Is this reallly how it's going to be today?

Falling under the-I can't believe I'm saying this category

Today's favorite is something I would never in a million years consider to be a favorite.

I had a few other things in mind, but I decided I needed to count my blessings.

Today's favorite is.....tax season. Yes, you heard me tax season. I had heard what tax season was like before we were out of college. T grew up with his dad as a CPA, my SIL had already lived a few years through it. It didn't sound fun. And don't get me wrong, it's not that fun.

But, being 23 when we bought this house and T started tax season I was still young and selfish. I was inconvenienced. It was all about me! I was home alone with little kids. I didn't have a husband. Well, time and maturity tends to change ones perspective.

A very dear loved one lost a job this week. So, can I really complain that T has too much work?

No, I can't. Here are the reasons I love tax season:

1) Self-employment has it's advantages and disadvantages. One advantage is that he won't be laid off. Business might go down, but he won't be fired.

2) Absence makes the heart grow stronger. I love that my husband will work 70 plus hours of stressful work to take care of us and allow me to stay home.

3) I love that it makes him want to live life after it's all over. He loves to spend time together and go on trips, etc. because it somehow it makes it all worth it.

4) It's the best time of year for it. Holidays are over, the weather still stinks, not much going on anyway.

5) Taxes are just going to get harder and more complicated, giving us job security.

6) I get to winess that honesty pays off. They try to be honest in every way possible in their business, and the business (and us) are blessed.

6) Like all things, it ends!

This is not to say that I still won't have an attitude at times. If I do, I should re-read this.

And some years are harder than others. This year everyone is old enough to play and not need me every second (just every other).

The other thing that is my favorite today is parent payday moments. I always wonder how my kids are doing and if they are gaining a testimony.

B has been reading the New Testament reader and he came out of his room last night so excited and said, "I know why the church was taken off of the earth! All of the apostles died and there was no church until Joseph Smith came!" He had finished the whole thing in less than two weeks. It is exciting to see testimonies being born.

Making progress...

So, I decided to go with Violet Whimsy (not violent whimsy) for Capri's room--the same color as my bathroom.

I got it done this weekend.

My crib set:

This is the bumper, which made me decide on purple so it would contrast.The comforter. I think I'm going to try to find some green fabic for the curtains so I have pink, purple and green in the room.

I just found the coolest thing

So, I lost my primary book (and my Bear book-what is my deal?) today and I was trying find the lyrics to Choose the Right Way for family night. And I found the coolest website. It is an interactive church music web-site.
You can search for songs and then you can actually play the music. You have options of music with words/no words/melody etc.

This is perfect for my musically challenged family. I love the Internet.

It's 100 Day

At school they get to celebrate 100 day. Today is my 100 day. 100 more days until my due date. And I've gained 100 pounds :)
I was hoping this would be my 100th post, but it is my 98th. It would have been 99, but I deleted one because weird people kept looking at it.
Happy 100 day.

Disclaimer on last post: We tried the quesadillas in the book. You could taste the squash way too much and it didn't go over very well.

Friday's Favorite: Deceptively Delicious

My family is eating veggies without even knowing it.

So, I've heard of this book and been semi-intrigued but I haven't wanted to spend the money. Then I saw it at Seagull for $7.50 and bought it. You may have heard of it. It is written by Jerry Seinfeld's wife and I think it was featured on Oprah.

I have been a little intimidated by the thought of making all of the purees. But when I read through the book, I thought it looked doable. So I made butternut squash, cauliflower, and broccoli purees. She usually uses about ½ cup of puree per recipe, which is about the size of a Baby 2nd Food. I found that the homemade squash was about 70 cents per half cup, and I could get a baby food squash at Wal-mart for 25 cents. The broccoli was only 22 cents and the cauliflower was 16 cents.

Anyway, so far I have put pureed squash in Billies mac n' cheese recipe, pureed squash and tomatoes in my taco meat (which I think made the meat taste better than usual), pureed cauliflower in my Crock-pot Italian chicken, and chickpeas in my Chocolate Chip Cookies that I made for the Blue Gold Banquet.

No one has noticed and everything has been really good. I was not going to let it intimidate me and maybe try one breakfast, one dinner, and one dessert from her book per week. But I've enjoyed it so much that I think that once you get started you will find many ways to add these purees to your food.

