A New Toy

I met Shane when I was 19. He was 26 and practically a geezer in my little world.

The whole story of how we started to date and later became married is a story for another time... or about 10 other times I'm sure.

But somewhere in between becoming friends and actually dating, Shane had started his new "high paying" job. Which to look back on seems like nothing, but at the time, fresh out of college, it seemed like a lot.

I had just gotten back from my summer in the Florida Keys. I went to his apartment not really to visit him, but to visit his roommate. The fact that he was there didn't hurt anything. We were friends after all.

He was looking on eBay for a car with a buddy. Not just any car, but a classic. I was clueless and I humored his excitement over the whole idea. Then, I proceeded to announce that I had mono (lovely), and went back upstairs to hang with his roommate.

This was 10 years ago. He didn't buy a classic car, instead he bought a ring, a house, three kids (or at least all the stuff 3 kids need) and a few new-er cars.

Fast forward to now and he and his dad have gone together on this little wonder. I'm still just about as clueless as I was 10 years ago, but at least I don't have mono. :)

Now... don't ask me about it because to me, it's just an old car. But he seems to think it's pretty cool. I guess I think it's cool. Honestly I know nothing....nothing about cars except what I like and don't like about the ones I'm currently driving. And I have some pretty strong opinions about domestic cars.

Gotta love the lap belts. I guess it's pretty lucky it has anything at all.

The car lives in Ohio, where it can be enjoyed and played with by his dad and on our yearly visits.

Apparently the engine is the high point and is something to experience (something about "chirping" the tires in all the gears).

I am excited to see what we've gotten into this summer. I've got my whole outfit all planned out so I can ditch the kids with the grandparents, and run away with my boy friend in his new sweet ride and get some ice cream.

He'll think he's cool because of the sweet car and maybe the hot chick as a passenger. I'll think I'm cool because there are no car seats in the back, or diapers in the glove box. :)

Here is exactly what this baby is for those of you who speak car:

1969 Ford Mustang Mach 1
Calypso Corral
351 Winsor
Factory 4 speed car now equipped with a T5- 5 Speed trans
Power steering
Power brakes
Front disc brakes
9 inch rear end w/ 389 gear
Full length headers
Dual exhaust
Magnum 500 wheels
Wood steering wheel
VDO Tach
AM/FM Stereo

Gotta love a new (old) toy.

18 Months

My littlest one is already a year and half old! Where does time go? I just can't believe he is becoming such a big kid. Of course he will not cooperate for pictures. I will keep trying, but it's the same story every time. It takes three or four attempts just to get 4 decent pictures of the kid. For now, you get what you get.


He seems so little, but we went to the Doctor today and he's measuring above average on everything. Here are his stats:

33.5 inches long (80%)
25 lbs 2 oz (60%)
49 cm head (60%)

I know I say it every time but he is such a funny kid. He's a little dramatic about everything and can get really upset at the drop of a hat. And can go from sobbing to laughing just as fast.

He does his own thing. Last night we suddenly noticed that he was not with the other kids and we couldn't hear or see him anywhere so I yelled "EZ-RA!" and he yelled "NO!" from the basement. I guess he just wanted to be alone.

He finally, mostly, lets me change his diaper without a fight now. It's usually when I'm about to attach the last tab that he rolls over and ruins it all.

He has a bunch of new words including:

Yeah
Movie
Ease= strawberries
Emnemenem= M&M
Buboo= bubbles
Ba= ball
Bow= bowl
Daddy
He's also started to sing Ring Around The Rosies

Another funny little story. I went to the neighbors' house today to tell Roman to come home. They have a little yippy dog who came out and proceeded to bark at us. Marisa screamed and climbed me like a cat climbing a tree and Ezra got down and started barking right back at the dog. He ain't scared.


He's starting to want to walk everywhere instead of being carried. But he's in no hurry, and can't be trusted to follow me all that accurately. Unlike Marisa who might as well be glued to my leg. When I give up and go pick him up he reminds me of a slippery pig. He goes completely limp, throws his head back with no regard to the hardness of the surface we are on and screams like I chopped off his fingers. I'm always wondering if someone things I'm kidnapping my children when we leave places and they are screaming like that. Oh my!


He loves it when Roman or Marisa make him laugh and he likes it when he makes them laugh too.

Church is still his hardest subject, and our upcoming trip to Ohio has me seriously considering drugging my him with Benedryl for the flight. I just don't know what we are going to do. It's going to be rough.

Carnitas

Well, I'm having trouble finding a link for the recipe for Mexican pulled pork from my America's Test Kitchen book. This is what I made last week for my new recipe of the week. They have it on their website, but you have give them your email and such.

