Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down 2012 - #21

Up:

• Our little girl turned 7 months old on Saturday! Hard to believe we are now on the short end towards the 1 year mark! Also, we used the last of our gifted diapers this week. Cannot stress enough how wonderful that diaper shower and all our family/friends are to us. We are definitely blessed - thank you!

Daddy was my spotter!

And this is why everyone thinks I have a little boy when we go out; she always pulls off her headbands.

• I did my first 'garage sale' on Saturday. We used to have mega garage sales growing up, but I just haven't had enough stuff to do a full up garage sale on my own. I did a community yard sale on base and took a couple of other girls stuff besides my own to sell. The turn out wasn't great and not a lot of people showed up to even sell, but we made a total of $225 between the three of us, which isn't bad. It was also a perfect day for an outdoor garage sale which also means it was the perfect day for this fair skinned girl to get scorched! Oops, at least I made some money in the process!

Down:

• Another "worst mom ever" moment. It happened the first day of school when I didn't get JP's picture and here we are at the end of school and I did it again. No, I got a picture and remembered teacher's gifts! However, there is the matter of the end of year party. I was only notified that there was a party and to bring food. I did not realize that it was a ceremony where the kids sang songs and got certificates :( I was hurrying to get there because I had to feed Kennedy and then of course, anytime your running late there is the last minute double diaper changes because both kids decided to poop. I was like 5 minutes late, that's it, and I walk in just in time to see all the 2 year old class leaving the stage. I was so upset Jackson missed his special moment. He had no idea that he'd missed anything, but I did and I feel awful about it.

• Last year while Mike was deployed our Keurig started acting up and brewing the wrong cup sizes, then it just quit all together. Luckily it was in warranty and we got a brand new replacement brewer! Well almost a year later, here we are again with a different problem that is not fixable. Thankfully we are still under warranty on the current brewer and they are sending yet another brewer to us. I feel like we have just gotten shafted. So many people I know haven't ever had any issues and here I am taking good care of my machines that keep breaking. The upside is that we haven't had to pay for new brewers and the company has been great about everything.

Future Tiger!

Getting some sun!

Love to see them play together!

Favorite Thing:

I have recently been on a Greek Yogurt kick - it is really yummy and packed with protein. At the commissary they sell the Yoplait for $.70 and the Chobani for $1 each, so I've been eating mainly Yoplait. Then at my conference a couple weeks ago the RD (Registered Dietitian) that works for Chobani came and spoke to us about the product, processing, etc. because they are building a new facility in Twin Falls, ID. May I just say, number 1, I want her job! How cool would that be to live in upstate NY and work for an awesome yogurt company. Number 2, they have a tasty product that is also well manufactured. It has 5 active and live cultures and 3 probiotics and made with all natural ingredients. They also just started a whole new line of kids yogurt called Chobani Champs where the yogurt is in smaller packaging and already blended. They had tons of free samples at the conference so I tried to try as many flavors as possible while I was there. My favorite is the Apple Cinnamon - delicious! I highly recommend it!

Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down 2012 #20

Happy Mother's Day to all you wonderful mommys out there! Give yourself a pat on the back for everything that you do!

Up:

• It is rare that it happens, but this year my birthday falls on Mother's Day!  I think it's pretty cool! I was also born on Mother's Day back in 1984 - best Mother's Day present ever (I'm guessing)! What a blessing 28 years later to be celebrating my own birthday and being a mother to my two precious babies - Jackson & Kennedy!

• We enjoyed great company with friends for dinner today! Not to mention Mike smoked another fabulous brisket! Thanks everyone for making today special!
• A while back my friend Lauren asked me if I would be interested in having a group of girls over to the house to learn about organization. I was definitely flattered that she thought I had something to offer, but didn't really know how to teach people to organize short of giving them a tour of the whole house to show them what I had done, so that's what I did! I think the evening went really well and I hope they took something away from it. 

