Big Girl Bed

As if sending my 5 year old off to Kindergarten wasn't hard enough to handle, this week we decided it was time for our 2 year old to move into her very own "big girl bed." We were lucky enough to get a bed frame that belonged to my great grandmother, which looked great after a quick coat of white paint, so all we needed was a new mattress, sheets, and comforter. The mattress was easy enough to get, especially during the Labor Day Furniture Sales at practically every furniture store in the area. And after some searching on the internet, we found the perfect comforter, sham, and bedskirt set - ladybugs of course. We gave Hailey the option to switch to something else, but she decided she wanted to keep with the ladybug theme we already had going in her room. So Monday, we put it all together















The little "Hailey-bug" on her big girl ladybug bed - does she look happy or what?


After getting the bed together, it was apparent that we were in need of a dresser to match. And since both hers and her brother's dresser were both falling apart, we took the big plunge and purchased a dresser for both kids. Now her room is all girly and cute as can be for our big girl.















And the dresser for Zach's room looks great - much better for our big boy.















Seems like every time I turn around, my kids are growing up on me, but I'm so proud of them.

Kindergarten Here I Come!

Well, it's official. My little baby has grown up. Today was the first day of kindergarten and he was so excited. He had a grin on his face all morning and kept asking me every 5 minutes if it was time to go. This was a little sign his teacher (Mrs. Paxman) gave him to get him excited for school.



He was all dressed up and ready to go by 7:45 this morning, which left us 1 1/2 hours to wait until school started. This isn't the shirt I would have picked for him to wear the first day, but this shirt has his school name and mascot on it (The Snow Springs Dragons), so he begged and pleaded with me to wear it today. And with his backack, he looks all official. Awfully cute don't you think?















And he didn't want me to forget to take a picture of his new shoes. He's been waiting all summer to wear these!












Two monkeys against the wall - waiting for class to start












Lining up outside his door, getting ready for his teacher to come out














There he goes into his classroom - HAVE FUN ZACH!



And of course we can't forget Hailey, who doesn't want to be left out of anything, especially when we're taking pictures with backpacks















In all, we had a good day. I really only teared up once as I watched him walk into his classroom and it hit me that he really was growing up. Other than that, I did really good, which surprised me. Hailey on the other hand, had a much harder time with it. She wanted to stay with him when we dropped him off and the whole 2 1/2 hours at home, she would tell me every 5 minutes that she wanted Zach home and that it was time to go and get him. We went through this same thing when Zach went to preschool last year and it got easier for her after a few days. We're hoping for the same thing this time around. As much as my kids fight with each other, they really do love the other and could not survive without them. I'm certainly blessed with good children.

The King and The Queen

I helped out with a Primary Activity Days Daddy Daughter Activity last night. They had some crowns left over and they sent them home with me to give to the kids. I don't think I could have come home with anything more exciting. They wanted me to put them on right away and they ran around the rest of the evening playing with them. Zach kept saying he and Hailey were queens, but we quickly explained to him that girls were queens and boys were kings. He seemed to be fine with it and quickly changed to telling us they were the king and the queen. Anyone who's met our children know that this is probably more of a truth than just a make-believe thing. I think the two of them do rule our little home "castle."







Too cute.

There was a Melon who had a name ...

And BINGO was his name-o.

Our little garden has really done well this year. Last year, we lost a few plants (probably because we thought we were watering better than we were), so thinking we would lose about as many, we bought the same amount. Of course we changed our watering habits (ok, we just adjusted the sprinkler) and we haven't lost any. So our little garden is more than overflowing with plants. I think it looks more like a weed patch, but I promise they are all plants.



So far we've harvested quite a few items from the garden. We have 3 tomato plants and 4 cucumber plants (we lost 3 of our 4 of these last year, but all 4 are going strong this year). While our tomatoes have been fairly normals size so far, our cucumbers have been huge!



In addition to the cucumber and tomato plants, we planted a watermelon and cantaloupe plant too. Nana and Papa gave us 2 huge pumpkin plants last year that the kids just loved. Unfortunately, we didn't get out early enough to get any pumpkins this year, so Zach decided he wanted to try a watermelon plant - I think he was thinking he wanted something BIG. The other day when we were out weeding the garden and searching around for cucumbers, we saw a strangely shaped cucumber. After looking at it for a few seconds, we realized that it was the beginning of our first watermelon!



