Thanksgiving 2012

I hope everyone had a nice and relaxing Thanksgiving. This year we were fortunate enough to have family gather at our house. Usually we do the traveling and meet at the in-laws house in New Mexico but this year our animal sitter (my friend Jessica) was due to have a baby right near Thanksgiving (which she did! Baby girl..more on that later). When you have as many animals as we do you have to plan vacations carefully so that there is someone to watch them. So, unfortunately, we were staying home this year. Then we all decided to just have it at our house. Sean's parent's showed up Monday and Sean's brother Nate and family showed up Tuesday. Their little girl Berkley is just a few months older than Greta so those two played wonderfully. It was great seeing the cousin's together. They flew in from Washington and brought some crab with them on the plane. It was so surprising seeing them lug in a giant styrofoam cooler full of fresh seafood. In the midwest we don't get to enjoy fresh seafood so this was a treat. Thank you so much Nate and Stacy, that was sure memorable.

It was freakishly warm last week with temperatures in the low 70's. We took advantage of it and lugged the kids to the park to soak up some sun. Boy did they have fun! Granny Randi was a trooper letting them crawl all over her.

We got the Christmas tree up and Thanksgiving morning all the kids decorated it while Sean made waffles. That might have to be a new tradition around here. Have I mentioned how much I like it when Sean cooks? Boy it's a treat.

I got to make all the food for Thanksgiving which was harder than I thought it would be. Maybe not "harder" just more stressful. I think it turned out well. I tried a brined turkey this year and it turned out juicy and yummy. I'm not a huge fan of turkey but it was pretty good. It was lovely having almost everyone around the table (you were missed this year Jeremy, Becca and Sasha).

Chicken Fried

I think my love of country music is starting to wear off on my little girl. After dinner most nights she dances around to this fun song called "Chicken Fried" by the Zac Brown Band. It's cute so I thought I'd share.

Scissors

This little girl is a handful. To say it mildly. She keeps me on my toes. There is no down time when it comes to Greta. Her new passion? Taking Wesley's school scissors and hiding behind the curtains while cutting paper into tiny little pieces. She's cut herself on several occasions so she's back to the plastic beginner scissors which make her mad (because they don't cut well). When she gets mad she scrunches up her little face and screams like the Hulk while stomping her feet. Believe me, you wouldn't like her when she's mad. This little one seems to have inherited my temper and my patience level. Poor thing.

Road Trip

This weekend we got to get together with the family to celebrate my nephew Emery's birthday. Initially we were to travel there as a family but at the last moment a decision was made to leave Sean at home so he could finish up the siding project before it rained on Sunday. Therefore I got to take the kids on a road trip to KC all by my lonesome. I'm happy to report it was smooth sailing due to the dual DVD players and several Disney movies. Sean even managed to hook up the DVD players into the main sound system of the Volt so we all got to listen to the movie broadcast (loudly) over the radio. Oh and the Volt did pretty good on the highway getting 44.5 mpg.

Emery turned three years old last week and was excited to celebrate it "Thomas the Train" style. There were several little kids that he hangs around with there along with Wesley and Greta. They all enjoyed themselves and love going to Aunt Betsy's house.

 On a funny note, Wesley kept going up to my dad (Papa John) and would call him Papa Rich (his other grandpa). My dad kept correcting him and Wesley kept calling him the wrong name. Finally my dad just started calling Wesley "Fred". Wesley looked at my dad all weird and said "Papa, my name is NOT Fred" and my dad looked at him and said "Well my name isn't Papa Rich!". They got a good chuckle. And of course Wesley kept calling him Papa Rich and dad kept calling him Fred all weekend. It was great.

VOLT Report

I thought I'd take a moment and write a little post about the electric car out in the garage. As of this weekend I'll have put 2,000 miles on the Volt. I've got to say it's completely changed the way I think about driving. Even though it has a back-up gasoline engine I'd say I get obsessed about NOT using it. I ask myself "Can I get there and back only using the battery?" If the answer is "No," then I ask myself "How can I get there and back without using gas?" This has turned me into the typical little old lady driver. I take back roads, I don't take highways, I coast up to stop signs and stop lights, and if nobody is behind me I go well under the speed limit. All these things combined can get me up to 47 miles to a charge (my personal best).