Down:

• Talk about a bad day. Monday we drove home from Salt Lake City, surprisingly the drive home was smooth and uneventful. As soon as we get home I started unloading the car. Jackson said he wanted to draw with chalk on his easel, which I thought was a good idea to keep him entertained while I was still unloading. BIG MISTAKE! He decided to do some more art on the walls upstairs. Then later that evening as I was switching out the laundry, he happened upon my purse. He found my lip stick pouch, unzipped it and picked out my favorite lipstick (which is no longer made) and decided he would color all over our white carpet in the living room. I was livid! Unfortunately after all my efforts to get the stain up, it didn't work and I'm sure we'll be paying for that when we move out. Sorry, I was too mad in the moment to get pics of these events. 
• To top that day off, after the kids went to bed I decided to put together the new toy storage system we purchased at Ikea. Of course I didn't get very far. Apparently there was some type of manufacturer's error and the holes were drilled in the wrong place by like a 1/4-1/2"!!!! I was really upset because on Thursday night I had a group of girls over to show them all my organizational stuff. Even though I wasn't able to have those in place for my talk, Ikea pulled through and is sending me replacements. They are also letting me keep the defective ones which I think my Dad could probably rig and make them work too! Needless to say that day ended with a much needed glass of wine and some DVR'd Grey's Anatomy to make me feel better!

Kennedy, so happy about the warmer weather so she can wear cute stuff like this!

...and these tiny adorable shoes!

The fruit is starting to be on sale again so I made a delicious fruit pizza!

We went bowling when Daddy got home on Friday. Love Jackson's stance here!

There's that stance again while he watches Daddy.

Kennedy watching the bowling from the side lines.

Don't know if you can see it but this is the closest I've ever been to a real beehive. This was in a tree in the Babies 'R Us parking lot of all places. They just called the exterminator thankfully! 

Forgot to post this last week. This is the gorgeous Catholic church in Sun Valley. Unfortunately they only do weekend masses and we weren't there on Sat. or Sun. There's always next time!

Favorite Thing:

I love a good challenge! A couple of weeks ago I purchased a twin bed off a local classifieds site. I had been wanting a twin bed to put in K's room so that when we have guests, Jackson can just sleep in there with her. Specifically I wanted a Captain's bed because those have a lot of built in storage. If you were to purchase one they range from $400-600. Obviously that is not in Mike's 'value tree' as he would say. Then I found a Captain's bed on this site for $200 - what a steal! I'm pretty proud of myself because this has been my project all the way through. I took Mike's pick-up and picked up the bed myself, unloaded it myself, sanded and stained it, repaired a broken drawer and replaced the knobs. Of course I had some guidance from my Dad, but I did all the work. To get to the point, my favorite thing this week is more of a challenge - to do something for yourself to make you feel proud and accomplished. It could be anything - making, crafting, organizing something - anything! I think sometimes as moms we get wrapped up in our children and doing things for/with them that we sometimes lose sight of the things that make us happy and keep us sane. I think it's so important to hold on to that because that is what makes us who we are and helps us set a good example for our children to be independent and your own person. I think I'm rambling now, but I just wanted to say that I had so much fun redoing this bed. It didn't turn out like I envisioned, but like Mike said, "Did you have fun doing it? Then is was worth every penny!" Here are some before and after pics:

Before

After

Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down 2012 #19

FYI this was written on Sunday, so there may be some retractions next week!
Up:

• It's not often that I get time to do things I enjoy or am passionate about by myself. My schedule generally revolves around the kids. This week, Mike took off work Wed.-Fri. to watch the kids for me while I attended the Idaho Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics state meeting. It was in Sun Valley which is a place we'd been wanting to go since moving to Idaho. The conference was amazing and had some really knowledgable guest speakers. I was able to get a lot of continuing education hours to maintain my registration. Mike had a good time exploring the town with the kids despite the yucky weather.  We will definitely make our way back to Sun Valley before moving from Idaho!

