I Couldn't Make This Stuff Up!

Before and after

When we bought our new to us suburban it had seen some pretty heavy wear on the carpets in different places. One of the places was the back. Fast forward to my love of the pinterest site.
Someone posted if you mix hot water and ammonia together in a spray bottle and then place a clean towel over it and iron over the towel the stain comes up. I am here to tell you it really freakin' works. I may be a little high on fumes right now but for nearly all my carpets the stains are coming up!!! We even found you really didn't need the iron if your willing to scrub a bit. It needs to be equal parts hot water and ammonia. I love pinterest!!

Jan 24, 2012

Natalie started this picture today at school. She drew her family that was here at Christmas. Her teacher asked if all that family lived with her. She told her only at Christmas.
Now she claims I'm embarrassing her by posting it. Seriously.

Back at it

I haven't left the house in days. Since Tuesday to be exact and it's now Sunday. I'm actually not feeling too terribly anxious about it and to be fair the kids haven't been out since then either other than to play in the snow. We tried to get the kids to go out for pizza Friday when we had a slight break in the weather but they didn't want to go so there you go. They're happy being home, so we'll roll with it.

I've been working on my blog book from 2008. I'm slightly behind on that and I really want to get it done. As I look back at the pictures and the stories I want to try to blog more get the stories down a little more this year. We'll see.

Tim had pneumonia last week. He's slowly getting over it. It came on pretty fast and hit him pretty hard. He got on some antibiotics and he's still coughing here and there and ran down. I will freely admit on here that I suck at caring for him. Tim being sick makes me feel like a single parent and I did not sign up for that and then I get bitter. It's awful but it's the god's honest truth, men being sick without something that is going to cause death makes me bitter.

And yes I get that pneumonia can cause death and that he didn't ask to get sick and some of it is that it's January and January's like the worst month on the calendar. Then I think the other part is that he was sick with some sort of non descriptive flu like thing a week ago. Sickness that was way too close together makes me bitter as well I guess. Anyway there you have it. I love Tim dearly and he obviously still loves me to put up with my crazy. It's my germaphobia too. When anyone in our house is sick I immediately go to how will I keep everyone else from getting whatever this is. People have bigger problems, this I know, so I'll move on.

I've got to get the kids in bed and ready for this week ahead. It's only a four day one and last week was a one day week with all our snow. It sounds crazy but I'm glad it's only a four day week this week. Short weeks make me happy. Even though we'll now be making up days in June I'm still happy for the break last week. We'll call it Winter Break the sequel.

 

 

Snow snow everywhere

Yes we still have snow. We got hit with the perfect storm early Wednesday. The weathermen said we'd get 4-8" and we laughed thinking they messed up again. Come to find out they nailed it. We got about 7" and then the freezing rain/hail hit yesterday all day long. Schools been cancelled and I've enjoyed the kids being home. They even cancelled work at Hanford and PNNL. It's been epic. I do love the snow.

iPhone pics from the week

Some pics from our past week. Tim got sick and got better so that was good. The kids and I went to Applebee's for dinner before they went back to school last week while Tim rested at home.

I've been working on the school levy that's coming up in February for a vote. Here's hoping it passes. Heidi, Miranda, and I go to the meeting and then go out for dinner for the after meeting. This week we tried out our new Texas Roadhouse, which was amazing. The rolls alone were fantastic. The food was great and the prices were extremely reasonable. Oh and the cowboy Margarita was nummy also!

We got a little Lilly time in today. We see Kelly and the kids everyday but usually it's as we're shuffling kids in and out of cars and to and from school. Life is it's normal busy pace for all of us.

I made a recipe I found on pinterest and fancied it up a bit to make it my own. Baked Fried Chicken, homemade rolls, and mashed potatoes and gravy. Pretty yummy stuff!

We're good everyone is well and back to school and work and life is good.

The January slide

It feels like we're coming down off a holiday high around here. We're all feeling the effects of so much good food, late nights spent visiting with family and running around during the holidays.  The big kids start back to school today, Nat will go back tomorrow it's her Wednesday off kindergarten. Tim is home sick. He's got a headache and stomach ache and is feeling under the weather. My big tree is sagging and looking like it's ready to be put away for the year.

