Feb 12 in 12

While Maddie was in school, it was time for a quick shopping trip.  This was my first of three needed stores for the week, also up: Costco and Sprouts.

Surprise Valentine goodie bags for the kids, I am going to be their hero (especially the 7th grader who doesn't get a party this year).

Ugh, it's laundry day.  I HATE laundry day.  I don't mind sorting it, or washing it; but rather, it's the folding and the putting away of the laundry I can't stand.  Oh well, a necessary evil.

Picking up Maddie and cousin Roan from preschool-it's a fabulous day too!

Finally getting around to fixing Maddie's little Red Ridding Hood costume (it's only been on the mending pile for 4 weeks).

Costco with Little Red Ridding Hood-at least she left the basket at home :)

I never did post a "finished product" of the laundry room.  But we went with stacked W/D in December when the old ones died (mid-cycle too), and just two weeks ago we finally got some shelves in here.  I may hate laundry, but I'm really happy with the open-ness of the laundry room now.

Davin showing off his articulated paper doll/warrior guy he made (I just put in the brads for him).

Little Red Ridding Hood and friends enjoying the fabulous day with a "picnic".

Jr High homework never ends.

Nightly scriptures.

These four practicing a play, can you guess which one?  I'll give you one hint: Maddie picked it.

Maddie's Field Trip

Maddie had a great field trip to the pet store with her preschool class.  And I have to say, it was pretty cool.

They brought out a Guinea Pig, followed by a hamster in a funny little wheel "car" (he insisted on going backwards).

Next came the baby Ferret, the kids had lots of fun petting the "furry" animals before moving onto the reptiles.

My sweet girl (who insisted on wearing this hat) was all for holding any and all reptiles, starting with the bearded dragon.

The fat-tailed gecko didn't want to be held, but Maddie was happy to poke at it anyway.

Awe, a cute little corn snake.  How fun, Maddie had to hold it twice.

And of course, she also had to hold the baby python.  I'm so proud of my girl, she's not afraid of animals.

Last up, all the colorful fish!

Thanks Petco, for a great time!

Sometimes You Really DO Need to Fight With Your Kids...

The boys got their Nerf disk guns for Christmas, and Eric got his just two days later.  We've had countless Nerf-wars fights, and the boys all love it.

Our front room/entry works really well for a battle: with the dinning room around the corner, the stairs, and the landing upstairs as a perch/lookout.

The girls like to serve as the disk-collectors for the various teams: Aidan/Davin vs Eric (I only just got myself a gun).  The rules are simple: head or torso shot-you're dead; arm or leg shot, you've lost the use of that limb for that round; if a disk collector is shot (rarely) she gives her ammo to the apposing team; direct hits only.

  

We started out with 40 green disks, then Eric bought his gun (which came with 10 white disks) and an additional 10 green disks.  And then I just got my gun (with its 8 orange disks) and another 40 disks; plus the kids found a disk in the church parking lot.  So far we're only down 1 white, and 8 green, they're somewhere in this house.  I keep finding them in weird places too, which I'm pretty sure will be the status for the rest of my life :)

Science in the Kitchen

So I've been wanting to try my hand at sourdough bread for a while now, and I had even found a fairly simple starter recipe.  So I thought it would be a really good idea to wait until after we had a hotter than usual week, and had a week full of freeze warnings to try my first attempt-smart, real smart.

The ingredients: whole wheat flour & pure water (non-chlorinated)

Mix it all up, put it in a warm place and wait (feeding it every day, sometimes twice a day)

After a day or two, not too bad, it's sort of looking "yeasty".  I'm seeing bubbles!  This might work after all...

Um, maybe not.

After 4 or 5 days, and far too much good whole wheat flour, I'm calling this a fail.  I could actually submit this sucker to Pintrosity if I felt like it, but I don't.  Thankfully I saw a pretty nice (and only $11) Natural Yeast Cookbook at Costco this week.  And as a sweet bonus-they had two mail-order (free/super cheap) starter options as well.  I think I'm going to give this a break until we warm up a bit (which won't take long thanks to a stinking groundhog), and then I'll give it a go again.

Love and

Rockets!

We thought it would be so much fun to launch rockets again with our friends since we had the day off.  It was a lovely day for it too, and Hobby Lobby had finally re-stocked their engines.  Eric thought it would be a fun thing, and more economical, to just buy the larger C6-7's and use those for all of the rockets.

