"Hey...."

We were driving on the freeway today and there was a tow truck passing us with a car on the flatbed.

Hunter was watching and he said, "Hey, that truck stole somebody's car!"

Top 5 Tuesday

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I've been racking my brain for a topic. And then, not so much racking my brain, but trying to narrow it down.

I finally settled on this......

What are 5 things that you hope you can pass down (or at least teach) your children. Beliefs, ethics, morals......stuff like that.

Mine-

1. How to love and be loved.

2. Honesty

3. Perseverance

4. Ethics.

5. Respect.


Short and sweet for me. I'm guessing it's going to be really hard to narrow it down to 5 things.

Looking Fine by '09-Week 2

I'm a little off on my dates. This should actually be week 3, but I'm a week behind, so I'll just say it's week 2.

I have worked out pretty much every day, except this weekend. I had 3 days off and today I was looking forward to working out. I feel so much better too. My routine has been 30-40 mins. on the elliptical machine, and then 20 minutes of various machines.

So far I have lost about 2 lbs. Not bad. I have been trying to still cut back on the Dr Pepper addiction. I did really good with it last week, and over the weekend I got off track.

I'm also trying to change my attitude about eating, and so I'm trying to think "Eat to Live, NOT Live to Eat".

So far so good......

Did I miss the easy button stuck on my forehead?

So...a few random things, since I've been behind on my blogging lately and I don't think I'm going to even begin to try to catch up. (I've finally finished all of my books so hopefully I'll be a more regular blogger again).

I didn't even look to see what my reader number is up to. Last week I cleared it out (by clicking on the "mark all as read" button), and I don't think I've read more than 5 or 6 since then. Let's see.....189. Wow, not as bad as I had imagined.

The cloth diapers are going ok. Daycare agreed to do them, and they seem to have no problem with them, except I took them on Friday after missing a couple of days, and they gave them all back clean. Not sure what that was about. And, since they will be doing cloth diapers too I will have to get some more of the all in one type diapers, I don't want to be doing this laundry every night if I can help it.

Rylie doesn't seem to really like the prefold diapers in the wrap. I think it's because she is so petite and no matter how I fold them they are so bulky on her that they make her bowlegged. I am testing a couple of different ideas right now though. So far so good.


What is it that makes both of my kids obsessed with my glasses? I try to put them out of sight when I put in my contacts in the morning, but it never fails that they somehow get ahold of them. Hunter got them this morning and put them in the little compartment on the back of his trike....and then told me about it. So far they haven't broken or bent them.....

And the easy button?

I was almost done with my route the other day when this middle aged lady stopped me and asked if I had any rubber bands. Really? Seriously? I mean...kids do this all the time so they can shoot their friends, but a middle aged lady?! Is the economy so bad that she can't afford to go buy some? And who uses rubber bands at home anyway? We don't have any in our house at all. I don't know when the last time was that I needed a rubberband.

I told her I only had old ones that were ready to break any second, which I wasn't lying about.

As if I wasn't already amazed by her asking for the rubberbands in the first place, I couldn't even believe the next question.

Are you ready for this?

She asked if I could drop some off the next day for her!

I figured the only explination was that I missed seeing the easy button stuck to my forehead, because what else could possibly make someone think that the post office supplies free office supply products...to your mailbox no less?

Wordless Wednesday- Deep Sleepers

Not Top 5 Tuesday

Another missed week. I will come up with something for next week, and I'm going to try to think of it by thursday or Friday, so I can post the topic early.

I've been to the gym every day except Sunday. Saturday I went to the gym and then came home and walked to the park with the kids, so they could play at the little carnival that was going on. Hunter had fun and this time he actually got up the nerve to go down the big slide (the blow up kind). Last time they had the carnival he was still pretty shy and there were bigger kids that scared him off.

The mail has been smothering me this last week, and I'm hoping it will let up soon. All the political stuff should stop soon after election day, and I hope that helps things, I can't take much more of this. I've been working longer days and combining that with the gym doesn't even leave time for sitting down to read much until after the kids are in bed.

I'm almost done with Eclipse, the third book I was reading. It's very good. I stayed up until midnight last night reading it....just couldn't put it down.

M.I.A.

