Happy Birthday Dahrran

I’m a little behind on the blogging bandwagon, but that seems to always be the case around these parts! In an effort to be a better blogger,  I’m going to sit down a few nights a week and just blog.

We celebrated Dahrran’s birthday by having  a sleep over again this year. They seem to have a little more fun when they’re in their own surroundings. We did take them out to the farm again like last year, thankfully this year we didn’t come home covered in Mud like last year!

These boys will be friends for life! Dahrran had three of the four over last year, and has since added the fourth. They’re all great friends. Dahrran has had sleepovers with two of the boys as well. I love that he has a great group of friends already!

The kids have been asking for Nintendo DS’s for about a year now. They really started asking for them around Christmas. At the time we decided it was best if we didn’t have to buy 3 of them at one time. We decided birthdays would be best since they’re all spaced out. Poor Kaitlynn though will not get her’s until August!

And just a little walk down memory lane if you want! Birthday’s past.

An Igloo

MacKenzie’s teacher has this project every year where they have students bring in milk jugs (empty and rinsed of course!) to school so they can build an igloo. It’s such a great activity for the kids to get to learn about recycling. As the igloo starts to fall apart they take them to be recycled. The kids love having something they can play in, and they get to learn too.

This project is something great, and would take quite a while if you tried to do it alone, but it’s a great teacher resource! Total cost of project is hot glue sticks to put it all together! :) 

Bowling – a Date night

Joel and I don’t usually do “date” nights. I mean we’ll go out for supper, and then come home. To me that’s not really a date. It’s supper, which I would’ve had to fix anyways. I love going out doing “something” instead of just sitting down for a meal. So a moth or so ago when we were trying to work on things we decided to go Cosmic Bowling, basically the lights are off except the fun, funky black lights. Everything glows and it’s really fun!

There are pink balls, green balls, all these funky colors and they all pretty much glow in the dark. Unless you find a regular ball instead (like Joel did!) He has to be the difficult one! :P

 

Most of the games ended up like this one. You wouldn’t know it but I was beating him by almost 40 at one point! He always comes back to kick my rear!

While we were out I tried to get cute pictures of each of us. His all turned out good, most of the pictures he took of me turned out like this. Not ONE of them was a good shot of my face, most of them were blurry. Oh well. At least my butt looked good in those jeans!

 

In the end we had a great night, and even ended up with a decent picture of us together!

Overcoming this feeling

If you’re new here you might not know that we’ve had a miscarriage. Only one, so please don’t feel overly sorry for me there are moms out there who truly know the loss. We’re just amatures when it comes to this whole thing. We have friends who’ve had multiple losses and have no kids yet. So I don’t really feel that bad for myself. I mean come on, I have 3 perfectly healthy children what more could I ask for.

But yet there is this sinking feeling every time someone else tells me they’re pregnant. I get angry. Upset. Anxious. And then the joy sets in for them. Some how the feeling fades away and I become happy for them. But until that feeling passes I put on a happy face and tell them Congratulations. It’s just how I deal.

I don’t want to deal anymore. I want to be. I want to truly be happy for them when they tell me, excited for them. After all it’s  been over a year, shouldn’t I have moved on by now. Though when July rolls around I know I’m going to cry. We should’ve been celebrating our sweet little baby’s first birthday. Instead we’ll carry on, and get through the day.

What’s harder almost though than knowing someone else is carrying a baby, is the face Joel gets when he finds out. It’s pure disappointment. He wants another baby just as much as I do. The baby we lost was one that brought us together after a rough  patch in our marriage. The loss brought us closer. We’ve struggled to figure out where to go from here since, but have finally found a common path. One we want to head down together.

So tell me, how do you over come this? Will I feel like this, until we complete our family and have another baby? What if that day never comes? That is the real question.

Family Pictures

It’s hard to believe that I’m just now getting around to printing these pictures. Seeing as they were taken almost a year and a half ago. I just never found the time to edit them back then, and when I did, I couldn’t figure out what I liked.

I sat down about a week ago and edited them all. I have another window project that I completed a while back and I realized I wanted these pictures to be in it. So today I ordered them from Shutterfly. Nine 5x7 photos cost me under $10.00 WITH shipping! I was so amazed at the deal I figured I’d better get them up before I change my mind again.

 

Made with Love by Caty – a giveaway

Along my blogging journey I’ve come across so many cute little etsy stores and WAHM’s out there. They all are so talented and I wish I could create some of the things they do! Today I’d love to introduce  you to Caty from Made with Love by Caty.