For those of you who have kids who love their veggies already, maybe this isn't that neat. For the rest of us, I would highly recommend this book. I'm hooked!

I feel like I should get loyalties for doing these favorites.

Thursdays Tips of the Day

Being a semi-disorganized person I'm always looking for tips on how to simplify and make my life easier.

Here are three tips that I have learned recently. The first two I learned from my friend Z while at a cabin weekend we had together.

1)I started saving used ziplock bags and making Brandon bring his home from his lunch. Then I put them by the diaper garbage and zip up stiinky diapers before you throw them away. This helps a lot with garage smells. (Which I'm sure you know can get pretty bad in the summer)

2) Save a couple plastic juice containers like this one. Then when you go to make Crystal, Kool-aid, frozen juices it is already in a nice 2 quart container so you don't have to measure. You just shake. Frozen juice concentrates have to mostly thawed so it will fit through the hole. With the square bottle it also can lay on its side in a full fridge.

3) This one comes in handy if you especially if you have three kids of the same gender, who are very close in age. C and B could share shirts, and C and T could share shirts. I would love it if we had just had one big shirt bin with everyone's shirts, but no way. You would think that being boys they wouldn't be so possessive of their clothing. But, someone has once bitten for wearing another's shirt. They don't share clothing nicely.

Anyway, sometimes I have a hard time remembering whose shirt is whose, so one day we went through all of their shirts and I made cut one in the tag for B, 2 cuts for C, and 3 for T. If there was no tag, I used a marker. This way I'm not using initials, so when they get handed down I can just make another cut and not have to cross off a name. This had made laundry a whole lot easier.

So these are my tips of the day. Do you have any? I would to hear!

By the way, Tammie you need to let me know if you want to be the 3rd winner on pay it forward. Debbie was the 3rd commenter but she isn't playing, so you are the next in line.

Let me know if you want to play.

Paying it forward

The first 3 people to leave a comment on this post will receive a hand made gift from me during this year. When and what it will be is a surprise. There's a small catch...You knew there would be didn't you? Post this on your blog then come back and leave a comment, telling me you're in. Fun, huh? Remember, only the first 3 comments receive the gift. Let's see who looks at my blog!If I don't have your home address, please leave it for me.

I'm living with a (holiday) Nazi

So, I'm not sure what happened to B, but he has become obsessed to the point of annoying about holidays.

Maybe it all started when I gave him a friend Birthday party at age 4. Three years later he is barely starting to differentiate the difference between a Birthday PARTY and a Birthday. (One being a celebration and one being the day on which one was born. This is an issue because 2 of my 3 kids have tax season birthdays, therefore we have to celebrate with families on the weekends sometimes)

Anyway, starting in January he decided he wanted to be a Ninja, so he turned his black PJ top backwards and wore black PJ's bottoms as soon as he got home from school, slept in the them and then started the process over. And of course little brothers have to follow suit.

A little annoying, especially if one wanted to leave the house and all of my kids are looking ridiculous, but a cute little stage that will pass right? Wrong.

So, Valentines Day is getting closer and he now a red Ninja, day and night. As soon as Valentines Day is over he is now a green Ninja for St. Patricks day. The only all green clothes he has is a church sweater and the nastiest hand-me-down green PJ pants with stains and holes everywhere.

I'm trying to be tolerant but this is driving me crazy. You can only wear the same clothes for so long! I told him today that if I didn't find those green clothes in the laundry they might accidentally end up in the garbage. He sufficed himself by finding a decent green shirt to wear to school.

Look at the calendar people, St. Patricks day is one month from today! We don't need to celebrate that for a month. When I was growing up, hopefully you remembered to wear green that day and giggled all day at the thought of being pinched. Maybe someone wore green underwear so they could pinch back all day. That was the extent of it.

Maybe it's my fault. My sister told me that a leprachuan came to her house during the night and turned the milk green, so I invited a leprachuan to my house to do the same. He turns the milk and the waffle batter green during the night.

B has also been crossing off the days on the calendar in pink for V-day. Today he started marking it off in green. He also told me that if I found time today I should make some green juice.

Cute, but annoying at the same time.

Valentines Day Fun

Making crazy heart guys (Thanks Stephanie!). They later got light sabers added to them

so they could feel the love.A mobile we made for scouts.Opening a sugar fest and new movies.Pink eggs. (You can't really tell in this picture) Stuffed French Toast. This was definitely a holiday breakfast as it had cream cheese, chocolate chips and 1/2 and 1/2 for the ingredients. It was a little too sweet for breakfast for me but the kids liked it.

