I Won!!!

Here's The Girl:


Consequently, here's my scrap desk. Yesterday there was no less than 3 piles at least 12" deep each. You can almost see the top and I could actually scrap on it tonight! WHOOOO HOOOOOOO!

Spoiler Alert: I hear a baby crying . . . must be too quiet here for her to sleep!

Nappin' and Poopin'

Oh these kids, seriously I am counting the days to preschool -- sometimes I am sad about it but sometimes I feel like calling the school right now to ask if they can start this minute and if they have a boarding school affiliation. With vacation Bible school every evening last week, the kids decided they weren't going to nap, well Addison and Caden decided that. I can count on Ethan to nap mainly because he's still locked in that crib tent and he has no choice and after he plays a while, boredom overtakes him and he's out. When boredom begins to overtake The Girl and her Sidekick, they begin the party or the fight or the coming down the stairs 500 times to tell me this or that or get this or that or see what I am doing. I'll tell you what I am doing, I'm busy trying to keep all these kids in bed without losing the little bit of sanity I have left! I thought with 3 hours of Bible School every night they would be exhausted and they were but did it make them sleep more? No, less, go figure! Back to my old adage: Sleep begets sleep. The more you do it the more you have to do it! Every day The Girl becomes a little more and more like the devil. No kidding after 5 days of Bible School (that's 15 hours of education and listening to religious CD approximately 5 million times) she told me while looking at her Vacation Bible School book during a nap strike "I cannot want to like Jesus" that would be the devil talking! And last night, I believe I did see the devil rear it's ugly head more than a few times -- down right scary!

So no more, I am stubborn and I'm not about to give in -- today is a new day and new rules -- everybody sleeps, do or die! Addison is sleeping on the downstairs couch and I say don't get off this bed (don't call it a bed as I did, "She said this is not a bed, it is a couch!") so I repeat don't get off the couch! At least there's nothing much going on in the party room -- they are both out in 41 minutes -- world record, I believe for the Murray Team. I think the Murray Team broke another record here earlier today when I had 3 people poop in less than 15 minutes of each other. At least Caden made it to the potty, Ethan on the other hand decided he would remove his pull-up then tell me he pooped after a little couch jumping (which is not allowed). Thank God, we have a wipe-off couch now -- don't worry I sanitized, if you visit, you can still sit safely. Reesey decided she needed to join in and it was everywhere, I went through 2 diapers and half a box of wipes just to change her and then she somehow removed the new diaper while I was trying to fix the malfunction of the diaper genie thing where it somehow spit poop out and I finished the other half of that box of wipes to clean that up. I have washed my hands a million times today already. So everything is a little quieter at the moment, now that 3 out of 4 kids are sleeping and 3 out of 4 kids have pooped.


See that's how the 4th kid looks right now, doesn't she look tired? Actually look closely, see the red eyes, there's still a little bit of devil in there.

The BIG Job Continues

I think we have now passed week 3 of the roofing project. It's coming along. I say a little more than half of it is complete. The $#^*!@ scissor lift promptly breaks down about every second day and then the weather is uncooperative about every fifth day. There's a lot of sweating going on along with some colorful phrases and interesting conversations between Neil and Aaron.

They work well together and Aaron says he's learning a lot about roofing mainly that he never wants to do this again. I doubt that this is the last time he has to lay shingles on a home we own but maybe we will be looking at prospective homes in a different way and basing a purchase on how steep the roof is . . . something to consider.

It is pretty high up there.

It's hard to tell by this photo but the front porch is complete and for some reason there was 4 layers of shingles to remove off this part but the rest of the house only has one layer. It took Aaron's Dad a whole day just to remove the old shingles just off the porch.

This is the other side that still has the old green shingles. And we are running out of shingles which is super puzzling to Aaron and he just can't understand why he didn't get enough. Things like that drive him crazy. I say accept that we didn't' get enough and move on and get more but he must question it over and over . . . and we'll probably never know the answer to that puzzle.

Then there's the back porch that is our laundry room and pantry. It looks small but Aaron assures me it's not that small and it has BIG issues.

Looks like sheeting will have to be replaced . . . see the big dent . . . I wonder why we don't have a waterfall in our laundry room on rainy days. And turns out I do have a green thumb . . . look I can grow trees in our gutters. The tree is this photo is not my only one . . . I have several propagating on all sides of the house . . . pretty talented, wouldn't you say?

