Adventures in La La Land

1. Sorry this is so late. It's been a crazy day. Today is the one day of the year that I work outside the home. Every Saturday after Thanksgiving, Niki and I work at the family-owned dollar store. Our second cousins own it, and this is their family day to get their Christmas tree and have a day of fun together. So we run the store. It's always an adventure! Haha. 2. My van is dying. The transmission is going out so it has trouble making it into first gear. It has 241,000 miles on it, so we're not going to put any more money into it. I was really hoping it'd hit 250,000 but it's not looking too hopeful. Every time I put gas in it, I hope it doesn't die the next day, taking that expensive gas with it to the grave! 3. We had a very nice Thanksgiving with Justin's side of the family this year. I feel bad that we pretty much ate and ran, but it was naptime and Lena was melting down. Plus, I had shopping to do . . . 4. I am one of those horrible people who s...

Here are our Advent Activities for 2013. We repeated a couple of favorites from 2012 , but added a lot of new ones. If you're a procrastinator like I am, feel free to steal my ideas! :-)  This year, I found a package of 12 blank cards at the dollar store in red and green. I bought 3 packages and went to town decorating them. (Pictures to come.) Last year, I numbered them from 1-24, but this year we're going to do it as a countdown, so we'll start with number 24 tomorrow morning. 24. Make a cinnamon roll Christmas tree for breakfast.  23. Make ornaments and decorate the Christmas tree. Some ideas from pinterest: bead candy canes , scrabble (gonna use the girls' birth dates), marshmallow snowman 22. Go to Chicago to visit Aunt Kaley! 21. Paint nails red and green. 20. Make a Christmas card for Judie (our Compassion International child) 19. Visit Frederick Meijer Gardens with Great Grandma 18. Make hot chocolate snowmen to deliver to friends.  1...

I think every month, I'm a little later with the update. Haha. Here's what's up at 10 months. The first and only picture I got of her looking at the camera. This is what most of the pictures look like. Haha. Eating She's nursing every 4 hours around the clock. Sometimes during the day, she doesn't nurse very well. I wonder if she's getting ready to drop a feeding. (I dropped Lucy's afternoon feeding at 10 months) But then some days, she acts like she's starving. She loves solid food. She can eat pretty much anything now. Some of her recent favorites have been lasagna, cheese roll-ups (with green bean puree - sneaky, sneaky), beef-a-roni (with carrot puree), cheese, and cinnamon rolls. Hehe. That's my girl. I'm really trying to feed her 3 real meals a day. She has a jar of baby food here and there. She'll still only eat fruit from a jar, but it's better than nothing, right? And I work hard to incorporate veggies in other areas of...

1. I've been getting some great deals online shopping for Christmas. Mostly for Lucy. I have absolutely no ideas for Lena. She has all Lucy's old toys to play with! And I just realized (duh) that her birthday is a month after Christmas, so I need to be buying stuff for that too! Second child syndrome. 2. I posted the baked French toast recipe from last week  here . Mmmmm. So yummy. 3. Lucy and I had kind of a rough week. She is entering the whiny phase with a vengeance. I need to nip it in the bud, but I'm kind of at a loss. It's not just a whiny voice. It's this teeth-clenching, mind-numbing, fingernails-on-the-chalkboard fake cry that goes on and on and on. One day this week, we went to the dollar store 5 minutes from our house. 1 mile down the road she said, "I forgot to bring my balloon!" (She wanted to bring her balloon in the car with her.) When I refused to go back and get it, she cried the rest of the way to the store, the whole time we shopp...

