{pretty, happy, funny, real} - End of Summer Edition

We've been hanging out around home more than usual lately.  While I was so excited (for me and them) for school to start, now that it's close, I think I'm going to miss them :-)  The up side of all this homebodiness is that I've actually taken pictures!

{pretty}

I cleaned the kitchen within an inch of its life yesterday.  That makes it pretty, or at least a lot prettier than it was.  Goo Gone is my friend.  It took care of a lot of the greasy mess on the microwave underside.

{happy}

After the pantry cleaning last week, I got out the easel for a long overdue (read: it's been many months) painting session.  Little E was not quite paint-eligible, but she was happy to color chalk on the other side.

{funny}

 It's funny, and maybe a little sad, but my kids are such desert rats that one good afternoon of thunderstorms produced some awesome puddles worthy of about 45 minutes of running and jumping in.

{real}

I suppose this is to be expected since she only has big brothers, but here is Elizabeth "peeing" in the potty.  She picks up her shirt and pushes on her belly button and is SURE she's going just like the big boys!  I've started putting her on the potty before bathtime in the hopes that we might not have too big a mess (or struggle to get her to sit down) when we actually start training her!

{pretty, happy, funny, real} - Easter is Here!

Hooray, we've made it through Lent and now we get to enjoy the Easter season, which actually lasts almost 6 weeks until Pentecost!  Here are a few fun pictures from our Easter festivities.

{pretty}

Pretty blessed is more like it.  We have three (generally!) sweet, beautiful, healthy kids.  No matter how difficult some days seem, life is really good!

{happy}

Mama got to make an Easter dress this year (more on that here) and I'm really happy with how it turned out.  Now if only the Energizer Bunny Elizabeth would've stood still for a whole 3 seconds, I could've gotten a clear picture.

{funny}

Elizabeth found out about the wonder that is Easter candy this year.  She approves wholeheartedly.

{real} 

Patrick gets constant "coaching" from his big brother, Christopher.  I'm sure my sisters will tell me that I drove them crazy doing the same thing, but I struggle to find a nice way to tell him, "Just let Patrick color his own darn eggs!"  And yes, I took their shirts off because you know that egg dye will never come out of anything, and we're short on clothing that fits right now as it is!

Joined up at Like Mother, Like Daughter - some great Easter fun had by all!

{pretty, happy, funny, real} - The Spring Edition

I have a sick big boy at home, so this will be pretty short this week.  I didn't want to completely disappear again, though.

{pretty}

I love these pretty yellow flowers that popped out in my garden a few days ago.

{happy}

Miss Elizabeth has made the developmental jump to walk-first, crawl-when-I-fall.  It makes me happy because, at a year old it's time and means she's growing as she should.  It makes me sad because she looks so darn big doing it - what happened to my baby?!



{funny} 

This is sad-funny.  This is my sewing table right now.  Apparently I thought that if I took my whiteboard and made a list of things I need to finish and mend, and then sat it by my machine, that would shame me into getting to things.  Yeah, it's not really working.

{real}

My pretty yellow flowers in the garden - they're on the broccoli.  I have no idea what happened there.  I planted about 30 broccoli seeds, and this is the only one that came up.  It went from having a tiny head (maybe 5 florets) of broccoli to this in a few days.  Clearly my gardening skills still need a lot of work.  I'm thinking I'll just bring the stalks in and put them in a vase and enjoy them.  I'm sure the broccoli is not edible now that it's shot to flower.

I have a bunch of other things to put up, but I have to go get Patrick from school and then we'll see how everyone's feeling.  Hope everyone has a great weekend!

{pretty, happy, funny, real} - The Kitchen Edition

It's been a while since I linked here, but since I've actually taken some pictures this week, I thought I'd jump in.

{pretty}

I scrubbed up my kitchen on Monday. It's needed it for WAY too long and it's amazing how much more counter space I have and how much easier dinner prep is now that I cleared up all the junk.

{happy}

We celebrated Pi Day yesterday (more on that here) with a very tasty chocolate cream pie.

{funny}

I made a salad on Sunday night with lettuce from our little garden. It's funny in that I'm waaay to proud of my 3 handfuls or so of lettuce.

Although if you consider that the view from my garden is this:

 gravel and a 6 foot tall cactus, the fact that anything grows at all is really pretty amazing!

{real}

I scrubbed up my kitchen in part because of this.

My toaster oven picked Monday morning while I was changing the Princess's dirty diaper to not shut off, catch fire, and scare me half to death.  Thank God, the flames were contained within the toaster oven and I was able to unplug it and then throw some water on it.  Scary, though, and a good moment to talk to the boys about what to do if they ever see that much smoke again.

We're enjoying our two weeks of spring here, with temperatures in the 70s and 80s, so maybe I'll get some outide pictures taken before it gets into the 90s and I can't bring myself to go outside much.  I hope you are all having a great week!

{pretty, happy, funny, real} - The Craftastic Edition

I got a box of fabric from Gorgeous Fabrics the other day thanks to Jen, who gave me a gift certificate for my birthday.  It's pretty much been the highlight of my week!

{pretty}

I love this jersey, which is going to be a wrap dress from Vogue 8379.  The color is aubergine and it's a fabulous deep greyish purple.

{happy}

These two sweaterknits and a grey jersey will be tops of some sort, although I'm not sure quite what yet.  Sounds like a good excuse to search the web looking for cute tops.  If you need me,  I'll be on Pinterest :-)

{funny}

I scrubbed my tile floors downstairs yesterday.  Normally I just mop, but every now and then (not really often enough), I get down there on my hands and knees and get all the corners and baseboards.  Why funny?  Because I think it's funny (and more than a little sad) how happy it makes me to see my (relatively) pearly white baseboards.

