Freezer Cooking

So last week I attempted my first batch of freezer cooking. I had been thinking about doing it for quite some time. I'd seen a whole bunch of recipes on Pinterest (you can see my Freezer Cooking Pinterest board here) and had seen people posting on various blogs about their attempts at freezer cooking. After realizing that we have over 30 different soccer and volleyball games to go to in the month of April (with who knows how many more practices), I knew I wasn't going to be able to put dinner on the table every night without some help, so I finally bit the bullet and decided to do it. I went through the different blog posts I had pinned, reading about how others had done it so I could decide how I wanted to do it. I marked the recipes I wanted to try. I made up a list of all the ingredients I would need for those 10 recipes and then marked which ingredients I already had and which I would need to buy. Luckily, I have my own "store" to shop from, full of all the food storage items I have already stocked up on (I'm really glad that I coupon and price match, and already had quite a lot of ingredients that I had already bought on sale or with a coupon!). I ended up really only having to buy the meat (I was low on chicken breasts and I decided to buy the stew meat and pork chops, as mine were already frozen and I didn't want to defrost them then freeze them again) and a few other specialty items (like the teriyaki sauce, hoisin sauce, etc). I did spend about $11 on the ziploc bags (I bought a large box of the gallon size freezer bags at Sam's), but I didn't even use a fourth of them, so I'll have plenty more bags for the next time and won't have to count that price in. My final total ended up being $148.41 which, divided up into 22 meals, comes out to $6.75 a meal. That is not bad AT ALL!! Granted, most of the meals will still need a side dish, but holy cow!! MAYBE that'll come out to $10 a meal, which is something we could NEVER come close to at McDonald's or any other restaurant with a family our size. I am so super stoked about that!!

In reading some other blog posts, a couple ladies had said that they weren't happy with recipes they had used that had a lot of veggies in them (like stews with potatoes, or ones that added frozen broccoli, etc). They said that all the veggies were mushy and tasted the same at the end. That sounded like it was probably true, so I looked for recipes that were mainly meat with sauces. There were a couple I chose that had carrots added, and I also never have a problem with using onions in the crockpot, so I didn't exclude those. Two of the recipes I chose called for frozen broccoli, so I bought it, but I didn't put it in the bag with the rest of the meal. I'm planning on adding the frozen broccoli to the crockpot for the last half hour, so that it'll be cooked but hopefully not mushy and gross. I ended up going with 10 different recipes. I had planned on making 2 of each meal but, because of the amount of meat I had purchased, I was able to triple 2 of the meals, so I ended up with a total of 22 meals. The recipes I went with were Teriyaki Chicken, Balsamic Glazed Drumsticks (I made 3 of this one), Mongolian Beef, Beef Stroganoff, Honey Sesame Chicken, Black Bean Taco Soup, Chicken Alfredo, Maple Dijon Chicken, Cilantro Lime Chicken, and Marinated and Baked Pork Chops (I made 3 of this one also and it's the only one that doesn't go in the crockpot).

To start, I pulled out the ziploc bags and, on each bag, wrote down the name of the recipe, the date it was made, and the cooking instructions. (I don't have a picture of that.)

Then I got out every single ingredient I was going to need and put them all out on my kitchen table.

I started by prepping the veggies. I cut up all the onions; some called for large slices, some chopped, some diced fine. Since I'm a little OCD about things like that, I had to divide them all up on my cookie sheet lol. I also cut up the green peppers that were going into the chicken alfredo meal.

After that, I started prepping the meat. I washed and dried all the chicken breasts and drumsticks, got all the pork chops out of their packaging, and cooked the ground beef with the onions for the taco soup. Then I went through each recipe and put the correct amount of meat into each bag. Because our family is large, I put in a little more meat than was called for in each recipe (if it said 1.5 lbs of chicken, I put 2). I also made a little more sauce for each recipe (I didn't double them, but multiplied by 1.5).

After I had the meat in the bags, I added the veggies (fresh and canned). Here are all the bags with veggies and meat added.

The next step was to make the sauces. Somehow this took me SO much longer than I thought it would. My printer is broken, so I couldn't print up the recipes. I had my laptop on the kitchen counter with all the recipes pulled up and would have to keep going over to it to check the measurements, so that might have taken up some more time than necessary. I mixed up each sauce, poured it into the bag, sealed the bag, rinsed out the bowl, then started on the next sauce. The only bag I had a problem with was the pork chop bag. I was using bone-in pork chops and, I don't know if I had a particularly sharp bone or what, one of the chops tore a small hole in the bag. I just made up a new bag and double-bagged those ones. Once I had all my sauces made and my meals bagged up, I was done!

