Is It Naptime Yet

Friday was a good day. I knew it would be since we had planned on going to the Springs Preserve with Sam, Britta, and they brought Izaak along, a young boy from the mommy class we use to do.

Before heading to the Springs Preserve we went to Trader Joe’s and my in-laws house.

At noon we meet Sam and the gang. The kids ate lunch and played. Britta split her lip open, but other than that it was a mostly smooth afternoon.

The kiddos had lots of fun and Sam and I were able to chat  and get adult conversation in. We actually talked about more than kid stuff, like politics, which luckily we agree so it was a pleasant conversation. Fortunately, our conversations are pretty broad and I am able to talk to Sam about a lot of different things.

We did the usual activities and then the girls and I headed out before leaving Sam, Britta, and Izaak there.

We stopped by a local gas station to use our gas cards. They’re only $10 each and you have to do a complete transaction for each one. As in pump gas, return nozzle, wait for a receipt and repeat. I had to figure this out, so it was rather annoying.

Then we headed over to a local store I rarely visit, one, because It’s on the way to places I go, but not really on the way home and two, it’s not a very tidy store. They had the fun sized candy bar bags on sale for $1.50, which are usually $2-$2.50, on sale.  I bought eight bags for Halloween and I guess  to gain a lot of weight with. Usually we have to buy candy for Halloween and the trunk or treat, so eight is about right, but this year, once again, our ward is having the ward party on Halloween, which I’m so against, so I’m not supporting the activity in any way, where as last year I think I still donated candy. I just don’t like ward activities on Halloween night.

We bought lots of candy and the cashier was nice enough to ring it up twice for us, because there was a limit of four bags per transaction. I didn’t know, so I would have stuck to the limit, but it was very nice of here.

Friday night was normal.

Saturday I was busy cleaning and trying to create order in our house of chaos. I then sewed the skirt on finally. I’ve actually finish everything on the dress, except the buttons, because we don’t have enough and we’re waiting for them to be transferred to a closer store.

Saturday night the girls and I gave Jon some study time by going to JoAnn’s and then to Carolyn’s work to help her office decorate for the Halloween party. It was fun, the girls had tons of fun and Lilah now prays for a very scary Halloween.

Sunday was a normal day.

Monday I made the apron.

Today I’m working on the pantaloons, which I didn’t buy enough lace for so they won’t get done till Thursday or Friday, or after I go to JoAnn’s again.

Now I just need to cut out the bonnet and sew it together.

I’m almost done with the costume.

Then next week I’ll begin table runners for my friends wedding, which have to be done by the 15th of November.

I’ve never made table runners, so I’m a little nervous. I’m mostly nervous about cutting the fabric completely straight so the seams turn out straight and so they’re retanglular table runners and not trapezoidal or some other parallelogram.
I think I’m a little crazy.

My apron and robe will probably be Christmas presents to myself.

For Halloween some people decorate their front yard as a graveyard.

Me….I like to make my laundry area a mini graveyard of ants.

Can you tell I’m avoiding sewing?

I’m gonna go vacuum up the mass graveyard.

I guess the ant bait is working.

…An hour and a half away from your life?

Ironing and sewing this hem.

It may have only taken a little over an hour, but it felt like longer since I was watching a debate between Dina Titus and Jon Porter and they had a commercial break like every three minutes.  I’m almost not sure who I like least right now for Congress.

Keep in mind it’s folded in half and is still longer than my 7 or 8 foot couch. (I’m not sure of the exact length.)

They also wanted me to hand sew it. That would have taken me 3 or more hours to hand sew because I’m a slow sewer with a machine and even slower with my hands that tend to cramp when hand sewing.

I am one step closer to being done. Now I just need to gather it and attach it to the dress.

I hope the ant bait works, because I don’t have time to deal with those suckers.

My friend Anna is giving away a $10 gift card to JoAnn’s.

All you have to do is hop over there and tell her: If you could be anything you wanted for Halloween, cost and costume being no object, what would it be?

She’ll close the giveaway once she gets 25 answers.

