Six months old!

If you didn't know, I am a project manager for road construction projects. I really love my job, and it allows me to stay at home with my kiddos; but I do have occasional meetings that I gave to attend. Yesterday, I had such a meeting, and some of my co workers were asking about my baby. I said, " He is great! He'll be 6 months tomorrow." They were all dropped jawed, you see this road we have been working on Ed scheduled to be complete the same week that Max was due. And here he is 6 months old, and we still have close to 3 months left on this section of the road is done. Such is the way of construction.

I swear time is speeding up. It is surreal that Maxwell is already 6 months. Baby's just grow too fast. He is rolling, and sitting, and laughing and today he had his first taste of food.

This little man honestly has one of the biggest personalities I have ever met. He is always happy. His favorite game is staring at someone until they look at him, and then he breaks into the biggest grin in the world; then he moves on to the next unsuspecting bystander. If he is not smiling, than he is laughing. And of he is not laughing, he is sucking his thumb.

My little reindeer at One-month-old.

Two-Months-Old - just wearing a pink bib and chilling with his big bro.

Snuggling with Papa (three-months-old)

Hanging out with Daddy at four-months-old

This was the trick he learned right around the time he turned five-months-old

Oh, and he learned this trick; he can suck on his binky and the thumb at the same time.

First meal- yummy rice cereal.  six-months-old

He learned today, that he can also eat food and stuck on his thumb at the same time.

All three of my cute boys!

DIY Baking Soda Disks

I recently started to cloth diaper. Before you roll your eyes, and decide that if I wasn't before, am now officially a hippie, hear me out. Cloth diapers are not at all like it was when our moms and grandmas were diapering their babies. They are so easy to use now, I would contend they are almost as easy as disposables. Plus, there are bunch of good reasons to cloth diaper: it is a total money saver; it is better for the environment; it is better for the Family Jewels (if you know what I mean); and to be honest, cloth diapers a so sticking cute! They can also be seriously sticky. Even though there have been improvement from the sticky diaper bin, that was full of bleach water, and stunk up the entire house, diapers still stink. I mean my wet bag does a great job containing the stink, but every time I open it up, it about knocks me over.

I read a suggestion on a cloth diapering website to place an Arm & Hammer baking soda disk in the wet bag to absorb the stink. Makes sense, I mean people use baking soda to fight odor all the time. So I sewed a mesh pocket into my wet bag, and then went to the store to get some baking soda disks.

For some reason, I was shocked when I got to the store, and discovered that said baking soda disks were nearly $3.50 for two little disks. Because, the primary reason I started to cloth diaper was to save money, I said to myself, "Self, there has to be a way to make these for significantly less dollar bills." So, I left those baking soda disks in the cleaning aisle, and went to the baking aisle and picked up a box if no-name brand baking soda for $.57. Awesome! Then I began my search for instructions on how to make these odor eating disks, all I could find was a recipe. It was actually WAY easy. I can't believe A&H charges so much for such a simple thing. So here is how you do it:

What you need:
1 box baking soda. (16 oz)
Water
Essential oils (***optional)
Muffin tin
Cup cake paper

First things first, you've gotta boil the water. (NOTE: I boiled about 2 cups, but you won't use nearly that much)

While the water is boiling, empty the entire box of baking soda in a mixing bowl.

After the water gas boiled, Measure out 1/2 to 1 cup of water. If you Want to add essential oils, added a couple of drops to the water now (I did add some oil, but the baking soda absorbed all the fragrance, I am not convinced this is a necessary step).

Slowly add the water to the baking soda while stirring. Watch out, it will get fizzy.

Add water to the mixture until it looks paste-like, wet, think and smooth. Be careful not to add to much water, or it get runny, and take forever to dry.

Once you have the paste to the consistency that looks right, start scooping it into your muffin tin until it is about 1/2 an inch thick.

When I made these, my mixture made eight disks.

