Tomorrow, tomorrow, you're only a day away!

I am excited about tomorrow. Here is why in no particular order.

Tomorrow starts a new week, yea for Mondays!

Tomorrow starts a new month. I am so ready for March. A lot of great
things coming up in March.

SPRING!
Daylight savings (yea for kids sleeping in again)
St. Patrick's Day- better wear green or I'm goig to pinch you.
Passover

Hmmm what am I missing? Hmm oh yeah my birthday! This year is my
magical/special birthday, you know where the age you are turning is
the same as your birthdate.

Tonights blog is brought to you by my phone, since my router is down.

What?

I’m too tired to blog tonight, my brain is not working. I just wrote out what should have been a really funny story, but it was not funny. I know this because Jeremy told me so. So I will tell it to you another day when my brain isn’t fried from no sleep and too much school work. I did write my last essay for my government class and can probably tell you how a bill becomes a law.

Settlers with friends

Have you ever played "settlers of catan"?
Do you have a couple hours to kill?
We played it tonight with some new friends.
It was way more fun than I would have thought.

http://www.settlersofcatan.net/

slow day = slow cooker

After a day of not doing very much, except homework, housework, and of course the refereeing that is my life as the mother of twins. I did make an awesome dinner. Why was it awesome? You might ask. Three reasons


1) Super Easy

2) Super yummy

3) The babies actually ate it!

It was-

Slow Cooker Italian Chicken

Whole chicken, Italian seasoning, garlic salt, and olive oil

Rinse the chicken. Remove anything inside the cavity. (I bought one that didn’t have anything in it) pat dry. Place in slow cooker, brush with olive oil. Sprinkle generously with Italian seasonings and garlic salt. Cover. Cook on low for 6-8 hours.


You are welcome.

A coversation with You about wasted time

You: Hey Martha

Me: What’s up, You?

You: Well, I know how good you are at wasting time, so I thought I would get your advice on it.

Me: Oh yeah? I am good at it but there are so many different ways, could you be more specific?

You: Well sure, How bout on the internet? What are some of the web sites you like to go to to waste time

Me: That sure was a lot of “to”s in that sentence.

You: You are stalling just get on with it.

Me: Oh all right since you asked, here are some my top time wasting web sites. Enjoy your wasted time!

http://www.postsecret.com/

http://www.passiveaggressivenotes.com/

www.foundmagazine.com/

http://www.getmortified.com/

And of course the obvious your blogs that I posted about here

And Facebook.

Me: What are your favorite time wasting sites?

And the news is...

I should change the name of my blog to 50 sticky fingers and 4 muddy paws.

This is Leia. As in Princess Leia, which is what Avrah calls her.

She is my news. She is an 8 month old full blood Standard Poodle.

A friend of mine texted me the other night and asked if I would be interested, because there was a family that had one and they couldn’t take care of her any more. Of course I was interested, my friends got her last night and I went to “just look at her” and of course brought her home. She is very sweet and gentle and calm, but she is still a puppy despite her size and she is very playful. And she is hypoallergenic and doesn’t shed, which is a HUGE plus, I know I’ll have to keep her groomed, but I’ll trade that for shedding any day! I can’t wait to get to know her more and get her trained. She loves to ride in the car with me.

Isn't she pretty

and big

Micah didn't like that I wasn't taking a picture of him

What Micah did when I told Leia to sit. Such a good boy!

News?

I have some new fun news, but you will have to wait for tomorrow to read all about it. There are some people that don't like reading about news on my blog so I have to tell them first, and then I can tell all of you.





Is the suspense killing you?

Looking forward and counting

What are you looking forward to this week?


I am looking forward to getting up earlier and doing shred again. Yeah I know that is a goal I have pretty often, but I get off track easily.

I am also looking forward to not raising my voice this week.

I am looking forward to restoring some kind of order to my house. How does it get so messy? Don’t answer that J.

I am looking forward to receiving more postcards in the mail. OH did you forget you were supposed to be sending them to me? That’s ok you still have time. Thank you Ms. Jean as you are the only one whose I have received so far.

I am also looking forward to finding something that the babies will eat for lunch. They were eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches every day, but for some reason have now stopped and only open them up and rub the contents in their hair and on their clothes, and as much fun as that is to clean up, I really would like to try something actually getting in their bellies. Any suggestions?

