monday morning

The girls are gone, the Z-man is asleep, and once again, it's eerily quiet at my house. Those first few moments of quiet on Monday are so strange.

Embracing the silence, and moving on...

Now, what to do? Cleaning out and organizing have taken top priority recently.

Let's go into the girls' room.

All of their stuffed animals are supposed to fit into this nifty little pink mesh-thing:

But, upon further inspection, I find, stowed away in an under-the-bed-box, this little guy. (There were quite a few other stowaways with him!)

So, being the mean reasonable mom that I am, I gave the girls a choice to make all the animals fit in the pink-mesh-thing themselves, or to let me take care of it for them (i.e pitch them myself.)

The result was this motley crew, delivered to my room with "ransom" notes around each of their necks. I was informed that I was the cause of splitting up families, that certain daughters would never see their mothers again, and that brothers and sisters were being parted forever.

Seriously? Oh, the drama.



And, yes, I'm sorry, Black Dot, but I'm sure you and the others will find a nice home somewhere else. Good bye!

sunday afternoon

Sunday afternoon at my house means it's time to get ready for the week.

It's school snack prep time!

Each week is so busy, that I've found it's much easier to prep all the snacks at once at the beginning of the week, so that during the week, the girls can just grab the items they need for their lunch bags.

Our favorite snack is popcorn, popped traditional style. Yum!

Start with one cup of kernels.

Add three kernels to a large pot. The bottom should be covered with thin layer of oil. Turn on high heat and cover. Just wait until those three kernels pop. Then, add the cup of kernels, and your favorite popcorn seasoning. I use some special butter-flavor seasoning.

Shake the covered pot vigorously until all the kernels are finished popping. Be careful when removing the lid. There are usually a few kernels that pop at the very end.

Remove the popcorn to a large bowl, and wait a few minutes for it to cool.

Then comes the fun part: bagging it all up! The girls love to help with this part. We just put these little bags into our pantry, and each day the girls grab one for their lunch bag. Yummy, healthy, and simple!

I also prep a few other things like applesauce. I like to buy a large jar, and dish out individual containers myself. Maybe it's the environmentalist or the frugalista in me, but I'm pretty sure that re-using my own containers is both better for the environment and more economical in the end.

When I'm on a roll, I cut up celery and carrot sticks, cantaloupe and honeydew melon as well. They all keep well pre-cut. Just add a few ice cubes to your celery and carrot stick containers. They make nice, easy sides for meals as well.

You don't need school-aged kids to do this. It really makes life simpler to prep fruit and veggies ahead of time. Happy chopping!

it's officially fall!

Yay! Four years later, I'm not grumbling quite as much about the apparent lack of season change. I still miss it though. Terribly!

So, to compensate, as SOON as September 1st rolls around, all my fall decorations come out.

This is sort of how I feel about fall in Orlando: it's in black and white, right? And, you can't see any color changes!

Ahhh, now that's better. I can see color again! I make it my personal mission to "search" for fall every year. I'm finally noticing slight changes in certain trees and bushes. Some things actually do die here. I don't know why, but they do.

And, if you look really, really hard, you can actually find some red and orange leaves. Shocking, I know.

My fall theme seems to be pumpkins. They're just so cute! I love them!

Miss M's photo shoot

I took Miss M out a few days ago to shoot her 8 year old portraits. First, she wanted to do some jumping shots like we did a few years ago for our family portraits.

It was late afternoon, and the sun was still pretty high in the sky, but this location was in the shade, and the lighting was nice.

As we were walking over to our next location, we got waylaid by some small creatures.

Miss M just LOVES searching for bugs in plants.

As we passed by a group of bushes, she discovered some baby caterpillars.

This pretty much sabatoged the rest of our photo shoot.

Out of the thirty minutes we spent together, twenty were spent in the bushes or with the caterpillars. Not exactly what I had in mind, but okay.

I got about five minutes in the field, then it was back to the caterpillars.

The sun was still pretty high in the sky. Not ideal lighting for portraits, but I wanted to try anyway.

I made sure the sun was over my right shoulder, and placed Miss M so that the side of her face was lit, so that she wouldn't be squinting at the camera.

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with the effect.

Making an "8" with the rocks was M's idea. She's got a mind of her own. Can you guess what she's looking at on the leaf? Yep, it's a caterpillar.

5 months

The little Z-man is five months old today.

I love this little guy so much!
He's such a happy and mellow little baby, and very interested in everything.
He's great.

I'm in love, yet so exhausted that I just want to sleep. All. the. time.

It's like a dual existence. Happy and miserable all at once. How is that possible?

(Little Z is napping now, and I hear my bed calling my name.)

8 is great

It's Miss M's 8th birthday today. Wow, eight!

She's getting so big. I wonder if I'll ever stop saying that?

She's having a small "party" tonight with one friend. They get to eat pizza, have cake and watch a movie. "Return of the Jedi" is the movie of choice. I'm sure there will be some dressing up of their dolls as well.

Doll clothes and Star Wars. Love it! Eight is great!

(Oh, and I'm missing a photo for this year...I guess I've been too busy taking photos of my baby. I'll have to make that right very soon!)

fun friday

It's been a not-so-fun week at my house.

I've been lying around sick-y most of the week, thus my lack of blogging.
No fun.

But, I did finally get out of the house last weekend, and headed to Target
where I found these cute shoes on the clearance rack for only $10.
Very fun!

That was right before I went to Chili's with some friends and started to feel like I was going to faint.
No fun.

So little Z and I have been lying around together on the floor all week.
He's laughing at us now, playing peek-a-boo, grabbing his feet, and rolling over both ways.
Very fun!

Hope you've had a fun Friday!

happy thoughts.

It's the little things in life that make me happy.

These photos make me happy.
Three day weekends make me happy.
Jazzercise makes me happy.
8 hours of consecutive sleep makes me happy.
Fridays make me happy.

What makes you happy?

getting organized

September is here. School has begun. It's time to get organized.

Some of you know I'm a Jazzercise instructor. I know it sounds so 80's-ish, but believe me, if you haven't been to Jazzercise lately, you haven't been to Jazzercise. It's an awesome workout that will kick. your. butt. Seriously. You should check it out.

Anyway, I digress. We have an amazing instructor team this Fall. There are four of us. Four. Wow. I am so excited! With four of us, trying to figure out our teaching schedule was a bit of a mental challenge.

So, I thought a little visual aid might help. I started with some circles, one color per person, and added our initial to make it more fun.



I then arranged them on a little calendar that I made. Here's the artsy shot.


And, voila! It was so much easier to see our options and trade out days to find what would work best. I'm going to make sure the circles are not affixed permanently so that we can make changes as needed.



You can use this idea too. How about a chore chart? Or a school schedule? Just change out the AM/PM for subjects or chores. Be creative!

Oh, and just in case you workout with us, this schedule is not yet finalized. We'll let you know when it is!