Here is the promised French Toast recipe from Jesus' Birthday Party . I got it from my friend Kelly who got it from her mother-in-law. You know it's gonna be good when it gets passed around that often. :-) Ingredients: 2 sticks of butter*  2-3 loaves of French Bread (I used 2 really long loaves.) 2 cups brown sugar 2 heaping tsp cinnamon 6 eggs 3 cups of milk* Directions: 1. Use 2 cookie sheet with sides. On each cookie sheet spread one stick of softened butter. It will be lumpy 2. Mix brown sugar and cinnamon together. Sprinkle mixture on top of buttered cookie sheets 3. Mix eggs and milk. Cut French bread in 1" slices. Dunk bread slices in egg mixture, making sure both sides of the bread are covered. Arrange bread slices on cookie sheets 4. Refrigerate overnight 5. Bake at 350 for 10 minutes. Flip bread slices and bake 10 additional minutes 6. Serve and Enjoy! *I used Earth Balance butter (almost a whole container - enough to cover the bottom of e...

It's that time of year again! Time for our annual Birthday Party for Jesus! I started this tradition with Lucy and her friends when they were 18 months old. This was our 3rd year. We've added more kids and more chaos, but it just adds to the fun! This year was special because we combined the party with the Merry Larry party I won from houseparty.com ! We got sent an awesome kit full of goodies to share. It had the Merry Larry and the True Light of Christmas DVD, a Veggie Tales Christmas CD , plates, cups, napkins, silly bands, stickers, tattoos, and some fun face masks. I had a blast incorporating Bob and Larry into our party. Lucy helped me fill the goodie bags a few days ago: Then we decorated: Lucy picked out the pink tablecloth. Haha. I got pretty good at drawing Bob and Larry faces! Yes, I drew all those faces. Please admire my incredible artistic ability! ;-) We made some delicious dairy free cupcakes. (Recipe here . I substituted earth balance butt...

1. I took both girls to the doctor this week. They both checked out totally healthy, but they couldn't be more different size-wise. Lena was 27.5" (35%) and 16 lbs (19%). Lucy was 39" (80%) and 31 lbs. (41%). 2. I decided to change up our "homeschool" schedule this week. I think we're going to do the alphabet one day, numbers one day, and the Bible story one day. Ideally, we'll work on our verse every day, but I'm not always super faithful with that.  3. This was on facebook, but I need to record it here too: On the way home from the doctor today, we saw a deer on top of someone's truck. (Opening Day here in MI, just FYI) Lucy and I had a little chat about how the deer got up there. She proceeded to tell the story as follows: "a reindeer was running in the woods and a guy shot him and put him on his car to bring him home. I think the reindeer's name was Rudolph." Fast forward to tonight: We're making cupcakes and talking ab...

1. I had such a nice weekend at retreat. I missed a few sessions, and didn't hang out as much with everyone else thanks to Lena, but I greatly enjoyed the relaxation. I also enjoyed someone else making all my meals and the escape from (most of) my usual responsibilities. Lena was so good all weekend, and I'm pretty sure we got more sleep than we've ever gotten at retreat before. (6 hours a night! That's unheard of!) Lena's friend Josie was there with her mom, Amanda. It was fun to compare the girls in person. Lena is 2 months older, but you sure wouldn't know it! I came back from retreat so excited to see Lucy and Justin, and feeling refreshed and ready to get back to my routine. Just what I needed. 2. I finally got Lena on a 4 hour breastfeeding schedule this week!! It only took 9 months! Haha. I've been really trying to give her at least 2 meals a day of real food. She usually eats a big breakfast (one day this week she ate a whole waffle!) and then ...

I'm leaving for Ladies' Retreat tonight, so you get a special advance-edition of the Saturday 7! 1. I always talk up my Halloween costume in the Saturday 7, but then I post the pictures on facebook and they never make it on the blog. Let's remedy that this year: We were Flo and Mayhem ! Apparently Flo is a pretty popular costume, because Progressive's website has all the logos ready to download and print. Easy peasy! Didn't Esther do a great job on my hair and make up? It took me days to get my hair back to normal! Haha. We had so much fun with our small group that night. We played a new game called Telestrations . It's a cross between Telephone and Pictionary, and the result was hilarious . I'm bringing it to Ladies' Retreat. :-) 3. The girls loved Halloween, too. Lucy picked out her own costume at Once Upon a Child. It's actually Cherry Blossom, but she thought it was Strawberry Shortcake, so we let it slide. ;-) And my mom found this awes...