Discontentment

Now that the kids are a little older I have come to accept that my routines are changing (if you can call 8, 7 and 4 years old, "older") . In case I have mentioned it before, I am a compulsive list maker and love my routines. My husband, on the other hand, could care less about schedules and routines. Even though he has to be to work at 8:00 am do you think he gets up about the same time everyday? Nope. Does he take a shower about the same time every day? Nope. Does he eat breakfast regularly? Nope.

So, each morning, I get up about the same time: 5:30 (this is so I can have some "mommy-time" before everyone else gets up). I go about MY routine while I watch my husband have his routine, which is not routine at all and changes from day to day! Some days he will get up, grab a bite to eat, then take a shower. Another day he may sleep later, jump up and into the shower immediately and skip breakfast. I tend to do things in basically the same order, get up, make coffee, have mommy-time, make lunches, unload dishwasher, make breakfast, clean up kitchen, then shower and get ready for work.

When the kids were younger and not in school, even though I still worked full time outside the home, our routine was different. A friend of ours watched the kids in her home from the time Spirit was about 9 months all the way until Lady Bug was about 6 months old. (The friend decided she wanted to purchase a home which would have been about an hour and a half drive the opposite direction of my work so we had to part ways) Then we went to another home daycare briefly before a friend of ours asked if she could watch the kids at our house. My point of sharing this is that the routines were just different, simpler in a way. Now it is hustle bustle all the time.

Now that the boys are in school and Lady Bug is in preschool the routines are as different as they ever have been. Last year Spirit only had to turn in the weekly homework once a week (Friday), this year it gets turned in daily. Last year Lefty had very little homework, this year it is nightly and gets turned in once a week. Lady Bug even has homework (yes, people they give it to 'em in preschool now!) but she only gets it once a week and has all week to complete it. Mr. Man has been busier this school year so far and basically he is up and out the door before the kiddos are up and about, which means I am on my own for getting everyone ready and getting everyone to school on time.

However, at the start of each new school year, I find myself discontent in areas of my life. This year I am discontent with my bedroom furniture, discontent with my bathroom walls, discontent with my living room walls and then discontent with what has become of my "mommy-time".

So, I recently found some cute pictures for my bathroom wall....just need to hang them up. I also found a good journal that I plan to use during my mommy-time. My bedroom and living room remain a source for discontentment.

I also need to say here, I do this at the start of every school year...get discontent, make all kinds of plans to fix or update things and nothing comes of it. I tend to get over the discontentment when the hustle and bustle of Christmas takes over!! **(Not to ruin your day but there is only 116 days until Christmas....eeek!)**

School morning breakfast taco bar

I have posted this recipe before, but since the last time I posted this I have made one slight addition to the recipe so I decided to re-post this. I recently started adding in a few cubed potato hashbrowns in the taco.

This is a great school morning breakfast, it can be made ahead and set up as a "taco bar" with all the fixins out so as people get up and are ready to eat they make their own taco.

Breakfast Tacos are similar to a breakfast burrito only smaller.

Breakfast Tacos
INGREDIENTS:
4 eggs
1/4 cup sour cream, plus a little extra to top off the tacos
4 small (8"-fajita size) flour tortillas
1/2 cup cheddar cheese, shredded
4 strips bacon
1/2 bag of cubed hashbrown potatoes
mild picante sauce

Fry bacon in a skillet and remove only bacon to paper towel to drain, then crumble and set aside.

Using the bacon grease cook hashbrowns until done. Set aside and cover to keep warm.

Beat eggs together in a small bowl. Add sour cream and salt and pepper to taste. Pour egg mixture into skillet and cook for a few minutes, then stir with a spatula and cook more until well cooked.

When ready to serve, place scrambled eggs in the middle of the tortilla. Add a few hashbrowns down middle. Top with crumbled bacon, cheese, sour cream, and picante sauce. Fold over and seal with a little sour cream.

**NOTE: Be sure to only add a few potatoes and a little bit of egg, otherwise you won't be able to close up the tortilla if it is stuffed too full!**

4,300 mile road trip. 10 days. 5 people. 1 car.

Some things I learned when taking a 4,300 mile road trip with an 8 year old boy, a 7 year old boy and a 4 year old girl...

1. Never underestimate the importance of a potty stop

2. Never allow 8 yo boy to purchase a sling shot in Mt. Airy, NC and then coop him up in a car because inevitably there will be coco puffs shot from said sling shot aimed at sister or brother or even mom's head!

