Jun 02
Everyone,
After a super late night last night (thanks Momster for the fun time!) and a very busy night with Butterfly and Professor, we decided to stay in and just have a down day.
Apparently, Butterfly is not allowed to watch Scooby Do. Every time she does, she has bad dreams. Last night’s dream was about a skeleton that no one could kill and it was in Nana’s house. Scary stuff! Professor woke up at least 2 times before she did, each time needing a binkie find and a back rubbing. Butterfly complained about the nightmare only about half an hour later. I snuggled in bed with her for about an hour, and then went back to my own bed and a huge crick in my neck. She got up to use the restroom. I kicked Juice out of bed (much to his annoyance) to go snuggle with her some more.
And once he was back in bed, Professor needed a binkie find. Then early this morning he cried again but found his binkie himself. Unfortunately, he woke me up. 6am baby. Thanks a lot kid!
The rest of the day has been filled with little fun tidbits. Like I went running (I know!) and left the kids, including Cappy, with Juice for 20 minutes. Not once, but twice did I see one of the brood in the middle of the street chasing after me.
I went to my annual girl lunch with my BFF Mink, sans kids. It was so nice to just sit and chat and be a friend and not a mom. We went to our usual place, which is a very old house converted into a small cafe. We both had caramelized pear and gorgonzola salads and half sandwiches (me: veggie with hummus, her: chicken). Mostly we talked about cars. I know, it’s a weird subject for a girl lunch but she just bought one so we discussed having the ones we have and getting new ones.
My mom and I spent nap time doing our annual cousin camp picture book for the kids. We are almost done! Now if only we can do last year’s book, we’ll be set.
We surprised my grandparents by going to see them this evening. My dad is taking pictures of all that side of the family and wanted to pick out the right spots and get his super cool lights set to the right setting. The kids charmed my grandparents and my aunt (who lives next door to my grandparents) and my dad got his pictures set up.
Everyone is in bed horribly late (yet again). We expect another fun filled day tomorrow!
Safire
Safirecousins, exercising, grandparents, kids in trouble, Mink and Spider cousins, Great Grands, Mink, nightmares
May 07
Everyone,
Things I have done today in list form because that’s all the brain power I have.
- baked 9 small round pizza crusts and one full pan for the party tomorrow
- went to the resource center and let the kids play…felt like a good mom
- went out to lunch, had a great time
- talked to my BFF Mink for 2 hours while everyone napped
- wrapped presents while talking to her
- cleaned some (not a lot) while talking to her…current topic: what to do when our parents are old and need 24 hour care (random I know but seriously, we talk about strange things and love it which is why she is my BFF)
- made broccoli salad for the first time for a church function tonight
- had 2 people ask me for the recipe which I amazingly remembered but still can’t finish a sentence if I wanted to
- went to the store for party food stuffs and our week’s worth of groceries
- picked up Butterfly’ birthday cake for tomorrow and a fruit tart for her actual birthday on Sunday
- enjoyed previously mentioned church function and didn’t learn a thing…which is good. I’m on the right track I think.
- lost my camera battery charger and went digging through the whole house for it
- Juice found it under my camera bag, after tearing up the whole house for it
- he ran into a moldy banana in the diaper bag and was TOTALLY grossed out for touching it…oops, I forgot that was in there
- tried to clean some tonight and gave up
- reminded myself that Juice has the day off tomorrow and can help me clean before the party in the afternoon
- going to bed later than I wanted to
- charging my camera battery! Yay pictures
Safire
SafireButterfly birthdays, camera stuff, cleaning, cooking, daily list, Mink and Spider
Dec 05
Everyone,
It’s not that time of year. No one is thinking about it. Well, except maybe my BFF Mink. Why her and what is she thinking about you ask? She is due to have her second baby girl (which I like to think that I named, thank you very much) any day now. Not only is she excited to have a baby the same year I had mine, she is excited about the tax credit.
Yes, she is! If you know Mink, you know this is totally true. And to tell you the truth, I am excited about my double tax credit coming up. I have a general rule with the tax stuff I get for the kids. Two rules actually. 1) That credit goes straight into a college fund for them. It may not be a ton, but at least it will be something. 2) The first year I get the credit, it’s mine. Pay back for having suffered through pregnancy and delivery. The boys first tax credit is earmarked for a new kitchen table and chairs since they pushed us over the edge. And I’m going to go all splurgy and buy one that the Amish have made. With a take out leaf, a bench on one side, and 4 chairs. And then we are never going to eat on it because it will be too beautiful.