If you really want it, email me. I will share it.

I'm not counting on a bunch of emails because I didn't think it was all that great. I even forgot to take a picture. But this is basically what it looked like.

Have you ever been to Chipotle? They have the most STELLAR carnitas. I mean...AWESOME! I could eat it all by itself. I think it is nice and salty but not dry. How this is accomplished? I don't know because salt tends to dry things out. Another one of my favorite styles of pork is Kahlua pork. HEAVEN help me! YUM!!! Too bad The Little Grass Shack has been gone for years now.. Anyone remember The Little Grass Shack on 9th? SIGH!

Back to the Mexican version of pulled pork:

I know there is a recipe floating around for Cafe Rio's pork. I think it has a can of cola in it. ??? I don't know...it just doesn't seem right. And I know I'm going to get hate mail and my house egged for saying it, but I don't like Cafe Rio. The line alone is a HUGE turn off.

Well, this recipe called for a picnic roast that comes from the pig's butt. :) I found one and cringed a little because it looked like all fat.

I hoped somehow the fat would mysteriously disappear while cooking, but it didn't. I spent WAY too long pulling small chunks of meat from HUGE chunks of fat. The thing was nearly 50% fat. YUCK! It gave me flash backs to the chicken thigh episode, and I wanted to just dump it all in the garbage and drive to Little Caesars.

It called for all sorts of spices and fruits to cook the meat in and it still came out tasting like plain old pork.

After you cook the meat, you take it out of the juices and reduce the juice into a syrupy sludge that smells like a tannery. GAG! I will admit that I'm not a fan of the smell of any cooked pork that hasn't been cured or doctored up a little. (ie. ham, bacon, sausage). But boiling down those juices that were filled with fruit juice and spices still smelled just like I was boiling pigs feet.

So...needless to say, we won't be making this recipe again.

I'm not very confident in this weeks recipe either. I'm running out of the ones that really sounded great.

Potty Mouth

Beware! This post contains all sorts of potty words. If you don't want to read 'em stop now!

I wanted to share just exactly how this potty "training" has gone.

Like I said before, Marisa woke up on her birthday ready and willing to wear underwear and use the potty. No accidents on the first day and she did very well.

This is so different from the way we trained Roman. Roman practiced for months. Just peeing on the potty before bed, or before bathtime, or whenever we were ambitious enough to remember to ask him if he wanted to go. He was, and still is, a pro at peeing on demand.

When I finally decided I had had enough (after two months of changing two kids diapers) I made a potty chart, set a timer to go off every 1.5 hours and went for it.

Since he could go just about any time I asked him it was really just a matter of getting him out of the habit of using a diaper. He was trained in a week with very few accidents.

Marisa will not/cannot pee on demand. I can suggest it, but she will wait until she is good and ready. She gets pretty mad that I want her to go before bed. Only when the lights are out and the door is about to shut does she relent and go  because she wants to delay bed time that much longer.

Anyway, it's been 5 days and we have only had one accident. And, I was lucky enough that we were outside at the time. She both pees and poops on the potty and lets me know when she needs to go even if we are at the library.

Everyone likes to get involved with potty time because the M&M's come out with each successful trip. Everyone gets rewarded when Marisa pees. :)

Yesterday she pooped on the potty all by herself because I was in the shower. You go girl!

All the stress for the last 6 months or so seems to have been for nothing. I just needed to wait. Which I knew. But still, I've been changing two kids diapers for 18 months now, and at least one child's diaper for nearly 6 years and I was SICK of it. I can't give her all the credit. I think I've been telling her (brainwashing her) since she turned 2 that when she turned 3, there would be no more diapers. I stopped saying it, so I guess she started saying it so that it would be HER idea.

I have her wear training pants (the padded, absorbent ugly kind) under her pretty panties for now. But, in a few more days we will ditch the training pants and just go for the cute ones. OH! You gotta love a little bum in undies. I don't know why the makers of the training pants don't try to make them more desirable to little kids. Or why the makers of the cute kind, don't make the training sort. I mean really?

She wears pull ups at night but she's been dry every night but the first. She woke up early this morning to go potty and went right back to bed.  YEA for her!!

I sure needed this to go smoothly. Soon she will have her potty chart full and I will share all her potty prizes.

Ezra, I can guarantee, will be a total pill when it comes time. Only 18 months and he will be three. I can't even imagine my life without diapers.

Next...Carnitas. Now doesn't that sound appetizing after this post?

Three

Here is a little bit about the big girl Marisa who just turned 3.

She is stubborn. If you didn't notice, she potty trained on her terms. Of course we are only 4 days into it but things are going well. More on that later.