I took pictures of them all individually (but in the interest of space am leaving those pictures out) and then carried them down to my deep freezer. I have them all laying flat so they won't take up a lot of room. I plan on pulling them out of the freezer the night before using them and putting them into the fridge to defrost. Some people had said you can put them straight from the freezer into the crockpot, and I'm sure you can, but I'm a little concerned that stuff might stick to the bag. Then I'll put them in the crockpot that morning and we'll have dinner ready when we get home from our games that night. A lot of them are supposed to be served over rice, but I also have a rice cooker that I can set to cook before we leave the house. Then when we get home, while the girls are putting away all their stuff, I can steam/sauté some veggies or throw together a quick salad, and we'll have our meal ready to go!

To recap, I made 22 meals for about $6.75 each in a total of about 4.5 hours (5 with the cleanup afterwards). I really was happy with these results (and I bet I could put them together even faster next time)!

Just so you know, I haven't actually tried any of these recipes yet, so I can't swear that they're all good, but they look good and they've got to better than cereal, right? I'll post an update as we go through the meals and let you guys know what we thought of each one. If anyone has any questions, let me know and I'll answer as best as I can. And if you decide to do it too, I'd love to see what you make!

I Am Not A Runner

After I saw this video on Amber's blog, I knew it would be the perfect start to tell about what happened today.

This was me not quite a year ago (minus the man boobs). Noah was about 3 months old, we had some friends over for dinner, I was complaining about how I wanted to start losing weight so I'd be a little skinnier at Kara's wedding, they told me that they run every morning and I should start running with them. UGH. I HATE running. I hate any form of exercise/dieting/whatever. I've never been a fan of any form of physical exercise whatsoever. Reluctantly I agreed to start running with them cause the weight wasn't going to come off by sitting on the couch. I almost died that first day. I think I ran a total of 3, maybe 4, blocks before I had to start walking. And then I'd run a block, walk a block, repeat. It was horrendous. I was not a runner. Yet. 2 weeks later, both my knees were killing me and I had to stop running for about 3 weeks. Keith said I was walking around like a 92 year old, instead of a 29 year old. But I got new shoes, started running again after the knees stopped hurting, and kept going from there.

The route they run is about 1.8 miles long. I can't even tell you how proud I was of myself the first time I ran it without stopping. It took a LONG time to get there. Then winter came along and it was too cold and icy to keep running outside. So we started getting up even earlier and going to an indoor track to keep running. I decided to start adding in a lap so that I could eventually be able to run the route twice. By the time we were ready to run outside, I was up to 3 miles indoors and thought that was all I could do. The first day we went back to outdoor running (I think it was the end of Feb or beginning of Mar), I ran the whole route twice. Without stopping. WooHoo!!

One of the friends has since moved, and the other can't run right now... but I found 2 other friends to run with and so I've continued running. 3 weeks ago I decided to run my first 5k. I dragged Keith's brother, Arax, along with me. We got there ahead of time, heard them say to start lining up, and got ready to run. I had looked at the map the night before so I'd be prepared and when everyone started turning where we weren't supposed to turn, I wondered what was going on. I just figured they'd had a last minute change of plans and we kept going. We got to mile 2 and then they started turning again. There was also a half marathon going on that day. I had looked at the map for that as well and realized we were running with the half marathoners. ACK! We were so not ready to run 13 miles!! So while everyone else turned, we kept going straight and eventually made it back to the finish line as the other 5kers were coming back in as well. We ended up running 3.7 miles (a 5k is 3.1 miles) and did it in pretty good time. Oh, and did I mention it started raining about 5 min in to our run? And then the hail started coming down? Yeah, that was a lot of fun. But we did it. And we were proud of ourselves. Then last weekend there was another 5k. So we ran that one too. This time at the right time and on the right route. Arax hadn't run for two weeks and ended up grabbing Amya's scooter halfway through so he could keep up with me lol. We came in at 32:06. Not too shabby.