(NOTE: I used a Demarle Silicon Muffin form, so I did not need to use cupcake paper. I would recommend using paper if you don't have a similar pan).

Now let it dry for a minimum of 24 hours. Once dry, pill off the cupcake paper, and voilà: You've made your very own Baking Soda Disks! And all for less then $.10 each. I bet the hardest part was waiting for them to dry.

Now, there are many places you can use these stink eating disks: in the fridge; in your sock draw; in your gym bag; anywhere. One disk should absorb odor for about a month. Make sure to store the ones you are not using in an air tight container.

And if you are using it in a wet bag, remember to remove it before you wash the bag. I would recommend adding a mesh pocket to the top of your bag, which will make it easier to take the disk out, and keep it out if all the wet diapers. Once the disk is done absorbing, just crumble it up and throw it into the wash with your next load on diapers.

Here is what my baking soda pocket looks like:

Chick-a-dees!

We got chickens! Well ok, they are still chicks, but Tom finally caved and let me get some baby chicks. I have been trying to convince him for two years that we should get chickens when we get a yard, but he has always been less than excited about the notion. Then the other day we were walking into the hospital (don't worry, no one was sick) when we heard someone across the hall spurt out, "I got chickens! And I am building a coop, and I keep thinking, 'Rosie will be so proud!'"

It was my cute friend, and college roommate, Megan, who is a nurse at the hospital. It was then that Tom finally realized that I truly would love to have chickens. The next day, when he came home from work, he went out to the garage and started screwing boards together. I asked him what he was up to, and he said, "I am making a brooding box. We are going to get chickens."

I about did a back flip!
We got 6 birds: one Buff Orpington, (Buttercup), two Barred Plymouth Rock (Pepper and Ginger), and two White Leghorns (Sugar and Emily), and one Araucana (Sparky- she's going to lay green eggs!). One day I really want to get a Silky Bantum.

They have been a lot of fun so far. The boys think they are great, I have spent a ton of time learning how to raise chickens on BackYardChickens.com. And Tom and I are getting ready to build our little ladies a hen house (I will be posting about that when it happens)

Here are some pictures of my little chickies!

Magically Delicious

Ok I know that this posts title is the same as Lucky Charms slogan, but I think of Lucky Charms as the unofficial cereal for St. Party's Day, and I officially made some stinking cute food for the green holiday.
Obviously, we had to have corn beef and cabbage, or in our case coleslaw, but my favorite was the more festive food.
For dinner I made shamrock rolls. I just made regular rolls, only I added some green food coloring when I added the water to the dough, then when I shaped the rolls I simply made three little dough balls (like when making flooded rolls, only put them on a sheet in stead of in a muffin tin) and then a put a little chunk of dough as a steam.

They turned out so stinking cute, and yummy!

I love dessert! I can never have enough, so I figured why not make two green desserts!

First one up: LIME BARS.
These scrumptious little bars are just like lemon bars, only better! I used a lemon bar recipe, only replaced the lemon juice and lemon zest with lime (and a bit of green food coloring). Oh boy, they were so good. Perfect amount of zesty yumminess. The recipe I used is here.

Second green dessert: LEPRECHAUN FLOATS
I was trying to think up some sort of festive drink to have with our St Patricks Day meal, but because I have very little creative juices, I had to refer to my good friend Pinterest. There were very few non-alcoholic drinks out there, but I did see an idea to make a "leprechaun float" out of 7-up and lime sherbet, which sounds like a plain old sherbet float, tasty, but nothing special. So, I decided to take the idea and jazz it up a bit. Instead of 7-up and sherbet, I used Ginger Ale and Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream (I figured mint and ale sound more St Patricks like). My mother-in-law was rather nervous about the combination, she said it sounded like something that only the kids would enjoy. But some how Tom convinced her to try it, and she LOVED IT! My floats were "surprisingly delicious," I would even say magically delicious, and it even had that St Patrick flavor I was looking for. Mmmmmm, yummy.