As you can see I don’t have a lot going on this week, but I am still looking forward to a new start and am choosing now to be excited about this week for whatever the reasons may be.

On a totally different note, if you are reading this on my blog you may notice a counter down at the bottom of the page, you may have to scroll down to see it, as I type this it sits at 1976, which means that this blog could set it over the 2000 mark. So I just wanted to thank each and every one of you that has taken the time out of your busy days to stop by and see what is going on in my world. It means a lot to me. And if you are reading this on facebook why not click over to my blog and see how it was meant to be seen, and thank you for reading too.

Also if you just happen to be the lucky one that is my 2000th hit, then let me know by taking a screen picture and putting it in the comment box, or just comment and let me know that it was you. I may have a little treat for you, it will probably be along the lines of this or this.

Pajamas? Yes please

It was a jammie kind of day.


So for you I have pictures of the kids playing in boxes.

Enjoy

3 in a box

1 in a box

Princess sleepy head

Late date

Out on a date with my babe celebrating Valentine's day a week late.

We ran into Josiah's teacher and she gave me this gold nugget.

"I got a mouth full of silver, but it's the wrong kind, I'm not
riches."-Josiah

What a funny kid.

They ate what?

You don't really want to hear about my day do you? It was really rather boring, did the whole bikes balls and you thing and then came home ate lunch put babies to nap, then did homework. I think the highlight of my day was dinner, it wasn't extravagant or wonderful, and the best thing about it was that the babies ate it. You read that right, they both ate it, like two bowls of it. What was it?

Pan Seared Smoked Sausage

2 lbs smoked turkey sausage
1 red pepper sliced
1 green pepper, sliced
4 green onions, chopped

Slice sausage in diagonal 3" lengths; sear in skillet until browned. Add onion and both peppers toward the end of cooking time; stir fry together until veggies are crisp tender.

We had applesauce with it too.

This got a 5 out of 5 kid rating! It was super easy too, the babies didn't eat the peppers but I'll take what I can get!

Français ?

when did i get a french kid?

The Bambi rule

If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.


That was going to be my whole blog for today, because that is what kind of day it has been. But then after dinner Jeremy told me to go play candy land with the Avrah and he would take care of the babies and clean up. Of course the big boys wanted to pay too. It was actually refreshing to just sit and play with them and see their joy in the simple game. It was neat to see how each of them played the game differently. Judah cared the most about winning, Josiah cared the most about everybody else playing the right way and staying on track, and Avrah didn’t seem to care about winning or losing just as long as she could finish. Whenever she would draw a card that had a little figure on it which usually helps you along in the game except when you have already passed it and then it sends you back, however the rules say that if you are a little kid you don’t have to go back, but every time she got one of those that would send her back I would tell her you don’t have to go back but she would anyway and do so happily. Josiah would then say “Avrah is making bad decisions.”

Excited about laundry?

It's Monday and what do I do on Mondays. You guessed it laundry. Today I was actually excited about doing laundry. We got a new washer and dryer, and let me just say they were worth every single penny. They can hold so much more than my old ones that they saved me 3 loads. I did a load of 24 pairs of jeans. They also sing to you when you open the doors and when they get done, it is very cheery. So not only did I enjoy doing my laundry today I got it all done!


What’s that you say? You want to see which ones we got, well ok.

aren't they pretty

Oh and for dinner we had BLT egg bake, which is kind of like a quiche without the crust. Also it had no L in it, so that is a misleading name. It did have turkey bacon and tomato though and it was good. 4 ½ kid rating. I think the babies would have eaten it better but they had a sippy cup of milk right before dinner, so I think maybe they weren’t hungry.

A few things about Avrah

"E-I-E-I-O Yes that's the book for me I hear it read aloud to me the E-I-E-I-O BIBLE!"-Avrah sung at the top of her lungs to the tune of B-I-B-L-E (not old MacDonald)

Avrah has learned to write her name at school. It is very cute, she writes it on everything. She makes her r's with a little curly underneath. Very girly.

She wrote her name on the back of one of my school workbooks and as you can see in the picture the second A the legs were a little close together, after she wrote it she looked up at me and giggled and whispered and pointed and said that A needs to go potty. Then she gave it a face and for some reason known only to her proceded to scribble on the rest of the letters.