{real}

I'm holding out my new dress project as a carrot for after I finish this sweater.  This is the sleeve that never ends.  I have 8 more lace repeats and if I could manage to knit more than two rows at night before I fall asleep, I might actually make some progress.

{pretty, happy, funny, real} - What We Did on our Christmas Vacation

  We were lucky enough to have Daddy home with us for the past two weeks, so we got to have all sorts of Christmas and winter fun around here, even if we did have to drive 1.5 hours to find some snow!

{pretty}

Two handsome boys and a beautiful princess in (hopefully) the first of many mama-made holiday dresses.  I've been hoping for a girl ever since my oldest son told me at the ripe old age of not-quite-three that he didn't like the overalls I was making him for holidays.

{happy}

Aunt Jenny got Elizabeth a shopping cart for Christmas, thus putting her one step closer to world domination walking on her own and finally catching her brothers for a change.

{funny}

Last Thursday, we left our desert home and drove about 1.5 hours across town and up the largest nearby mountain to find snow.  Rather than storing sleds we use once a year (if that), we use the lids from underbed plastic boxes.  They look a little silly, but I at least get points for being thrifty, right?!

{real}

This was the view of my living room on Christmas night.  We are very fortunate to have grandparents who love their grandkids so much, but oh my!  We spent a day a few days later going through and organizing and donating toys, so it looks much better now.

{Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real}

This week's offering is a complete hodge-podge, but has only one kid pic.  That must be some sort of record for me!

{Pretty}

Advent started this past Sunday, so we got out our Jesse Tree and started reading all about the Old Testament figures that lead us to Jesus.  The boys were very excited to read about Noah the other night - let's see what sort of interesting questions come from reading about Abraham and Isaac tonight!

{Happy}

The Saturday before Thanksgiving I rode the 42 mile length of the Tour de Tucson.  I finished in just over 4 hours, which was my goal.  Read more about that adventure here.

{Funny} {Real} 

Every one of my kids has gone through a stage where they are fascinated with watching the laundry go around, and Elizabeth is no exception.  Of course in true "the third kid has it easier than the first"fashion, we now have our own front-loading washer and dryer.  Poor deprived Christopher and Patrick had to watch Grammy and Grandad's when we went back to PA.

The {real} here is the ridiculous collection of stuff on top of the washer and dryer.  Where did all that come from?  I have such big plans for the two weeks Mike is off work around Christmas.  Maybe I should make another calendar for that!

{Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real}

These last two weeks have been a little crazy, with sick kids on and off and a baby who doesn't want to sleep (what's new?!).  I have found a few pictures to include for PHFR, though.

{pretty}

I indulged my inner geek and made a calendar to schedule Christmas-related activities around here.  Yes, it's color coded. It makes me happy, OK?!? There is one for November, too, but I won't torture you with that.  My goal a few months ago was to get all the shopping done before Advent starts so that I could properly prepare for Christmas this year, but that's clearly not going to happen.  The new goal is half the shopping done and all the lists ready.

 {happy}

Big girl is SOO excited to get in the bathtub with her big brothers.  As soon as she hears the water running, she crawls as fast as her chubby legs will go to the tub, stands up, and bangs on it until you let her get in.

{funny}

Sometimes it's just too much work to stay awake the whole way through dinner.

{real} 

These are the favorite toys in our house right now.  WHY, oh WHY??  I don't understand the allure of Transformers, except that the other kids in kindergarten like them.  Furthermore, the movies are nowhere near age-appropriate, so the boys have been watching old cartoon episodes on YouTube.  I can transform the big one without the instructions, though.  Oh the crazy things you learn when you have boys.

Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real - The Spooktacular Edition

We were in Halloween mode here last week (along with everyone else it seems).  In true procrastinating fashion, I only completely finished the costumes on Monday afternoon, a few hours before trick-or-treating.

{pretty}

Of course the pretty for this week is Princess Prissypants all dressed up for her rookie year trick-or-treating.  She was happy here, although not so happy about not being able to crawl in her dress.

 {happy}

Two big kids very happy to be setting out on their adventure.

{funny}

This is from a few days before Halloween.  Even ninjas and SuperWhy have to do schoolwork when Mommy says its time!

{real}

The princess just cut her first tooth and got a cold from her big brother.  Neither of us has slept well the last few days.  But, a teething biscuit makes it better for a little while.  Speaking of real, apparently her nap was only a half hour...again.  I'd best get upstairs.

{pretty, happy, funny, real}

Over at Like Mother, Like Daughter, they have a great weekly feature called, you guessed it, {pretty, happy, funny, real}.  The point of this little exercise is to find contentment and joy in the everyday things we pass by so quickly.  So Wednesday afternoon, instead of thinking about all the other things left to be done, I spent a few minutes taking a few pictures of everyday here.

{pretty}

This rosebush fell over while we were in Delaware this summer.  When we got back it looked like a goner, but a little water and cooler weather and it has perked up.

{happy}

It's finally gotten cooler outside (down in the 80s for highs this week!) so the ninjas have been able to take their martial arts prowess outside.  Yes, those are golf clubs...I don't really understand either.

{funny}

I wished for a girl and finally got one, and now she frequently dresses like a boy (mostly because she's so darn fat she keeps outgrowing her clothes).  Except for the pink socks, she could be Patrick in his "My cape and tights are in the wash" shirt and borrowing her brother's dinosaur picnic blanket.

{real}

My chore chart as of Wednesday evening.  Yes, Wednesday, even though there's nothing marked as done for Wednesday and no cleaning done at all.  Sadly, yesterday and today were no better.  Maybe after I finish sewing Halloween costumes, I'll get around to digging out the house.