Today was another 5k. This time I got my running partners to sign up with me, Arax, our nephew Joseph, my bil & sil Noel and Carrie. So there would be 7 of us running together. I was pumped. Until 4am this morning when I woke up with horrible stomach cramps and had to make a few trips to the bathroom. I was up from then on, in a lot of pain. I couldn't run. I was SO upset. I was supposed to be there. I was supposed to run with everyone. I cried. Can you believe it?!??! Kathleen... crying about not being able to run? It doesn't even sound like me. At all. But it's the truth. I guess I'm now a runner. The amazing thing is, Amya ran it for me. She put on my shirt, got my number, and ran with my group. She came in 2ND out of our group of 7. (Arax was first - he said he felt so guilty about last week that there was no way he was going to walk or run slow this week.) I think her time was 35 min:something... I don't remember the exact time and she's already asleep so I can't ask her. Oh. I am SO proud of her. First, for filling in for me and second, for doing such an amazing job at it. Seriously. She is so cool. I'm so so proud of her and everyone else in our group who ran today. They did an awesome job. I'll post some pics tomorrow when I get them loaded onto the computer.

And I guarantee you I'll be there running next weekend with all of them. I think there's at least 6 more 5k's I'm planning on running this summer. Now to work up to the 10k. :D

SM iNSD BlogTrain!!

Hey everybody!!!! Welcome to stop #23 on the ScrapMatters' iNSD blog train! You should have just left Jennifer's blog. You're now back in Utah (and I don't think it'll be your last time here today). I'm so excited about being a part of this HUGE and super cool blog train!

By now, you know all about our NSD mega-collab at SM this weekend called "Moments that Matter". Make sure you get over to the store and check out all the new grab bags that have been released, along with the 40% off sale on almost everything else. You can get "Moments that Matter" free with a $20 purchase. And trust me, with all the goodies we've got over there, it won't be hard to fill your cart up. :D

With my husband's and my anniversary coming up in just 3 more days (May 4th), the special moment I want to share with you is the night we met. I've been thinking about it a lot lately, about all the little things that fell into place so that we could meet that night.

We met on August 1, 1998. I had just graduated from high school 2 months before that. My family had moved from FL to WV at the beginning of July, but I wanted to spend my last summer before college in FL. So I convinced my parents to let me stay there with a friend's family until shortly before I had to leave for college. Surprisingly, they agreed, and I spent the next few weeks hanging out with my friends. We are LDS and our church was having a regional singles conference July 31 - Aug 2 in Fort Lauderdale. My friends and I decided to drive over there (we were on the west coast) to attend the conference. The first night was not that fun. While it was advertised as a singles conference, and my friends and I were single, we were around 18-20 and it seemed like everyone else there was 35 and older. So we decided we wouldn't bother going to the dance Sat night, and we'd go out to a club instead. That sounded like way more fun. One of my friends (Kim) and I got ready the fastest and decided to go down and see how the dance was going while we waited for our other friends. We walked in and sat down on the outskirts of the dance floor (this was taking place in a big hotel).

Meanwhile, my soon-to-be husband was trying to convince his friends to go over to the dance. He was living in FL for the summer selling pest control. He and the guys in his apartment had thrown a disco party for all the people out there in their office. Then he heard about this singles dance and thought it'd be fun to go over and crash it. But none of his friends wanted to go. It took him a long time to convince them to go with him. When they finally made it over to the hotel, they went up to the front desk to ask where the dance was, and were told there was no dance that night. Needless to say, his friends were annoyed with him and they turned to leave. As they were walking out, some random guy stopped them and said, "If you're looking for the LDS dance, it's down that hall". They followed his directions, found the dance, and started dancing with all the girls who weren't being asked to dance.

Shortly after, my friend and I walked in. Keith saw us sitting down across the room and said to his friend (also named Kim), "You take the short one, I'll take the tall one", not knowing what we looked like or anything. And that was that. Keith and I danced that dance and then the next one, which happened to be the last one of the night. I told him we were leaving to go to a club, he convinced us to go back to his apartment for smoothies instead. We went and we stayed until 4 in the morning. As we were leaving, he asked for all of our phone numbers so he could stay in contact with us (he says now that he really just wanted mine but didn't want to make the other girls feel bad). He also says he was sending me signals all night long, but I had no idea.

He called me 2 days later and asked me out. We went on 2 dates in 1 week. He had to drive over from Ft. Lauderdale - it was a 2.5 hour drive, one way. He'd drive over after he got off work, take me out, and then drive back. Crazy, huh? I left a week later to go home for a week, then out to Rexburg, ID for college. He gave up his work bonus to leave early so he'd have a few days to spend with me in ID before he had to be back to school in Utah. We were engaged by Thanksgiving and then married in May. And that's that - we'll celebrate our 11th anniversary this coming Tuesday. Every now & then, one of us will say to the other, "Can you believe that we actually met?" I know it seems like my story was already long, but there's even more to it that I left out, that should have kept us from meeting each other that night. We really feel like it was meant to be. I made a scrapbook page with a picture we took that night (and please ignore the crazy drop shadows, it was one of my first pages and I was still learning lol)....