Back to Mink. Her new baby girl will be born at the last “minute” for tax purposes. And even if you aren’t having a baby at the last minute, you will still at least get some tax relief. Such as:
- Any new baby in 2008 could deliver a $1,000 child tax credit. This keeps going until they turn 17.
- Be sure to file a new W-4 form with your employer to claim an additional withholding allowance which may help boost your take-home pay.
- There’s also a tax credit, worth as much $11,650 in 2008, to help offset the cost of adopting a child.
My good friend Karen knows all about that tax credit and adoption. Go check out her blog and her beautiful baby girl!
So, all of you friends like Mink out there, you can even get more from your December baby! Turbo Tax is having a contest called America’s Cutest Last-Minute Tax Deduction. Parents or legal guardians can go to www.CutestTaxDeduction.com and submit a photo of their newest last minute tax deduction. One lucky baby, born between Dec. 1-31, 2008, will win a United States savings bond worth $5,000 (up to $10,000 upon maturity). I bet you didn’t know your December baby could be worth so much!
You can check out a video of last year’s winner here.
There’s more here, though. So what if you didn’t have/are going to have a baby in December this year. Did you have one the same time I had mine? Or after? You can win a turbo tax romper that says, Tax Deduction, on it. (size 6 months) Right here! Just leave me a comment and tell me what you plan on using your new tax money for. Or if you know someone who needs a romper (maybe you know Mink!), you can leave a comment telling me what you do with your kid credit. Because I’m nosey like that sometimes. I will randomly pick a winner the day after Mink has her baby. (She is due on the 19th I think…or that may be the day her doctor is inducing her.) Anyway, the point is this contest is going to run from now until her baby girl is born, whatever day that may be.
Good luck everyone! (And I bet you are thinking about taxes now!)
Safire
Safirecontests, giveaways, Mink and Spider
Nov 10
Everyone,
I declared today a stay at home day and I don’t think I stepped foot outside the house. Butterfly did to wave hello to me out our front window when Juice came home. “I want to do what he did!” Other than that, we were inside. I did entertain the idea of going to the bank after the kids woke up from their afternoon nap and I even put clothes on Butterfly so we could do that. But she cried so hard about leaving. She asked me why we had to go and I said to get some things done. She then looked at me with her big brown eyes and tear streaked face and said, “Can’t we get things done here?”
You bet! There’s always something to do at home. Instead of running errands, we stayed home. I did a load of laundry, which made it into the dryer within an hour of being washed and was actually put away. You hear me right, there was no lingering longer in the basket.
I cleaned the front room in anticipation of friends coming over to play tomorrow. I even cleaned the black hole of our couch. It’s where we dump everything when we come in and somehow, it never makes it out again. Well tonight it made it out.
I made baby food again today. I had three yellow squash on my counter for awhile and I wasn’t sure what kind of squash they were. Well, I opened up the first one to find a mess of brown mushy goo. Ugh, that one had gone bad. The second one reveled they were spaghetti squash and I baked both of them for an hour. An hour to cool, one and a quarter into the blender with some water and I had 48 oz of baby food. Plus probably another 30 oz with the stuff I ran out of ice cube trays for that I will freeze tomorrow. I love making baby food.
I’m hoping to clean off my kitchen table and maybe clean my downstairs bathroom before bed tonight. I also talked to my BFF Mink for about 2 hours today. It’s our bi-weekly phone call. She is about 4 weeks away from having baby girl #2 and I’m thrilled for her. Wish I was there though.
So yes, there is a lot to be done at home. Great idea Butterfly!
Safire
PS- Check out my friend Chef‘s blog for more links of our family pictures.
Safirebaby food, family pictures, home days, Mink and Spider
Sep 13
Everyone,
Around 4am this morning, I woke up a little freaked out because neither boy had woken me up. Wow. I made sure they were both still living, and tried to get back to sleep. Once I was right on the cusp of sleep, Butterfly woke up screaming. She had a bad dream that Grandpa was going to eat all of her/my strawberry shortcake dolls. Great. (Like a good sick person I made Juice go see what was wrong. Or maybe like a good lazy person. Who knows.)