Unfortunately this was the only pic we got while in Sun Valley - Jackson thought he was hot stuff sitting in the big chair!

• Mike has gets to work in Salt Lake City all this week for a training. Sun Valley and Mountain Home are the same distance from SLC, so we decided to make the trip with him. Ok I will admit, my motivation was purely selfish - Ikea! I love this store and we were able to go get a car full of stuff I'd been wanting for a while. If you've never experienced this awesome place, I highly recommend it. Anyway, we are heading home Monday, short trip, but always a fun place to visit. Mike won't be home until Friday, but glad he'll be home for my birthday and Mother's Day!

Down:

• Apparently Mike thought it was a good idea to leave the computer open for all to play with while he went to the restroom one day when he was watching the kids. Of course, when he comes back Jackson has turned on some type of closed captioning thing on my computer that narrates EVERY thing you do. I have no idea how to turn it off and it is highly annoying. Mike thought it was hilarious and has made no efforts to fix it. (Thank you Krista Hughes for fixing this for me!)
• This week there was another F-15E crash. Thankfully both the pilot and WSO ejected and are fine. It is really hard for me to understand/accept why these things are happening. Obviously I have always known that Mike's job came with risks, but two crashes in the span of a month seems a bit much. My only hope is that they figure out what went wrong so it won't happen again.

Favorite Thing:

As mentioned above - IKEA!!! As an organization enthusiast, this store is packed with economically priced things for storage/organization. I've been wanting the Trofast organization storage system for the kids' toys for awhile, but just haven't made it down to Ikea to get it, plus there is always the part of convincing my husband of the necessity of my purchases. To my surprise, Mike put more in the cart than I was originally planning to get! Also, they sell the best gingersnap cookies there that I can't ever leave the store without. It is absolutely worth the trip if you've never been to one. If you don't have one in your neck of the woods, check out their catalog/web page to see all their great stuff!

So this was a pic from last summer when JP and I went to Ikea. I failed to get any pics this visit.

Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down 2012 #18

Up:

• My husband is awesome - I have been pretty worked up recently because I just haven't had a chance to really 'deep clean' the bathrooms in awhile. I clean bits and pieces here and there, but they obviously need a lot more than that. Yesterday while I was working in the garage, to my surprise Mike cleaned both bathroom and the ceiling fans! Seriously made my day!
• I enjoyed my first 'Ladies Night' in I don't know how long also thanks to Mike for watching the kids for the night! We ate at a new place I've never tried that served steaks and seafood. I think I was the only person that got a steak, but Oh MY! it was the BEST steak I've ever had. It was a center cut top sirloin cooked exactly as I like it and topped with peppercorn crusted gorgonzola cheese - heaven in my mouth! I also had a great time enjoying some wonderful adult conversation!
• Kennedy had a fabulous 6 month check-up. She is 16.8 lbs. (65%) and 27.56 inches long (96%), I think she's gonna take after Daddy and Brother in the height department. She's been sitting up so well that we were able to quit using the baby bath and now we can bathe the kids together (at least for a little while) which is so much easier. She has started doing this sort of army crawl where she just uses her arms and drags her feet behind her. I'm sure it won't be long now.

Look at Kennedy sitting up so well!

She is so content to just sit and play with her toys now - it's great!

Kennedy loving the big kid bath and Jackson had fun too, he kept giving her bath toys to play with!

Down:

• Will someone please tell my 2 year old that getting up between 5-6am is just not acceptable! I am so tired by the end of the day, but daylight lasts a while here so I have trouble going to sleep at my normal time. 
• After a great stint of warm beautiful weather, we're back to blah. It's been pretty chilly and windy the past couple of days and doesn't look to be getting any warmer until the end of this coming week. It's so hard for Jackson because we were spending so much time outside last week and this week we've had to stay inside and he just doesn't understand.