Alright, now that you've made it through my LONG story, here's the freebie you'll be getting from me (click the image to download) -


and here's the page I did with it....


**Links will be active until midnight Thursday night 5/6. Then all these blog train goodies are getting gathered up and put into the store!**

Well, I've taken up enough of your time! You can move on to your next train stop - Wendy's blog. Have fun on your "trip" today!!!

Recent funnies....

Maricela: "I sing INCREDIBLE" (after singing along to a song on the radio)

Maricela: "Elena, you have a pimple."
Elena: "No, Mari, you mean a beauty mark. It's a beauty mark."
Maricela: "No. It's a pimple."
Elena: "Mom, tell Mari this is a beauty mark!!!"

Me: "Mari, you need to go get your clothes for today."
(she comes out with a nightgown)
Me: "No, Mari, not a nightgown, an outfit to wear today."
Mari: "What's an outfit?"
Me: "You know, pants and a shirt. An outfit."
Mari: "That's not an outfit, Mom, that's a UNICORN."

I asked Keith to go get me a can of chicken broth to use in cooking the dinner. Our food storage is in a root cellar outside, so I usually ask him or Amya to get me something (usually chicken broth) I need from it because I hate going out in the cold and I'm lazy (Yep, I said it) and they're usually nice enough to fetch me whatever I need. So Keith was putting on his shoes to go get it and...
Amya: "Dad, where are you going?"
Keith: "To go get some chicken broth for Mom."
Amya: "Mom uses a LOT of chicken broth, Dad. Women don't got chicken broth, Men don't got dinner."

(Keith made me try a grapefruit he had cut up that he swore was sweet, knowing that I hate grapefruit)
Me (making a gross face while  chewing the NOT sweet grapefruit)
Téa: "Mom's making a face....Mom doesn't like the grapefruit....Mom's trying to spit out the grapefruit...Mom hates the grapefruit...Do you hate it Mom?...Yep, she hates it! Mom hates the grapefruit!!! (like she's a sports commentator or something)

i'm worse than my children

Right after yelling at gently chastising my children for the colossal mess they had made of my scrapbook/craft supplies, I proceeded to spill a whole bottle of Mod Podge all over me, the kitchen cabinets, the kitchen floor, the kitchen wall, the dishwasher, etc. Elena heard me growling in the kitchen and came to inspect. The following was our conversation....

Elena: "Wow, Mom, what happened in here?
Me: "I'm cleaning up a mess."
E: "What is this stuff? Sour cream?"
M: "No, it's glue."
E: "This is pretty bad, Mom. I didn't know you could make messes this big. I know we make big messes, but this is way worse than ours."

Thanks, Elena. Rub it in a little more please. :P

Happy Birthday to Me!!!

Since we were up after midnight last night (this morning) Keith was the first to tell me Happy Birthday today. Then when I woke Elena up for school, the first thing she said to me was Happy Birthday. She's normally a little grumpy in the mornings and I hadn't thought she'd remember, so I said "Elena, you remembered!!" And she said "Of course I remembered your birthday, Mom. I would be bad if I didn't remember your birthday". (Of course I assured her she wouldn't be, and then thanked her for remembering!) Then when Mari, Téa, and Amya woke up, they all came into our room and sang Happy Birthday to me with Keith. Then Keith took them to the kitchen to make me some breakfast - yellow cupcakes with chocolate frosting. Probably not the most nutritious breakfast, but very yummy. Mari keeps walking up to me and singing Happy Birthday - it's very cute.

And the mail just came and it was ALL for me! A birthday card from Memmie (to which Amya said "She always sends pretty cards"), one from Sally&Ben (to which Amya said "They always send cute cards...usually with dogs" (and this one was no exception)) and one from my mom (to which Amya said "Is my money in there?" (long story, but it was)). Oh and I got a card from Ceci on Monday...the first one to arrive. After I opened the card from my mom and pulled out the 3 gift cards to Target, Bath&Body Works and Old Navy, plus a little cash (THANKS Mom), Keith had something to say - "Hey, is she trying to outdo me or what?" :) Thanks for the cards guys!! Love ya!

So far this is shaping up to be a pretty good birthday. And since it's my last one (I don't plan on getting older than 29), that's a very good thing.

Here's Mari singing to me....


And this is totally unrelated, but we think it's hilarious so I'm including it. We like to play a game we call "Who Says? Who Says?" (Amya made up the name when she was 2). We say a quote from a movie and the first person to correctly name the movie it's from or the character who says it, gets the next turn. Last night Téa came up to me with this gem....