About 10 minutes later I hear her coughing and then she started screaming for Juice. He lept up again (he is such a good daddy) and I hear him say, “Oh Baby Girl!” Uh oh. I knew instantly what had happened. She caught my sickness. And there was puke everywhere. The sad thing was that she had had fruit punch for dinner and so this puke was red. All over herself, her bed sheets, and the carpet. Eww…
I sat with her by the toliet as she continued to empty her stomach and Juice gathered up all the sheets and got out the spot cleaner for the carpet. By this time the boys are up and screaming. I quickly put them in the same bassinet (hello play time) and cleaned Butterfly off. Juice is still messing with the carpet. Nothing is happening. Hmm… I suggest we pull out the carpet cleaner my parents have. So we find it and can’t figure out how to get it going. Or where the soap is. By this time Butterfly is jumping up and down on her bed absolutly loving having both of us paying attention to just her.
By now, the carpet cleaner is in pieces and Juice sends me in to wake up my dad to figure the stupid thing out. He wakes up, helps us out, and we get the red out with some up and out and a bunch of passes with the carpet cleaner. At least it came out! I take Butterfly downstairs for some ginger ale and she throws up several more times into a bowl. Ugh…I hate to throw up. But she says it’s like coughing. “Only your tummy comes up instead of your lung!” Funny girl.
By now the boys had had enough and so I had to go feed them back to sleep. Butterfly finishes her drink and Juice puts her back to bed. He climbs into bed and is out instantly. I am up with the boys for another half hour or so getting them into bed and feeling totally ill myself. 6:30am rolls around and I finally fall back asleep.
She woke up at around 9 pretty happy. I slept another half hour or so with Professor and then decided I needed to get up. My mom had taken the day off of work to spend some time with just me. So we went clothes shopping. I was feeling better. Not so woosy and crampy. Mink and Spider joined us because this is one of the few days I have left here. I left Butterfly at home watching movies (I think she watched 3 and a half today) and the boys came with me. I got a great new dress and some Christmas orniments for the kids. We were home an hour later than we expected, but we had a really nice time.
After feeding both of the boys (who were hungry hungry and cross today…I don’t think days of being ill and not keeping anything down helped my milk supply), Mink and I were able to go have a girly lunch at our favorite little resturant. I had half a veggie sandwich and some french onion soup. I don’t normally eat soup but it was very soothing on my stomach. Mink and I talked up a storm and just enjoyed being together. I am sad to leave her.
I came home ready for a nap and the boys were very tired. But both wanted to be held/nursed and I just couldn’t do it. Pirate kept making faces every time he was jostled and unlatched and Professor screamed and wiggled and kicked and made a ruckuus. I gave up and brought them down to grandparents who were happy to hold them.
Butterfly took a very long nap and woke up moments before I was going to get her up to go out for my birthday dinner with my family. That’s right, my birthday is tomorrow. I’ll be 28. So tonight we went to a Thai resturant and really enjoyed ourselves. But by the end the boys were done and screamed all the way home. I was able to get them both nursing with about 10 pillows and Juice’s help.
We started packing after they were done but I got hungry (yay a good sign!) and went down for food. I then got sucked into a movie with my mom, and now it’s very late. I hope I can sleep a little better tonight.
Tomorrow is our last day here!
Safire
SafireMink and Spider, my birthday, shopping, sickness 2008
Sep 08
Everyone,
After a very long Sunday and a pretty late night, Juice let me sleep in. Of course, he didn’t know that I had plans! Of course I have plans! So I got off to a very late start. I was over an hour late to BFF Mink’s house. I didn’t even pull the kids out of the car before we ran off to my 1st year at Ricks roommate’s house. She and I and Mink were inseparable our last year of high school. We decided it would be fun to be tourists in a place we’d lived forever and saw a lot of the really neat stuff that Utah has to offer that year. One memorable trip was to the silver mine in Park City. I don’t think it’s open anymore but I have some great pictures from it and a memory of driving through Parley’s Canyon in a spring snow storm. Scary!
Anyway, T and I went off to Ricks together, and Mink stayed behind in Utah. She did come up and see us a few times, though. T and I had so much fun together at Ricks. I loved having her be my best friend and my roommate. She was entertaining, even in her sleep. She talked. A lot. The most memorable being about a boy she was dating at the time…hehe…that was so funny!
She met her now husband our second semester there at the beginning of the semester dance. (Ricks was big into dances…they had a lot.) He came to eat lunch with her one day, and by the next week they were engaged. Gotta love those super fast engagements! I was a bride’s maid at her wedding, and we kind of kept in touch. She came to my baby shower with Butterfly. They lived in PA for awhile in Hershey and we went to see them one evening.
