Fetus #3

So here I sit 36 weeks pregnant with my third child. One thing I have learned from being alive is life NEVER 

(if I could make that word any bigger I would)

goes according to my master plan. 

When I had baby #2 I thought I might die. Meaning it was so hard and mentally challenging to have two children I created a slogan, "two and through". That is what I would tell people when they asked me about my plans for having more children.

Fast forward a couple years and I kept gaining weight and was convinced my IUD was the cause. So I removed it all by myself!!! Don't worry I had done lots of research via google (everyone knows the internet never lies) and decided it was totally something that could be done. So I did that and guess what...turns out my diet and lack of exercise were what were making me fat the whole time. Who saw that coming?

Anyway, months later I decided I would never be "ready" to have another kid so we figured we might as well try and see what happens. At the time we had a good job, a cute little house to dwell in, family near by and all that good stuff. 

A few months later I was pregnant with baby #3. Since it was my third kid I figured I would wait to go to the doctor when I was 17 weeks or so. That way when they did the first ultrasound I could find out the gender early. Brilliant plan! About a month after I found out I was pregnant I developed some funky looking bug bite on my boob. My doctors thought it was lyme disease.....not ideal. The medicine they usually give people you can't take while pregnant and this other drug has unknown side affects on the baby..blah, blah, blah. 

So then I attempt to find a ob/gyn and have mass difficulty through my insurance. I find the perfect birthing center, but they won't accept my insurance. They I get stuck with this terrible clinic that makes you feel like you are just a paycheck to them and another person to see. I'm convinced no one there knows my name and who I am. They ask me the exact same questions every time I go in. While I was in there this morning the doctor asked me if this was my first child. I wanted to scream at her face that I have been asked that same question multiple times and why doesn't she just take one second to look at my chart/history because I bet it is in there somewhere!! I am basically chopped liver to them. And I detest feeling like they really couldn't care at all about me. Not to mention the doctor they assigned me to is old enough to be my grandpa, super creepy. But he won't likely be the one who delivers this baby because there are seven at this clinic and I have only met two but you just get whoever is on call at the time. And I am sure they will ask me the same questions and make me want to attack them...and let's not forget to mention about half of the doctors aren't even board certified yet...that is how I really feel. 

Soooooooooo, back on track. I am stuck going to this horrid clinic but I finally got to see a real skin disease doctor and he informs me it is not lyme disease. Woohoo. Then we find out my husband will be losing his job in Oct. so he found a seasonal job that just ended and now here we are jobless, about to have another baby, I am attempting to potty train a child that refuses to poop in her diaper or on the toilet, we will be moving sometime this year, I have had a hard time getting really excited about this new baby and feel terrible about it. Half the time I want to scream and the other half I want to cry. 

Onto the moral of the story. We have amazing support from family and friends, we are lucky to have a place to live and any insurance at all. I can't wait until January 2016 to look back on this crazy time and think of how it made us grow stronger as a family. In the mean time I will attempt to focus on my adorable girlies and have more patience. 

2014 Update

I might as well update since it has been FOREVER. 

Where to begin.....................

I became impregnated again. It's another girl. I'm due in four weeks. Poor big daddy has no chance of survival with all these girls around. And the cherry on the cake is I feel large as a house.

We gave them pink balloons to tell them it was a girl, balloons make everything awesome.

We went on our first family camping adventure with our friends. The kids woke up around 5am every morning. I learned sap on clothes is the worst. The food was delicious. I decided to take a picture with my phone in the pitch black with the flash on.....not a good idea. My bestie found a sweet way to take a picture with both cameras at one time (oh wait, she just has a cooler phone than me)!! 

Holidays and birthdays were had.

Jobs were lost. Ugly sweaters were worn. Memories were made. I got a sweet minivan. 

Welcome 2015 and all the fun you have to offer!

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all the beautiful mothers out there, and even the ugly ones!

 bahahahaaa....that was a joke people.

This is my mom, I call her Lafawnda.

She helped mold me into the person I am and for that I am super grateful. She also always has and continues to spoil me and my family rotten. My favorite thing about my mom is she likes to pretend that all her kids were perfect while we were growing up....or maybe she is in denial, either way.

Being a mother is the hardest thing in the world. It never ever, ever, ever, ever, ever stops and even when you are alone or getting a break you still always are thinking about what your kids are doing and if they are ok. The best thing about being a mom is how your kids love you unconditionally (at least they do when you are little, I have heard horror stories about teenagers).