3. Never underestimate the importance of a good hotel bed.

4. Don't think you are doing a good thing allowing kids to run and burn energy, getting hot so they drink tons of water and then throw them in a car....you WILL have potty stops every 20 minutes. Guaranteed!

5. Portable DVD players are heaven sent!

6. Two girls definitely take longer to make a potty stop than three boys do!

7. Rest areas and McDonalds make great places for potty breaks, they tend to be more on the cleaner side than a gas station.

8. Snacks in the car are life savers for kids who are bored, but skittles that get spilled and then water dumped on them are extremely messy to clean up!

9. Advil is a necessity when being cooped up in a car with 3 kids who don't want the others touching them!

10. I love my family very much and enjoy vacationing with them, but was glad to be back home too!

Take a tour of my house - Spirit's room

This room is actually on the lower level but somehow in my haste to pre-post the last "home tour" pictures I somehow posted Lefty's room last week which is upstairs, instead of posting this one. Since I was on vacation, I didn't realize I had done that until yesterday...whoops!

So today we are back to the lower level to showcase Spirit's room.
When we moved into the home, I was not ready for any of the children to be on a different level than me. So we ended up making this room the playroom for almost a year. Then the boys just had way too different of personalities and they weren't able to share the upstairs bedroom anymore. Lefty is a very clean, organized kid, where Spirit is well, he is spirited and doesn't mind dirt and clutter. We were finding that Lefty would go in and do a thorough cleaning of their room and get really upset when Spirit didn't keep it clean. We finally decided it was time to separate them. Then we had to decide which boy would be moved downstairs. We ended up moving Spirit down there since he is the oldest.

This bedroom is on the lower level next to the laundry room/bathroom.

There is one whole wall that is a large closet with lots of built-in shelves that I just LOVE! The previous owners also built an L-shaped desk in there (which isn't my favorite thing and I would love to tear it out one day, but Spirit likes it!)

I will being showing you pictures of when it was a playroom and then what it looks like now as Spirit's room.


PLAYROOM:
The large TV in there isn't connected to cable, nor does it have it antenna so they can only watch movies (from the VCR/DVD player) or play video games on it.

Spirit is my book loving, video game loving, outdoor loving kid. He loves to lay in bed and read, but also takes every opportunity to be outdoors, riding his bike, roller blading or collecting bugs.

SPIRIT's ROOM:
We ended up leaving some of the toys in here. I took out all of Lady Bug's kitchen stuff and moved it to her room and most of Lefty's toys were taken to his room also. The Playstation is still in here and Spirit plays with it often and allows the other two to play whenever they want.


You can see in the above picture the wall of closet, they have mirrored doors (not my favorite!)

I absolutely hate the wall paneling too and that is on my list of things to remove and paint too!

This room is in need of some "character", and slowly we are adding stuff to make it more HIS room.

In case you missed some of the previous rooms I showcased in my home tour:
Living Room
Kitchen
Sunroom
Family Room
Laundry room / bathroom

Back to reality

Sometimes it is a good thing to get back to a routine, sometimes it is terribly hard to do!

We rolled back into town about 10:00 pm on Saturday night and just went straight to our own beds....ahhhhhhhhh. I love my own bed!

Yesterday we cleaned out the car, did loads and loads and loads of laundry and tried to adjust back to life without vacation!

Today the kids started back to school! Everyone had new clothes on and backpacks loaded up with school supplies. Funny how when school let out I thought the end of summer would never come, but then BOOM! here it is! The kids had a great summer and they were able to do some really cool stuff, I feel good about the summer!

I guess I better get to work....

Take a tour of my house - Lefty's room

I am starting this part of the tour with the stairs leading up to the master bedroom and also Lefty's and Lady Bug's rooms. I just love this hallway so I had to showcase it to you but didn't think it needed it's very own post!

So here is a picture taken from the stairs looking towards the end of the hallway


Now we will move to Lefty's room. He is my train loving, book loving, puzzle loving kid. Although he loves to be outside, he loves his train sets equally as much. He will lay in bed at night or write in his journal.

I've told you before he is a very clean and organized child, but these pictures were taken after we had company and the room was not as clean as it could be, but I needed to take pictures and didn't have time to wait for it to be clean!

This is taken from the doorway

This is taken from the bed looking at the closet

This one is taken from the closet looking at the bed

I'm leavin' on a jet plane...

I just don't know what time...

Apparently there are only two flights from here to Nashville on the weekends on this particular airline and my original ticket is for the later of the two. I am heading to the airport this afternoon in an attempt to get on the earlier flight which gets me to Nashville four hours earlier. IF I don't get on that flight, then I still have my ticket which leaves at 7:00 pm.

