Ahhh...Spring Break

This week is Spring Break, and we have been loving it!  Absolutely perfect weather, lots of projects completed (mom's favorite) and fun times had by all (kids favorite).

Today was no exception-Mom's choice: clean out and organize the storage room--wahoo!  For some reason my children have started to feel like this was their own personal resource room, and it was a disaster area.  I figured since they were 5/6 of the organizational mess they should be 5/6 of the clean up power, and I'm happy to report it looks lovely!  Added to the mess was the fact that we had seriously depleted our stores over the winter months, and I really needed to take a current inventory and see what we need to replenish!  2 birds in 1- another of Mom's favorites!

Kid's choice: run on the canal (or walking the dog on the canal for some of us) in the early morning, and really, did we need more fun after cleaning and organizing all morning?  YES! cried the 5 rascals in my house, and put to a vote the winner was:  Family Bike ride to "Water & Ice." 

 If you aren't from around these parts "Water & Ice" may seem like an odd name for a store, I know I thought it was a tad bizarre when we first moved here.  There are little shops with this name in just about every strip mall.  They are little stores where you can refill your 5 gallon water jugs (or whatever size you may have), buy large quantities of ice (hence the WATER and ICE store name-oddly enough).  You can also buy Thrifty Ice Cream by the scoop, Hawaiian Shaved Ice in too many flavors to count, hot dogs, candy, churros, play video games, and basically be in kid heaven.

**Quinn's response when I teased him about "trying to look cool" in this photo?  "Who's trying?"**

It was a really fun day that we topped off by heading to my kids' 2nd favorite destination of choice: The Library! 

Ahhhh...Spring Break, I really don't want school to start again on Monday!

Lucky Strikes Again!

That's right, Lucky the Leprachaun has struck again!  He always finds a way to sneak in and turn our milk and pancakes green.

Sometimes he messes up the furniture, or locks the bedrooms doors while the kids are sleeping.  Sometimes he turns our whole dinner green, or spills his lucky gold coins outside the doors.  We never know quite what he's up to from year to year! 

We love having fun and being silly with St. Patrick's Day, we're not very Irish truth be told, but we love any reason to have a little fun.  The kids even wear pjs with green so they are protected from pinches from the stroke of midnight on.  Sage is lucky, her eyes are green right now, so she loved tricking her brothers this morning, not sure how many of them fell for it, but I know of at least 1 who yelped when he was pinched back. 

Arizona is beautiful in the spring, so today we took advantage of it and headed to a park with huge fountain, I think the sign said it sprays 560 feet into the air.  They turned it green at noon, and it was lots of fun.  We met up with friends there, and found more that we hadn't planned to meet up with, had a picnic lunch, and enjoyed soaking up the sunshine, and talking or playing with friends.  It was a beautiful 80 degree day here in the land of the sun.  Perfect Spring Break weather!  And a great way to enjoy a little luck O' the Irish!  Thanks to my friend Janette for tipping me off about the fountain, and inviting us to join their party.

**Thane wants to make sure it's clear he was wearing army green shorts, he was not a St. Patrick's Day Party Pooper as some might believe.  Kiefer also had some green on, so don't be trash talking him either!**

Happy St. Patricks Day! 

 Hope the Luck O' the Irish was with you today!

Eeewwww....Head Lice and the Ridiculousness of it all

I have 5 children, 4 boys in grades 4, 6, 8 and 10.  All of whom have short hair and have made it safely through the halls of public education with nary a single head lice (louse?) in sight.  My 2nd grader is a girl, you know the kind with long hair.  Not just long hair, but thicker than thick long hair.  She's the one whose class keeps getting a lice alert!  It is killing me!  Last week was the 5th time this year we have had an alert about lice in the class. 

**I looked for a picture to paste here, but they made me itch, so I'm sparing you**

The part that's really killing me?  The school isn't telling us-it's moms spreading the word in order to help out other moms, no children's names are included, just a heads up about another outbreak.  The school cites privacy  issues as the reason they can't tell parents about these outbreaks.  The lice hit the fan last week though, with this 5th outbreak.  A mom had her fill of stinky shampoos and tiny fine tooth combs, and she had it out with the school administration and demanded a note be sent home to parents telling of the outbreak.  She won in the end, kind of.  A very generic note was sent home stating there had been "an increase in outbreaks in the community" and warning parents to check their children regularly before bedtime as a result.  Funny that I have 3 kids in this school, and it only came home with the one child, but as the school assured me that "doesn't mean there are actually cases of lice in that classroom."  Right, you just randomly picked this class to send notes home with, wink, wink.

