Singing in the Tub

All you can see here is nothing special. :) Pause the music at the bottom of my blog and listen on the video as Samantha tests her vocal limits in the bathtub. I thought it was really cute! The song she was singing is from Shark Boy and Lava Girl. I remember singing in the bathroom when I was little too. The acoustics truly are amazing!

Modernizing Myself

I'm so behind the times! I FINALLY set up a YouTube account when I got my Flip video for Christmas. The thing I really like about it is that now I can add a little more character to my blog and the internet instead of always going for the still photos.

Nothing against still photos, but I lost my Adobe Photoshop and have been mourning the loss. Thus, my blog has been quite empty lately because I don't want to face the fact that I have no Photoshop. I can hardly bring myself to open my photos in some dumb photo editor that only lets you rotate your pictures. So . . . now that I can do videos, I'm having all kinds of fun playing with my little video program! It's so super duper easy!!!

Anyway, YouTube just allows me to post videos to my blog so easily now. So I'll share the one I took today of Alexandra.

A little background on the video: I was sitting in the kitchen and noticed that Alex was sitting with Max having a little conversation and talking in a special "baby" voice just for him. I peeked over the table to see her going through Max's bag and showing him all the contents one by one. She sounded so cute sitting there talking to him that I just had to pull out the camera real quick. She didn't notice me at first, but as soon as she saw the camera she immediately struck a pose. It was so funny to me! What have we done to our kids?!! When I was little I HATED having my picture taken. Now it's just second nature for kids.

Scrumptious Bat Eyeballs

Yesterday I decided to try something new, again. I got out the black-eyed peas and created a new dish for my family that I had when I was little. When I was getting ready to cook them I told Nathan to come and look at what I was going to make. He said, "WHAT ARE THOSE? ! I told him, "They are eyeballs. We are having eyeballs for dinner. Do you want eyeballs for dinner?" "Yeah!"

We sat and watched the eyeballs boil and he and Alex got a real kick out of the beans boiling to the surface and "looking" at she and Nathan.

When Athena and Samantha came home from school, I passed the word along that we were having eyeballs for dinner. When I showed them the eyeballs, Athena was too smart for me. She told me that eyeballs aren't that small and they had to be beans. I said, nope! Eyeballs CAN be that small. These are bat's eyeballs. She still didn't believe me, but had to see for herself. She got a fork, pulled out a bean, and took it to the table to dissect it. After the dissection I couldn't really tell if she was doubting or if she had satisfied her curiosity.

When it came time to finally eat dinner I served up the black-eyed peas (bat eyeballs) over rice and guess who had the hardest time eating it . . . . Athena!


OK, it looked better than this when I first served it up. This is Athena's plate after she pushed it around and around during dinner time.
Here is Samantha working on her eyeballs.

Alexandra was the first one done with her dinner. She really liked it!

After awhile I was really trying to get the kids to eat because they were just sitting there wasting a whole lot of time messing around at the table. I told Athena to just EAT HER FOOD! She said, "Well then quit calling them eyeballs. I can't eat eyeballs. Tell me they are beans. I can eat beans." LOL! So I said, "Fine, then eat your "beans", even though they are eyeballs." Poor Athena. She did finally finish, by the way.

I also made my first batch of cornbread to go with the dinner and it was so good! When I pulled out my cornmeal to make the bread I realized I was about 1/4 cup short of what I needed . . . so it was a perfect chance to try making my own cornmeal! I got out my grinder and made cornmeal for the first time and it turned out to be so much better than the storebought corn meal. The bread turned out really moist - not the dry, falling-apart cornbread that I remember. Now I'll have to make it again. :) The picture doesn't quite do justice to how tasty it was.

Last of all, here is Nathan. He finished his dinner without much complaining, too. I think this is a dinner we will have to try again. Maybe next time I'll call them beans.

New Year's Resolutions

I've never really been one for New Year's resolutions, but this year we decided to set some as a family. We sat down together and talked about what we could do to strengthen our family, voted on our favorites, and agreed on them together. I really like that the kids helped us come up with them and that we worked together. I figure the more places I put them, the more I'll remember what I need to do, so I'm posting them to my blog! :)

Our church goals are:

• Have a morning devotional as a family. We get up at 7am and read a scripture, sing a song, and have prayer as a family. That's been going well. :)
• No playing on Sunday morning and only church videos

Our family goals are:

• 1 hour of deep cleaning together on Saturdays
• Do a family activity two times a month

My personal goal:

• I will take better care of my home FOR my family.

Seeing as this is really one of the first times I've made goals at the beginning of the year, I'm hoping to really stick to them. I don't have a record either way with resolutions, but I'm looking forward to the improvements within my family with these goals.

Dangerous Toffee

Teresa, your toffee was SO GOOD! The good thing about it is that it was sooooo good!!! The bad thing about it is that I ate almost all of it today ALL BY MYSELF! I'm hoping that it all counts towards only today's calorie count and I don't have to punish myself for it tomorrow.

Christmas Carnage

We had a wonderful Christmas. Everything went much more smoothly than in years past. Maybe it's because the kids are getting older.

I got an iFlip and just had to share this great new video I took after everything was opened! :) I think I'll have a lot of fun with it. Feel free to scroll down on my blog and pause my music to better hear the video.

Up and Moving

We finally got our Windows 7 CD in the mail, but unfortunately I was too sick to do anything about it. I am just getting over being sick for 2 weeks. I came down with the flu. Then it turned into bronchitis and by the time I went to the doctor he told me it was settling into pneumonia. 11 stinking days with a fever and just being able to lay on the couch! At least I've been able to still eat through the whole ordeal, although I haven't had much of an appetite. Also, thank goodness for facebook. At least I didn't feel completely isolated!

I looked at my posts for November and it's shameful. I MUST get on top of this blog thing! I really do like to blog . . . so once I get this Windows 7 installed, I will also go ahead and install my photoshop, microsoft office, and my homesite. Then I will truly be up and running with nothing hanging over my head. :)

I've had to take a little leave from my exercising which I love so much and I hope to be able to return on Monday. Last night my visiting teachers were so kind and they brought in dinner - which was quite tasty! Also, there was so much food that we get to eat leftovers tonight and I don't have to get up and cook. It really was a relief to have one thing less to do when right now I get out of breath just standing.

I'm hoping that by the time I post again I'll be going full swing and will be able to post some nice, colorful, happy, long-awaited, already-behind-the-times pictures of my family and of our trip.