After having her daughter in May of 2010, Caty realized how the added expenses of a new baby can really add up fast. So, she started out making nursing covers, reusable nursing pads, reusable wipes, burp clothes and diaper wipe cases/carriers. Her shop has since expanded to carry hats, and booties as well. These are ADORABLE!

Up for Grabs is a pair of booties from Made with Love by Caty for boys or girls sized 0-6mo or 6-12mo! All you have to do is fill out the form to be entered!

Giveaway ends April 20th at midnight CST.

 

Be sure to scroll clear to the bottom of the form to click submit, or your entries will NOT be submitted.

Wordless Wednesday – A living room redo!!!

Last fall we decided to FINALLY do what I’ve been asking Joel to do since we moved in. Tear up this UGLY dirty carpet. (honestly it doesn’t look nearly as bad in these pics as it truly was!) I love it and wouldn’t go back for anything….though we do need to get a big area rug to put in the middle yet. One of the last pictures shows how we survived in our dining room as a living room for a little over a week! It was scary to say the least!

      

Terrific Under Ten Tuesdays

For the last couple weeks I’ve been crafting away in my garage. I’m loving every minute of it, except for the waiting for paint to dry bit. It takes time to do these things, but they’re also bringing me joy!

I have a love for old windows. LOVE. The bad thing is I don’t exactly know what I’m going to do with one when I get it. I may have a slight idea, but nothing that will make me want to just go outside and start working on it. This can be a good thing and also a bad thing. Good because then I don’t just jump into some project and end up hating it later. Bad because they can take up a lot of space, and when you have a slightly larger than two car garage, space is valuable.

About a year ago we had a friend that was moving, and had these two rather large windows. When I asked her if I could have them, she said she didn’t care, but the look I got from Joel was Priceless! I had NO idea what I’d do with them. Fast forward a year and I’ve come across Kindra’s blog and had an epiphany. Why not make it a mirror!

I was on the hunt for Mirror Spray Paint. I found it on Amazon, but it was a little pricy. Come in $30.00 credit I got when I signed up for their credit card (two years ago! Totally forgot I had it!).  I also got a great deal on Groupon (great site for daily deals!) for Vinyl wall lettering $30.00 worth for $15.00 and I had a $10.00 coupon just for signing up!

I started by scraping off the old paint on the existing window and sanding it down. I then applied two coats of black paint that has been sitting in my garage waiting on my dining room chairs to give it some love. I then sanded it down again to give it a more aged look. After bringing it in the house though I realized that I’d have liked it a bit better if I’d sanded a little more. (oh well right!) I then covered it with a coat of high gloss polyurethane that we had left over from our hard wood floor redo (which you can somewhat see in the picture). I still have to ad a way to hang this mirror/window, but my dad gave me a cute chain that will look nice along the top.

Total Cost for this project:
Window : Free
Mirror Spray Paint : Free
Vinyl Lettering : $3.83 ($5.00 + $6.50 for shipping, divided by 3 (purchased 3 decals total!))
Black Paint : Already in my garage waiting for my dining room chairs
Polyurethane : Free (leftover from our hardwood floor redo!)

What we’ve been up to

It’s been crazy in this house. Just when I think our lives have slowed down enough for me to blog again, we’re never in the house. It’s been beautiful outside. (Well, other than the little cold snap we had for 5 days where it didn’t know if it wanted to snow or rain.) Today is another beautiful day outside except for the fact that it’s only 40, and the wind is blowing like crazy.

All school year we’ve been lucky enough to get away from being sick. NOTHING all school year. Until last Thursday. Kaitlynn started with it, and MacKenzie came down with it yesterday. It’s the kind of bug that last about 4 days, and Dahrran and I are on day one today. Day one makes you feel bad, but not bad enough you can’t move. Day two is bad enough you don’t do anything. :( I’m really dreading tomorrow. Because Day 3 is puking. So tomorrow I’ll feel crappy enough to not want to move with a puking MacKenzie! (Maybe by putting it here it won’t actually happen!!!!!)

My grandma has been in the hospital since last Wednesday. She isn’t doing well. This is the grandma that we’re super close to. The ones my kids know well, and only live less than a mile from our house. I was taking it rough at first but I think I’m doing okay now. I know there comes a time, but I’m not ready.

Other than that we’re not doing much. Adding to our cow herd on a weekly basis, though that’s about to slow down with only one left to calve. I’ve got plenty of pictures, and if I’m feeling up to it maybe I’ll get our cattle blog updated today. :S We’ll see!