Tonight we were having rotisserie chicken for dinner and Avrah was given a drumstick, for the rest of the dinner she proceded to talk in a deep voice and went on and on about being a caveman, must have had something to do with eating the chicken off the bone.

Walking in Daddy's shoes.

Daddy took Avrah to Krispy Kreme this morning for a new Valentine's Day ritual, where he takes his daughter out to breakfast the weekend of or around Valentine's.

I studied and took 2 history quizzes and one government test.

Usually I do 1 history quiz a week, I spend the week reading the chapter then do the open book quiz on it online on Saturday. Well this morning I realized I hadn't even cracked the book all week so I had to read the whole chapter and then after that I sat down to do the quiz and I opened the wrong weeks, I opened next weeks, but once you open it you have to take it so I took it, they give you an hour for a 10 question quiz. So even though I hadn't read that chapter yet I still got a 100 on it. It did take me 20 minutes though. After that I did the one that I had actually read the chapter for and did it in like 8 minutes.

The government test was a little bit harder it was 50 multiple choice questions and you have 50 minutes to answer them I made a 92 on it. I also have to turn in a two page essay, that is due Monday, I have about a page and a half done of it.

This came in during my studying to make my day.

Valentine Craft #3

My version of this.

Heart shaped crayon valentines.

First I collected a bunch of old broken crayons, but since I usually throw them away when I find them laying around the house I really didn’t have that many broken ones, but I did have an old box of crayons and 3 new boxes so I used the old box, even though they were still in pretty good shape.

Then I peeled them all, a helpful tip here is that if you score them down the side with a razor or knife then the wrapper comes off pretty effortlessly.

Once I had a bowl of crayons, I cut them all up into pieces. (Others have used a pencil sharpener or a grater; I just used my knife and cutting board)

Then we filled up the heart shaped ice cube trays

Put them in the oven at 250 for 12-14 min

Took them out

Let them cool

Then we hot glued them to a piece of card stock and wrote “You color my world.”

I think the kids liked them.



Oh and on a side note look what came in the mail today!

Valentine’s Day Craft 2

Rice krispies treat hearts on a stick.

I got this idea from my friend Jill too. She is so creative and I am such a thief.

Here is what I did.

Melt marshmallows and butter and then add some vanilla

Remove from heat and stir in rice krispies. I put them in a pan and let them cool a little while

Then dumped them on a sheet of wax paper, put another sheet on top of them and rolled them down a little bit thinner.

Then took a heart shaped cookie cutter and cut out hearts.

Put some red sprinkles on a plate

Put a stick in the treats and then pressed them into the sprinkles

I didn’t really liked the way it looked with the stick in it, and since I rolled them a little too thin they didn’t really stay on the stick very well so I just stacked them off center and put them in a baggie and tied a cute ribbon in a bow.

I know you guys probably know how to make rice krispies treats and really don’t need me taking you through it step by step. I just think it is funny and hopefully you will be amused by it also.

On a side note Jill’s looked much better than mine do, and I’m sorry for butchering your craft Jill.

Easy Valentines gifts

Remember how I told you that I did three valentine’s crafts yesterday? Well here is one of them. I’m not sure what it is called but all the kids’ teachers are getting them this year from us. It is basically just hot chocolate, fancied up. Now lest you think me really creative, I got this idea from my friend Jill, thanks Jill I think these turned out great.


Here is what I used to make them

Hot chocolate mix, Mini chocolate chips, Mini marshmallows, red sprinkles, cake decorating bags, and some red ribbon.

Very easy, just open cake decorating bag add other ingredients (I used two bags of hot chocolate in each one) and tie closed with ribbon. I don’t know if there are different sizes of cake decorating bags, I am sure that there are, because these were huge, but it still worked out fine and I just cut the excess off.

The finished product.