 About 75% of the time I feel like I could be a better mom, have more patience, talk in a nicer voice, play pretend, play hide and go seek and take 10 minutes to find them hiding in the same spot every time. 

But no matter what they just keep loving me. I love my girlies more than anything in this world. I'm so glad they made me a mom, and help me continue to be a better one.

Now onto the serious stuff, this is how my Mother's Day played out in my head. My kids sleep soundly all night like usual. Big Daddy gets up with them at 6am. I sleep in soundly until at least 8am, then I awake to the smells of breakfast in bed and fresh flowers and the cute little homemade cards my kids made me.

My reality:
Nate falls asleep on the couch while watching House on Netflix, he never comes to bed so I can't sleep that well anyway, Sas wakes up twice yelling about who knows what, B Face wakes up once crying, Big Daddy does get up with them at 6am and keeps them quite but I can't go back to sleep. The brings me the most delicious breakfast in bed (SCORE)! B Face helps me eat it. And Sas sits in her room screaming about how it is not Mother's Day therefore she will not come in and say Happy Mother's Day to me because it was last week.

 Love my little family. And I have finally convinced Sas to make me a card even if she doesn't think it is Mother's Day. I will get my hand crafted card DANG IT!

Mormon Crack

(Disclaimer: for those who follow me on Facebook I made this for a birthday present. I did not eat it and ruin my awesome, in the making, weight loss story!! I knew some of you were judging me, I could feel it.)

Mormon Crack (news flash, I'm a Mormon. And you may or may not know that Mormon's typically don't do drugs, therefore this is my drug....get it?..it's supposed to be funny but if you don't get it by now it may be a lost cause for you) is what I have decided to call this oooey gooey sticky crunchy heaven in my mouth creation. It all started a couple years ago when I was at a church bake sale and this bowl of what looked like regular old cereal sold for $90 or some crazy number like that. The weird thing about that is the person who bought it was married to the person who made it?! Well, said purchaser was sitting in front of me and let me have a taste and that was the end of my waistline (not to mention everything else I stumble upon on Pinterest). I quickly had someone snatch up her magic recipe and I made it many times. 

Then something terrible happened..........I moved and the recipe was lost!!! I text the person I got it from to have her send it to me and she never did. Then the horrible cravings set in and I was on a mission to find my oooey gooey friend again. So I finally came across this recipe on Six Sisters Stuff and it was the closest thing to the original recipe I could find, but it still wasn't the one. So here is my wanna be version of "the one" and I'll be honest, once you have it you will want it over and over again. SOOOO yummy.

Ingredients:

1 box of Rice Chex or Crispix

1 box of Golden Grahams
1 1/2 cups sugar
3/4 cup butter
1 1/4 cups light corn syrup  

If you are feeling crazy you can also add almonds, coconut, little yummy candies or chunks of candy.

Directions:

1. Grease a big ole bowl and mix the cereals and whatever other yummy things you want to add.

2. Put the sugar, butter and corn syrup in a pan on medium heat and stir. Wait until the mixture starts to boil and let it boil for three minutes while you continue to stir. (Sometimes I turn it up to high to get things going)

3. Pour the mixture over the cereal and mix it all up.

4. Spread it out on wax paper (sometimes it sticks) or onto greased cookie sheets. 

5. Put it all back in the big bowl when it has cooled, then take the bowl and hide in a closet with it so you never have to share!!!

Just Call Me Martha

I will start by saying I AM NOT CRAFTY. As a matter of fact my attention span for crafty things is approx. five minutes long, maybe ten on a good day when I am loaded with sugar or caffeine. With that being said, Big Daddy and I have been tapping into our crafty sides and I am loving the results while hating the amount of time it takes to get things done.

Recently we inherited a new huge television from my brother and we had to get rid of the entertainment center we had because the tv wouldn't fit in it. Which lead to our tv mounted on the wall and all the stuff from our old entertainment center sitting on our floor...not so kid proof. Then the search began. You may not know this but Big Daddy and I are rather picky. Our budget was max $300, and we wanted something real wood so it would last forever, or until we were sick of looking at it. Oh, and we also wanted something long and taller than two ft. Weeks later we came to the conclusion that was never going to happen with our budget.

So we searched out DIY dresser/entertainment centers and decided that is what we were going to do. After days of searching on Craigslist we found the perfect one and of course I didn't take a picture of what it looked like before so you can be that much more impressed with the results. But here is a picture of the mirror that was on it, which shows the wood stain color so with a little imagination you get the idea. 

