Matters Most

Hey everyone :) Hope your weekend is going well so far :) Mine was pretty good. I slept in until around 8am, but was wishing for longer. I'd gone to bed at almost 1am. But it was enough. I came out and hung with the kids for a while.

Then we turned off electronics, and cleaned for a while. Everyone had to get their chores done and their rooms cleaned before they could earn back electronics privileges. Jake and Tom went to do their rooms, and Eme and Joe and Jim did their chores. Then Eme and Joe went to do their rooms, and eventually Jim did his room. Jake got done first.

I organized the sheet/towel closet, and the upstairs closet, and the above the washing machine/dryer shelf. And the game closet. Yeah, it was a lot of organizing. Not too bad :)

I should have spent a little time doing my laundry, but I didn't. ha! I did do 2 or 3 kid loads of laundry, though...

In the middle of cleaning, I got a phone call from Captain America! It's been the first real conversation we've been able to have since he went to the field. We've texted briefly, but that's about all. We chatted for about 50 minutes, and it was SO nice. I sure do miss that boy...

I got the kids lunch, and we watched some TV together. Then I took a VERY short nap, but my brain wouldn't turn off. So I eventually got up, and put on my workout clothes, and went for a jog. But yeah, I wasn't really feeling it. I did one lap around the neighborhood, plus a little bit more, but didn't jog the whole time. It was a total of 20 minutes workout, maybe 10 minutes of jogging. Maybe. hehe. I didn't wanna push it too much, though.

Kids were all finished with their chores, and played on electronics for a while, and at around 3pm, I put a lasagna casserole in the crock pot. I'd never cooked it that way, and I was hoping that it would turn out.

1 LARGE jar of spaghetti sauce
2 LARGE containers of cottage cheese
1/4 cup parmesean cheese
1 defrosted package of spinach
1 box whole wheat noodles
Garlic powder
Onion Powder
Italian Seasonings

Mix all together in bowl, add 1/2 cup water, pour into crock pot, shred cheese on top, cook on high for 2-3 hours.


I showered and got ready for the rest of the day, and it felt SO good. Showers really are good, you know. hehe.

Around 5pm, we started to get everyone else ready too. Shoes and socks and pants and such. Because I didn't want my kids going to the Ward Talent Show tonight looking like Jimmy does here. ROFL!

And soon we were ready to go. And yes, you CAN cook lasagna casserole in a crock pot. It turned out fabulous :)

Pics of the fam RIGHT before walking out the door. Jimmy giving himself bunny ears. ROFL!

Eme and I

Tom and I

Eme and Joe

Tom and his popcorn

So we left the house around 5:30pm, and headed over to the church. AND, since there's a Howdy's on the same street as the church, I felt I deserved a 64 oz Diet Dr Pepper. ROFL! If I was gonna have to take 5 kids to a ward activity all by myself, then I needed a "hit" of caffeine. ha!

Here's me with my "fix"

And on to the church. We dropped off our crock pot, and found seats. The little boys played ring around the rosie in the center of the gym with the little kids, and the big kids sat with me at our table. There were a TON of people there.

Tom and Eme and Joe got in line, and Jake and Jim and I guarded our places. Me "guarding" my soda...
After Tom got to the VERY front of the line, Jake and Jim and I jumped in with him. I know, I know, line cutters. hehe. I grabbed some pulled pork and a piece of pumpkin pie. I'd eaten dinner already at home, but purposefully didn't have dessert JUST so I could have it at the party.

We were supposed to bring crock pot dinners, rolls/bread, and pies. There was a TON of food, but a TON of people too. I don't think there was any food left at the end...

Anyway, here's Tom with his food

Eme and her food

Jim and his food

Jake and his food. Yeah, he wasn't so happy with having to come out and socialize.... grrrr... I know it's important for him to be out and about and around people. But it's not the easiest thing to do sometimes. Because he fights it, and purposefully does things to annoy me, hoping that I'll send him "away" from people.
And me and my pie. Pie that I passed up cupcakes AND my cookies for today. I actually had a cookie in my hand, and put it back, deciding to eat the pumpkin pie later today instead. Because I will only eat 1 dessert a day. Self imposed rule.

And yeah, I LOVE pumpkin pie. But I learned something toinght. I LOVE homemade pumpkin pie. And these were definitely not. These were frozen cooked pies. I'm not crazy about those. The first one I tried was watery. Whaaaat? Pie is NOT supposed to be watery. I had one bite, and gave the rest away. Because I wasn't gonna waste the dessert on something I didn't like.

The line for food was HUGE. I'm so glad that we "cut" in front of Tom. ha! Check it out. It starts at the back door...

goes by the stage...

and cuts up through the center of the gym

and into the overflow area.

