Blocked

It seems I've got a bit of blogger's block. No fun. It's been four days since my last post and I can't think of a single thing that's happened or a single thought that I've had that is worth blogging about since then. So bear with me...I'll think of something soon.

I'm curious...reveal yourself, please

I've been keeping up with my sitemeter and I've noticed that someone from Spring, Texas has been visiting me a few times. I know most everyone from Texas that visits my blog, but for the life of me, can't think of who in Spring knows I have a blog and actually visits. It's been driving me crazy trying to think of who it might be...I suppose there is a possibility that it's someone I don't know. Anyway, if you are in or near Spring and reading this, please leave a comment or drop me an e-mail at alligirl1104(at)gmail(dot)com if you prefer to stay anonymous to the bloggy world. It sure would clear things up for me!

Wordless Wednesday

Hard not to smile at a picture like this!

Something else to pass along...

If you are at all interested in baby slings and baby wearing, you have to check out this website. I got my sling from there while I was still pregnant and I can't sing its praises enough. I don't know what I would do without this sling (or how I got through having two babies before realizing the blessing that is babywearing!). The website is run by a work at home mom of three so she gets what it's really like to wear babies.

You can get a sling in really cool fabrics and all the items the website sells are affordable.

The customer service is superb. There's nothing like getting a good deal on something you really want AND getting great service, too. And the name is just too fun! Iif you're in the market for a new sling, head on over and check her out!

And now we return to our normally scheduled programming...

The Mama to this Bloggin' Mama

Stephanie started this at Adventures in Babywearing. I think it's a great idea!

So here's my mom. We've always been close and growing up, I always knew--and still know--that she's my biggest fan. We may not always agree or get along, but she never lets me forget that she's on my side. I have lots of fond memories of the time spent with my mom when I was growing up. I remember that she never really treated me like a kid and she included me and let me be a part of just about everything she did. Now that I'm a "grown-up", we've gotten to be really good friends. Hardly a day goes by that we don't chat just to see what's going on with the other.

And whenever I need her, I always know she's just a phone call away. The day that I had Marc-Adam is proof. The night before I had been up all night throwing up. Every time I would start to doze off, I would get sick again. Around 1am, I knew that if I didn't get some sleep, I would not be able to function the next day (remember, I was 8.5 months pregnant). At 3am, I started having contractions, and I just felt terrible. I called her at 7:30am and asked to come take care of me and the boys. She dropped everything she had to do that day and in 30 minutes, was on my front porch. She then bullied convinced me to call the doctor later that morning...I was in denial about being in labor. Turns out, I was in labor, and she drove me and the kids to the hospital. She took care of everything for me that day. And I'm so glad she was there with me.

What's really fun now is seeing how much the Sweet Boys adore her. I can see that what she has with each of my kids is really special.

I'm so glad that I've had her support in my life. She's one of the "legs" that holds me up. After all, life is always better when you have your own cheerleader.

Had to share this--The Homeschooling Mom

Ok, I might be late to board this train, but I found a website that is awesome! It's for homeschooling moms and has information on all kinds of things. Even free menu planners and grocery lists! You can sign up for the menu plans to be e-mailed to you. The meals look very normal, too (normal for me anyway, which I'm beginning to think isn't really all that normal). You can also sign up for daily reminders a la Flylady, but you only get one a day. So for those of us that were completely overwhelmed by Flylady, this might be a nice alternative. I'm very excited about this and wanted to pass it on!! Click here to check it out if you are interested.

Better late than never!

So I finally got the pictures of Stephen's birthday party off my camera. And a whole bunch of other great pics, but mainly it was Stephen's birthday. So here's some pics. Stephen and his birthday candles (with a little help from Little Brother Z). And the awesome Larry Boy cake my mom made for him. (If you're not familiar with Larry Boy, click here to see what he looks like so you can see how great this cake really is.)

ABCs of Homemaking

My cousin tagged me for this meme and I was so excited. I've seen it floating around the blogosphere and was secretly hoping I'd get tagged. It looks like fun! Here goes!

Aprons- Y/N? Yes! I have a pretty green one I made and when I think about it, I wear it. I think I'm going to start wearing it more often though. There's a part of me that thinks I might be more productive if I do. I've also made some really cute ones that I sold on eBay.

Baking- Favorite thing to bake? Brownies. Out of the box. With frosting.

Clothesline- Y/N? Actually, one came with the house. The only thing it's good for at this point, though, is collecting spider webs that I seem to walk through every time I go outside. I prefer the dryer or to hang dry in the house.

Donuts- Ever made them? I don't know anyone that's ever made a donut. That thought has never even occurred to me!

Everyday- One homemaking thing you do everyday? Some part of the laundry process. On the weekend I either put a load on or switch a load to the dryer or fold a load. On the weekdays, I do at least one maybe two loads a day.

Freezer- Do you have a separate deep freezer? It's a chest freezer, does that count? So far, the only thing it's been good for is holding food that we don't really eat.

Garbage Disposal- Y/N? No, it's been years since we've lived in a house that has one. But when we remodel the kitchen, that's going to be one of the investments. Until then, we take the trash out everyday.