With a little tag that says “You warm my heart Valentine, from Avrah”

a warning

Josiah was a little on the small side when he was a baby. I was a little worried, and his dr. told me I could add in a bottle of formula, since I nursed him. I decided that I would give him a bottle after his night time feeding. This started when he was probably around 6 months, as he got older this changed from a bottle of formula, to a pediasure, to sippy cup of milk (first flavored then regular). Always right before bed, he usually would use this time to calm down and fall asleep. Josiah was a very busy child, he was crawling at 5 months and walking/running at 8 months, it was very nice to have something that would actually calm him down long enough to let him go to sleep. So even though I knew not to put a baby/child to bed with a milk cup, and he technically didn’t “go to bed” with it, he would have it on the couch and then we would take him to bed. We did this with him until he was 3. Why am I telling you all this? Because today he had to have oral surgery he had to get 5 caps and one tooth pulled. We are pretty sure that all the decay was because of the milk that sat on his teeth. None of the other children have any problems with their teeth. So if you are reading this and don’t know don’t let milk be the last thing your child has to drink before bed. Oh and side note he never did gain any extra weight after all that either, some kids are just small and we should just accept that and not try and change them.

a little loopy before his surgery

bottoms after

Top after.

Today Jeremy took Josiah to have his dental work done; they did it at a surgical center where they knocked him out so he didn’t feel a thing. I took Judah for his regular scheduled dental cleaning and check up. I did 3 different valentines crafts (more about that tomorrow) and had a TMOMs spa social; I got to get my nails done yeah!


*** Edited*** I guess I can't count. He got 6 caps not 5. 3 on top 3 on bottom.

Education or Environment

Judah -"Mom, you know that patch of trees behind our school? I think they are going to knock those down to build the new 4th and 5th grade center."


Josiah- "Oh no, that is bad for the environment."


Judah- "Bad for the environment, but good for our education."


Josiah- "What is an education?"


Judah- "I know, but I don't know how to tell you."


Josiah- "Mom, what's an education?"


Me- "It's what you are taught. If someone teaches you something they are educating you."


Judah- "That makes teachers educators."

Happy Super Bowl

Jeremy’s Awesome Cheese Dip

1 block velveeta
2 cans rotel
1 can golden mushroom soup
1 ½ lbs sausage (turkey for us)

Heat in crockpot until cheese is melted.
Enjoy.

Because some things like the super bowl, call for plastic.

That is a lot of Animal crackers.

I was getting ready to go out for a friend’s birthday party, and the big kids were watching the babies, and Judah comes running in to tell me that the babies had got out the animal crackers and were getting them all over the kitchen. I thought well that should keep them busy for a little bit, thinking that maybe they each had a handful or so.

I was wrong. They were ALL over the kitchen.

The animal crackers were from my sister’s wedding, four years ago. They were in the bottom of the pantry and pretty much forgotten about until, this morning when I took everything out of the pantry because our dishwasher was leaking water into the pantry and the floor was all wet. Which leads me to my next point; we got a new dishwasher today.

We just got our tax return back, and it really wasn’t what we had planned on spending it on. I got kind of bummed that we were going to have to spend it on something practical instead of something fun, but Jeremy pointed out to me how good God is because every time something big breaks or needs to be replaced it always happens right when we have the money to fix it. It really couldn’t have come at a better time. We decided to go ahead and get the new washer and dryer we had been wanting while we were at it. We didn’t really need a new dryer as we just replaced ours last year, but our washer is over 10 years old and it is on its way out.

Now the animal crackers have all been thrown away

and the kids have a new toy to play with.

History test, shmistory test.

I’ve been a little down lately, and so instead of droning on about what I did and didn’t get done today, we’ll do something different.

What are some of the blogs I like to read? Oh well I’m so glad you asked here they are.

http://annasjoyblog.blogspot.com/ My lovely sister who has some awesome things going on in her life right now, she always does actually.
http://organichomeschooling.blogspot.com/ My awesome cousin who is way crunchier than I will ever be, and I don’t know how she does it! Who also doesn't blog often enough.
http://smashedpeasandcarrots.blogspot.com/ love love love this one, I am so stealing a bunch of her ideas.
http://thelettereleven.blogspot.com/  See boys can blog too- this is the husband of one of my message board twin mom friend’s
http://thetoddlerwhisperer.blogspot.com/

I also follow a lot of my twin mom friends in their journey of mothering twins too.

So that dear reader is what I read. Besides this one of course, what are your favorites?

Dinner tonight was Cowboy stew, I thought it could use more flavor, it only got a 2 kid rating, not surprising.

What’s that? You want to know how I did on my first test in over 12 years. I got a 96% on it, I only missed 2 questions. I guess that is ok. People say that online classes are harder, I am finding this to not be the case, but my next one starts on Monday so I will be taking two classes, we’ll see how I feel about it in another couple weeks.