Sadly we learned a lesson, just because they can use a larger engine, does not mean all rockets should use a larger engine.  We had no problem with the first launch of the day-Eric's, it went up, the parachute deployed, and came back down perfectly (too bad the rocket got stepped on and broke a fin-just one flight for today)

Davin's rocket was next-it went up, we saw the tell-tale "poof" marking the end of flight/streamer deployment.  But that was it.  As you can see from the picture, the sun was at a crazy angle, and we just lost it in the light.  We searched and searched.  It was never found.

Next up, my rocket-I must have packed my wadding in too tightly, my streamer never deployed.  But it landed without any damage.  Then came Aidan's-oh boy.  Eric let Aidan pack his own wadding (without double checking his work), plus a large engine, plus major glare=well see below...

Aidan's rocket ended up in Guadalupe and was run over, at least twice.  Eric and Aidan had searched the field for 20 minutes before looking over in the street (which isn't really close).  Eric had to wait for a break in traffic before running out to retrieve the beloved rocket.  Aidan was heartbroken, Davin kept trying to cheer him up by reminding him that he at least had a rocket to say good-bye to.  Plus, they each would get new ones before the next launches!

After a lunch at Burger King, every one's spirit's were greatly improved (especially ours).  Rockets are definitely more fun when you don't spend 2/3 of your time searching fruitlessly for lost ones.  Oh well, better luck next time.

Jan 12 in 12

Ah, it's a new year and another round of 12 in 12. Are you ready? Here we go...

Saturday happened to be our Relief Society's temple day.

It was only 45 by the time I got home from the temple at 11:30, which meant we could uncover our plants from the night before.

Um, I think we might have forgotten something...

Thank you Eric, at least it's not Valentine's Day, right?

These three decided to have a pajama day since I was gone all morning.

Aidan returning from a very very cold camp out (luckily he has a mom who ran out and bought him long underwear so he stayed nice and warm even with the temps in the 20's)

Hallelujah!!! The final cabinets are being loaded up to take to the in-law's.

Cabinet install-almost there, Eric's mom will be so happy.

Break for food-mmm, pizza

Here's the finished (sans drawers and doors) product-just don't ask how long it took. I designed it, Eric built it, all around his mom's specifications. Yup, we work well together. He's still got some finishing details (along with the drawers/doors) to do. It didn't take long for his mom to settle in :)

When we got home we found a really really stupid pigeon who thought he was part bat.  Here he is clinging on to the side of the covered entryway.  Eric had to grab the nerf gun to "encourage" him to leave for the night, after he already made a rather unpleasant mess all over the corner of our entryway.

And yes, I can count to 12, I do realize that was only 11. I accidentally deleted a super cute picture of Eric and I eating lunch-I'm already beating myself up over it, oh well.

Some Goals for 2013

So here's a list, in no particular order, of some of my goals for 2013.  Some are big, some are small, some are silly, some are practical, but they are all mine, and are here to help me be a better (and a happier) me.

Shop at Sprouts 1-2x/month (Done)

Attend the temple 1-2x/month (averaged 1/month)

Davin's quilt-it's already planned out (got half-way done)

Keep Target trips to once a week (FAILED)

Monthly date night: (off to a rough start, but then we discovered Zupa's and Frost)

Plant our winter garden (done)

Plant our fall garden (done-herb and salsa)

Read 6 non-book club books: The Secret Keeper, by Kate Morton; 

Run two miles w/o stopping (ankle surgery put this one on hold)

Go for 3 family hikes (ankle surgery put this one on hold)

Try 1-2 new recipes a month and type up the keepers: surpassed my goal!!

Keep up the 12 in 12 project (done, but did a bad job posting)

Nightly walks w/Eric (ankle surgery put this one on hold)

Keep riding my bike 2x/week (ankle surgery put this one on hold)

Keep waking up at 6:15 for personal daily scriptures (yup, got through the year)

Read a conference a week and talk to someone about it (PT made this one even easier)

Monthly play-days for the kids-nope

Make/try 6 things from my Pinterest boards (sort of)

Find 10 different uses for my new Cuisinart: 1) blended homemade tomato soup (worked better than the blender); 2) homemade pesto (next time use greener basil, NOT the purple-y cardinal basil); 3) shredded cheese in 3 seconds; 4) Chicken salad; 5) chocolate glaze; 6) bread crumbs; 7) apple butter; 8) better homemade basil pesto; 9) graham cracker/cookie crumbs; 10) cauliflower soup (WOO HOO!!!)

Call each of my sibling on their birthdays (nope, I did get texts off-most of the time)

Go on a special 15th anniversary trip (it's called saving for a new bathroom)

Well, that's it, I may add to it, I may take away from it.  There are some home improvement projects we've got to work on as well this year, but this is my list, not the Home Depot list (ugh, you should see that one...)