The car likes to tell me I'm getting 250+ miles per gallon. It's a mind boggling number.

Like I said, the car is not 100% electric. It does have a back up gasoline engine that acts as a generator to run the electric engine. The gas engine gets 37 mpg if you use it solely without the battery. But there is a little loop hole that Volt owners use to get better mpg's if they are traveling past their battery range. The car has several modes in which you can drive. One of the modes is called "Mountain Mode" and this particular mode causes the gas engine to run at such a high rpm that it charges the battery while you are driving. Cool eh? So if you have a long drive ahead of you all you do is deplete the battery (not all the way), put it in Mountain Mode, charge the battery while driving, switch it back into battery mode, deplete the battery and repeat. I've "heard" this method can get you up to 50 mpg. We will be finding out if this is true this weekend. I'm anxious to see if this works.

I was worried about the size of the car when we got it. It's not a big car. I'm used to driving bigger vehicles. The last car I drove was a SUV of sorts and I carried all sorts of things in it including feed bags, straw bales and my personal favorite, baby goats. I knew there would have to be some changes made to what I could and could not carry in this car. Probably no more baby goats. But I'm happy to say I've already loaded the car full of 50# feed bags and a weeks worth of groceries (horse feed in the front seat and goat feed and groceries under the back hatch with Greta in between).

It's a great car and I'm having fun with it.

Plugged in and charging.

The Wednesday Write-Up

-I've been trying to decide if it's wrong to decorate for Christmas before Thanksgiving. I just love the house all decorated and the kids absolutely get excited at the thought. Greta already is pointing out each and every decorated Christmas tree in the stores. I figure anything that puts me in a good mood is worth doing. I guess I just decided.

-So I'm standing at the post office window on Monday, shipping out a sculpture, when my oldest child starts screaming. It started out low and got louder and louder. I look down to find Greta biting Wesley's arm, causing him to scream. Seriously, I don't know what goes through her three year old brain sometimes.

-I've really been enjoying my morning ritual. I rush around getting the kids fed, lunches made and Wesley to school and then when I get home I reward myself with a soak in the tub. It's such a relaxing end to a hectic morning. I've been reading a ton and am enjoying my latest book "Concrete Blonde" by Michael Connelly. At this rate I'll have read all his books by the end of the year. I just eat up murder mysteries.

-We got Amazon Prime for the year to try it out and I have to admit we love it! We order quite a bit from Amazon and it's paid for itself already. The two day shipping has completely spoiled me. We must not forget about the Prime Instant Videos. I've been watching all sorts of shows that aren't on NetFlix. It's just great. One of the best $70 spent.

-I was sitting on the couch last weekend looking at our coffee table which has become worn over the past year. Let's just say the kids haven't been kind to it. The varnish is starting to chip and it needs to be refinished. But I don't feel like refinishing it (again) so I'm thinking of painting it with my new found chalk paint.  I've heard it holds up wonderfully once waxed, so I'm dragging the coffee table outside to the driveway and painting it today. I have a quart of black, we'll see how it looks.

Work work work, all day long.

We have been busy little beavers lately. Apparently having company coming pushes us into high gear. All the projects that are half done are getting completed in the next two weeks. I have to admit I like having people visit, the house never gets cleaner than right before a visit. Sean has been using some of his vacation time to finish up the siding on the south side of the house. Last weekend he and Rich worked hard to pull off the siding which was nailed and glued up there with industrial strength something. It just wouldn't come off easily. But it's off now and Hubby is out there, as I write, cutting siding. I'm sure he's as excited as I am to cross this project off the list. The siding had to be replaced before the deck can go up, so now there is nothing stopping us from building a deck....except a long, cold winter. I'm really looking forward to a deck in the spring.

We are all excited to host Thanksgiving this year. It will be a first to have everyone here, usually we travel to see the family. Greta is probably the most excited. Every day we talk about who is coming and she gets downright giddy when we mention her cousin Berkley will be here. Her cousin who is the same age as she is. Oh to have another little girl to play with for several days. The funny part is she can't remember how to say Berkley's name so she calls her "Broccoli". Hehe.

