Disaster afoot...

Today has promised to be a disaster from the start. Little M tossed and turned all night last night. I finally gave up on her this morning after hearing D take his shower after work and passed her off to him so I could grab another hour of sleep before it was his turn. Of course as soon as I got back in bed, Mischief and I got into a fight over personal sleeping space, and the little monster bit me. Not bad, but enough to tick me off so I couldn't go back to sleep. And of course, Little M was super cranky for a good hour before she took a short nap...which was just long enough for me to load up PSE and get inspired but not long enough for me to do anything. I think she might have a tummy ache. By noon, she already had two messy diapers. Really.messy.
Thankfully, Big A seems to have woken up in a good mood. And the ear pain I've been suffering from for the past few days (random sharp stabbing pains) seems to have vanished.
The chicken enchilladas I made last night for dinner were so delicious they even got D's seal of approval, even if Big A didn't want to eat a bite. So we now have one new recipe to add to the dinner menu!

Thank you Pinterest!

Some Quiet Time

The girls are back on a no sleep routine, so I've been keeping my days as lazy as possible. Little M loves to make a bee line for the computer whenever I lift the screen, so instead of fighting her prying fingers and growing my frustration, I've just been letting things sit. It's also been my "time of the month" which leads to such severe cramping, it gift to move off the couch for a few days. I can't even find time to edit my pictures, or scrap. I don't see myself jumping on the Project 52 bandwagon anytime soon. So, if it can't be done with my phone, I haven't been doing much. I have been trying to take more pictures with my phone. I go a few days where I slack in my mamarazzi duties, and forget to turn on the big camera, so I went searching for a fun camera app for my Android phone. No instagram here, but I did find Lightbox. I don't know what features instagram has, but I've been having a lot of fun with Lightbox. I love the Sahara filter! I've gotten a lot of great pictures, and as soon as I get a chance I might post some here in the blog. With my lightbox account, it makes like a little photo journal, which is pretty cool. And I can always share in Facebook right from the app. At least now all the little moments I would miss scrambling for my main camera, I can capture and edit with my phone. If you haven't tried it out, you should!

Big A is slowly getting back on track with the potty training, finally. She took a two month break, after almost being completely trained by Halloween. It was driving me crazy. We had plenty a loud battles over it. Bribing wasn't working, nor sweet talking. She was completely unphased by me just putting panties on her, and letting her wet herself. I was so tired of cleaning up pee. I finally just took candy away from her and told her in order to get another piece (including all her Christmas kisses and reeses) she had to potty. I figured it would either end her candy habit or she would start using the potty again. For a couple of days, she still didn't care and I thought my plan had backfired...but then she would randomly test me by asking for candy.

"No, go to the potty"

"No, I not want to" she would say. Surprisingly she never protested to much when I still said no. And then randomly she would potty and exclaim " I have piece of candy now!"
Well we are on day two of almost nothing but potty, so I'm crossing our fingers she doesn't backslide when we start getting serious about moving.

This last rotation of hubby's days off have been exceptionally lazy. I washed some clothes and got groceries. But that's as productive as we got. We did, however, make red velvet cake balls, bbq chicken nachos, and homemade reeses cups (here). We did a little shoppong, too, and I was able to find an awesome pair of purple pants and a grey stripped shirt at Target for $10 total. I'm in search of clothes that don't make me look like a shapeless blob, but are also cheap since I plan on loosing weight.....soon. I also found the skirt for our Elf on Shelf we will hopefully get next year, for $1 at Barnes and Noble! I'm not a huge fan of Barnes and Noble (long story) so the less I spend in there when we go, the better. Maybe one day, I'll get over my grudge. We used to have a beautiful relationship.....

I took a few minutes the other night to start sorting my digifiles again. Before I went to crazy, I dug out the external and backed up our pictures and my scrapping files. I think I might ditch my current system and try and slim it down, again. Heck, I still have files in huge bulk folders that still need to be grouped by kit. Another huge project to work on!

Anyhow, it's taken me days to write this (so sorry if it seems a bit disjointed!) so I'm going to stop rambling for now and get something productive done!

Lazy Days

I declared today, and the next three days, while hubby is working,  Lazy Days. I'm so tired of trying to be productive, while at home with two kids, and I just give up. I can't blog, I can't scrap, I can't surf, I can't do dishes, I can't read a magazine. I can't do anything. I don't know how other mom's with kids this small do anything. I literally feel like I have one on each leg all day long, for every trip up and down the stairs to fetch a diaper, a pacifier, a toy, a pair of socks, a clean shirt.....ugh. I don't see how I'm still so overweight with all the exercise, but I am. Double UGH.

I haven't scrapped a page since..........................................................weeks before Christmas?

And on my hubby's day off, he is just as demanding and needy as the kids are. Thank god the car search is over, because if I had to waste one more minute driving through a car lot, I was probably going to go insane. I mean, I've had three years of sleepless nights, is it really necessary to waste Mary-Anne's car naps on looking at freaking cars?!