In case you missed the drama, click here to read last nights post.

Wahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

So I didn't get on the flight tonight. So now I have to go back tomorrow.

It is kind of a long story but basically when the e-ticket was purchased by my husband online with me sitting right beside him we somehow booked it for the wrong day!

So anyway, I am at home watching a movie and eating some popcorn. The flight tomorrow isn't supposed to leave until 7:00 pm tomorrow, but I am making some calls to see if the airline would let me attempt a stand-by flight. So far, the answer is no. I have been told with the economy and budget cuts that they don't like you to do that now...... which doesn't completely make sense to me, but it is what it is! My brother in law works for this particular airline so I am trying to get ahold of him to see if there is ANYTHING I can do to leave earlier without paying $350 change fee..... yes Three Hundred Fifty!!!

I will keep ya'll posted....... but worse case is that I will leave 7:00 pm Saturday night.

And ...now I'm off

I fly out tonight to meet up with my family that has been on the road for 3 days without me. I will be on the road for a whole week! It will be tons of fun and I plan to take tons of pictures!

I talked with Mr. Man this morning about how things are going for him. He said the kids had destroyed the backseat - toys, books, spiral notebooks all strewn about - took him 30 minutes to get it all cleaned up and organized. Before they left home on Wednesday, I was most worried about Lady Bug giving her dad trouble, he said she has been the best out of all three of them. Potty stops are hardest with Lady Bug however, since he has to take her into the nasty men's restroom with him. He also told me that he sure does appreciate all I do for them (he told me that yesterday too, so he must really believe that!) I fly out tonight! I can't wait to see my family again!

Here are some pictures my niece took of Mr. Man and the kids visiting her in Kentucky.


Niece and her husband.

The kids sleeping.


Lady Bug at breakfast this morning.

Miscellaneous pictures:

**Just curious if anyone else besides me noticed that my family is wearing the same clothes they wore yesterday? Check out yesterday's post for pictures. Honestly people, I did the packing and I know they all had more than one outfit! **

Hope everyone has a great week! See ya on the 24th!

Friday Recipe - Rice, corn and spinach salad

This recipe is for a very good main dish salad. Mr. Man thought the rice in a salad seemed really gross, but he ended up really liking it and asked me to make it again for his lunch at work! This recipe is also very easy to throw together. It would be a great way to use up left over rice and/or left over corn.

Rice, corn and spinach salad
INGREDIENTS:
1 1/2 c corn, cooked and cooled
1 1/2 - 2 c cooked rice, cooled
1 pint cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
2 c fresh spinach (a Spring Mix salad mix is also very good) *The amount is purely a guess on my part, I actually just grabbed a couple handfuls and mixed it in until it looked right.*
1 jalapeno pepper, finely chopped (use as much or as little as you desire)
1 small red onion, cut in thin wedges (OPTIONAL)
3 Tbls red wine vinegar
3 Tbls olive oil
2 chicken breasts, grilled

Combine cooked rice, tomatoes, spinach, onion and jalapeno. Top with corn. Drizzle with olive oil and vinegar. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Lay grilled chicken strips across the top of the salad.

**We also found that although this salad was pretty good when served immediately, it was even better after it chilled for about an hour or so.

Road trip update

So I got an update on how the road trip is going. Remember, this is Mr. Man plus three kids on a road trip. By himself. The only adult to three kids. Could be a scary thing. They might just take him over! Just kidding!

The update I got was that basically it is going well! Is it perfectly smooth? Well, no, but overall things are moving along. Mr. Man told me he thinks I conspired against him. He said I stayed home on purpose so that he and the kids would realize how much I do for them. *insert evil laugh from me*!

Mr. Man had to call me a couple times last night for help with a couple things. It was cute. I could hear it in his voice that he was a little stressed. I am just glad he was with his sister and not alone at a hotel because I am sure she was able to help him with some stuff that would have otherwise stressed him out!

Today they are driving another 9 hours to a niece's house. She and her husband will be able to help out again so hopefully Mr. Man won't be a total stress-mess by the time I see them tomorrow night!!!

Here is my sister-in-law and Mr. Man and the kiddos eating ice cream.
Here they are downtown Kansas City, MO.
Here are the kids with my brother-in-law
**A side note here: Notice the boy in the front? Ya, that is Lefty. He has this hang up with cameras - he hates them. So a couple months ago we were going through a bunch of old photos sorting them and he commented that there are tons of Spirit and Lady Bug, but not many of him. I pointed out how he runs from the camera and told him THAT is why there aren't many of him. So when I have the camera and see him make that face like "I don't want to have my picture taken" I just remind him of that day we sorted pictures!!**

Here are just a few miscellaneous pictures that my sister-in-law took last night:

And they're off....

