This is how we "handle" the little brother these days.....

ADD

You know if you've ever wondered if one of your children or a friends child or heck maybe even yourself may have ADD or ADHD please just take a peek into my life AND I'm on medication.....

Seriously, at this exact moment in time I'm in the process of moving the tv (and all that accompanies it) to the other side of the room and then the big leather recliner will take up the tv's old position.

AND currently I have most of the basement stairs and partial walls painted(1 side needs the second coat) and a little more than half the wallpaper removed from the front entrance way and I keep thinking about doing the upstairs hallway(want to scrape and paint) so that I can put up some pictures.......

Cracks me up!!

You know everything I have ever heard or read says to get your kids to eat more veggies to have them take part in the growing process.. Well that's exactly what I've done for the past 2 years. We go to the store, pick out the seeds we want and plant them and water them and pluck them when ready and you know what.........................
They wont touch any of our veggies any more than the store bought variety......sigh.......

Having never grown carrot's I decided to check and see how mine are growing.....
\
Also, we do NOT have a potty trained "house trained" 3yr old...........sigh........ it really isn't ever going to happen...............

Raspberry Jam.......bla

Raspberry jam is a very close second to Cherry in our family..

I am not sure what happened so different from the rest (except that I used a different recipe for each fruit and this one didn't call for cooking the fruit)but the raspberry jam didn't "set" and it's much to sweet. I feel like it's a waste of expensive fruit but am trying really hard to not let that get the best of me.
I know we will eat it regardless but still, the Blueberry and Cherry turned out AWESOME and we will enjoy them for months to come just wish the "expensive" fruit would have turned out also.
It's not easy making mostly seedless jam........


This is the juice from all of them... Had enough left over to make "raspberry syrup" for our breakfast for dinner that night(YUMMMMM)

Norah said the seeds looked like ground beef (not so yummmm)

AND our waste of jam that taste's like raspberry flavored sugar.....sigh....

What do you do with 4 POUNDS of cherries that you got for 2 bucks??????

Why make cherry jam of course(that is the ultimate fav at this house)



Pitting cherries even when ripe is very time consuming, messy and man does that sting in the eye....

The Jam turned out awesome! Can't wait to eat some........

Spent the morning/early afternoon at the beach yesterday, it's not so hot out when you can play in the water all day :)

This is how good my birthday cake was.......................

Berry's

So yesterday I took the kiddo's berry picking at one of the many local U-Pick places....
This was our take home..........
I have been wanting for years to make homemade jam's and thought this would be the perfect opportunity to try my hand at it...
1 child to pick out stems.
1 child to measure out the rest of the ingredients
1 child to mash the fruit....
1 mom to make them all leave the super duper small itty bitty kitchen so she could finish least she kill one or more children before it's done......







Turns out I can make some super yummy Blueberry jam, 7 small jars of it :) We will be returning to pick many more Raspberries(tomorrow) because apparently you need LOTS of them to make jam.......
My one question so far is can I just mash up the raspberry's and then force thru a "sifter" to get out a bunch of the seeds?? I don't have one of those presses to do it for me......

The things they do......

I have 2 observations that I'd like to share with all 5 of you...... Both of these were made either yesterday or today and they are NEAT!

1)After foolishly trying to dry a load of wash 2 separate times on 2 different temperatures I realized the bigger picture and pulled out the dryer to find a "swim hole" behind it with the water slide emptying onto the floor... YEA ME!!
Apparently while my 2 youngest were outside yesterday re-creating the "water park" with the hose and anything within reach they also thought that strange hole in the house might want to become a water slide....

2) While using the downstairs bathroom yesterday afternoon I happened to look at the sink and on the counter next to it the top to my Night Time face creme looked dirty... Hmmmmm I opened it and to my utter shock and horror it appeared almost completely empty!!!
I immediately felt sick and nauseous, you see I just recently started using night time face creme and it's the one expense I allow myself(along with the daytime creme).. This particular jar is 30.00 for 1.7oz..... needless to say it was one I used as little as possible while achieving the desired results AND it was an almost full jar....... I'm almost in tears just reliving it...
Oh and guess where SHE used it..........yes all OVER her legs, it seems they are very full and youthful looking legs, I'm jealous.......................

10,6,3 part 1 :)

THE pictures are in my possession! I can't for the life of me decide which picture(s) I like best, don't you love when that happens...
It's crazy to me how RED Norah's hair is getting, in the pictures anyway(or should I say auburn)...
It's also crazy that I am soon to have a 10 YEAR OLD child..... how did that happen people, I still feel 24!

10,6,3 part 2 :)

14 year olds

Last week I invited a teenager into my home for a few days.

Picked her up on Wednesday morning and brought her home Saturday afternoon.(some of you know how awesome a lone teenager is when you have many little people:))


Would you believe I forgot to take pictures THE entire time! I KNOW!! The last day we did what all family's that have a fish geek in them do, we went to the fish geek family summer picnic:)
Chrs remembered the camera thankfully and this is the one and only picture I have of the lovely Kelly!
My kids love her, I love her and Chrs calls her "feisty"
She reminds me a little of me when I was 14 :-) Now to figure out when I can get her back.........
I didn't want to see her go.........sniffle sniffle sniffle..........

I have within my sight the picture's of my amazing kiddo's! Problem is that I can't see them all!!! Waiting for the photographer to wake up and see my email.... Then I'll post a few here...... THEY ARE AMAZING!! If you have facebook you can see a few there in the mean time...............................

OOOHHHHH and we wont be seeing Cars2 people(At least not Ari), not after the reviews I read thanks to my friend Carey and this terrific website that reviews movies....

The basement, it's almost finished

This is my nasty, dirty, gross basement before(well almost before) and then after :) All I have left is to paint the wall above the HUGE aquarium and then finish the steps....

ding ding ding

******* SPECIAL ALERT, SPECIAL ALERT******* That which I thought would never happen and quite frankly stopped even hoping for, did indeed happen today, 2 times and THE child was not prompted!!
My 3yr old who turned 3 the end of March, used the potty today, 2 times!!! First time he actually ran to me, mom I have to poop and did so on the potty and then he peed. Second time said child ran into the potty and walked up to the toilet at peed!! WHO HOOOOO he may be "house trained" ;) before winter after all!!!!!!!!

a Tad bit behind these days..................................

Last weekend we went to the Big Ticket Festival and I'm posting pictures of what my kiddo's would say was the best part of the entire day :)
You know I haven't had an elephant ear in I don't even know how long so when I heard that Chrs and Isaac were going to get one I said "hey get 2"... Well they have ruined them folks, RUINED! You can now get toppings! TOPPINGS?! that should be cinnamon and sugar greasy awesomeness with the possibility of powered sugar (which I never got) but NOOOOOOOOOOO they came back with this thing that had "Bavarian creme" on it! I couldn't even eat it.....