So there you have it, now you know how we celebrated the big Green Day. It was a lot of yummy fun, and I think I may have started some new traditions.

I love spring!

What a gorgeous day today has been. I know we have not had much of a winter this year, but after a week of wet and snowy weather, it was so nice to have a dry, warm, sunny day.

Today was the first day that we of yard work, EVER! Seriously, it was our first time working in our first yard! It was awesome. I know that this will be one of the few times I am excited to do yard work, so I might as well document it.

While I was out in the yard working, I truly realized how awesome of a yard we have. It seriously is such a fun yard, a swing set, a trampoline, a slide; what kid wouldn't love it? At lease kids love it.

Four years flew fast

Today is Owen's birthday. I cannot believe my baby is four! I can't believe how much he has grow. Four today, twenty-four tomorrow.

My sister-in-law, Joanna's, birthday was last week, so we had a combined party last Friday. Owen thought it was so cool. Everywhere we went last week, Owen would tell people that he was going to have a birthday with his Aunt O-Jana, and that they ere going to share a digger cake. And that is exactly what happened.

What is a digger cake? This is a digger cake:

Stinking cute! Wouldn't you say?

But thus is the coolest part of the cake:

Now I am not going to sit here and pretend like I am so creative, and dreamed up this cake. I believe in giving credit where credit is due. I found the idea on this blog (via Pinterest) and knew that one of my boys would have to have this cake for their birthday. I have a great sister-in-law because she was so cute, and excited about sharing this very boy cake with Owen. What a fun aunt!

Anyway, back to my boy, and how awesome he is. I am so grateful for him. He is one of the most compassionate people I know. He is an amazing brother, a great friend, an outstanding son. He loves to help me, and is very good at reminding me of what is important. Seriously, he is such a great example to me.

Owen, I have lived every minute of the past four years with you, and am excited for all the years to come!

Merry Christmas, Happy Birthday, Happy New Year!

Wow, what a crazy month this has been. Moving. Hospital. Christmas. More illness. Birthdays. And New Years! And that all happened in less than two weeks. I think it is safe to say life has been a but crazy for us lately. I think I have sufficiently filled you on on moving and hospitals, so I will start at Christmas.

Christmas was wonderful. I had decided back in the summer that I wanted Christmas to be ready before I had the baby. Talk about inspiration! With everything that has happened since Max has come, I am not sure Christmas would have happened. Plus it was nice to be able to just focus on the Christ part of Christmas during the season. Anyway, this year the boys got a whole bunch of dress-ups, which they LOVE. Here is some helpful advise: If you think you might want to give dress-ups as Christmas gifts, start collecting costumes in the summer. I got tons of dress-ups at garage sales. Then I hit up the local thrift stores for more costumes before Halloween, and the department stores at the after Halloween clearance sales. I also made some super hero capes, and really cute construction worker costumes. But the best part of Christmas was the Owen was home and healthy. What a gift that was.

The day after Christmas, Tom and I got super sick. I honestly believe that this the sickest I have ever been. I could not stand up for four days, because I would fall over if I did. Sound seem to be amplified 100 times and would bounce around in my head; the noise of air blowing out of the furnace vents sounded like I was standing in an air tunnel. And I had a fever of 102. Tom had something similar, but poor guy had to go to work.

Because life gas been so crazy, we still have not unpacked our house. My sweet sister came to my rescue on New Years Eve. That is Tal's birthday, and I was still so sick, that I hardly had enough energy to make him a cake, let alone unpack boxes. So my wonderful sister brought her family up from SLC to help. The kids got to play together, she unpacked my house, I made a cake, and we had a Happy Tal-Tal/ New Years eve party. And we were all in bed by 8:00 pm. AWESOME!

I really liked going to bed early. I think this might be my new tradition.

Anyway, Happy New Year every one. I am totally ready to say good by to 2011. WELCOME 2012!!!!!!