I suppose it's time to get back to work. I have to paint siding, go pick up new tires for the car, vote and paint a coffee table today. Hope everyone is having a great week!

My cute boys.

Thanks Papa Rich, appreciate your help!

Time out for a bike ride....and a work out! Try pulling 85 pounds on dirt roads. Whew.

Counting

I don't know why I look at Pinterest. I just get hungry. I want to make every recipe on there but if I did I'd weigh 300 pounds. Just this morning I found this homemade recipe for Butterfinger bars. As if having two candy buckets brimmed full of Halloween candy wasn't enough. Ugh. I've been doing so good too. You see I've started calorie counting as of two weeks ago and it's going a lot smoother than I thought it would. I felt I needed to do something since Fall and Winter are the months I tend to put on a little weight. I just don't have it in me to run this winter. In fact I don't know where the motivation came from last year....I suppose the half marathon in the spring had something to do with it. I've been focusing on weights three days a week, doing the BowFlex in the basement but cardio is just not happening.

I started using an awesome website called MyFitnessPal.com. It's free and it tracks what you eat, calorie intake and exercise. The food database is great, I've yet to find a food that isn't in there (even the Red Lobster menu the other evening). When I logged in the first time it asks your height, weight and goal weight and then creates a calorie goal to get you to your goal weight. I'm not trying to loose many pounds...just a few, really just trying to maintain over the winter until I get back to running in the spring. So far so good, four pounds down in two weeks. Give it a try!

Happy Halloween!

Whew! What a day. It was one of those "hit the ground running" sort of days. I had the camera out a lot today so I'll just share the events through pictures.....then I'm going to go crash.

Carving a pumpkin. Greta was excellent at pumpkin gut removal.

Jack, Greta and I.

Greta and Abby ready for the Halloween party.

Spiderman Wesley getting ready for the Halloween parade.

Wesley's kindergarten class.

Every year the elementary school marches down the road to show off their costumes.

What a family picture! Empty buckets and a couple of anxious kids.

Trick-or-treating at Noni and Papa's house. They have the best loot!

One happy kid.

Another Halloween over, hope everyone had fun!

Weekend

What do you do when your travel trailers deadbolt vibrates into place during the long trip home from Colorado, essentially locking itself from the inside out?

You rack your brains trying to figure out how to get into the trailer to unlock it. Zeroing in on an access panel that opens up under the bed. But who is small enough to squeeze through that access panel? Why your grandson of course!

 So the access panel was opened, cleaned out, the board was pried up and Wesley squeezed through.

Unfortunately he couldn't figure out how to push the deadbolt back so he did the next best thing and pulled the screen off of the back window (that serves as an emergency exit) and my Dad was able to climb in that way.

My camera froze at that point and the rest of the pictures died. But they made it in! Wesley was the hero of the day! They took him to the toy store and he got to pick out something. Go Wesley!


While Wes and I were away helping my folks, Sean was home ripping off the siding on the South side of the house. What was supposed to be the last project of the year is proving to be tougher than expected. Hubby was hoping to just pull down the old stuff and put up the new stuff. Pretty basic right? Nothing is that easy. Turns out the windows are rotting. The vinyl, Andersen windows are rotting. I was under the assumption that vinyl windows don't rot. I guess inside the vinyl is wood. So we are stumped at what to do next. Not all the windows are bad, just a few. What are to odds we could walk into a Andersen window store and order new windows that will match the existing 25 year old windows? I suppose I'm going to find out. Oh goody!

At least it wasn't all work this weekend. We did manage to escape together to eat snow crab Saturday evening. Thanks Rich for babysitting! We also rented Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter last night. What an excellent movie! It's so rare to see a movie that's actually enjoyable that when one does come along it's noteworthy. Hope you all have a great week!