It takes us about a month to put up our Christmas Decorations and usually about 2 weeks to get them all put away and stored. 10 trees this year will take some time to pull down. It was worth it. I love the house decorated at Christmas.

We bought a new car last week. Our old Suburban was getting up in age and miles. Lots of trips back and forth so we upgraded to a newer Suburban, 2007. It's really nice and we're hopeful it's as dependable as the last one has been. We're still figuring out what we'll do with the van and the other burb. I think right now we'll sell them both and get a newer car for Tim as well, but we'll see how it all shakes out.

Our January calendar isn't looking as crazy as the last couple of months have and I'm good with that. We need a slow month to ease back into things here. I hope your New Years starts off well at your house too!

Happy New Year 2012!

Our New Years came together sorta at the last minute. We were all wanting to get together but really tired from Christmas and Dad's birthday celebrations. We decided at the last minute in order to get both our families together in one location so we could all be together on New Years we'd gather at Mom and Dad's. And yes that's Uncle Andrew using Maddie as a foot stool.

It ended up being Mom, Dad, Tim, and I and the kids, Pam and John, Charlotte and Shepherd, Andrew and Esther, Chris and Michelene and the kids, and Barb, Steve, and Sara! It was a full house with lots of kids.

As in the past years we celebrated New Years New York time at 9pm our time for the little kiddos. The big kids were told to roll with it or they would have to go to bed with Natalie early. I've done this for years now and we just turn on one of the news channels usually Fox and watch the ball drop the kids have never caught on, because we pop sparkling cider for them and champagne for us and celebrate just the same.

At midnight we celebrated again with the grown ups and big kids. At 1am when we were still wide awake, I mentioned a chicken fried steak from my slowly deflating air mattress in the front room. Barb said "Let's go to Shari's!" and 15 minutes later Mom, Barb, Esther, Sara and I were in the car headed down the hill to possibly the worst 2 hours of food we'd ever encountered. Barb served as our waitress taking our orders on a napkin after waiting 2o minutes for someone to take our order.

She then found a waiter and he turned the napkin in to the kitchen. Seriously. We all need to make better decisions in the future. At 3am when we got home Tim was centered in the middle of the air mattress and it had sunk lower. I thought I'd buoy him up by hopping on it. 2 hours later we were touching floor and he fired up the air pump sending my dad flying out of bed. Esther and Andrew stayed the night too and they got the new air mattress. Anyway at 5 I decided it was time to try the couch and slept there for the next 3 hours on and off. I've had better nights sleep but we were all together and that was what mattered. Happy New Year!

 

Happy 60th Birthday Papa!

We celebrated Dad's 60th birthday by taking him out to dinner at House of Good Fortune. Madeleine and Uncle Jim were able to join us. The owner made Dad a fruit plate for his birthday dessert. Such a nice owner.

We went back to the house afterwards and had ice cream cake and opened presents.

What to get Dad this year. Why all the gifts he hadn't used and had piled on top of his dresser of course. Hilarious. I told him if he didn't use them this year he'd be seeing them again next year! This is Dad with his gift from Ryan, Kristy and the kids. I'm sure it's something he'll use, unlike the gifts I gave him that sat on his dresser. Anyway it was a good birthday for Papa.

Christmas 2011

I could tell you so many details about our Christmas. How many dozens of eggs we used and pounds of butter. How many people were here for Christmas day and the days leading up to it. Who got what for gifts. The food that was made and the preparations that went into it. And the toilet paper these people used. Hahaha, always think of my Aunt Rose who used to say that. And who said, "Not bad for poor folks!" as my Grandma used to say every single Christmas. And how truly truly happy I was to have nearly all our family and friends here to celebrate Christmas as I had so often dreamed of doing over the years as we traveled back and forth from Portland. Yes I could tell you so many stories but today as we are now down to only 9 people in our house I will show you this instead. These were what as I look through all these precious pictures we took and this is what is makes remember what the most important thing is. Family.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

This is a small piece of my life. We're getting ready for Christmas. We even got a dusting of snow