Precious Time!

Starting at 1:00pm today I will do something I have never done before.  I will have a whole and complete weekend all to myself.  Andy is leading worship at a men's retreat and the kids are going to grandpa and grandma's house.

I have not had this since we have had kids and I am so excited!

What will I do?  Not laundry or house-work.  Maybe some shopping, definitely some digital scrapbooking, coffee with a friend, and some girl movie-watching.

Oh yes, and waiting for a phone call about the arrival of my newest nephew.  My sister Katie is being induced today...........

Next week is spring break so hopefully I will have some pictures of some good family time.

Baby it's cold outside!

Today was one of the coldest days we have had all winter long, and it happened to also be the day we had planned to go tubing in Alexandria, MN with Jan and Luther at Andes Tower.  So we bundled up in 3-4 layers packed in the car for the 1 1/2 hour drive and had a "we can do this because we are hardy North Dakotans and Minnesotans :)" spirit.

When we got there, there wasn't a single soul on the tubing hill and I started to get a little worried that they had closed it because it was so cold.  No sirree, Bob!  Cold does not stand in the way of this family.  The tubing hill was open, so we chugged down some lunch and headed up the hill.

 You sit in the tube you selected and it's attached to a tow rope and you are pulled up the hill.  This is definitely the way to go.  The hill was very large and to have to walk up it, would have done us all in.

 Kaelynn, our "no fear" girl was the first one to go down.  She had no hesitations about going speeding down the hill at 30 mph.

We thought it might be fun for Julianna, Lydia, Isaac, and Jonah to have a taste of what it feels like to tube down a hill, so we took the following video for them:

We also celebrated Valentine's Day and Kaelynn's birthday as Jan will be Indonesia on March 23rd.

Kaelynn got a DS for her birthday this year.  She was really excited as were her brothers because now they don't have to share with her anymore.

One of my favorite pics from the day is this one of Carson and Kaelynn:

There can be some tense moments between these two some days, so it warmed my heart to capture this sweet moment.

A little piece of humble pie (or cupcake).....

I'm betting my sister Katie, "cupcake maker extraordinaire" will get the biggest kick out of the following story:

We have a family carnival at church on Saturday and I volunteered to bring a couple of desserts for the cake walk.  Of course I want my desserts to be something kids will want to choose first, so I remembered some super cute cupcakes Kaelynn brought home from a friends house this past fall.  Rainbow cupcakes with white frosting!  

My first thought was, how hard can it be?  Just split the batter into however many colors you want and put food coloring in.  Done, no problem.  My next thought was pretty clever too- Put each color of batter in a ziplock bag and cut the tip off so I can easily layer the colors on top of each other.  Done, no problem.

As I was layering my five colors on top of each other, trying to completely fill each layer so as not to make it look like tye-dye gone bad, I was thinking to myself, "Boy, there's a lot of batter in these cupcake cups.  I suppose I'll have some pretty big cupcakes."

In the oven they went, with great anticipation of what was about to come out.  When the timer went off and I opened the oven door, this is what I saw:

How awful does that look??????????????????????

In fact, Carson came rushing over and stated, "That's awful!"  To which I replied, "Ya think???"

I was able to salvage them by peeling off the excess cupcake, but they are still not cake walk worthy.  Back to the drawing board, I guess.   

If you can get past the large chunk missing from the side of the cupcake and are willing to taste one, the inside looks really cool:

I'm actually quite curious how the pink got down to the bottom because I only layered each color once and the pink was on top.  Maybe we'll have to use this as a science experiment.

Note to self for next time, if it looks like too much batter in the cupcake liner, it probably is.
 
Katie, if you have any tips for me for next time, pass them along.  I obviously need the help :)
 

Weekend recap

Guess who got to use his snowblower this weekend.......

 He has been waiting and waiting since November to use this snowblower we were given!  It's pretty amazing that it's almost the end of January and this is the first significant snowfall.

This weekend Andy and the boys went to the Wild Game Feed at church so Kaelynn and I had some mother/daughter bonding time.  We took in a small meal at McDonalds and then did some crafting at Clay Your Way.  It's a store where you pick out an unfinished piece of clay and paint it to your liking.  You leave it at the store for a week and they fire it for you.   

 She loved it!  She of course picked out a cell phone to paint.  It was quite detailed with all of the small buttons, but she worked diligently and got it done with a little help from me :)

This afternoon, the boys and friends- Micah and Tate, made a little extra money by cleaning off the rest of the driveway for us.  They did a great job and were quite speedy- 10 minutes!!!! 