I didn't think to have her say it again and tape it last night, but we got it this morning. I think it's SO funny how she changes her voice for the different parts. In case you can't figure it out, she's singing a line from the "A Whole New World" song in the movie Aladdin. She says "Don't you dare close your eyes (Aladdin's part) and then "A whole new world" (Jasmine's part). Oh and that's chocolate frosting from the cupcakes all over their mouths.

Scrap Matters Enabling

I just wanted to pop in and post all the fun stuff that's going on at ScrapMatters right now. For starters, I'm hosting my first challenge! It's called the Grand Theft Layout challenge and, basically, I pick someone from the gallery who I think has awesome pages and challenge everyone to pick a page from her gallery and scraplift it. (Scraplift is where you take a layout and then use it as inspiration to create a page of your own, whether you copy the layout, or use the same color scheme or photo placement, etc.) You can check out the challenge by going here. These are the two pages I made for it....

credits


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I also did this page for Sya's CT

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and this one for a speed scrap last week

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There's another speed scrap tonight that I'll be participating in (as long as no more of my girls get sick - Mari was throwing up on Tue and Téa was up all night last night)....

Finally, tomorrow will be a big day at Scrap Matters. All of the designers have gotten together to create new collaboration kits....they're calling them "twice as nice" kits and they'll all be released tomorrow. I've seen these kits and they are GORGEOUS!!! So check over in the SM shop tomorrow to check out the new goodies!


I think that's about it for now....I have a couple more pages I've done but can't post yet, as the kits haven't been released. So you'll have to wait for those. Also, I'm hosting a speed scrap later on this month, so I'll let you know more about that later. TTFN!

the story of the ankle

I've had some requests to get the full ankle story, so here it is.....

Late Friday afternoon, I was trying to get some cleaning done in the girls' room. I had asked Elena to help and instead she climbed up to Amya's bunk and wouldn't come down. I kept asking her to come down and then threatening her, but she wouldn't budge. I think she thought she was safe, since I don't go up there. Finally, I'd had enough, and I hauled my big butt up there to make her come down. On my way back down, I had a little fall. I was standing on the very last rock with my right foot. I could either put my left foot on the shelf of the bottom bunk, or down on the ground. I thought I was low enough (and my legs were long enough) to bypass that bed shelf and go straight to the ground. So I let go of the rocks I was holding onto and "stepped" down. Unfortunately, I totally miscalculated the distance and crashed down hard on my left ankle/foot. I immediately fell backwards and poor Téa broke my fall. I was initially more concerned that I'd injured her, but once I realized she was fine, I started to feel my own pain. Keith quickly came and helped me up, but I couldn't put any weight at all on my ankle. So he carried me to the couch and I laid there for the rest of the night. I wanted to go to the doctor's, but he had his electrician friend over and they were working on wiring the clubhouse (more on that later) that Keith has been working on and he didn't want to lose their momentum.

I realized that I haven't posted any pictures (at least I don't think I have) of the monstrous bunk bed that Keith built for the girls this past October and if you haven't seen it, you may not understand what I'm talking about. So here are some pictures to help you out. This is the three tier bunk bed that the girls sleep in - Elena and Maricela on the bottom, Téa in the middle, and Amya on top. This thing goes from floor to ceiling and I can't fit the whole thing in the picture with my widest angle lens; it's that big. Our ceilings are about 12 feet high in the bedrooms....this thing is huge. You can just barely see the opening for Amya's bunk in the top middle of the picture. And then the bottom opening is the "shelf" that I'm talking about. Anyway, my right foot was on the rock that the arrow is pointing to.

And just for a little more perspective, here's Maricela next to the rock I was on. As you can see, it's really not that far off the ground, since she's barely 3 feet tall and it's shorter than she is.

So on Saturday my ankle was still hurting A LOT and we went to the doctor. He xrayed it and said it was broken. On the navicular bone (the one I've circled in the picture below) you could clearly see a piece of bone jutting out. It didn't look smooth like the one in the picture. He said that probably the tendon that is attached to that bone had been pulled too hard and pulled off some bone with it (which is almost exactly what happened when I broke my thumb skiing a few years ago). However, it was way too swollen to cast, so he made a splint for me to use until the swelling had gone down enough to cast it. I told him I already had an appt scheduled for the coming Tue (yesterday) and he said that should be long enough and to have my regular doctor cast it at that appt. And I guess technically it's not my ankle, it's my foot.