You may have been wondering where I've been (or you couldn't care less, you pick). I realize I haven't posted much of anything the last couple of weeks, and I have to admit, I haven't read many blogs either. It would probably be safe to say that aside from the time I spent posting those pictures last weekend, I have averaged about 10 minutes a day on the computer.

Travesty isn't it?

So would you really like to know what I've been doing?

I've been sucked in.

You see, I was anticipating this 6 hour drive to Disneyland. In a car. With 2 kids who were strapped in to their car seats. Not needing too much supervision.

So...I bought a book.

Not just any book.

Twilight by Stephanie Meyer.

I had seen so many people talking about it that I finally had to see for myself.

I'm hooked.

I just went and bought the 3rd book in the series today.

Because I was finished with the second book yesterday.

That's 2 books in 1 week (around 500-600 pages each).

So you see, I've been just a little busy.

Working.

Reading.

Joining the gym and working out.

Reading.

Laundry.

Reading.

Cooking dinner.

Reading.

Oh...did I mention joining the gym and working out?

4 days this week.

Feels great!

A little sore, but it's the good kind of sore.

I guess this means I'm going to join in with my bloggy friends in their quest.

You know....this one.

I'll try to come back and update, but I don't really have a starting point. My goal is to get to the point of being at least more toned up, and hopefully a size or 2 smaller than I am now. Heck, I'd even settle for not looking absolutely horrendous in pictures.

I can't promise that I'll be around, but I will promise to try.

Yet more pictures, are you sick of them yet?

Alright, so I added a few more, and a couple of videos also....this time I'm trying out something new- embedding the slideshow right in. Let's see if it works....

Fun For All

Here are a few pictures of our trip to Disneyland. Our hotel is right nest to California Adventure, and we have the Tower of Terror straight out from our balcony. We were also able to watch the fireworks from our balcony. I think it takes about 10 minutes to walk there from our hotel.

Both kids and all adults had fun today. I think in total we spend more time in and finding bathrooms than we did riding rides. It's a holiday weekend which means crowded as ever. We haven't bought any souvenirs yet. We did have a slight stroller mishap. We parked our 2 strollers while we went on this one ride, and when we came back, our umbrella stroller was missing. Someone must have mistaken it and then realized when they saw our luggage tag, and a couple of hours later it was there again.

Disneyland trip

More fun to come tomorrow, I hope I can make it out of bed in the morning.

Fingers Crossed!

I hope I don't jinx us by saying this (I've got the leave slips signed and in my purse, so it would have to be something big) but...

Disneyland here we come!!!!

Now I need some serious help. We are driving. I think it's something like 6 hours to drive, all interstate/freeway. We are taking our little Audi, and I may have a friend who can loan us their dvd player for the car, and I have bought a couple of cheap little toys for the kids, but I would still like to ask if any of you have any advice for semi-long car rides with little kids.

My sister gave me some good ideas, like trying to get them to sleep for a couple of hours would be good. I have some of those little neck pillows, we'll see if those work out.

I should probably say this first....anything to do with crayons, markers, liquids, or playdoh are absolutely out. I bought Hunter a little aquadoodle travel pad thing, since it only uses water. I also got him a magna doodle to replace the one we had before that he seemed to like. I also have a couple of cd's and a little ipod with his music on it, so we're pretty set in that catagory.

So let me hear all of your fantastic ideas!!!!!

I'm having some issues

I haven't thought of a Top 5 Tuesday topic this week. Let's just wait till next week, mkay??

Seth's Grandpa passed away last week, so we had the funeral on Saturday night, he'd been pretty sick this last year or so. He will be missed, but I know he is in peace, and a better place.

I was sitting here catching up on some things, and trying to block out the stress of work, and I almost forgot it was Monday night. We are supposed to be going to Disneyland this weekend, and still haven't resolved our leave situation at work, we're getting down to a fight now, which I'm sure won't be pretty and I'm also about 95% sure that it won't get resolved at all which really makes me mad. I hate playing games.

Everyone has said, "oh don't worry, they'll give it to you". The part that sucks is that we have to go through all this stress up until the freaking day before. Even now, we don't know what tomorrow is going to bring, if anything. They may not give it to us, and that would royally suck, since we are not the only people involved in the trip.

Hunter was sick last week, and I've had a sinus infection for 2 weeks and I'm really not in the mood to deal with games.

All about the diapers

Eww! Cloth diapers!!!!