She is an emotional girl. But that goes on both sides of the fence. She may cry a lot, but she likes to get close and snuggle, hug and love too so we're good.

She does pretty good at talking and is only usually hard to understand because she's either crying or whining when she talks. She is also learning her alphabet and how to count in the right order. She can usually make it to ten + as long as she doesn't get stuck in a round of 7-8-9-7-8-9...

She's starting to want to be a little more grown up and is talking about how she will go to school... in three years.

She successfully sleeps in her big girl bed, is pacifier free YEA!!!!

She likes to make up songs. She always sings while I'm vacuuming because she thinks no one can hear her.

She doesn't like going outside very much. She is constantly asking when we can go back inside. I think it might be that she's not a fan of the elements (not to mention the bugs). What a girl! She likes playing on the playground though.

She loves juice, peaches and strawberries. Any other food is subject to her mood. Which makes dinner interesting most nights.

She likes dressing up and trying to mother Ezra, which he HATES.

What a funny little girl we have here. I'm so glad that she is learning/wanting to be a big girl. Although she is balled up on the floor throwing a tantrum as I type this. 

So there you have it. Marisa at 3.

It's HER party and she'll cry if she wants to

Lucky for us, she really didn't cry much at all.

Marisa really enjoyed her birthday this year. We didn't plan a whole lot because any plans I could come up with, I knew she would be more annoyed with than anything. So we took it pretty easy.

For weeks Marisa has been saying that when she turned 3 she would start wearing underwear and use the potty. I supported her, but stopped short of believing her because, well... She wasn't showing any potential.

This morning when she woke up, she said she wanted to go potty and wear underwear. So I halfheartedly took her to the bathroom, sat her down and walked away to go get something out of my room when I hear. "I did it!" What do you know? She actually did!! She's never actually peed in a potty before today.

She was so excited and as you can imagine, so was I. We ran to my closet to dig out the pile of princess undies, princess snacks, M&M's and sticker chart that I hid in there after the last miserable failure.

Wouldn't you know. She wore undies the entire day, had ZERO accidents and even let me know when she needed to go (instead of me asking/prodding/forcing every 20 minutes) Although, it was hard not to be nervous and remind her now and then that she didn't have a diaper on.

WOW! Now, if she can keep this up, I would be forever grateful. Seriously. I was getting so tired of all the diapers. I will definitely trade it for frequent trips to the bathroom as an escort.

Marisa and Roman played the morning away and I fixed a small picnic for the kids to eat in the back yard while I worked on a little gardening project.

We had pizza for dinner, opened presents, and then the cousins came over for cake and icecream.

Ok, so about the cake. I saw the kit to make this cake on ebay. It seemed reasonable at $17 after shipping since she got 6 princess figurines to play with afterward so I bought it. I didn't know that our grocery store could/would make it for us until after I bought the kit. But when I saw the price they would charge, it seemed like so much to spend on a cake. $40.

Well, if I had known, and had thought about it a little. After buying cake mixes, Stuff to make frosting, A couple food coloring jars, and some piping bags. I was within about $10 of the $40-already made, just pick it up and your done, cake.

I spent about 3 hours on this cake, which doesn't include the time I spent learning how to make those roses, or the time it took to actually BAKE the cake. SERIOUSLY, I should have just paid to have the cake made and tried to sell the kit to someone else, but the "do-it-yourself-er" in me just couldn't let it go. Besides, I already had all the right decorator tips. I might as well get some use out of them.

I actually really like decorating cakes. I just don't have very steady hands. The more I try to hold them steady, the more they shake.

Needless to say, it wasn't hard to make it look good, and now I know how to make a rose out of icing. :)

Back to the party.

I made Marisa a few dress up clothes since she wears her halloween costume so much. And she got some new shirts to wear this summer. She also got a few my little ponies, some books, and some dress up bling from her cousins. She is SET!

I'm so glad that she had a good day because the day before was one for the record books. I just don't get how one day can be so awful and one day can be so great. Why can't they all just be O.K.?  The life of a girl I guess.

S...omeone wants you to notice Shane's wicked beard. 

Happy Birthday little girly. We love you SO much! And we are especially proud of you today!

A good deal

We clip coupons.

We get a paper, we shop. Why not? Ok, so there is the argument that you end up buying something you wouldn't necissarily get just to "save" a buck.

I think for the most part we are pretty good about only using coupons for things  we would get regardless (whether generic or brand name).


I don't go crazy most of the time. We shop at maceys and anything that is rediculously overpriced there, we get at Walmart. We go once a week and try to stick to what is on sale (of course there is the perishable stuff an occasional ingredient that I end up paying full price for)

But we usually end up saving 5-10% of our grocery bill with very little effort. Sometimes more, sometimes less.