We are looking forward to a somewhat low-key week with no Wednesday or Thursday evening activities this week.  I wish these kind of weeks happened more often because they are very much needed!

The Ransom Box

Just the title peaks your interest doesn't it......

A huge shout out to Pinterest for our newest way we are trying to teach our children responsiblity :) 

I as a mom, can spend a lot of my day picking up after my three cherubs.  They can make a royal mess if they are allowed.  I do not indentify with the quote, "Excuse the mess, my children are making memories".  My Type A, slightly anal self likes to have a clean house.  This doesn't go so well with three kids who like to leave things all over the house.  It kind of makes this mama crabby!   

Insert the RANSOM BOX!

Instead of constantly nagging my children to pick up their things, I give them one warning about not leaving something out or picking something up.  If they forget to pick it up, the item/s go into a container:

In order to get the item out of the box, the child must chose a task from the "task jar".  These tasks include but are not limited to:
          *clean up a siblings room
          * write a note to dad to thank him for working so hard for our family
          * sweep the upstairs floors
          * do 25 jumping jacks while singing "I am a cleaning machine"
          * you are free, but this is a warning!
            ...........and many more

Oh look, we just started it and there are already items in the box:

Kaelynn will need those snow pants for tomorrow, so she better get them out of there. "Take a task Kaelynn":

She got- clean a bathroom mirror while singing any song.

Task completed and snowpants retrieved and put in their place. 

Can you tell how much fun this is for me?  Teaches my kids responsibility and keeps my house clean in the process.  I love it!!!! 

If you are interested in this for your own home, here's the link to this woman's blog. 
http://madsmemories.blogspot.com/2009/08/moms-ransom-rubbage.html
She includes all of her tasks for you to copy or to get ideas from for your own.  I took a lot of hers :)

Day off = work for me and fun for them

We had today off to honor Martin Luther King Jr.  So what did we do?  Well, what I did wouldn't make a very interesting blog post.  I don't think you want to see pictures of me cleaning the blinds and bathrooms.  So I'll tell you what the kids did. 

They started the day off with a nice competitve game of Monopoly.  Andy planted this idea in their brains before he left for work by telling them that it is what he and uncle Matt used to do on days off.  It took up about 45 minutes until things got heated and I shut the game down.  

 Connor woke up with the idea to organize the box of Andy's old baseball cards.  He wanted to organize them into teams.  He started at 6:55am and didn't finish until 11:45am.  Of course there were a few interruptions in there, but his goal was to get it done before lunch and he did.

 Even though the temp is frigid, these boys love to play together.  It's Monday and we always have Micah over for a couple of hours.  Some, if not all of those hours usually include outside play time with our neighbor Tate.  I love it that our kids have friends in the neighborhood to play with. 

 Kaelynn likes to play with the magnets every once in a while and she built a holder for her marbles today. 

We also got in piano, reading, a little homework,and a trip to Sam's Club to get Angry Birds cupcakes for Connor and Carson's school classes.  Their half birthday is tomorrow! 

Andy and I get to go out tonight, so all in all, a pretty great day off was had.   

For the love of DIY

PINTEREST!!!!!  I absolutely love this website!  This website helps me to think outside of the box- which I am not gifted in.  For those of you who don't know what pinterest is, it is a website that helps you to organize ideas you have or have been given for everything from DIY projects to recipes, from birthday party ideas to styles you love, and tons more!  People "pin" (post a picture and a link to the blog or website they got it from) things on this website and then it is free for anybody to see.  Here are just a few ideas I have gotten from the website:

Our new key holder:

Wall art for our family room!  These are simple 12x12 styrofoam cushions with scrapbook paper glued on them and then black ribbon glued around the edge. A $20 project that would have cost at least $100 had I bought them in a store already done.   

I have had this sitting in storage for a few years now.  I was going to take it to the thrift store, but Pinterest helped me see it in a new light.   I took out the baskets, but didn't throw them away as I have an idea of how to repurpose them.  I covered the back of each nook in scrapbook paper that matches my main bathroom and.....

....now it's hanging in my bathroom filled with little things guests might need.

This is one of my favorite inspirations.  It's a canvas print of "our family rules".  I saw this on Pinterest and decided to do my own version of it.  It is now hanging in our living room for all to see!  I often have to remind myself of these rules during the day as I walk past them.  I love it so much!

I have gotten so many recipes off pinterest and have loved everything I have made.  I'm very excited about the possibilities that lie ahead because of this website!