Some days

Prepare yourself, this is what I like to call a "big ol' vent post." Some days I can cope with the ever presence of a three year old and some days not so much. For the past two weeks I've been remodeling two bathrooms. New tile, grout, paint on the walls....the works. One of the very last steps before trim is to caulk the edges of everything. It's a bathroom that small children use so it literally has to hold water like a giant fish bowl. Yesterday I spent three hours spreading caulk around everything in these two bathrooms. It was tedious and downright painful on my poor legs (due to the 5K this weekend). I was so grateful to be done.

This morning I was awoken by Sean telling me that Greta was in the bathroom playing in the caulking.

Sigh.

I suppose it should have been my first clue when yesterday Greta was perched at the opening of the bathroom watching me caulk while saying "Mom, it looks just like frosting!!" For some reason it didn't dawn on me that she'd go play with it and possibly taste it (she tells me she didn't though, goodness I hope not).

So apparently at 6 am she got up and started poking around my fresh, uncured caulking. She then went into her bedroom and started wiping her fingers on everything. There were smudges of caulking on nearly every surface in her room including my brand new carpet and her hair. To say I was mad would be an understatement. So I spent the next 20 minutes wiping everything off and trying to salvage the bathroom. What a mess.

What worries me is Greta's attitude about this. There is no remorse for what she did. I realize she's three years old but it's very difficult to not compare her to her brother at this age. He picked things up quite a bit earlier than his sis. If I told him not to do something he wouldn't do it. Even after she had been reprimanded this morning I was afraid to leave her alone near the bathroom for fear she would go right back in and mess with the caulking all over again. She's on a short leash today.

Since I'm venting I might as well keep going. Potty training has stalled out. I so thought she was done. Nope. She's back to pull-ups and she urinates in them about 90% of the day. Luckily she hasn't soiled one in some time. I've tried coaxing her with candy, stickers and now we are on to toys. She tells me daily how she wants a Tangled doll and I tell her she has to keep her pull-ups dry for seven days and we'll go get her the doll. She gets excited and then an hour later pees in her diaper. Oh and the really fun part? When she's done "using" her pull-up she takes it off and flings it somewhere, gets a new one and puts it on. So I find these discarded diaper bombs all over the house. It's so frustrating. She's old enough, it's just a game to her now.

Ok, vent post officially done. Thanks for listening.

Saturday

My legs feel like jello right now. For some strange reason I felt the need to run a local 5K this morning. It was cancelled last weekend due to the rain so I felt I was off the hook but then they rescheduled it. It would have been much more enjoyable had I run at all in the past month. Turns out training is needed even for little 3 mile races. Oh well, I made it. It was tough though. About half way through one side of my brain is saying "What the heck were you thinking?" Then the other side of the brain is saying "Wuss, you did 13 miles with no problem earlier this year!". Didn't do too bad, finished with a 29:14. Not my best 5K time, but I'll take it. I think it's time to start running on a regular basis again.

We were invited to an open house at the aircraft company my father works at. So today, after the race, we all loaded in the car and headed into town. The kids were excited because I promised them they could go explore some airplanes. I'm always excited to get them out of the house, they have been wound up lately. It was a lovely day with live music, good food, fun things to do, trolley rides and big airplanes. I'm thankful my dad invited us, it was a lot of fun.

Pumpkin Patch

It's pumpkin patch time. Greta had been asking when we were going to go over and over and over. I caved and we went Monday. It was sunny, warm and the perfect day to go. We coincided our trip with the preschool trip there so Greta could play with Abby. She had a nice time, I had a nice day away from the house...it was a win win situation.

Small Scale Renovations

We finished up the bathroom remodel yesterday and are thrilled with the results. I love "do-it-yourself" projects. Always have. This house was a giant do-it-yourself project when we moved in nearly eight years ago and there is hardly a room in the house that hasn't been touched in some way or anther. All except this little bathroom off of Wesley's room. I'm happy the former owners kept the decorating neutral when they built it back in the mid 80's. It sure made living in it manageable while we slowly remodeled rooms.

