Adventures in La La Land

Confession: I have a hard time paying attention at church because I'm so busy looking at everyone around me - namely the beautiful, well dressed, well-coiffed women who make me feel horribly inadequate. It was especially bad yesterday. I actually blow-dried my hair, attempted to style it, and put on some make up. I wore a new shirt and my favorite jeans and headed to church feeling semi-confident only to have my confidence popped like a balloon when I first walked in the door. How does everyone have money for cute new clothes? How does everyone know what's stylish and how to attain it? I must have been out sick the day the instructions for hair and make-up were handed out in high school. The biggest question, though is, Why does it bother me so much ?? Why am I so insecure and threatened by beautiful women? I can't worship at church because I'm so mad that they're wearing accessories and those cute tall boots everyone but me seems to have. I know, I know, God look...

1. This week my sister and her husband went to Jamaica for their 20th anniversary. Justin, the girls and I moved into their house to take care of their boys (who are teenagers and don't need me for anything other than rides occasionally-haha). I also spent the week watching Niki's day care kids. For Niki, all the running around is second nature. For me, it required 3 pages of notes. Haha. The week wasn't without its challenges. We had a little bit of puking, a little bit of lice, and a whole lot of fighting between a 2 year old and two 3 year olds. But for the most part it went really well. The kids were well behaved and helpful and hilarious. And Lucy was in her glories having so many friends to play with every day! 2. Niki's house is a tri-level so there are lots of stairs. None of her day care kids are young enough to warrant baby gates, so I spent a lot of the week trying to keep Lena away from the stairs. Especially after she fell down 10 of them Monday night. Ha...

1. I made some good meals this week. On Monday, I made crockpot chicken and dumplings - my most viewed blog entry of all time. (It made it on Pinterest even though it's not my recipe. I feel bad for stealing the blog-views from whoever originally wrote it!) On Tuesday night, I decided to try something I'd seen on Pinterest: quesadillas in the waffle maker. I used another trick from Pinterest that I've seen a few times, but always doubted it actually worked: shredding chicken with a Kitchenaid mi xer . It was amazing!! It worked so well! I boiled two frozen chicken breasts until they were cooked, let them cool for 5 minutes in the fridge, then tossed them in the mixer and turned it on low. I threw in half a jar of corn and black bean salsa and a large handful of cheese to complete the quesadilla filling. I sprayed the waffle maker, put down one tortilla, slopped on the chicken mixture, topped it with another tortilla, and let it cook. They were delicious! I don't reall...

We're still working on identifying lower case letters and remembering which upper case letter they correspond to, so we did this fun little activity this week. It's similar to the Letter Scavenger Hunt we did a couple weeks ago, but with less motion and more stickers. :-) My original plan was to recreate this activity from Pinterest. But yesterday we made bookmarks with my scrapbooking stickers and Lucy was so enthralled by the letter stickers that I decided to go this route instead. I started by cutting out a bunch of hearts and taping them to a big piece of kraft paper. Then I put either upper or lower case letters on each heart. I went in order alphabetically because both Lucy and I are too OCD to handle anything else. Then I gave Lucy a sheet of stickers and told her to complete the heart with the missing upper or lower case letter. It was actually pretty challenging for her to figure out whether each heart needed the upper or lower case letter. And she'...

1. We finally celebrated Lena's birthday last weekend. We had delayed for sickness and the weather, originally, so the party wasn't until 10 days after her birthday. She's one. She doesn't know any better. :-) We had a blast, though. I found some cute plates on Oriental Trading, so went with a sock monkey "theme." Lena looooved the cake: 2. Lena really took off walking this week. Until about Wednesday, she was still just taking a few steps here and there. But at storytime on Wednesday, I was shocked when she was standing by me one minute and took off walking to the other side of the room the next! Since then, she's been a walking machine. She looks way too small to be walking so well! Video evidence: (I was watching a few other kids this day. They're not all mine. ;-) ) 3. Lucy and I did a couple fun crafts this week. On Monday, we learned about the 10 Commandments and did this craft: 4. And on Wednesday, we did an Olympic craft. Lucy...

Today we read the story of Moses getting the law in Lucy's children's Bible, highlighting the 10 Commandments. We talked about how God gives us rules to keep us safe and to help us love others. And then we did a little craft. I cut out two "stone tablets" from cardstock and we painted them gray.  Then I printed off and cut out the ten commandments. (Some of the wording was inspired by this . The rest was inspired by my brain.) Lucy and I briefly discussed the meaning of the commandments as best as I figured a 3 year old could understand. Haha. I scattered them around the table and had Lucy arrange them from numbers 1 through 10. Then we glued them on the tablets. Lucy did all the gluing. I don't know why she did them so carefully on the first one and so wonky on the second. Haha. *Funny sidenote you've already seen if you're my friend on facebook: A few hours after doing this craft Lucy said, "Mommy, are the iPads dry?" I wa...

1. I finally put Lena in the crib in Lucy's room this week. We waited until she was consistently sleeping through the night so there'd be less of a chance of the girls waking each other up. The transition went so much better than I expected! I realized that Lena has always been a fantastic transition-er. She went seamlessly from the Rock n' Play to the Pack n' Play to the crib. She even weaned from breastfeeding without incident. It just goes to show that she has Justin's laid back personality. "Oh, I sleep here now? Ok!" I don't deal with change as gracefully. Haha.  2. We spent a lot of time cooped up in the house again this week. At this point, I feel like the local TV stations should alert us when there's NOT a winter storm as opposed to the other way around. We'll just assume we're under a winter storm warning unless they tell us otherwise. Blurg. Also, getting reeeeeeal sick of these temperatures in the single digits and windchills b...