Really, you wanna know the truth?

It's AWESOME!

Well, ok, I still haven't got the ones I ordered yet, but the 3 I have are awesome! If you can get past washing them every 3rd diaper (haha).

But I will bet that some of you out there would also have never considered cloth diapers. I don't blame you. Obviously I didn't. Well, a couple of months ago I saw them for the first time....(alright, I've seen cloth diapers before, but not like this).

It was also around this time that my friend Allison did a post on cloth diapers. I thought it sounded a little extreme, but it did have me thinking more about it.

So this last couple of weeks, we were talking about things we could do to save money. Mostly because we really want to work towards getting to the point of moving back home. Undoubtedly, it will be impossible with our current situation with the house. We bought just before the market dropped. Nice.

I cancelled our home phone and our cable tv. That should hopefully help us all be more productive, as well as saving around $60 a month. I also cut my grocery budget....drastically. We've been eating out way too much, and it shows. And then it came time to buy diapers again. Oh how I hate shelling out the money for diapers. I get mine from Costco, and even after trying different brands I had found them to be the best value for the money. When I switched to Luvs it seemed like even though were cheaper I was changing her more often, which pretty much cancelled out the savings. I also usually buy the cheapest diapers to take to daycare, because they change them on the hour if they are wet. So when I calculated my savings with cloth diapers I only took into account the box of diapers we use at home. $40 a month, plus wipes. I usually go through a box of wipes every other month, so that puts it around $50, I think.

In my research I found that you can make your own wipes out of flannel material, which would cost you roughly $2.50, and that would give you 35 or so wipes. You just cut your material into 8x8 squares with pinking shears and that's it. I think most people fold theirs in half and use an old wipes container, and some people make a solution to keep them moist, some use a wipes warmer, and other's make a spray solution to spray either the baby or the wipe. You can also buy cloth wipes and solutions from most places. I am going to make my own, since I already have some material in my closet.

I e-mailed Allison, and asked her how it's going. She said great, and gave me some tips (like making your own wipes). I also had seen a recent post on Rocks In My Dryer asking if anyone had tips for cloth diapering. She's got tons of readers so it was really helpful to me. At last check she has 80 comments on that post. I found it extremely helpful.

Basically I found out this:

*It's not as bad as you would think...we are in the 21st century here, and everything is easier and prettier then it was back in the day.

*If I can stick to breastfeeding for 6 and 9 months (which I never thought I would do but did it to save money) I can do cloth diapers just as long or longer. That was hard to stick it out, the toe curling pinch for the first 6 weeks... perseverance, I tell ya.

*They make a sprayer that attaches to your toilet, or even flushable liners to get rid of the poop easily. I've touched my share of poop, been puked on and everything else. I can handle this (I'll have to do without the sprayer...I would probably find Hunter "cleaning" the bathroom with it).

*My daycare may even be willing and able to deal with the cloth diapers there (if the laws allow), which would save me even more money than I figured. I'm still waiting to find out, but it would be great if it was possible.

*There is so much out there to read, and I'm a reader. Almost everyone has said they love(d) it. The only negatives I saw were from people who have not, and would not, try it themselves. I don't think you can review something that you haven't tried for at least a month.

Here's what I'm going to do for you: I'm going to post the links of the places I found helpful information, and if you're interested, go see for yourself.

Cotton Babies - Online store- they have a "Try it kit" for $30, and instructions and information. Plus free shipping on orders over $74.95.

The Cloth Diaper Diary- I think she covers pretty much every question you could have.

Gohn Crazy- A great post about the different types, and a breakdown of the basics.

Traveling With Baby- There's another great post, reviews of several different styles and brands complete with pictures and ratings in different categories. Very informative.

I think I'll stop there. You could spend an entire day just reading all of that information.

I hope this helps if you have thought of cloth diapering and just needed a little push.

Unmentionables, mentioned

Just in case you were wondering, here's a picture of Rylie in one of her new cloth diapers. It's one of the ones I found at Target, a bumGenious brand one size diaper. She also has it in pink and yellow.

They do seem to have a little extra fluffyness....

She doesn't seem to mind one bit....

In fact, here's some new dance moves.....

(and just so you know that thing moving along the floor is NOT a mouse, it's a candy wrapper left by one of the little monsters)