So the mirror is laying on top of the dresser hence the weird angle and the reflection of my garage shelves and garage door, but lucky for you if you look really close you can see part of the dresser below it.

The all it took was a little (many, many hours) sanding, priming, sanding again, and painting twice. I lied, that wasn't all. We also took out the middle drawers and put wood down so we would have shelves for the blu-ray player, Nintendo 64 (woooooooohooo) and other things to make our viewing pleasure excellent, and cut holes in the back for the cords. And of course the new hardware to make it look so fresh and clean. 

Ready for the much anticipated reveal...... 

TA-DA!! Take that Pinterest!

I am so in love!  All we have left is hiding the tv cords, and the best part was it cost us about $160!!!!! So there you have it, I am turning over a new crafty side.

Next project re-upholstering the piano bench.

FYI the color is BEHR Amber Moon

Coupons!

As mentioned previously I am a recovering coupon addict. I am still using all the body wash I bought over three years ago! Well this week Safeway was having a screaming deal on cereal and you didn't even need coupons so I went and partook and got a little taste of that good ole adrenaline high from saving money. But I do believe that couponing is actually a waste of money (GASP!!). Hear me out, if I didn't ever coupon I would have never had to spend hours, at least six, weekly cutting out the coupons, looking online for the best deals, and wandering around the store looking for all the great steals that were clearanced. Not to mention if you are going to coupon for food it is typically processed garbage that you get all the coupons for (I said typically, I am aware not all of them are but let's be honest the vast majority are for crappy food). 

I usually don't buy cereal and now I have over 15 boxes and I am $20 more poor than before. Don't get me wrong that is a great price for the amount I got but I would have only bought one or two boxes a month like I typically do and only spent $4. Then I could have used the remaining $16 out of my budget on the fruits and veggies my kids love. However, I have a small doomsday mentality (thanks to my father who is a total doomsdayer) and I feel the need to stock up on EVERYTHING. Well news flash to myself, I am pretty sure if the world is going to Hell in a hand basket it won't really matter what my stock of cereal and granola bars looks like, I should be more concerned about my stock of shotgun shells so I can protect my two boxes of cereal and steal my neighbors food..... .... 

Back to the real issue, I can see the benefit of couponing but when it comes down to the value of my time, forget it. I would much rather chill at home with my babies than wander around the store for hours looking for the best deals. And I don't want that sugary, yummy, processed crap food in my casa anyway, I have enough problems with self control with my amazing baking skills and I can pronounce all the ingredients in the things I make. I can only imagine what the boxed stuff from the store with the list of crazy ingredients is doing to my internal organs.

I will now only stock up on tampons, shampoos, body washes, diapers and wipes. Then when the world ends I will barter with my womanly products for food. That is all.

valentines day

I am just going to come out with it. Valentine's day is such a waste of a holiday, phew, I feel much better. And Big Daddy agrees with me, what dude wouldn't? 

Don't worry, I don't feel this way about only Valentine's day but also mother's day, father's day, grandparent's day....the list goes on and on. I refuse to waste my money on little red boxes of chocolates that taste like wax. Maybe one day when I can buy the good stuff and order a new car for myself for vday. No, not even then because I refuse to be a robot and buy crap just because marketers tell me I need to. News flash, I have a degree in a marketing related field (history...jk it's not history, it's public relations) and I refuse to give into your evil schemes unless it involves me buying mass amounts of cereal and receiving milk for free (I am a recovering coupon addict). 

Do you know what my awesome little family did for Valentine's this year? We woke up and I made eggs, bacon and toast, I make breakfast every morning so this wasn't special. I take that back we usually have sausage and I was feeling crazy and bought bacon. I had also bought myself some pink tulips the night before for a whopping $5 and they were beautiful! The kids got their cute little Valentine's from their daddy (I raided a clearance bin at Winco and got some sweet stuffed animals and plastic dinosaurs for $.15 and some sweet lip suckers). Then I took the kids to the park, we went home and I wanted them to nap for hours, ya right. Then I gave them a bath and B face got out and pooped all over the floor in the bathroom and then walked in it. Happy Vday to me! Then Big Daddy came home and we went to our friends house and had heart shaped pizza for the kids and we adults had yummy Vietnamese take out. That my friends is how Valentine's should be, just a regular day with the peeps you love.