I really don't understand the state of schools and society in general.  Since when did we become so consumed with privacy?  I can understand protecting a child's privacy-so they send home a note and it witholds the name, but says other children in the class have lice, please check your child and take care of any issues.  That makes sense, but to refuse to tell any of the parents because of privacy?  huh?  Who decides where that line is?  And how are they basing these decisions?  This is just the tip of the iceberg, and I really don't want to get into it all, so just thought I'd share a slice of lice (oops, that should have said life, but I really did type it that way on accident, and it was too funny a slip up to erase!)

Thank goodness it's Spring Break this week, and we can rest easy knowing there are no lice lurking on our funiture, under our beds, or on our heads!


Just typing this post is making me itchy.  I think I'll go wash my hair, again!

Friday Favorite

Why are these my favorite things this week?  Because, apparently ...

Doing This:

image found here

Makes me sick.

Enough said, I'm going to bed.

*Added later:  I was completely fine yesterday, cheering on my boys at track and field day in the gorgeous Arizona 70 degree spring weather.   That was at 2 in the afternoon, fast forward to 6 o'clock and I was hammered! Threw a frozen pizza in the oven, called it dinner (thought I posted this entry while it baked) and headed to bed by 7 pm.  Where I set my alarm to wake up so I could pick up my teenager at 10 p.m. and promptly conked out.  The alarm worked, I dragged myself out of bed to grab him and hit the sheets again.  And before you ask, my hubby is out of town, that's why he wasn't dispatched to pick up said teenager.  Got up this morning only to discover this never showed up on the blog.  Guess my drug induced state isn't conducive to blogging.  I'll try and remember that in the future.

Handwriting

Life is the 21st century is all about easy, quick communication.   Blogging, texting, email, voicemail, IMing, Facebook, it just keeps going.  I rarely take the time to sit down and put pen to paper to express my thoughts, more often than not it's a quick email or text, or a hurried thank you or "great job" in passing as we all rush to our next destination.

A few months ago I came to the end of several years serving as the President of our ward's (that's the local congregation of our church) Primary organization. In our Church, Primary is the organization for all the children ages 18 month to 12 years old.   Find out more about Primary

Oh, how I loved serving in the Primary with my children and their friends.  It was a shiny place for me, so full of love and laughter, hope and happiness, but I digress.  Cutting to the quick-I was so sad to see it end, sad doesn't really even begin to describe how I felt as I knew my time was coming to a close.  And I did know it was coming to a close, I felt it for at least 6 months before it happened, and I tried really hard to prepare my heart to leave my little friends.

And still, I was sad.  I knew it was time, I knew it was right, but it was hard to say goodbye.  Then one by one little notes began to appear in my mailbox, or on my doorstep, or in the hands of one of my little friends.  Handwritten notes.  Notes that said "Thank You"  or "I Love You" or blank note cards with heartfelt words of appreciation. 

It was a beautiful experience, it began to bring tears to my eyes just to see a notecard on the door step or in the mailbox, I felt so very loved.  And then it happened again, when I spoke in church-people actually sat down, put real live ink to paper and took time to write me about it.  And again when I made a blog post that touched them.  I couldn't believe how much these words of love meant to me.  Isn't it funny how seeing your name in someone's real life handwriting means more than it does on a computer screen? 

As one friend said in such a note "I wanted to take the time, in permanent form..."  and maybe that's the kicker, in two parts.  One, it takes time to get out the card and envelope, to find a pen that actually works, to think about what you want to say---no delete key or spellchecker available, and to sit down and physically write out the thoughts in your heart.  Two, it's permanent, I can pull it out anytime, anywhere I want to, and evoke those same feelings of love and friendship I felt the first time. 

I have some of my mom's recipes copied in her original handwriting, and I adore them.  She loved to bake and cooking was an art for her, these are real parts of her life, and I love seeing her handwriting as I prepare my own family's meals.  She feels closer, and the distance between Heaven and Earth smaller when I look at what she wrote.  I treasure the notes in my little ones handwriting as they tell me I'm "the beest moomm evah"  I still have all the letters my then best friend-now husband wrote me all the way through the time he served as a missionary for our church, two years worth of pen to paper thoughts.  Priceless.  I have all the letters I wrote him as well, somewhat less priceless to me, but I'm sure one day our children will laugh at us, even as they warm at the realization that we were best friends long before we were in love.

Priceless treasures formed from paper, ink and the heart.

Excuse me, I think I'll step away from this keyboard and find a pen that works, and write down, in permanent form, how much I appreciate someone.  Want to join me?