Highs and Lows

Highs

Got to sleep in

Got to be lazy this morning

Got to eat lunch with my Babe and my Besty and her Dude

Got to study for my History test with my Besty

Got to make a great dinner* and eat it

Got great news from sister

Got to go to the Y and do Zumba

Got to read to the kids before they went to bed

Got the kitchen cleaned up

Lows

Didn’t get to do Shred

My Babe is sick

Did not make wise choices at lunch

Still not ready for my History test

Did not get to see my beautiful nephews today

Lost my temper with my children

Was rude to the nice nursery workers at the Y







*Dinner was Cinnamon and brown sugar pancakes with turkey bacon and we were supposed to have pears, but we ran out of time. 4 out of 5 kid rating. Strange because the one that threw them on the floor usually likes pancakes.

And now to bed!

Today I took Avrah to school, went to the post office, went over to a sad friend's house and hopefully helped cheer her up a little bit. Came home, fed babies, played with babies, went and got Avrah from school, put babies down for nap, cleaned up house from babies, made dinner, took big boys to Jiu Jitsu, fed the babies and Avrah said dinner, Jeremy brought big boys home from Jiu Jitsu, and the big boys ate and changed, went to a life group meeting, fellowshipped, ate cheese cake and awesome guacamole, came home put the babies in bed, put the big kids in bed, and now blogging.

Thank you Babe, for cleaning up the kitchen after dinner. One of the many many reasons I am thankful for you!

Also found time in all that to do Shred and get caught up on Lost, but did not find time to study for my history test which I am taking on Friday. Tonight for dinner we had Chicken and broccoli bake with wild rice and cantaloupe. 2 kids ate it all, 1 kid ate the rice, and two kids ate the cantaloupe.

Not taking it for granted.

I found out some sad news from a friend today. It made me realize how blessed I am, how precious life is. Today I mostly just hung out with my babies, watched them play silly games like dump out the shoe bins and stand on them and then jump off of them.
Hosea has a new word it is "up", but he uses it for all of the prepositions, if he means in, on, out, up, off, he just says up and when you say "oh you want this on here" he looks at you like yeah that's what I just said. Also he has started saying "yea" and shaking his head, this is usually in response to a question. "Hosea do you want some raisons?" "Yea". Of course I am trying to get him to say yes, but again he just looks at me like I'm crazy.
I did get my kitchen and my floors cleaned, I love it when my floors are clean, but that lasts all of like 5 minutes when the big kids get home.

Tonight we had Greek Tilapia and parsley potatoes with lemon pepper green beans. 4 out of 5 kid rating. I LOVED it; I was really surprised, because as I was making it I was thinking this is not going to be good. I'm a little iffy about fish anyway and when I pulled the fish out to marinate it, it did not smell good, well it smelled like fish. But it was sooooo good. What's that? Oh you want the recipe. Well I just happen to have it right here.

1 1/2 lbs Tilapia fillets
1/4 c fresh squeezed lemon juice (I think I used more though I used 2 whole lemons)
1/4c oil
1T Worcestershire,
3t Greek seasoning (I only had about 1 1/2 so I just added a little salt and pepper too)

Combine all ingredients; marinate for 1-2 hours. Place in shallow baking dish (I marinated mine in the baking dish) and bake covered at 350 for 20 minutes or until flaky

Modify?

Anybody out there have or had recently an 8 year old? Anybody have any idea if this is “normal”? My son Judah uses words like “modify”, I don’t think I even use that word. Here is how it went down. On our way home from Jui Jitsu and Judah and Josiah were playing some kind of game that Judah made up, not real sure about what it was all about because I wasn’t really paying attention until he started saying this.

“MOM! Josiah keeps modifying my game that I made up. And it won’t be my game any more if he keeps modifying it. Josiah, don’t modify my game anymore!”

And he went on and on and on about it. I’m not sure they got it figured out, but I told Josiah to make up his own game to which he said that all the games had already been made up and he didn’t know what to make one up about.

Dinner was spaghetti and salad with apples and walnuts it was delicious and got surprisingly 5 out of 5 kids!

Now if you excuse me I have to study for a test I have to take sometime between now and Saturday. Anybody want to watch some kids for me so I can go take a test? Didn’t think so.