Go do it so I can win the gift card and buy a pie plate. Or if you’re Carolyn you can win the gift card and buy me a pie plate and I’ll share a pie with you, or you might even win the gift card, but I admit I really want to just win the gift card for myself. 😉

We had ants this morning. Not a lot of ants, but enough that were persistent that we needed to call the bug guy before we got a lot. So we’ve had the bug guy out twice in two months and since we’re not on the monthly plan we pay the call out amount, and we could get three monthly visits for two call out visits.

It sucks to waste money, but we usually only have them out twice a year when we get ants, because we don’t get that many other bugs. Last month the ants were outside by our front door, this month they were in the girl’s bathroom and my laundry area/ kitchen area.

Ants bite.

I really hate them and he sprayed a lot so I hope they all die.

I was also hoping to go to Utah for my friends wedding. We were discussing it and I was going to go, but we have Lilah’s ER bills, Jon has cavities that need to be filled, and we have this mornings bug man’s bill to pay.

Life bites.

I think I’m going to eat some Cherry Chocolate Bread, really cake, after lunch.

I need to sew, those were my original plans today. I have the hem and the skirt to attach to the dress and then I’m at a standstill till they get me buttons, lace, and the fabric for the apron and such. I’ve done so much work already this morning I don’t want to sew.  (I mopped floors, cleaned bathrooms and did dishes, things I planned on doing tomorrow after I finished the skirt. )

This week is going down hill. Fast.

I guess I’m in a blogging mood, mostly because I only have a short amount of time with nothing to do and the things I need to do will take more time than 15 minutes.

Tonight I’m making fish for dinner. Wild Alaskan Salmon to be specific. We use Wild Alaskan Salmon because it’s better for the environment than Farmed Atlantic Salmon. It use to be very hard to find Wild Alaskan, but now it’s a little more available if you know where to look. We buy ours at Costco and it’s marinated and packaged in 6 oz steaks. Two steaks are perfect for our family. They use to only have non marinated in the Atlantic, but now Costco carries non marinated Wild Alaskan, but it’s around $2 more a pound and that makes a big difference when you’re already paying 5 something a pound.

We like it and it works for us.

We eat  fresh Salmon around twice a month and if we have more seafood it’s usually canned salmon or canned tuna, in salmon burgers or tuna casserole, and we have fish no more than once a week. I’m very conscious of mercury content and when nursing we ate it maybe once a month.

With the fish I’m making butternut squash. I love butternut squash. I bake it, instead of microwaving it, what I did growing up. Baked butternut squash is so much better than microwaved, even if it’s not the most flavorful squash, but if it is, it’s heavenly. Well, maybe heavenly is a bit of an overstatement, but a baked, flavorful butternut squash is delicious. I don’t like other squashes. They just don’t compare, so I never but acorn or spaghetti, I’ve yet to try banana squash. They just aren’t as good in my book, but I do make them when Jon buys them, I just don’t like it when he buys them.

Lastly were having sauteed summer squash and zucchini. I bought enough zucchini to saute with the summer squash and later this week I plan on making zucchini bread, I just need to finish the cherry chocolate bread that Sam brought me today. I love zucchini bread, it’s my favorite “bread” that’s really a cake in disguise.

I guess I just had a desire to blog about the one balanced meal I plan on making this week.

Well, I make more than one balanced meal a week, but this one is of my favorite foods.

There’s the timer. I believe the fish is finished.

I did a few games with some words this afternoon with Lilah and then we did a small spelling test that used four of the eighteen words we were reading.

I think she did rather well, especially since she got all four correct.

The purpose is so they learn spelling in a fun way and it’s not as tedious as a normal spelling test that a child would have in school. It’s suppose to be short and if we do it two to three times a week she should be learning how to spell eight to twelve words, more if we decide to do six or eight words in one ‘test’. It’s also to instill confidence in her spelling abilities.

She checks the words herself and once a problem arises we discuss what she did wrong and how to correct it.

I think she’s doing pretty well for no formal schooling.

I think the girls are preparing themselves for changing from daylight savings time back to standard.