As soon as the line died down a bit, the Talent Show started. The first act was a dude playing drums. He was actually pretty good.
And here are the Young Women singing "Peel Bananas" or whatever that song was. The kids thought it was funny.

Jake and I watching the acts

This was definitely the funniest act. This dad and his son hooked up a Wii, and we watched them Dance to it. LMBO! Hilarious!


The kids kept going back up for more pie. hehe. I got a 2nd piece, and it was even worse than the first piece. This one wasn't cooked all the way (soft) and was still hot. Yeah, NOT what I was wanting. I ended up with about 3 bites of pumpkin pie, and 2 bites of cherry pie. Hmpf!

Here's Jimmy with his pie. Well, Jimmys spoon and his pie....

Here we go...

Emeline's Activity Day girls dancing with ribbons to "I'm Walking on Sunshine". It was SUPER cute!



Here's a family doing a Peanut Butter song. Kinda funny :)

And 2 dudes singing and playing the guitar. They were pretty good too.

Yeah, see what I had to put up with. He totally shredded the table cloth when I wasn't looking.... grrrr....And then they had all the little primary kids come up, and they sang "Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam". Tom and his buddy Eston and Joe watching the kids sing.

Jimmy singing

2nd kid from the left

There were 2 more acts left, and I had Jim sit with me for the rest of the time. He was having a hard time keeping focused. hehe. And I realized that he had 2 left feet! Ha!After the closing prayer, we headed back home. We put on some Muse and the whole car (minus Jake) was signing and using "microphones" and having a good time. Jake was just pretending that we weren't there. ha!

We got home, had family scripture study, family prayer, and Jake and Tom each took a little kid and put them to bed. Eme went to bed, and I grabbed my old laptop, and started blogging. And the boys and I watched a movie. It was pretty fun. But not terribly effective for me. ha! I only got a little bit of the movie, and it took me twice as long to do my blog. But it was together time with the boys, so it was all good.

I texted back and forth with my neighborhood friend, Terra, too. Her hubby is into Civil War like Captain America. We're going to her twins' bday party next weekend, and I'm excited to hang with her! She's a pretty fun girl :)

Here it is, almost 11pm. After the boys go to sleep, I'm planning on watching an episode of Glee and then going to bed too. Church doesn't start until 1230, AND it's "fall back" with Daylight Savings time. So we get an extra hour! Sa-weet! I'm just glad that my cell phone does it automatically for me. I'm terrible with things like that. hehe.

Click on the links below to go to my account to download the PNG file, and leave some love if you like my work. Thanks!

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Digital Scrapbooking Day

Oh my heavens... Can we say SUPER long day! Even for me! hehe. I woke up this morning at 6:25am, read scriptures, said prayers, and went back to sleep for 10 minutes, then washed off the old make up, put on new make up, brushed my hair, threw on some clothes, and got the kids ready for school.

I got Jim situated, Jake awake, kids on the bus at 7:30am, and I left the house at 7:35am to drive to the East side for my therapy appointment. It was supposed to be at 1pm, but my therapists wife's grandmother had passed away, and they wanted to leave town earlier for the funeral. So I said I could come in early.

It was a good session. We talked about how I was doing and feeling and junk. Things I was doing good, and things to work on. Make sure I'm thinking about things, and consciously choosing to do good things. Not just going with the flow. Those are the kinds of things that get me into trouble.

At 9am, I headed back home. I swung by Walgreens to pick up the rest of my prints, and came back to the house. 9:30am, and it was time to make some cookies for Tom's class. I decided to go with Banana Oatmeal Chocolate Chip, because I had old bananas, and they turned out SO good last time.

Here's Jake and I in the kitchen cooking. I'm WAY taller than him with my boots on...

But not that much taller without the boots.... QUIT GROWING, CHILD!

Yummmm, should I have a taste???

Nope, no tastes for me. I have convinced myself that it is ok for me to have a dessert a day, if I so choose. But not 2. So if I wanted to have a cupcake at Toms party, then no cookie for me. I'll have a cookie tomorrow. See, I'm exercising self control. hehe.

I had the next to last batch in the over when it was time to take Jimmy to the bus at almost 11am, so I left Jake with instructions to take them out when the timer went off, and walked to the bus. I visited with Erin and Maggie until the bus came, then hurried back home to finish up the cookies.

Here's what my project turned out looking like.

I took the 4x6 I had printed out, and folded it in half, then stapled it to a baggie

Here's the front

And here's the back

Cool, huh? I made 35 baggies for his class, and had about 2 dozen or so left over. See, cookies for tomorrow. ha!