So we went to the doctor yesterday, and after he looked at my xrays, he said he didn't think I had broken it. He thought it looked like an old fracture, not a fresh one and didn't think it needed casting. (Which is strange, because I've never hurt my ankle/foot badly enough to not walk on it before.) So he said to just stay in the splint and stay off it as much as possible so it can heal. And that if it doesn't get better, they can xray it again and cast it if they need to. I can put a little pressure on it now, as opposed to none at all over the weekend, but I don't want it to heal wrong, you know? I'm a little confused, but we'll see how this goes.

Here's a picture of me with my splint and crutches.

I have found out that it is NOT easy trying to get around on crutches while pregnant. And weighing (right now) 35 pounds more than usual. My hands and armpits are already sore, and I'm only moving around to go to the bathroom and back & forth from my bed to the couch. Also, you have to use your stomach muscles to walk on crutches and my stomach muscles are already sore from stretching for this baby, so now they're even worse. I usually feel a contraction or two after sitting back down...probably from the strain of moving around. Keith's been really great though - bringing my food (and my Oreos) to me on the couch, getting me drinks when I need them, and taking care of the kids. And my neighbor brought us dinner Sunday night (which was really good and I need her to give me the recipe) so that was nice, too.

And then because of all this, I had to quit the maternity subbing I was doing. I feel really bad about it - I'd already done 4 weeks and only had this week and next left to do, but it just isn't going to be possible. This was the one I was looking forward to, as it's a third grade class with some of my students from last year in it. But I had fun while it lasted.....I just hate feeling like I left her hanging.

Anyway, I've probably bored you with this story for long enough, soooo........that's it! Hope I've answered all your questions!

One more quick tidbit - At my appointment yesterday, instead of measuring 4 weeks bigger, I measured.....(are you ready for it)........5 weeks bigger. ARGH!!!!!!!

A New Creative Team!!

Just a couple of weeks ago, I stumbled across a new blog that I thought was SO cool....it's called The Hybrid Kid and it's a website that was started by a mom who had an idea one day. She said in her opening post: "This blog will be dedicated to using digital art in the everyday things we do. I hope to pair teachers and digital designers to create printable activities that serve three purposes...educational value, together time, and to look pretty". She's already come up with some really cool projects like The Color Book and The Popcorn Word pack. Just recently, she asked for people who would be willing to try out her projects, use them with their kids, take pictures of them in use, and provide feedback so that she can better showcase and promote her projects. I replied and was one of the moms (and therefore my kids as well) chosen to try out her things. I'm so excited about this!! Elena and Téa both are working on learning to recognize their letters and numbers and are so in to anything that has to do with learning and also art. These projects are perfect for them!! So you'll probably be seeing me showcasing some of these projects as we put them to good use.

Night Owls

Keith totally surprised me with my Christmas present. While out in WV over Thanksgiving break, I was looking at all the Black Friday ads to see if there was anything worth waking up for. The only thing I really wanted to get was a laptop and there were some good deals, but since Keith had just surprised me with all of them joining me in WV, there wasn't any money for a laptop. When he asked me what I wanted for my Christmas present, I said a laptop, knowing he wouldn't get me one. Do you see where this is going? I don't know what I did to get the husband I have, cause he totally went above and beyond on this one. He got it from Costco, where it was on sale and then even more on sale as the display model was the only one left, so he got an even bigger discount. I don't know how he does it. This was the best picture I could find of my lovely gift and it doesn't even do my laptop justice - this thing is beautiful and I LOVE it.

We have definitely been putting this baby to good use. We installed Skype and used it to talk to my uncle in Germany. That was way cool. I've scrapbooked on it and it's AMAZING. And every night, Keith and I have been laying in bed, watching episodes of The Office, trying to get caught up. (And when I say trying to get caught up, I mean we jsut started watching it and now have 4 seasons to watch). This is one of the coolest things he's ever gotten me....I love my husband!!

And I love him even more right now cause he just went out and bought me a package of Oreos to eat while I'm watching. What an awesome husband I have!

WooHoo!!!!

I am officially a member of the ScrapMatters Creative Team!! They had a CT call and I applied, not really thinking I would make it. But I did!!! So I'll be on their CT until Feburary and will be creating layouts mainly with things from their store, occasionally posting on their blog, and maybe even hosting some challenges in their forum. I'm really excited about this new opportunity!!! And tonight there will be a speed scrap that I'll be participating in....here's the announcement for it:

And this is the cool prize you get just for participating in the speed scrap:

So if any of you who read my blog are digi-scrappers, hopefully I'll see you there!

buckle up, it's gonna be a long ride

I realized the other day that I have not been updating like I used to. I've posted scrapbook pages and a few tidbits here and there, but I'm not keeping track of what the girls are up to... and that's what the original plan for this ole blog was. So I'm gonna try to stay more on track with keeping all y'all up to date with the goings on of our household. Here goes.......