When we told Zach to come over and see, he was so thrilled, he starting jumping up and down. We told him we should give it a name while we were watching it grow. When we asked Zach what he wanted to call his little watermelon, he enthusiastically said, let's call it BINGO! So we have a garden blooming so much that it's starting to grow out of the garden and our first little watermelon named BINGO.

GOOOAAALLL!!! (Well, almost)

This last Tuesday was Zach's first soccer game. He's had a few practices, but nothing came close to the fun of watching the first game. He was all decked out his his soccer shirt, official soccer shorts, soccer socks, and his very first pair of soccer cleats. It was so cute, because he couldn't stop smiling.














Once we got there, he could hardly wait for the game to start. Once it did, he ran and ran and kicked and kicked.











He did so great, he was a little runner the whole time. He probably handled the ball more than any other player on the team.

And he almost scored a goal!

Nana and Papa Hawks Visit

Last Week, our Nana and Papa and Uncle Troy from California came to visit us. We hadn't seen them for over a year and it was great to spend some time with them. Zach and Hailey are getting old enough to remember them more and more every time we see them and amazingly enough it only took Hailey about 30 minutes to warm up to them once they got here. For those of you that know how funny she can be about strangers sometimes, you'll know this was a miracle.

We had a ton of fun while they were here. Below are some pictures of places we went and things we did.

The Owlz Baseball Game
(eating yummy popsicles!)











Playing Board Games at Home
(this was our favorite thing to do)














Bowling











The Kangaroo Zoo
(jumping and sliding on big blow up toys)














Liberty Fun Park
(a mini amusement park with rides just for little kids)











Zach riding all by himself on a go-cart (his first time!)


Dad and the kids on the boat ride (Zach was really into spraying everything with water - even us spectators!)

Obsessed with Emergency Preparedness / Food Storage

Just ask anyone in my family and they will tell you that when it comes to Emergency Preparedness or Food Storage - I'm obsessed. Like everything else in my life, I can't just do things half way. I guess that comes from being a perfectionist.

Recently, a friend of ours sent us a link to a food storage blog (thanks Thelissa!) and ever since then I have been looking at different sites on the web trying to find some ideas and suggestions on emergency preparedness and food storage. Since everyone's tastes and situation are different, I like to see the different ways people like to do food storage. While I've been searching, I have found some really great sites that I thought I'd share with everyone. Here are just a few:

http://foodstoragemadeeasy.net
This website has a lot of great ideas. It's done by 2 stay-at-home mom's trying to do their food storage a little bit at a time. It's great because they break things down into what they call "babysteps" so it helps you do things a little at a time.

http://thecrazyshopper.blogspot.com
This is a lady after my own heart. In fact, I got my inspiration for this post title from her blog. Looks like I'm not the only one who's obsessed about this stuff. She has some great ideas and even lists some deals that she shares.

http://grocerysmarts.com/utah/lists/splashg84cso.php
This is by far my favorite. Have you ever looked at the weekly ads and asked yourself - is that a good deal for that? Well, this site does all the hard work for you and it's free! They take each of the ads and break them down into excellent, good, and ok deals. That way you know right off the bat whether something is a good deal or not. They also have linked the deals with coupons that you can get out of the paper or online. They have listings for all of the stores I know of in Utah. I'm sure for those of you out of state, they might have a section for your state - you may have to go to their home page to find it. The crazy/obsessive shopper site above also shows you how to sort these lists - for example, if you're like me and only want to see the 4 or 5 star deals. This is my new favorite shopping website!

http://www.myfoodstoragedeals.blogspot.com
This site also has great ideas for food storage. There are a bunch of recipes and ways to store things. They have another site entitled http://www.myfoodstoragedeals.com where they do the sorting of the ads (like the grocery smart site above), but they charge a monthly fee. However, they do offer more services like a meal planner - which takes the items on sale each week and comes with a list of weekly meals - so if you're pressed for time, that can be a great benefit. They also have some free downloads that are great, so it's worth taking a look on their blog.

So for you emergency preparedness/food storage gurus out there, here are some sites you might be interested in. If any of you have others you have seen or use, please leave me a comment - I would love to have more.

I'm also leaving these on my right sidebar for my own reference, so if you aren't into food storage yet, but find you are later, you can always find the links there or feel free to email me and I'll send them to you. Good luck!