Handbook- Y/N? If a "handbook" is an unusually large bright red diaper bag, then yes.

Ironing- Love it or hate it? Hate it. Only do it for really special occasions and for my sewing. For hubby's work clothes, two words: wrinkle free.

Junk Drawer- Where is it? In the coffee table drawer.

Kitchen- Design and decorating? There's not much decoration there. White walls, oak cabinets and yellow counters. That'll all change with the remodel though. I think it's going to be yellow walls and cabinets, white counters and brushed nickel hardware.

Love- What is your favorite part of homemaking? Seeing that my hard work pays off. Looking at a clean house and a closet full of clean laundry.

Mop- Y/N? Do I own one? Yes. Do I use it? No. Terrible, I know. Sweet Hubby mops once in a while, though.

Nylons- Wash by hand or in the washer? By hand, when I wash them. Which isn't often because I don't wear them but a few times before I ruin them.

Oven- Do you use the window or open it to check? Open, open, open.

Pizza- What do you put on yours? Beef, extra cheese, easy on the sauce.

Quiet- What do you do during the day when you get a quiet moment? Usually read or catch up on my fave sites.

Recipe card box- Y/N? Nope. Just a cabinet full of stray papers, books and a binder that I intended to organize way back when. So I suppose I just have a large recipe box.

Style of house- Standard Texas house, I guess. One story, 3 bed, 2 bath, 1600 sq ft.

Tablecloths and napkins- Y/N? I use vinyl tablecloths on the floor for when the kids play Play-doh or eat out of the breakfast room. Otherwise, that's a big fat NO.

Under the kitchen sink- It's kind of a catch all for the kitchen. It's got some plastic grocery bags, extra placemats for the kids, some yogurt containers and some other random things I haven't thought of in a while. Cleaning supplies are on a high shelf in the utility room.

Vacuum- How many times a week? Can I plead the fifth? Although, I got a little mini-vacuum for Christmas that Stephen loves, so it's happening a bit more often. And will probably happen a lot more when Marc-Adam starts finding things to eat off the floor.

Wash- How many loads do you do a week? About 7 or 8, I'd guess, I've never actually counted.

X's- Do you keep a list of things to do and cross them off? Mentally. A list would probably get eaten, scribbled on, peanut buttered or thrown away. So what's the point?

Yard- Who does what? Sweet Hubby does it all....whatever he wants to do or not do is fine by me. As long as I don't lose the children in the yard, I'm good.

ZZZ's- What is your last homemaking task for the day? Just before I crawl in bed, I fold the load of laundry that got dumped there at some point earlier in the day.

That was fun! Usually by the time I get tagged for these, everyone I know has already done them. So, I'll tag Jenn and LaughterThoughts if y'all haven't already done them and think you want to.

Works for Me Wednesday--my first!!

This is my first attempt at Works for Me Wednesday (click here for some more great tips). I'm not sure if this is really lame, or really cool, or somewhere in between. But since I'm not very creative or original in my thoughts, I was pretty impressed with myself for coming up with this a year or so ago.

We go through an insane amount of yogurt around here. The kids love it and eat it at least every other day. Since they like different kinds and the kind with the fruit, we have to get the little individual serving cups. I felt terrible about throwing those away all the time. It just seemed like a lot of waste. So I started saving them. A lot of them. Too many, probably. And I wasn't sure what I was even going to do with them. Then one day I was setting up the table for a painting project for the kids and was trying to figure out how I was going to do the paint. It drives me crazy when all the colors get mixed together, so I was going to give each color it's own brush. Then I remembered the yogurt cups! So I squirted a little bit of paint in to six yogurt cups and gave each cup a brush. The colors still got a little mixed, but I'm going to have to get over that! And then when we were done, I threw the cups away! Hardly any clean up! It was really easy (and as a side note, I save all of Sweet Hubby's old, holey, nasty, "shrunken" t-shirts for painting, too...I throw them on the kids to avoid getting their skin and/or clothes painted, but I'm sure everyone does that).

Ok, so I only use the yogurt cups one more time, but I feel less guilty about throwing them away.

I also save the little individual serving cups of applesauce. We don't use as many of those, but we do once in a while. They are the perfect size for putting a little syrup in when eating pancakes or waffles. The kids love to dip and we all use less syrup (which means less sugar AND saving money on syrup) because you don't use as much when dipping as opposed to drenching your pancakes in it.

Works for me!

You may have noticed...

If you keep up with my blog, you may have noticed that my last post "Nature calls" is no longer here. After getting a few more hits from questionable google searches, I've decided to pull that post and the post (including the comments) that seemed to be drawing that unwanted attention (sorry, LT!). It came to my attention that there is nothing funny about what these people were looking for. I knew they weren't getting what they were looking for when they found my blog, but it still creeps me out that those weirdos were here.

So, those are gone. And I'll be much more careful about my wording in the future.