Amya got her ears pierced this month! Or to quote her, she got her "earrings pierced". I think it sounds cute when she says it like that and Keith keeps trying to correct her. She was so brave. She sat right down, let the lady clean and mark her ears, and then counted down for her to pierce. It hurt a little bit, you could tell she was kinda cringing for the second one, but she was a trooper. Didn't complain at all, cause she knew it would scare the other girls.
We plan on getting theirs done too, but we're waiting to find a time when there are 2 girls working so that they can do both ears at the same time. That way it won't be as bad for the younger girls. Keith has said since before Amya was born that his girls couldn't get their ears pierced till they were 18. I fought him on this, as that was a rule for me and I HATED it, but he wouldn't give in. Then while we were in Hawaii, he saw some pretty flower earrings and said "Wouldn't those look pretty on my girls?" and that was that. He is such a softie! :)










Amya also started 3rd grade! I can't believe how old she's getting. We braided her hair the night before so it would be curly and she was very pleased. I think Spanish will be a little harder for her this year, as the Spanish teacher is pretty demanding, but she should be able to do it. We'll just have to practice speaking it more at home because that's where she's the most behind.











Elena continues to be our reigning dance queen. She dances all over the house. And it doesn't matter what type of music she's listening to - rap, classical, hispanic, jazz, reggae, etc. - she's got a special dance for everything. She goes right along with the beat and makes up moves that totally go with the music. We seriously need to put her in dance classes. In this picture, she's trying to do the chicken dance. A lady on the other side of the railing was doing it, and Elena was copying her every move. She also loves to try and do gymnastic tricks. Cartwheels, somersaults, hanging upside down, she's way into that.

She wears dresses or skirts EVERY day, unless we make her wear shorts. Even while biking, she has to look her best. :) She's learned how to tuck her skirts under her b*m when she rides so they don't get caught in the chain. She gave me a little scare yesterday. She was upset about something she was coloring, so she started to throw a hissy fit. She threw her head back and hit it on the cement blocks we have lining our front garden. Obviously she started to cry and I told her "That's what you get for throwing a hissy fit". Not
a lot of sympathy from me.
She came over to me and leaned up against me, so I started rubbing her head where I thought she had bonked it. My hand got wet. I pulled it away and, sure enough, it was bloody. I ran her inside and Keith and I washed off her head and tried to see how bad it was. Keith didn't think it needed stitches, so we just put pressure on it till it stopped bleeding and then borrowed some super glue from our neighbors and glued it shut.

In Téa news, that girl is CRAZY!!! I think she is, by far, our biggest tomboy. She is SO into doing tricks on her bike, playing in the mud, wearing Spiderman, Diego, Transformers, etc. stuff, runs around without a shirt on, and LOVES bugs. She has about 10 different tricks she does on her bike like standing up, riding with no hands, no feet, one hand, one foot, feet over the handlebars, etc. She is such a little stunt devil!! I love this picture of her riding with one leg behind - it looks like she's been amputated at the knee....crazy kid.


She also LOVES to color. She literally colors every day and does SUCH a good job. She tries so hard to stay in the lines...she gets this intense look of concentration on her face while she's working.
It is SO cute.

On to Maricela.....I cut her bangs yesterday. They weren't long enough to put back, but they kept getting in her eyes, so I decided to cut them. We think she looks pretty darn cute with bangs. Also, Keith decided it was time to potty train her. So she's been wearing und*es this week and doing pretty good with them. She doesn't tell us she has to go, we just make her go all the time. She's had a few accidents when we've forgotten to take her though. So I'm not too sure SHE'S ready to potty train, but Keith is. He thinks if we keep taking her, she'll eventually get the hang of it. We'll see how that goes.

so frustrating

I AM SO ANNOYED WITH BLOGGER! I have tried to get this posted three times now and it keeps messing up my post. So I decided to split the update into two posts and hopefully it won't mess up again. ARGH!!!!