If you put forth even more effort you can save A LOT! I don't usually do this but I did today.

SCORE!!!! $6.50 baby!

All Roman eats for breakfast is Life cereal. He has no interest in any other options. If we run out, he has toast. Well, we were running dangerously low and I really DO NOT like to pay full price for them so I sent a little prayer to the grocery gods hoping for a sale.

Boy was there ever!

Read about the simple trick to get a great deal here

I also had two rockin' Snuggle fabric softener coupons that were in the paper a few weeks ago for $3 off one. They were on sale for $3.99 (that's also the regular price at Walmart) So I got them for a dollar each as well, while I was at it.

I spent a little over $6 and got three full bags of groceries and breakfast for the RO-MAN for months! Yippee!!!

I don't think I'm going to go nuts with this couponing stuff as it involves a lot of running around which with three little ones can be stressful and today's trip was no exception. Some of the stuff, even when it's free is just not worth the work. Some of the stores that have frequent deals are just too far away from home aka Target. But, some of it really is! It's worth following a blog or two to catch some good deals.

That is all.

Spring Break

Just a note about the last post. Let me clarify that I in no way think that anyone over 30 is Yucky. I just miss my 20's and had to cry about it for while. On with the post...

This week was Spring Break and I decided in order to stay sane, we would have to make a few little plans.

Monday was my Birthday so we went to the I Buffet in Provo. I know.. strange pick, but we've been there a few times and have never been disappointed. Better to be happy with your dinner choice than grumpy about your dinner choice if you ask me.

BIG PLUS, both Marisa and Ezra were FREE!!!! And, we had a coupon. We got out of there CHEAP! And it was as good as ever.

ANYWAY,

Tuesday we went to Carls Jr. Eh...but the kids like to play and it was a cold wet day so it worked.

Wednesday was Library day. Then, we braved D.I. (for those outside of Utah and Idaho, think Napoleon Dynamite) The D.I. in Provo is INSANE. People sit around like vultures waiting for the carts to come out with the new stuff.

Me, I just make my way to the back corner and look at the movies. I SCORED this time. 12 VHS movies for $6. And they were all pretty good movies too. I can't rent them for $.50 and it costs that much to get them from the Library so why not?  Yes, someday our VCRs will break and they will be useless, but until then....

One of the movies I got was Sixteen Candles, which is PG. How it got that rating is beyond me. I remember that I was about 9 and having a sleepover at my friends house and her mom rented it for us.  We were BAFFLED!  Now that I've watched it again, I'm thinking I should not have bought it. It doesn't really fall into the "wholesome" category in any way. Of course, neither does Titanic, or Dumb and Dumber which were also included in my purchases but at least Titanic has some historical context...right? I will stop there. Anyway, the kids scored a few Disney flicks too.

The weather had warmed up a little so I let the kids go outside to blow bubbles and Marisa lost it for about the millionth time that day. She needed a nap but she hasn't taken one since the pacifiers disappeared.

Thursday was even warmer so I put shorts on the kids (even though the day started bellow 40 degrees). We piled in the car, picked up a friend and her kid, O.P., and we drove to Sandy to see some fish at the Living Planet Aquarium.

The kids liked the place, and it was definitely something different to do. I liked watching the penguins but they were kind of hard for the kids to see so I think they were a little disinterested. Roman and O.P. really liked touching the stingrays. Although it was a little deep for their short arms.

The bummer is that it is NOT worth the admission fee. We were in and out in close to a half hour.  Luckily, Marisa and Ezra were free. Sometimes you just have to pay to see something different. One of these days I will brave the Children's Museum. I've heard it's fun.

Friday was a picnic at the park.

The kids played and I noticed that it was pretty windy so after playing and eating, we drove home and got the kite Roman got in his Easter bucket and actually flew it. I love flying kites. It's so relaxing (when it will fly that is, it's pretty frustrating when it won't).

Marisa wasn't too fond of all of it. Roman humored me (he wanted to run with it and you can only run so far before that doesn't work anymore). Ezra was a sport but didn't care much either. After a while, Roman wanted to go play in the sand in the long jump pit and he was done too.

After all that playing the kids came home and watched a movie. Marisa was pooped so I put a blanket on her and gave her Dolly in hopes of keeping her happy and, Voila!

I love this extremely rare site.

Now it's over and we can all go back to school!!!! It's amazing how nice that 2.5 hours of slightly less responsibility is. I don't even want to think about what it will be like next year. I might make a count down chain or something.

I have to survive the summer first.