Favorite Thing:

  As I've mentioned before, I use unscented laundry soap and rely on my dryer sheets to give my clothes that fresh clean smell. However, this last box of dryer sheets smelled awful and I'm needed to find out how to make the laundry smell better. I kept seeing the commercial for the Downy Unstoppables, but once I saw the price decided that they weren't for me. Right next to them was a similar product called Purex Crystals which was significantly cheaper. I decided to give it a try and chose the Fresh Spring Water scent. It smells great and the scent last way longer than the dryer sheets, not to mention the fact that now if I don't dry an article of clothing it still smells great. You should give it a try.

Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down - 2012 #17

Well finally I have a good excuse for not being on time with my blog posting - fabulous weather! Instead of hanging out indoors typing on the computer we have been enjoying every minute of warm weather we can before it's gone again (which according to the weather forecast will be on Friday with a high of 55).

UP:

• Our beautiful baby girl turned 6 months old on Thursday. She had her first tooth barely break through the surface this week and she is so close to crawling. She's also gotten really good at sitting up by herself. She is still growing like crazy, but I'll have to wait 'til the next post to give your her numbers. We go to the doctor on Thursday.

• As I mentioned above, the weather has been great here. We've been so warm that we are setting records. On Friday the squadron had a 9 hole golf tourney and Mike took Jackson with him. He hasn't stopped talking about it since. He had a blast chasing golf balls, 'driving' carts and of course the sand traps! Then Saturday we headed to Boise and spent a good bit of time at the outdoor market. It really just feels good to get out. I feel like we are just confined to the walls of our home for most of the year here due to weather/wind.
• We sold the Saturn! It was sort of bitter sweet. That was my first 'new' car I've ever owned or purchased myself. Plus it was a great car for us, we just outgrew it with the kids. We were able to get a fair price for it from a dealership near Boise. Good to check that off the list.

Daddy did Jackson's hair that day - yikes!

Super tired after a long Saturday in Boise.

Who needs girl's toys, trucks are fun!

Jackson showing Kennedy how his airplane flies around.

Down:

• I'm really bummed we didn't get to join my family in celebrating my Uncle Amos & Aunt Loretta's 50th wedding anniversary party in Groom, TX. I think besides my sister's family, we were the only ones not there. It's so hard living away from family and not getting to participate in the big or little things going on with everyone else. 
• Two kids teething at the same time is NO fun. Jackson is cutting his molars and Kennedy is getting her first tooth. The problem is that Jackson hasn't been sleeping well while Kennedy is sleeping a lot more. So what does JP do - he has to go wake up his sister EVERY time he gets up. Although she is really nice to him about it, it's cutting into Mommy's productivity and Jackson has been so moody with the lack of sleep.

Favorite Thing:

This week I have two favorites that go hand in hand. With warmer weather comes better yummy fruit. Jackson loves strawberries and I found this handy tool to slice them with. This strawberry slicer is super easy to use and makes even slices. I purchased this one at the kitchen outlet for $5, but there are many varieties out there. Once you've cut the strawberries, you need to keep them fresh if you aren't going to use them right away. It always surprises me that people haven't heard of this wonderful invention - Fruit Fresh. It comes in more than one brand (I think), I just happened to have Ball which was by the canning section in my store. It works great to keep all your produce fresh and prevents turning colors after slicing.

Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down - 2012 #16

Up:

• Jackson had a great 2 year well check appointment this week. He's been excited to go to the doctor now that Doc McStuffins is on the Disney channel, but my fear was as soon as he got his shot he would no longer be a fan. To my surprise my big boy didn't even whimper when he got his shot! The best news was - no more vaccinations 'til age 4 and he can now do the flu mist! He has actually improved his weight from the 18th month check-up and went from the 17th to the 36th percentile!

Jackson giving 'coffee' to Daddy and Mommy for breakfast!

• Can I just say how much fun it is to shop for girls clothing! This weekend we bought Kennedy a swim suit for the summer - it's hard to believe they make them so tiny! We also hit up the new Gymboree outlet and got some adorable stuff for both the kids. Even Mike enjoyed picking out clothes for them!