Friday Favorite

I am in love with this site, I love all the ideas for fun stuff to make, not that I have time to make it right now, but it feeds my soul to dream. I know I won't always be this busy, so I am like a chipmunk, storing away ideas for the down time that just has to be coming up (please don't burst the happy little bubble I'm living in).

Make It and Love It

She has fabulous items to make and super easy directions to follow.  Everything from the cutest ruffled-neck-little girl's shirt to  handy household items (like a mesh bath toy bag) and even some yummy looking recipes.  Even I could totally follow the directions.  And that's saying something!

Here are some samples:

Fabulous sewing projects with easy to follow tutorials, including LOTS of close up photos Like these for curtains and the shirt I mentioned above:

 Home Decorating Tips (this one is for hanging pictures and using papers to practice first)

And sometimes she has giveaways for really cute stuff like this bean bag chair from her new sponser this really cute Etsy shop called R'z cozy creations.  I have a little girl with a birthday coming up that would love, love, love it should we win said bean bag chair.  (just a shout out to karma there)

Go visit, you're sure to find something you will make and love!

Milk, Bread, and Eggs...oh my!

This may not be very interesting to others (okay it really won't be, who am I kidding?) but I wanted to take a snapshot of our weekly grocery needs.  I don't think I'll remember in the future, in fact I believe I will block it out to protect myself.   Our 5 children include 4 boys ages 15, 14, 12 and 10, and 1 girl who is 7.  My word how they can eat!  I thought it would be fun to make a record of how much food is consumed in our home in an average week.  I'm sure it will only increase as the kids get older, I should probably be saving now just for that! Forget the Christmas Club of days gone by, I need a Grocery Club for the days ahead when I have 4 teenage boys in the house!  

Beverages:

image found here

20 gallons of Water (drinking water-in the winter that is -double in the Arizona summer- it may just feel doubled, I will have to keep tabs on that and find out)
8 gallons of skim Milk
assorted cups of hot chocolate and hot cider (unknown quantity)

Bread:

6 loaves of sandwich bread
5 loaves of homemade "snack" bread-includes cinnamon raisin, apple, herb, etc... eaten with dinners or as afterschool snacks
48 muffins
25 flour tortillas
15 corn tortillas
12 hamburger buns

Fruit (remember this is a winter list, I should really do this again in the summer):

image found here

20 lbs of apples
15 lbs of oranges
10 lbs of bananas
7 lbs of grapefruit
1 container of raisins

Veggies:

5 heads of lettuce
8 tomatoes
15 lbs of carrots
5 lbs of celery
15 lbs of potatoes
4 lbs of frozend mixed veggies


Untold peas, carrots, radishes and pieces of broccoli and cauliflower stolen from the garden-I don't mind at all, if you're going to snack can't do much better than straight from the plant!

Meat:
6 lb chicken
4 lb ground beef
1 pork or beef roast
0 fish (ewwwww!)

Canned foods (some of these are store bought, some home canned-whatever I have):
4 cans black beans
4 cans chili beans
4 cans pork n beans
8-10 cans of soup
6 cans of diced tomatoes
3 cans of tuna (definitely doesn't count as fish)
4 cans of green beans
5 cans of corn
8-10 large cans/jars of canned fruit (peaches, pears, fruit cocktail, etc...)
2 Jars of Spaghetti Sauce

Dairy/Misc. other stuffs I thought of:
16 oz sour cream
1 med. size jar of salsa
2-3 lb butter
1 lb cheese
3-4 dozen eggs, depending on the meals we make

1.5 #10 cans of whole oats (you know for oatmeal kind of oats)
1  #10 can of wheat
1 container of Cream of Wheat
2 lb spaghetti noodles
1 lb other pasta (varies)
5 lb of sugar
2 lb brown rice
10 lbs of flour (approximately, I honestly didn't keep track of this one)
1 lb. chocolate chips
.5 gallon ice cream
3 boxes of cold cereal
2 bags of pretzels
2 boxes of crackers


Of course this isn't everything, I didn't measure salad dressing, or snatches of marshmallows that disapeared.  But still, HOLY COW!  That's a whole lot of food.  I think it will be fun and somewhat astonishing to make note of this from time to time, and check out how it changes, and increases or decreases.  So, what's your weekly consumption of groceries look like?

**Amendment: I can't believe I left off PB & J-daily staples around here! 
1 large (grocery store large, not Costo supreme size) Jar Peanut Butter
2 Jars of Jam (thank heaven for abundant Peach and Apricot trees! )