Look What's Cookin' ...

or at least who's cookin'.



Saturday the kids decided they wanted to have ravioli for lunch. Whenever they decided to eat ravioli, we can pretty much count on both of their shirts completely covered in sauce by the time they finish. In order to prevent this, I always throw an apron on each of them to keep them somewhat protected. Jeremiah made them both laugh when he threw on one of my aprons to be like them. Needless to say, it wasn't too long before they all decided I needed an apron on too. I couldn't help making everyone pose for a quick picture. Boy, we all were quite the sight running around the kitchen with our aprons on.

Ever have one of those days ...

and it's only 8:00 in the morning?

Yes, it's a Monday. How do I know that other than the calendar? The fact that things are more than crazy this morning. Both kids have decided to make life difficult for me this morning, although not on purpose, I'm sure.

Just as the alarm is going off to signal Jeremiah that it's time to jump in the shower, Zach comes into our room bawling. Once we get him to calm down and tell us what the problem is, we find out that he has a bloody nose. So we quickly lay him down and turn on the light. What we find is a bloody trail from his bed to his bathroom to our room. We are even lucky enough to have him step in the blood at some point and so there are bloody footprints along with the trail. Good thing there aren't any police detectives in our home this morning because it looked a lot like a crime scene. Since Jeremiah had to get ready for work, he jumped in the shower while I began cleaning up all the blood off of the carpet. Luckily, it was all still pretty fresh, so it came up with a little scrubbing. But I did find it all over every door handle and even smeared on one of the walls. After getting that cleaned up, I went back to clean up Zach and after further inspection realized that he had blood all over his shirt (a brand new white undershirt to be exact), all over his face, and up and down his arms. Don't ask me what he was doing wiping his nose with the upper part of his arms, but he did and there was blood all over him. Sometimes I'm amazed at how much a nose can bleed!

Once his nose stopped bleeding and we got him cleaned up and some new clothes on, I jumped in the shower really quick in order to be done by the time Jeremiah left for work (he's downstairs eating breakfast and getting his lunch together at this point). Well, as I'm finishing getting dressed, I realize that I haven't heard or seen from Hailey for a few minutes. So having this, "ut-oh" feeling, I walk out of our room and into their bathroom where the door is closed and the light is on. And there I find a little girl naked from the waste down, with a tissue in her hand. When I ask her what she's doing, she quickly informs me that she was cleaning up her potty. Come to find out that she had gone potty all over the floor. You see, our little one wants to be just like her brother - eat what he eats, play with what he plays with, go to kindergarten when does, and even go potty like he does. Which in this case was standing up. Now, little girls don't exactly have the same anatomy as little boys, which we have tried to explain to her many, many times. But she doesn't quite understand why her brother should be able to do something she can't. So without Jeremiah or myself hovering over her in the bathroom, she decided to go the way she wanted to. Needless to say there was quite a bit to clean up on the floor of the bathroom. I was having deja-vue at this point since I just been cleaning blood off of that same floor not more than 20 minutes earlier.

After getting her and the bathroom cleaned up, we head downstairs, just in time to kiss Jeremiah good bye and send him off to work. He wished me luck as he left and I about slugged him! I'm definitely more than tired of cleaning up things this moment, but that doesn't stop because both kids decide it would be even better to dump both of their cereal bowls all over the counter and floor. And of course we can't do this when we almost have the cereal gone, it has to be when there is a ton of cereal and milk in the bowls. So I end up cleaning both of those messes up - at different times of course.

Now that we're done with breakfast, I'm trying to get my sanity back. But now I'm fighting with a little boy who thinks my house is an indoor soccer field and is kicking a ball all over - hitting the chandelier, picture frames on top of the entertainment center, and the blinds on the window. I'm also fighting with a little girl who has been up to her room 3 times, pulled a different outfit out of her dresser each time and put it on. Boy, am I in trouble when she hits the teenage years!

So that's been my morning for the past hour and a half. It's Monday and only 8:00 am, what in the world am I in store for the rest of the day and week for that matter????

Seasons

I love the changing of the seasons. I like the summer, with all of the fun activities, but secretly, I wish for fall. It's my favorite season and I love the change that it brings. After so much heat and sun, I love to have the slight chill to the air in the mornings and evenings. The change in the colors is probably my favorite part about fall, the beautiful reds, oranges, yellows, and browns. Nothing can quite compare to the beauty of the changing leaves (in fact, the above picture inspired the new change in background for my blog). Reminds me of the time we spent in Connecticut. New England is not matched by any other place I've been when it comes to fall (although, I'm sure there are many). This time of year makes me miss being there around all of the trees and their beautiful changing colors. And of course, I miss all of the wonderful people we came to know and love while living there.

Seasons are ever present in our lives as well. There are times when things go smoothly and times when they are rough. But one thing I've learned is that the rough times make you appreciate the smooth so much more. And despite how rough those tough times can be, you always come out a better person for having experienced it. I am grateful for a loving Heavenly Father that knows me personally and knows what trials and rough times I need to make me a better person.

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.