Handing it all over

Although I've been a Christian for most of my life, I've always struggled with what it means to have a deep, life-changing relationship with God. The kind of relationship that changes you in such a way that people have to ask, "What is it about you that makes you the way you are?" and makes you live as the person God intended you to be. I've struggled with consistently finding times to sit down and pour over His word. I have no problem praying. That verse "Pray without ceasing" doesn't seem to be a problem for me. Especially since I've had kids. But a one-sided conversation isn't productive and doesn't go very far. And a relationship where one party is selfish and does all the taking and none of the giving is doomed to failure. So all of my ceaseless and, for the most part selfish, prayer has gotten me nowhere in my desire for an intimate relationship with the One who loves me most.

I also think that I have a problem completely trusting Him. I slowly learned to trust Him to provide us with what we need. I don't really worry anymore about where the money is going to come from and if we will have enough left over to get groceries in the last week of the month or to get the baby his medicine. But do I trust him to make me the person I was intended to be? Do I trust him to bless my marriage and help me find ways to put Him first? Do I trust that He will help me raise my boys to be men that love Him, pursue His will and live lives that are full of love, compassion, integrity and purpose? "No" and "Not nearly enough" are the only answers to those questions.

The other morning, I was sipping tea out of my favorite mug. I got it from a Mary Kay lady and it's a cute mug. It has a feminine shape and has sweet flowers and cute little bees all over. It's lovely and it makes me feel fun and cute and feminine everytime I use it. It also has little "inspirational" sayings all over it. I usually ignore them, but that morning, one of them caught my attention. "If it is to bee, it is up to me." No, I didn't misspell that, it actually says "bee"...cute, huh? It was then that I realized that that mentality was my problem. I think that if I want things to be a certain way, I have to take care of it myself. Then another light bulb went off when I realized that the deeper problem was I was trying to make things the way I want them to be. I'm not trusting God's will or His way. "If it is to be, it is up to me." What a nasty lie wrapped up in a cute little phrase. Even cuter when you misspell it and surround it with bees.

I thought on that phrase for a little while. Then a verse came to mind in what I can only believe was God's counter to what I had been living out.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. Proverbs 3:5

The verse doesn't go on to say, "Except you, Alli, because you seem to have things under control." So I've come to a crossroads in my faith. Do I keep going down the path I've been taking (which history in my own life has shown leads to discontent and frustration and is actually a dead-end) or do I hand it all over to God and trust him with my life and the lives of the ones I love and care for? Handing everything over, not just the things I feel I am ill-equipped to handle.

But leaving the old ways behind is hard. And I'm not sure where to even begin except through lots of prayer (and doing a little more listening and a lot less talking) and setting aside more time to read my bible. Taking control of things is like an addiction and I'm afraid I'll just keep coming back to it when things don't seem to be going the way I think they should. I'm amazed at how true strength isn't in the hanging on but of the letting go. And I wonder how strong I am. But doesn't that come back to trusting Him? What an ugly cycle I've lead myself to.

And all this from drinking a cup of tea.

Because things should never be too easy

I meant to mention that we finally got our van back. Exactly one month later. It's all shiny and fixed and smelling like....paint. Yech! I keep asking Sweet Hubby if he's sure the fumes aren't killing our children's brain cells. Not too worried about mine for some reason.

Anyway, even though it's obvious that the lady who hit us was in the wrong, she and her insurance company are refusing to accept responsibility. Her insurance company told me that our statements are "inconsistent and don't match." Well, DUH!! Like the lady would tell her insurance company, "Yes, I ran that stop sign and completely ignored that the other driver the right of way...I thought that we would just simply pass through each other." The lady even called our police dept to speak with the supervisor of the officer who wrote her a ticket for the wreck and chewed him out.

And we had a witness...a wrecker driver who was there on the scene almost as soon as it happened. He was very nice and was making sure everyone was okay and told me he would pull my car out of the intersection for me (at which point I totally blew him off because I thought my car was still drivable). He told Sweet Hubby that he saw the whole thing and that it wasn't my fault. He hauled the thing off to the body shop he worked for. But we didn't want to leave our car there. We live in a small town and we haven't heard good things about this place. So when we tried to get it moved, they hassled and harassed us about it. We finally got it moved though. The other lady, however, left her car there to be fixed. Can I secretly say that there is a small part of me deep down inside that secretly hopes she got ripped off? Not very loving of me, eh?

Anyway, so apparently since her "story" doesn't match mine, her insurance company was going to give the wrecker driver a call and then they would probably have to go with his statement. But guess what? The wrecker driver is now saying he didn't see a thing. He was just in the parking lot across the street and heard it happen. PANTS ON FIRE!! That's a big fat lie and he knows it. But I predicted that would happen as soon as the insurance company said that they were going to ask him...I knew that those guys were crooked and since we didn't leave our vehicle there, they weren't going to help us out.

SO, we had to pay the deductible to get our car out while our insurance company fights hers. And hopefully *fingers crossed* they will eventually accept responsibility and pay us that money back.

Fun stuff, lemme tell ya....

Mystery o' the day

Zachary woke up this morning with a piece of Scotch tape stuck to his forehead.

He had a bath last night so I don't think he went to bed with it. And he still sleeps in his crib, so he couldn't have wandered the house last night randomly finding things to stick to himself (although, he does do that in the daylight hours).

They never cease to amaze me with weird things.