth Diapers at night.

In came Nifty Nappy. Like I said all my twitter #clothdiapers (search it in twitter just like that if you want to find other mom’s that cloth diaper) mama’s told me that Nifty Nappy fitted diapers with her woolie wraps were the solution to our night time problems. After looking over her website, I settled on a package and decided I should check with Joel first.

Late one night I asked Joel if I could purchase some new diapers just for night time use. He said sure whatever. Little did he know I was actually going to be buying 5 diapers and 2 wool covers. Wool is another thing I had absolutely NO experience with. I didn’t even know anything but the basics (it was waterproof naturally).

I ordered my cloth diapers and waited for them to come. It took them a little longer than normal because Vilate was out of fabric to make the Nappy Inserts, but she was great about emailing me to let me know they were on backorder. When they finally arrived we had to try them out! The very first night I put one on Kaitlynn before ever prepping it (note: this is not recommended by Nifty Nappy) cause well I just had to try it out! We used it with the woolie wrap and I was pleasantly surprised when Kaitlynn woke up completely dry and didn’t smell like urine at all!

These diapers are great! And paired with Nifty Nappy Woolie Wraps they’re bullet proof! I love wool! It is the best cover over a fitted diaper! We occasionally use them over a pocket diaper at night just for extra protection. Vilate also is great at helping to save the planet. All of her woolie wraps are made of upcycled wool sweaters. This means she goes to local thrift stores and finds sweaters that might have other wise been thrown away if they weren’t sold, and then makes them into woolie wraps.

They are also a one size cloth diaper. Which means they will fit babies from roughly 8 pounds up to 35 pounds. To test this theory out I decided to put one on our sweet little niece. Now her mama isn’t on the Cloth bandwagon yet, and no matter how hard I try I can’t convince her it’s just as easy as disposables. I also didn’t really want to wake her up because we were in the middle of a little photo shoot, and mama didn’t want nude pictures, so I put it on over her diaper & onesie. But you can see how well it fits a newborn. Bailey was only a week old in these pictures and it fits her really well! She’s right at 8 pounds, and I think if I’d had her diaper off I could’ve got an even better fit.



And as you know by now I cannot show them to you on Kaitlynn. She will not sit for pictures! :( As much as I try. If I try to get a picture of her just running around, she see’s me then runs off. I was hoping I’d had some pictures on the computer from when we got them, but I must not have taken any. We truly love these fitteds. Nifty Nappy Fitteds were our first fitted, and have opened my eyes to the world of fitteds. I love these diapers!

BUY IT:
Nifty Nappy Fitteds retail for $22.00
Woolie Wraps retail for: $25.00

WIN IT:
Vilate was kind enough to offer up a $35.00 gift card to her website!!!!!

MANDATORY ENTRY:
Head on over to Nifty Nappy and let me know what your favorite fabric is as well as what fabrics you’d like to see (themes/prints/solids you name it)

Extra Entries:
(one per entry unless otherwise stated, leave comment for each)
Follow my blog via Google Friend Connect
Subscribe to my RSS Feed
Grab my button (bottom of the blog)
Follow me on Twitter: @amongthemess
Follow Vilate on Twitter: @myniftynappy
Follow Vilates Blog
Become a Facebook Fan of Nifty Nappy
Grab Vilates Button for the Website
Subscribe to Nifty Nappy’s Newsletter
Tweet this giveaway: Be sure to include @myniftynappy @amongthemess & #clothdiapers (once per hour)

Contest Ends Thursday May 13,2010 at Midnight CST

I was NOT provided a diaper for this review, all statements above are of my own opinion & were not swayed by the offer of a gift card giveaway.

Children’s Museum – Field Trip

We went on the last field trip of First Grade last week. It was a rainy cold day and at first I didn’t know if we’d get to enjoy the park for lunch or not, but the clouds parted and we were able to have a nice day. First up was the Children’s Museum, and then the park for lunch, and then off to the UNL Dairy Store where we got a tour as well as sample ice cream!

 

The tunnels were closed off when we first got there but as soon as they opened up, all the kids headed straight for them!

Dahrran was chased by the girls.

Dahrran loves the water whenever we go. And then there is Dawson & Dahrran two farm boys at heart!

Dahrran’s class minus one student. This is the whole first grade with both teachers. There are 11 kids in Dahrran’s class!

On the bus ride home. Daylee & Dahrran. She was a rabbit he was a penguin.

A fun weekend!

The weekend went way too fast, but it was so much fun! We had a great time just hanging out. We hung out at the Naturally Green Expo all weekend. I have to say I was not impressed at all! It was rather dull. They said there would be thousands of people and at the end of day one they hadn’t even gotten rid of their 500 free gift bags! :( I’m not sure where it went wrong. I can say that there wasn’t really any advertising in front of the building to let you know it was there. I drove right past it on Saturday when I headed down there. It honestly could’ve been a great show if they’d actually got people in the door!

I did get to talk with a few mommies about cloth diapers. Just not as many as I’d liked! We were able to inform a few grandma’s though. One of them even informed us her daughter was still using pins & plastic pants! We couldn’t believe it. So we sent grandma away with a Snappi and a Thirsties cover in hopes that she can convince her daughter to use them. There was also another grandma there who informed us her daughter was using pocket diapers, but wanted to buy her some prefolds. She came back the next day and informed us her daughter was too good for prefolds  & bought some diaper pins instead for herself!

All in all though I had a good time hanging out with Jess. We went to a great Mexican place with the best Margarita’s as well as the best chicken taco salads! I so want to go back. Maybe I can convince Jess to bring me one when I crave one now. . . Or not but still! YUM!! I’m not sure if it’s a local just to Omaha place or what, but I LOVE IT!! It was nice to get to hang out with the girls & not have to worry about kids the next morning. I’d do it again in a heart beat!



Here is just a little sneak peek of the outfit I made for our new niece. I will have more pictures later as I edit them but I wanted to show you the little sweater/hat combo! Let me know what you think!

My sister is coming home this weekend to stay! The first time in MONTHS!! I love her but she hasn’t stayed the night with us in a long time! I miss my sister! This just means that I need to get the 5 loads of laundry that are sitting on the guest bed folded and put away! I’ve been doing good at getting laundry washed but I need to get them folded! Anyone want to come help??

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I know I haven’t drawn a Favorite Fluff Friday winner yet from last week. Nor did I get the new post up. Sadly, I think Favorite Fluff Friday will be coming to an end soon. Unless we have another baby I’m not sure I’ll be able to do it!! Kaitlynn is going to be potty training soon, and so I’m looking more for cloth trainers. If you know of someone who makes great ones I’d appreciate if you’d point me in their direction! It’s getting harder and harder to change Kaitlynn’s diaper as well as to take pictures for Favorite Fluff Friday’s!
Without Further Ado I give you the winner of the Favorite Fluff Friday Tot Wraps winner!

Comment number 64 belongs to a great mom! Kelli has become one of my good friends and I’m so excited for her! 

Go on over check out her blog and give her some loves! She’s a SAHM to two beautiful kiddos! Landyn & Lilly are just 15 months apart so she’s got her hands full but is doing a wonderful job!!!

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That about ends this post!  I’m hoping I can catch up on Laundry enough to come back to my computer and catch up on blogging! I miss all my favorite blogs. I’ve lurked on a few lately but haven’t had the time to comment! Just know I’m thinking about you all & wish I had more time to come leave you some love!! Hopefully this week!