My family took off this morning for a road trip. I will stay behind to work and I fly out to meet them on Friday night. I thought I would enjoy the peace and quiet at least a little bit, but instead I found that I was immediately sad and weepy when I watched them pull out of the driveway. And joy to me, I get to work late tonight and tomorrow too. The only good thing about that is that it will help keep my mind off the fact that I am all alone. Before they left I had visions of eating popcorn for dinner while watching some of my favorite girly movies...now I see no dinner since I will be stuck in the office and home in time to do some laundry and head off to bed.

I can't wait for Friday when I will get to meet up with the fam.

Take a tour of my house - Laundry room

The next room I am showing off probably should be left alone, but I am going to show it anyway.

We have a bathroom on the lower level that also houses my laundry room. I wasn't sure I would like the set up, but actually it works quite well. The bathroom is the one Mr. Man uses most often and recently the boys have decided they like to shower in there. This bath does not have a tub, just a shower.

This picture is taken from the family room area near the bottom of the stairs looking towards the bathroom.

This picture is taken from the bathroom/laundry room doorway. The white shelf unit sitting behind the toilet is one of my favorite things. It is actually meant to hang on the wall but the layout of the bathroom didn't really have a good spot for it. The mirror runs the length of that wall and that left one other little space, but it would have been cumbersome near the sink. So we had it sitting on the floor for several weeks and one day I was in there cleaning and realized the countertop behind the toilet would be the perfect spot for this shelf. It works great there!


This picture was taken from the other end of the bathroom, next to the shower. There is also a window on that wall which gives off nice light.



The below picture is taken from the sink area looking at the laundry set up. As you can see I didn't do any clean up before I took this picture, so please excuse the dirty clothes piled up!

The owners of the home built these nice shelves with great cupboards. I love that I can hide all my cleaning stuff and other junk in there. These shelves go right up to the ceiling so I can store a lot in there.




Close up of the cupboards!

In case you missed some of the other rooms in the tour:

Living Room

Kitchen

Sunroom

Family Room

We're goin' on a road trip...

Did you ever play that game "I'm going on a road trip and I'm gonna take a __________" then each person has to keep track and repeat what everyone says so you end with something like this:

I"m going on a road trip and I'm gonna take an Apple, a Banana, a Camera, a Dime..." and so on and so on..

Well if you haven't played the game, you should for kicks and giggles, if you have then you'll understand the title of this post! LOL

So, we are getting ready to head out for a road trip. 11 day road trip. With 3 kids crammed in a car for 11 days. So I am gonna take some Advil, a Banana, a Camera, a DVD player, an Egg Mcmuffin, my Firefox connection, lots of Good cd's for drowning out the kids, Headphones for said cd's, Ice tea, .....

you get the idea!! ;-)

Actually Mr. Man and the kids head out on Wednesday morning, I have to work through Friday so I will fly out on Friday evening and they will meet me. So Wednesday they drive 9 hours to my sister-in-laws house. Thursday they will drive a little over 9 hours to our niece's house. Friday they will drive to our hotel which is a few hours from his niece's house and then turn around to head to the airport to pick me up. Then we will return to the hotel. The next morning we will get on the road and head to another one of my sister-in-laws house. All in all the whole road trip will be from here to Missouri to Nashville to Virginia to Washington, DC. From DC we will start heading home and I can't remember all the stops along the way home, but Mr. Man has it all mapped out.

I am looking forward to it. I spent most of the weekend doing laundry and getting things packed up as best I could. The hardest part is packing for myself. I have to pack up my stuff and send it on with them, which means my clothes for this week are going to be slim pickings!

What? no recipe?

That's right. No recipe today.

Two reasons for this:

#1 - once again our week was very busy and I did not really try anything new (we ate spaghetti and quesadillas along with left overs this week)

and

#2 - at 3:00 am this morning I was woken up to my neighbor's phone call asking if I could come sit with her two boys while she followed THE AMBULANCE to the hospital!! Apparently her husband fell and hurt his back to the point he couldn't move, walk, sit up, etc. She was going to try to take him to the ER but he was literally face down on the floor and couldn't move. He is probably twice her size so there was no way she could lift him up so she called 9-1-1. The paramedics gave him a shot of something to ease the pain so they could get him on the stretcher. During all the commotion their two boys never even woke up. She didn't want to take them to the hospital with her in case they ended up there a long time. So I threw some clothes on and went over to her house. I tried to fall back to sleep but couldn't so I have been awake since basically 3 this morning. I am too tired to think of a recipe to post today.