I finished them all up, and drove them up to Tom's school, dropped them off at the office, and headed back home. At noon, Jake and I watched an episode of Fringe and ate lunch together. He finished up school, and I watched an episode of Glee and designed at the same time. Productive, right? ha! And I also worked on Tom's cupcake toppers. Wanna see them? SO cute!


I started on cupcakes for Tom's "party" at around 1:45pm. I made a batch of chocolate cupcakes and a batch of yellow cupcakes. And then hurried to the bus stop to pick up Jim. We came back, cleaned up a little, and made frosting for the cupcakes.

I took a tub of store bought chocolate fudge frosting, a package of cream cheese, and a bunch of powdered sugar, and blended it all together. Yeah, it was super tasty. And I frosted all the cupcakes. Both yellow and chocolate, and put the little Tom pictures on the cupcakes. SO cute!



Jake and Jim and I loaded the cupcakes in the truck, and we headed to the bus stop to pick up the other kids. We gathered them when the bus came, and drove over to the park. Kari and her kids, and Becky and her kids, and Laurie and her kids all came. It was SO much fun. Sitting in the sunshine was very nice. The kids all had a blast playing and running around for about an hour.

Here's me on the way to the park.

Elise (Laurie's 12 yr old daughter) and I

Kari

We got home around 5pm, and got the kids all situated, dinner started, and Tom and I headed out on our date. ha! Since Captain America is in the field, I decided that Tom could take me out. Ha! And, it's his birthday, so I figured he'd like it!

We drove to El Taco Tote, and he ABSOLUTELY loved it! He'd never been there before. We ordered what Captain America and I usually get.





We had fun eating chips and cucumbers and brocheta and guacamole salsa and soda and mmmmm, so yummy!

After dinner, we drove across town to the East side-ish to go to the Two Dollar Theater. We decided to watch Despicable Me. It was pretty funny! Tom and I laughed pretty hard! Here's a pic of the 2 of us before the movie started.

After the movie, Tom wanted to swing by Walmart and birthday shop. Yeah, it took FOREVER. I think we were there for at least an hour and a half. At one point, I ditched Tom to go and look in the clothes section. If I'm gonna be working out, I needed some cooler weather workout clothes. AND, they had some exercise tanks that were only $2 a piece (I got 5 different colors) and some longer pants and a jacket. I love them all SO much.

And yeah, Walmart clothes run big, I'm thinking. In jeans, I wear a size 5-7. And the exercise pants that fit me were an XS (0-2). Yeah, there's no way that's my real size. hehe. But whatever, I'll take it - hehe.

And the jacket was awesome. It had zipper pockets, a place for an MP3 player with headphone hole, AND thumb holes in the sleeves. I was pretty excited about that part. I may have to go back and get another pair of pants and another jacket. They were about $10 a piece, which is HUGE for me, huh? hehe.

And then I went back to Tom, and we spent FOREVER in the toys. I tried to have some fun looking around.

Me as Iron Man

Me as Optimus Prime

Me as Bumblebee

Tom looking at Star Wars

Me as a cowboy

We with a battle ax? hehe.

Tom and I finally left the store and got home around 9:45pm. Jake had asked me to use all of his babysitting money for November to buy him the new Star Wars Force Unleashed II Wii game. Worked for me. He was SUPER excited when I brought it home.

I changed into my new workout clothes, made a new running playlist full of harder Muse songs and 40 minutes total in time, and headed out. Here's me ready to jog! I told the boys that they could play the new Wii game until I got back home.

You know, the other times that I've jogged, it's been hard. I won't lie. It had moments when it felt good, but my lungs would eventually hurt, and I'd wanna stop. It would be too hard. But tonight was different. Tonight felt good.

I walked for almost 4 minutes, then started jogging. And I jogged for 40 minutes straight, no stopping. I did 3 laps around the neighborhood, but I don't know how far that was. I need to go and clock it with the cars odometer tomorrow to see...

I still feel pretty good after the run. I'm definitely gonna do it again! Here's me after my run. Tom and Jake made me wear Captain America's PT reflective belt. They were looking out for me :)

And then it was 11pm. And I finally sent the boys to bed, and took back over the TV. And put on an episode of Glee, grabbed my photos from Facebook, and started to blog. And just blogging about my day makes me tired. ROFL! I did SO much today, and had SO much fun! It really was a good day :)

Here it is, 12:03pm, and I'm just now finishing up the blog. I need to design a quick freebie, post it, finish my episode, and go to bed. So I can wake up and do whatever it is I do on Saturdays. Hopefully it involves a lot of sleeping and quiet children.... ROFL!

So in honor of DSD, I'm giving you all a Digital Scrapbooking Day WordArt! Click on the link below to go to my account to download the PNG file, and leave some love if you like my work. thanks!

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