The roof was one of two BIG projects we have on our to do list for our home. The other starts to show it's ugly head here. This is the window we took out when we remodeled our bathroom last year. Pretty, huh?

And look here . . . the gray area is the aluminum siding showing through our peeling paint. When the sun shines on it, it's very sparkly like glitter or diamonds but as much as I like those embellishments in scrapbooking, I don't think it's going to attract a lot of buyers. We were going to paint our aluminum siding. Before we started the roofing job, our slave neighbor, Neil, said putting up vinyl was no harder than painting and he knew how to do and it wouldn't be much more than painting. . . we'll see if Neil doesn't offer for us to use his paint sprayer the second the last roofing nail is hammered in.

Today we had a collision in the universe with an early thunderstorm to make every wet enough to hold off roofing until late afternoon. Once Aaron got all the equipment out to begin then the lift magically wouldn't work. So nothing more was done on the roof. On to week 4 . . . roofing sure is hard work!

Stay Beautiful

Here's my take on the challenge for Scrapping the Music based on the Taylor Swift song, Stay Beautiful. This song is new to me but I love it so much I'm adding to my blog! (click to see the photos larger).

Scrapping my Crap!

Not another one, but I'm on a roll! The novelty of challenges will soon wear off along with the fact that I think Caden and Addison are "done" taking afternoon naps . . . oh the injustice of it . . . they are infringing on my "me" time! This one is for a blog challenge called Scrap Your Crap and the challenge was to use a layout from an idea book as inspiration . . . basically your take on a "lift".

I used the July 2008 cover of Keely's Creating Keepsakes Magazine for the inspiration.

Here's my take on it:

Using my Stash

I said I was really liking these challenge blogs and I found another one called Use Your Stash. I made this LO for this mini challenge which I don't know if it technically qualifies since I used 3 photos (not 2) and it has more colors than just green and blue but I did use glitter and now we have it all over us and the house. Oh well I still like it even if it doesn't "qualify". (Click on photos to see them larger).

Favorite Thing Friday

Today I am endorsing a product that I found for about $2.50. I didn't know it would be so fabulous when I saw it on clearance but I just got it Sunday and we have used it 3 times so far. It's a . . .



popsicle mold, exciting, huh?

This has been one of the highlights of the day right after Vacation Bible School. The kids were starved after Bible School each night because they wouldn't eat the nice suppers they were given so this was their treat. 3 year olds and popsicles don't go so great together around here.

It's hard to explain to people who have children one at a time because if you have one child who isn't so great at handling popsicles like those ones in the plastic pouch that you push up to eat, you can sit and help them with your undivided attention, dab their mouths, wipe their hands as you go, show them, talk them through it. When you have 3 demanding, overtired, grouchy 3 year olds who aren't quite old enough to do the push up ones by themselves and make a HUGE mess on themselves, their clothes, and the floor and furniture (times 3, thank you!) while running everywhere and dropping them on the floor and/or ground and insist on eating them with hair/dirt stuck to them then you never want to see another messy popsicle again.


Popsicle eating usually ends in tears for all of us. If I buy other kinds of popsicles then there are fights about what color they want, or they don't like this kind, etc, etc, etc. So this way they are all the same and the mess was less because they had handy little drip catchers on the bottom of the stick. We've been making all kinds too: Tuesday was a blueberry smoothie popsicle, Wednesday was Apple Juice, Thursday was banana pudding, and tonight is Lemonade. I like that the smoothie one had blueberry yogurt (which Ethan won't eat -- but he did when it was frozen on a stick mixed with milk, a banana, and apple juice); so it's way more healthy than the colored sugar water ones. It is so easy and cheap to use whatever we have on hand and sneaking in the nutrition is quite fun for me. Here you can find some recipes if you don't want to wing it like me (I am going to try the applesauce ones next, hmmmm if I add some sprinkles that may be a hit here!) My only complaint is that there is only 4 molds . . . you know probably for that average family size we have in America. I guess since Aaron and I are overachievers on the family size thing, I don't need a popsicle and since my hubby is still roofing the house he can have the extra one until Reesey decides she needs one. I got my molds at Target on an endcap of clearance stuff but you can find some here and here for a little bit more money and here you can find various kinds of molds even a sailboat one for reasonable prices and you can buy a brush to clean your molds (oh, brother!). Get some, it may be the best $$$ you ever spent on popsicles.

Hip, Hip, Hooray, for Popsicles!