So sorry to disappoint!

I'm off for more coffee....this is my 4th cup so far!


ZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

That hundred and first time will get ya...

The other day Spirit was riding his bike in the park with some friends. They decided it would be fun to ride down the stairs.

Pretty soon Spirit came home, no bike and tears. He was limping a little and had some "road rash" on his nose.

Nothing was broken and there wasn't even that much blood from the scrape on his nose. All is good.

All is good until everywhere we go people ask what happened to his nose. I have to giggle when I hear him tell the story:

Concerned person: "Oh no. What happened to your nose?"

Spirit: "I was riding my bike in the park and rode down the steps."

Concerned person: "Oh. I guess that didn't work out so good. Not a good idea eh?"

Spirit: "Well, I did it like a hundred times without a problem, it was just the hundred and first time that didn't work out so good."

WFMW - Homework Box and Art Caddy

It is so hard to get a handle on homework sometimes, but last year we found something that works great us.

First of all, it is so important for the kids to have a nice place to work where they can concentrate. Our kids sit at the kitchen table for now so that I can help them as they need it. Each kid does, however, have a desk in their room if they choose to work there.

The biggest thing that has helped is the "Homework Help Box". We have a plastic tub, it is about the size of a shoebox, to house all necessary items needed to do homework. I was sick and tired of constantly searching for things (usually while I was trying to cook dinner) when it came time to do homework. "Mom. I can't find a pencil." or "Mom, I need a ruler for my homework." or even "Mom, where are my markers? I'm supposed to color a picture for my homework." How should I know where you put YOUR markers??? Ugh.

So, I found this plastic tub we had laying around and I started filling it with important homework helpers, such as pencils, a pencil sharpener, a ruler, pens, markers, crayons, colored pencils, a roll of tape, scissors, a glue stick, and a bottle of Elmer's glue. The boys pull the box out when they are ready to start homework, use any items they need for the homework and then return the box to the shelf we keep it on when they are done. These items may not be removed from the box for any reason other than homework. Period.

The other thing that Works for Me is to have an art caddy. I bought a kitchen utensil turn about thingy (I'm pretty sure that is the official name) and we store art supplies in it. I have crayons, markers, colored pencils, tape, glue, pencils, etc. in this turn about thingy. The kids can sit at the table and share all art items without a fight. They set it in the middle of the table and they can easily turn it as they need something and no one is upset that they can't reach.

SO, the homework box is just for homework time and the art caddy is for doodle time. They do not co-mingle! As items are used up, worn out or otherwise destroyed they are replaced.

This is what Works For Me - go check out We Are THAT Family for more tips and helpful ideas!

Take a tour of my house - the Family Room

I believe our home is considered a tri-level home without a basement. So on the main level there is the living room, kitchen and our sunroom addition. Then from the kitchen you can go either up or downstairs. If you go down you will go to the family room, laundry room, a bathroom and the 4th bedroom. If you were to go upstairs from the kitchen you would find a bathroom and 3 bedrooms.

So here I will be showcasing the family room. This room had wallpaper on one wall when we moved in which is still on the walls...for now. I want to take it off and paint the wall someday. The wallpaper isn't horribly ugly, it just isn't my style.

This picture was taken just after we bought the house, but before we moved in. The items on the shelves were the sellers things.

BEFORE:


Now this picture was taken a little over a year after we moved in. It is taken from the top of the stairs by the kitchen nook.

I love this room for it's coziness. Especially in the winter when the fireplace is going. This is where we watch movies or where the boys will gather to watch football or car racing. I fell in love with the shelves when we were looking at the house, now that I own the house I can't seem to get the shelves "just right" so we are constantly moving stuff around on here!

AFTER:
This picture was taken standing by the TV area (which is across from the couch) looking back towards the stairs that lead back up to the kitchen nook. This is a very comfy recliner that came with the very comfy couch my sister-in-law gave us!


This picture was taken from standing behind the chair looking towards the bathroom/laundry and the 4th bedroom. There is a linen closet in between the bedroom and the bathroom, then to the right of that bathroom is another large closet that actually goes along under the stairs and the hot water heater in another "closet". Just under our kitchen nook is the crawl space that has tons and tons of room for storage also.