All in all, today wasn't to bad of a day. For the majority, there were no breakdowns. Big A got a little touchy over some toys, but we managed to smooth it over. She has to learn to share sometime, right? She just needs some practice, but all in all, she is going pretty good. She loves her little sister, and it's so sweet to see her interact with her all day. She makes funny noises, or tries acting silly when Little M is fussy, or tries to tickle her, saying "tickle tickle tickle". It's so adorable.

Tonight while I was trying to work on my layout for the Scrap Orchard Template MIS, she put on her panda hat and my slip on shoes and said to me, "Look Mom, I'm so cute! Take a picture!" haha, so I did!

A New Car Owner, Twice Over!

Today was exhausting. I've spent more time in car dealerships in the past year then I care to. Upgrading from the Dodge Avenger to a crossover SUV proved to be painful enough. We researched, we drove, we ran numbers, we drove, we researched, we got denied at a few places, and then FINALLY ended up with a vehicle that worked for our needs and we liked. And now our needs have changed again. The hubby has been researching cheap fuel efficient vehicles so religiously my head has been spinning. Honestly, I'm glad the search is over, even if the payment makes me a little queasy. Our car payments now total more then our mortgage. I keep reminding myself there are plenty of families out there with two vehicle payements. This is normal. I mean, if I drove, I'd be expected to have my own car, and would probably be making payments on it. I have come to the conclusion I had a fairly naive concept of how much cars cost. And how much that pricetag equates to monthly. But regardless, today we came home with a Nissan Versa (beep beep!). Our intetions were to just go look at them again. But once we got there, we noticed they were on sale. For a only little bit more then the cheapest, useable used car, we could get a new one today, on closeout for 2011. Instead of holding out and risking not finding anything, we just went for it. Here's hoping this doesn't end up backfireing on us, like it seems all our other decisions do!

I'm Back!

I know. None of you even noticed I was gone. And that's ok. I don't blame you. I'm pretty boring most days.
My test run of Wordpress came to an end today when I realized there really is no way, that I could find, to cheat customization. And I decided that was more important then a flashy phone app. I've been so excited to create new blogwear using the Hopes and Dreams kit by Secret Stash. I absolutely love the look of this kit, and couldn't think of any better way to show it off then to decorate with it. But apparently Wordpress didn't agree with me. I could easily change my background, but I couldn't get any text colors changed, or dividers, and it was really annoying. So here I am. I'm still not completely sure I'm done with the background image, but its a start. I still have to add all my dividers tags, signature (toying around with using the bamboo to make a handwritten one!) and a header image. I won't lie, its probably going to take a while to get it looking exactly like I want, especially with the kids being as demanding as they are, and us getting ready to move.

That's right, we are moving. Again. We "rented" our house out for a bit, in hopes the tenants were going to buy it from us come June. Well, they have decided they don't want to buy it ( I can't really blame them, I regret buying it every.single.day) and want to move out. This is horribly inconvenient, but I won't deny that fact that I saw it coming. We are currently renting a townhouse (that is probably TWICE the size of our house) two hours away from where the house is, cause this is where the hubby works. I won't lie that I utterly despise this town, and that I am BEYOND excited to moving back to our "home" town (we both have lived there for over 10 years, though none of our families live close). I however, am not looking forward to 1) trying to fit in an 800 square foot home. I am thankful there is an unfinished basement and a yard, though. Having no yard is really tough when you have little kids! 2) We JUST traded in our car, a few months back, for an SUV. Due to the amount of negative equity (we've traded a vehicle every year for the past four years....doh..), there is no way to get rid of it now. Our carpayment is cringe worthy. The Rav4 gets pretty good gas mileage (at least, for the twice yearly trips we essentially got it for), it however, does not get good enough gas mileage to make the four hour (round trip) drive it would be making every four days. So this means, find ANOTHER car...that's cheap...and gets good gas mileage. Not very easy. 3) We had planned on taking our tax return and bonus this spring and paying off over half our debt. Now, we have to save that money to cover the cost of maintaining another car, making the payments and gas, and to provide a "cushion" in case things go terribly wrong. Needless to say, I'm pretty upset and overwhelmed by the amount of financial stress this is going to put on us, again, after we were making strides to get ahead. But I guess that's life, eh? I guess there is always NEXT year...and then there is 4) the hubby still has to work two hours away. Which means not only the before mentioned drive but also the fact that he will be gone for four days (and then home for four, rinse, repeat..except for cases of snow, regional visits, inventory, co-worker vacation coverage, you get the idea...where his rotation could be changed randomly). Last time we did this we only had one kid I had to take care of. Now there are two, and I'm a little angst about being a "single parent", even if it is just for a few days at a time. But again, he is on overnights, and we only see him briefly on work days anyway...so maybe this will work out better. At least when he is home, I should be easier to deal with since I will have friends to see on a regular basis, instead of being isolated at home all the time.

I'm also a little apprehensive about having to learn to drive ( I mean, if we are going to have two cars, by gosh I'm going to be driving one of them!). And in fairness, it's about darned time. I just really feel like that "you can't teach an old dog  new tricks" cliche. I guess it really can't be that hard, right? Anyhoo....enough rambling for right now. I'll be back soon, I promise. I even have a couple of entries to bring over from the other blog, so stay tuned!