The whole project started when I was wandering around Menard's and stumbled upon some nifty tile that floats and snaps together. It's appropriately called SnapStone and it was the answer I was looking for. Our house is the incredible forever shifting house and I refused to ever put tile down again in fear that it would crack and shift like every other tile in the house. Until I found a floating tile floor. It was a bit more expensive (about $25 for 5 square feet) but it eliminated the need for mortar and underlayment and get this, I could lay it over the existing linoleum (it makes it better for the environment with out the old flooring in a landfill or so it says on the box). I am all for not ripping out the old nasty floor. So five boxes later and a super handy husband that layed it for me, we have a nice new tile floor in the bathroom.

I've gotta tell you though, what I was most excited about was transforming that ugly, worn out sink vanity. I ran across a woman that paints furniture with a chalk paint (not to be confused with chalk board paint). You take two parts paint and one part plaster of paris (bought a little jug at Michaels for $5). This can be any paint, satin or flat or whatever. I used a little sample quart in the color Bark...kind of a deep brownish gray (sample quarts are $5). Mix it up and slather it on. It goes on so smooth, like butter. This chalk paint eliminates the need for presanding or stripping the old cabinet. You just wipe it down (to get off all the toothpaste junk), tape it off and go to town. Then when it's dry you take a furniture wax, I used Minwax Paste Finishing Wax (found it at Lowes for $10), and wipe it on. Let it dry and wipe it off. That takes the chalk feel off and leaves you with a silky smooth, slightly shiny cabinet. Here is a video if you want to see how to wax furniture. I love it! My mind is racing with all the things I want to paint in this house. I painted the wood medicine cabinet as well so they match.

I picked up a gallon of Valspar Matt paint in a rich brownish gray to go on the walls. Valspar is the only company that seems to sell a washable matte paint that I can find. We painted our whole house with a washable matte paint from Benjamin Moore but they don't seem to sell it anymore (plus they are an hour away and a gallon costs $40). For some reason I can't stand semi-gloss or even satin paint. I'm a flat paint kinda gal. Flat paint in a bathroom is not a good idea so this seems like a good option. We'll see how it holds up to the humidity. Time to move on to the main floor bath this week. A bathroom a week, not bad!

Thursday Thoughts

-The nurse at the elementary school called to inform me that Wesley failed both his hearing tests. For some reason this doesn't surprise me. The kid can hear great but he's always had ear issues. He inherited wonky ears from his father and we've been battling ear infections for years. Since school started he's had one long cold so failing hearing tests would lead me to believe he's got fluid in his ears. Sure enough, his pediatrician confirmed that yesterday and we are to retest in 6 weeks. If he fails again he's got to go see a ear, nose throat doc. Poor kid.

-We had our first freeze of the season last weekend, which seems early to me. I'm bummed because I had six nice sized cantaloup back in the garden. I was really hoping they'd make it until harvest. But on a side note, I can happily say that some of that grass seed I put down two weeks ago is sprouting and looks like it will make it. 

-I've been keeping busy this week remodeling one of the upstairs bathrooms. I've started a list of projects I can do around this house to keep me busy during the week and this was one of the big ones. The bathroom is nearly done and I'll post some before and after shots this weekend. It's turning out really nice, I'm excited.

-I took a video yesterday this I think is adorable. The Minions (our three adopted cats) have always kept their distance from the dogs. Our dogs are kept in a fenced in area and the cats, up until recently, have kept their distance. The dogs have always barked and lunged as it they would murder the cats if given the opportunity. Well something changed in the past two months. The Minions started slowly entering the dog pen area and lounging until a dog got up and chased it out. This went on until the dogs just stopped getting up to give chase. They gave up and realized the cats were here to stay. And they realized the cats were no longer afraid of them. So now, this, is what poor Cody has to deal with on a day to day basis. Please mute your computer because Greta was in the background chattering up a storm.

The Tasting Game

The farrier was here last week trimming the miniature horses hooves. He's a young guy but I think he knows his way around horses pretty good. I, on the other hand, can honestly say I don't know horses all that well. Yes I've owned horses now for going on eight years but when it comes to training them, I know nothing. This is evident in the fact that I have a almost eight year old miniature horse that has been biting ever since I brought him home as a six month old colt. Rocky has gotten away with everything because I have no clue how to correct him. It started out as him just being "mouthy." He would put everything in his mouth.....my jacket, my shoes, buckets and so forth. I didn't mind him being curious until the mouthing turned into biting.