I hadn’t seen her in over 2 years so I figured now was the time to see her and meet her youngest boy. We didn’t stay long (hungry kids) but we had a really nice visit. I was reminded why we were all good friends in high school and how much fun we had at college together. I wish we could have stayed longer or visited more, but I suppose that’s a time for another visit.
After her house, I got a little lost getting back to Mink’s house. But we had a nice visit there and I don’t think I left until 4:30. Mink and I can talk! We had a great time and I’ve loved being with her pretty much every day this trip. If we lived in Utah, I’d make sure that I lived near her because we just get along. We understand and love each other and everyone needs someone like that. I would love our girls to be friends too.
Funny quotes from these girls:
Spider “Girl!” (What she called Butterfly the first day.)
Butterfly *big sigh* “I love Spider’s house. It’s so clean!”
Spider “I comin’ Fly! I comin’!” (when pulling up to my parent’s house)
Butterfly “Spider? Spider is coming? Yay Hoorray I love Spider when she coming!”
Safire
SafireMink and Spider, old roommates
Aug 31
Everyone,
It was a busy day today. We got up early and headed out to the huge enormous so big it has it’s own aquarium sports equipment store today and had breakfast. We wer
e met there by Mink and Spider. We had a wonderful buffet breakfast (which I think I ate the most out of all of us…) and then we walked around the store. I bought a few new t-shirts and a new pair of pants. Sadly, twins have done some damage to my stomach and none of my jeans at home fit me. (They call it twin-skin because your stomach is just a mass of stretched out skin.) So if I want to wear something besides my shorts this winter, I thought I better get some interim jeans. I hope I only ever have to wear these jeans after I have a baby! Hopefully I can go back to my old ones soon.
Anyway, after watching them feed the trout and getting fishing licences for my dad and me for our fishing trip next week, we came home for a quiet afternoon. (The store even has a dog kennel and horse corral! So you can ride your horse to the store if you want! Sweet!)
The boys had some pretty good naps, and I read a little of Breaking Dawn. Good book! We decided to go to Provo this afternoon
and headed out as soon as the boys were awake.
We took our own sweet time getting to the bookstore at BYU and we missed it by 7 minutes. It closed! I thought it might have closed for the football game they had going on but no, it really just closes at 6pm on Saturday. So we got some jamba juice (waited forever for it too) and walked down the little river path they have by the bell tower. I was glad I brought my camera and got some pretty good shots of Butterfly.
We stopped by Sensuous Sandwich, and off home. Baths, books and beds were had by all.
Safire
SafireBYU, Mink and Spider, Provo, trips to Utah
Aug 27
Everyone,
Today I went with my best friend and my mom to the Children’s Garden here. Between us we had 5 kids. (Butterfly, Pirate, Professor, Cappy, and Spider (Mink’s daughter). We had a great time! Right when you go in there is a huge sculpture of Noah’s Ark. The boat has animals hanging out windows and out the top. It sits in a shallow pool of water and at different times different animals 
spout out water. Since today was 2 dollar day, the place was packed! Butterfly instantly wanted to go into the water and waded a bit before she went with Nana over to the jumping water fountains. She loves the water.
I fed the boys, we changed several diapers, and Butterfly got very wet. So we decided to go look at the bear cave. Butterfly had a ball climbing through the ‘tiny tunnel’ down to the bear. But it was so crowded in there we left. We saw some fish, wandered around for a bit and discovered the stage. The stage was off to the side and we had it to ourselves for several minutes. That was perfect! Both Butterfly and Spider had a great time hamming it up on stage.
The only down part to the outing today was my stroller. I miss my BOB stroller! I think next time I come I may have to risk putting it through the airport. I have 2 umbrella strollers and some stroller connectors so they go together but it’s hugely wide. And the umbrella strollers don’t recline and don’t have shade. Or storage even. It was hard to get them through the crowds. And Butterfly so wanted to ride. Poor kid. At least on BOB she can.
My boys were unhappy today and we decided to head on home a little earlier than we wanted. We had lunch and I hope everyone had a nap. I know we did!
Safire
PS- The fire is still burning, but I think it’s mostly contained now. We are still getting buzzed every 15 minutes by helicopters dropping flame retardant and water on the fire to get it out.
Safirefire, kid garden, Mink and Spider, trips to Utah