We’ve put them to bed at the same time, with the same naps, and they’ve been waking up around 8 or 8:30 am, or an hour later than normal. This is really odd for Eden to being doing this. She usually wakes up bright and early at 7 or even 6:30 am, but for whatever reason has been sleeping in and then does not want to take a nap.

Take right now for example. She’s still in her room making noises and asking when she can come out.

Sigh.

On Sunday Eden skipped a nap, but that was also due to me wanting to put the girls to bed early so they would wake up at 7:30 am to get ready for dance at 9 am since they slept in till 8 on Sunday too. (Eden didn’t take a nap Saturday due to making too much noise and I guess being excited about going to Chuck E’ Cheese that night. She also woke up at 8:30 on Saturday. See a pattern here?)

I’m not ready for both my girls to be awake all day long. Lilah’s not ready for Eden to be awake.

When we let Eden stay awake on Sunday she was so upset that the TV was off and she was missing her PBS kids. Once we told her PBS kids was not on on Sunday she was fine.  (Since Lilah normally sleeps later she doesn’t watch any, if much, TV in the morning, while Eden usually wakes up and does, if she’s not playing. So Lilah’s TV time is during Eden’s nap.)

I had a hard time when Lilah stopped taking her nap. The afternoon would be my time to nap, read, watch TV, and especially eat snacks I didn’t like to share with the girls. (I admit I’m a closet sugar eater and I regulate my girls sugar intake in hopes that they will be better at managing their sweet tooth’s. )

Lilah also has an afternoon snack, so Eden will need an afternoon snack, and that means one more person to share my yogurt with.

I want my alone time.

Why can’t they both take naps at my command?

This past Sunday I canned four quarts of peaches.  We’ve had the peaches in our room and it was smelling rather peachy, but I guess not peachy enough.

I had a few bumps and I’m not posting pictures because they don’t look too appetizing, though I’m sure they’ll taste fine in a pie or cobbler.

First bump: I don’t think they were as ripe as they needed to be. Plus, since they were so green when I bought them, the texture of the peaches was off. I’ve had this happen before where a peach should be so good, but the texture is just a little strange.
So they peaches I canned were a little stringy, but they still tasted just fine, just a little different than the kind from the store.

Second bump: I filled the jars too full and they didn’t seal the first time and I had an overflow of juice and peaches when I opened them to reseal ’em. I then had to remove some peaches and seal them again. Luckily, they did seal the second time, just rather low, so maybe they would have been fine had they set. I don’t know. I think next year I’m going to fill them a little lower and see how that works.

Other than that I had made just enough syrup and had just enough peaches for four jars, except what I removed and ate, which made me happy. (I didn’t want a lot of excess syrup or not enough because that would have taken time to make another batch. )

Once I get a pastry cutter, and a deeper pie plate, I’m going to make a peach or apple pie. I just hope my first attempt at pie crust works out well.

Pie crusts intimidate me,  so any tips are welcomed.

I lost our Target gift card, and it still had $40 on it. 🙁

I used it to buy clothes and a few other things on Saturday, put it in my wallet with the receipt and now I can’t find it!

Eden and I went to Smith’s right after Target and then the girls and I went to Chuck E’ Cheese that night.  I’m not sure where it went, but it is not in my purse or wallet.

I went to Target to exchange some clothes today after dance class and  I couldn’t find the gift card for the woman to put the return on. I was saying I couldn’t find it and she mentioned it had $40 on it, since she was holding my receipt. Yeah I know there’s $40 on it and that’s why I’m looking through every part of my purse! We’ll I didn’t really get angry at her, just a little annoyed.

I was too bummed to go buy pants and footsie pajamas at Mervyn’s. Lilah desperately wants footsie pajamas, but we no longer have any her size and they don’t have any at Target. ( She wants stripes cause the striped ones are her favorite.)

I’ve combed through my purse and wallet and have found nothing. It’s made me very grumpy and I’m not sure if Lilah asked for me to find the gift card in her lunch prayer because she wants to spend money or have a less grumpy mom.

I’m totally bummed.