He liked testing his boundaries. He would stand there all innocent then casually bend his head around and bite my thigh. I would react and he would race off across the pen. It was a game, a very painful game. I learned quickly not to trust that little horse. Then the biting turned into kicking. He'd bite me, I would yell at him and he'd flip his rear end around and try to kick me. This didn't get dangerous until I became pregnant. Then I didn't get too near that horse without a whip (actually it was a riding crop). He respected me as long as I had that crop in my hands. This went on for years. He eventually grew out of the kicking. But sadly, the biting has remained.

So last Friday I'm standing there holding Rocky's halter while the farrier was trimming his hooves. Most people just hold the lead rope that is connected to the halter. Not me. I stand directly in front of Rocky, face to face, with one hand on each side of the halter. This prevents him from biting the farrier but it also pisses him off. So that little horse stands there and gets more and more agitated that he can't move his head. The farrier is getting agitated because the horse is antsy.

Farrier: "You have to stop holding his halter like that, NO horse likes being held like that."
Me: "I'm holding him like this so he doesn't take a chunk out of your shoulder."
Farrier: "You think he'll bite me?"
Me: "Um, yes? He bit the last farrier and he bites me all the time."
Farrier: "Why do you let him bite you?"
Me: "I don't know how to get him to stop."

So he instructed me to just hold the lead rope and see what Rocky does. Of course he sniffed the farriers shirt and carefully put it in his mouth. That guy jumped to his feet and pushed that horse as hard as he could. Almost pushed the horse over. Rocky had no idea what had just happened. I could hardly keep from laughing at the incredulous look on that horses face. The farrier went back to work on his front hooves as if nothing had happened and again Rocky carefully sniffed him and once again tried tasting his pants this time. Before he knew it that horse was once again being shoved five feet. Rocky didn't try "tasting" the farrier again. Perhaps I will try the shoving technique. If anything it was worth a laugh.

Fall Projects

Fall is a busy time of the year. Most people do their major cleaning in the Spring but for me it's the Fall. Spring is all about planting. Planting a vegetable garden, flowers, trees and grass. Every year I tell myself to stop over seeding grass in the Spring and do it in the Fall (you know, when you're supposed to). But by the end of the summer I want nothing to do with landscaping. But this year is different. This year is the year I renovate the lawn.

The poor yard has taken a beating over the years. When we moved in it was beautiful, manicured almost. You could tell the last owners fertilized and applied weed killer regularly. With all the animals nibbling here and there I told myself there would be no more weed and feed applied. But I think I'm about to change that. The back few acres are the only areas that get fed to animals (the tortoises in particular). So this weekend I went to the local rental store and rented a Vertislicer. Cool name for an oversized, extremely heavy lawn mower that has blades. Those blades slice into the ground creating a nice home for grass seed. I pushed that thing all over the lawn Saturday morning and deposited 100 pounds of grass seed. It didn't go nearly as far as I was hoping so I'm off today to get another 50 pounds. I must add that my arms and shoulders can hardly function after the workout I got with that piece of equipment. I sure hope it was worth the time, money and energy involved in renting it. In two weeks I'll be applying a general weed and feed to the front yard in the hopes that it takes care of the weeds. Here's hoping.

I'm excited about my other project too. We were at the hardware store yesterday and I ran across a display for renovating old hardwood floors. Our cypress hardwood floors were so pretty when we moved in but now after four dogs and two youngins they are in a sad sad state. They should be refinished but I'm not willing to put the time or money into that. So, back to that display I saw at the hardware store. It's a product called Bona and they have a whole line of wood floor products. I came home and researched them (mainly Amazon) reading every review. The Bona Hardwood Refresher was rated wonderfully and supposedly will turn old floors into somewhat new looking floors (and it says it works on cabinets too). I bought some and thanks to our Prime account (which we forgot to cancel after the trial period) we will have a bottle here on Wednesday. I can't wait to try it out! I'll let you know how it works.