So to finish up with Maricela, she gave us a scare yesterday also. She already had a doctor’s appt scheduled to have a wart removed from her finger. About 20 minutes before we had to leave, she was running around in the backyard and ran right into a pitchfork. She got a nice little puncture wound on her leg right where her leg meets her foot. We cleaned it out and figured the doctor could look at it too. So he did and said it should be fine and put some steri-strips on it to help it stay together while it healed. Well after she woke up from her nap, she was crying and saying her “footy” hurt. I thought it had just fallen asleep and tried to calm her down. But about 10 minutes later she was still crying and when I sat her down she cried even more. We quickly figured out that it was her puncture wound hurting her. She couldn’t put any weight on her foot at all and started to cry if it even looked like someone was going to touch it. I was afraid it was infected and we’d have to go back to the doctor’s.
But after some Tylenol she started limping around on it and by the end of the night she was running around like normal.
Keith was joking that it was more like a stab wound and now she can say she’s a true Mexican. Okay. Maricela is also a huge copycat! If anything is said in this house, it’s said twice because you can always hear her little echo. She ADORES her older sisters and follows them around all the time, trying to be just like them. So if Téa’s out doing bike tricks, you better believe Maricela is trying to do them as well.








We went to a demolition derby two weeks ago and had a blast! I was not too keen on going, but once we got there I had a lot of fun.






It was cool to see cars crash into and knock over the cement barriers and one even landed on top of a barrier! Keith and the girls really enjoyed themselves and we all had a good time together.

Last week we went to a ward luau and that was really fun as well. Amya kept calling it a lu-how. Anyway, Amya entered the watermelon eating contest for kids. It was a race to see who could eat the most slices in 20 seconds. While Amya didn’t win (she ate 3), she did go on to eat 7 more that night. I love the little bit of watermelon dripping off her chin in the picture. And Maricela had so much fun playing that she zonked right out as soon as soon as we got home. She loves this little chair.

Whew! I hope that was a good catch-up for anyone who cares and I’m really going to try to not get this behind again.

bun in the oven

Elena made this drawing for me today.

In case you can't figure it out, that's me and a baby in my tummy. Yep, you heard it here - I'm knocked up again. :)

This could be interesting.....

I saw this on Elaine's blog and decided to play along...

1. As a comment on my blog, leave one memory that you and I had together. It doesn't matter if you knew me a little or a lot, anything you remember!

2. Next, re-post these instructions on your blog and see how many people leave a memory about you.

It's actually pretty funny to see the responses. If you leave a memory about me, I'll assume you're playing the game and I'll come to your blog and leave one about you. If you don't want to play on your blog, or if you don't have a blog, I'll leave my memory of you in my comments.

Happy Remembering!

holy cow

The girls have been really enjoying the English Primary. They're learning all the songs and singing them all the time around the house. We play a game together to practice the songs. I start to sing and then when I stop singing they have to say the next word that comes in the song. It doesn't always go smoothly, and today was a perfect example. Téa and I were singing "I love to see the temple" and here's how it went...



Me: I love to see the

Téa: temple

Me: I'm going there some

Téa: day

Me: To feel the holy

Téa: cow



Yeah, we need to work on that.... (For those of you not familiar with the song, the correct answer was spirit.)

My Graduation Day

I did this page for another template challenge over at Scrap Matters. My mom and I wrote the poem together while she was out here for my graduation. It reads:

Just before I turned 28,
from college I did graduate.
It took ten years and lots of work,
at times I thought I’d go berserk.
I had four kids along the way.
And in conclusion, let’s just say . . .
The last 10 years had ups and downs
but it was all worthwhile, I have found.

For credits, click here.

And while I'm here, let me just say thanks to everyone who has supported me throughout this LONG journey...I couldn't have done it by myself.

i won!!!

I am so excited!! My scrapbook page A Day at the Farm won a contest!! The designer of the template had a contest for using the template. You had a week to use it and at the end of the week she would choose two winners - one was drawn randomly and the other was her favorite use of the template. And I won!! For her favorite use! I wasn't the random winner, she liked my page the best. And there were over 30 people who entered. Sorry, I keep going on about this, but I'm just so excited. :)

Here's a link to my layout at that site (click here) . The credits are listed there as well. And the name of the website is Scrap Matters.

this is me

Here's my third page for the class. It's an all-about-me page. Never done one before. Kinda fun. and embarassing. Hope you like it!

hawaii pics

Remember how I told you we took over 1000 pictures while we were in Hawaii? That's a lot to go through. And a lot to choose from. But I've narrowed it down to 67 pictures and you can see them here. Let me know if you have any problems with the link or viewing the pictures. Enjoy! (Oh and keep in mind that I had no time to edit any of these pics. So they're all straight out of the camera shots, no photoshop fixes yet.)

And here's one of my favorites. We got very good at taking self-portraits.