So this is my almost 6 month old daughter in a 12 month size swim suit!

• Kennedy moved up to a big girl car seat. I was waiting until she could sit up in a grocery cart before I moved her from the carrier to a big car seat and this week she passed the test. While she still can't sit up on the floor on her own, she's been doing great in grocery carts. She loves her new seat and hopefully it will make traveling more pleasant for her.

Down:

• We had to shut down our credit card this week :( Mike was paying our bill when he noticed some suspicious charges. Even though they were only for a little over $1 each, they definitely weren't charges we made. We called and reported it and they stopped all payment on our card. While I'm glad we caught it early, I do wonder where the person got our information from. I don't feel like I'm that careless and neither is Mike.
• I don't know if something happens after you have your actual 2nd year birthday or what, but the terrible two tantrums are in full swing at our house. It also appears that Jackson has decided he doesn't need a nap when he goes to school, which makes for ridiculous evenings after school and much earlier than normal bedtimes for my sanity.

Favorite Thing:

My Aunt Marva e-mailed me a couple of weeks and told me about these new Peanut Butter Cheerios to try with Jackson. I bought some and he liked them, but not near as much as Captain Crunch and Fruit Loops. I figured I would eat them since he wasn't...Oh My Goodness! They are delicious! They are actually better as an afternoon snack than breakfast and despite not having any chocolate, they help my fulfill my chocolate cravings. Plus they are relatively low calorie assuming you watch your portion size. Once I discovered how yummy they were, the box disappeared in a few days! I haven't tried the other flavors out on the market like Dulce de Leche, but if they are half as good as the peanut butter flavor, I'm sold!

Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down - 2012 #15

Hope everyone had a happy and blessed Easter!

Up:

• It was so great have Mike home this week especially to celebrate Jackson's 2nd birthday and Easter, two occasions he missed out on last year while he was deployed.
• So hard to believe my cutie pie is already 2 years old. Jackson brings so much joy, love, and laughter to our lives and I'm so thankful for him. Some of his funnies this week include saying that Old McDonald had a camel and then last night I could hear him singing 'Red Solo Cup' and 'Jingle Bells' in his room to put himself to sleep.

• We had a pretty low key Easter this year. After mass we went to the club on base to eat lunch with friends. It was nice not having to cook a big meal. Then we went back to the house and Jackson opened all his Easter basket prizes before his nap. After an extremely unusual 3 hour nap, he got up and hunted Easter eggs. He was definitely more into it this year than last. Last year he wouldn't even attempt to hunt eggs because he was scared of the grass. Kennedy looked adorable in her dress and acted like an angel for the most part, Mike said we should put her in a dress more often if she would act like that!

My handsome boys at Easter!

Look at my adorable Easter girl! Such a blessing!

Jackson wanted to open each egg before he found the next one!

• We got our taxes done this week and found out that we are getting a pretty fat tax return. That definitely gives me some peace of mind with all the money we shelled out recently for the pick-up.

Down:

• Mike found out at work this week that we won't be moving this year. So at the earliest we would move this time next year. I know that God has a plan for us, but I really don't know how much longer I can stand being in this house. Yes, I know I'm very fortunate to have a home and no monthly payment, but we are rapidly growing out of this space. Not to mention that I'm not a huge fan of Mountain Home itself. (Sigh) I guess we'll stick it out a little longer.
• Mike had to go back to work today. It is so great to have him home and then he took off work through yesterday. We had a great time and he even took Jackson golfing with him yesterday!

Helping Daddy on the REAL golf course! 

Future Aviator - this is what happens when you take Daddy to Kohl's!

Favorite Thing:

Pintrest! Those of you that haven't joined this extremely addicting site should seriously reconsider. You can find everything from decorating tips to recipes to crafts to kids activities to fashion and so much more. I so wish that I had been the genius to think of a website like this, but I'm so thankful someone did. Feel free go check out my boards and get some ideas!