Making sugar cookies.

Candlelit dinner with the fam.



Heart-shaped bread for hamburgers.

Hope you had a great day!

New address

So, hopefully you made it my new address. I actually changed it and then changed it back the other day to see if would lose anything. It looked the same. The tonight when I made the actual change, I lost my blog list. (Not the private ones though). So I have just spent the last hour trying to rebuild it from memory.
If you aren't there, please don't be offended and just leave a comment with your blog address again! Thanks for your patience.
Love, Julie

Friday's Favorite: I looked out the window...

And what did I see?

Popcorn popping on the apricot tree!

You asked for it. Now hopefully you won't regret it and be bored. I'm going to start
Friday favorites! Why don't you join me?

Today's favorite is popcorn. This is probably more of Tristan's favorite than mine. I like popcorn, I eat popcorn, but I don't crave and absolutely need popcorn in order to make me know my weekend is complete.

I grew up on Air-Popped popcorn with soggy margarine and salt. Isn't that the only way popcorn is eaten? The thought makes Tristan shudder. I kind of like those soggy little pieces.

Tristan grew up on stove-made popcorn with real butter and no salt. (They don't even have any salt in their house, but that is another post). He used to make it just in a pot, but then his mom gave him this crank-handled maker for his Birthday. It's probably his most used gift he's ever been given.
If we don't have real butter in the house, he will NOT use margarine. He has been known to call the neighbors or drive ½ mile to his brother's house to borrow some. If it is Sunday and he is craving popcorn and there is no butter, it is total devastation!

He got this from his mother, as she is the same way. When we lived with them we had popcorn on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night.

His brother actually got one of those theater style popcorn makers for his Birthday. That is good popcorn.

I will eat this stove popped corn, but it is actually not my favorite. I like good old microwave popcorn now. I even found this microwave popcorn maker to make your own (I heard you can even make microwave popcorn in a brown lunch sack, I haven't tried this though). This way you can put less butter, or they even have popcorn flavorings now.

Fat-free microwave popcorn is actually a great diet snack. You get a lot more and it is a lot more filling than those 100 calorie packs where you get 2 small cookies and need about 5 of those bags to feel satisfied.

Movie popcorn: I've always been too cheap to spend that kind of money. For the cheap summer kid movies we actually pop our own and smuggle it in. Do you buy movie popcorn?

What kind of popcorn do you make at home?
Or do you have a husband like Karen's who can't stand the smell and won't let it be made it your house?

Also, remember that tomorrow this will no longer be my blog address. I will be at http://www.dreamingofbeaches.blogspot.com/

This will not be private, so you don't need an invite. Thanks-Julie

Random photo tag

You've been tagged. Here is what you do: grab your camera and take at least 5 random pictures around your house. No cleaning up first, this is your house as is:

Here is some catergories you could use:

Room that stays the cleanest

Work in progress

What someone else is doing right now

Favorite decor or display

Something that represents your current life

Favorite relaxing spot

Something hand-me-down

Etc. etc.

Work in progress: This is going to be Capri's room. Right now it is a library/junk room.

I got 12 boxes of girl clothes down to 9. Hopefully this will be a room fit for a little princess

in the next couple of months!

Favorite display. I got the clock for $12 at Winco (thanks to my MIL). The surfboard

and the violin are from Cocoa Beach. The frame is from our cruise. All good

memories. (Even Winco)Favorite place to relax. It may be big and not too attractive, but boy is it comfortable.What someone else is doing right now. Jumping from the couch the love sac. Nuf said.
Somethign that represents your life right now. Absent husband. Empty plate

ready for him to reheat dinner and eat by himself.

Room that stays clean. We don't use our living room a lot, but I am glad for a room

that stays (mostly) clean when people come to the front door. A great room for HT's.

Now tag three people: Joy, Tammie, Jana and whoever else wants to play.

New Blog Address

This Saturday, Feb. 14th I will be changing my blog address. As long as the name is still available, I will be www.dreamingofbeaches.blogspot.com. I decided to do this as a safety measure. Drop me a comment to let me know you read this change so that I can know who to notify. Thanks! Julie

Pray for Veiyah

I don't really have anything to post about, but I did want you to notice my site because I wanted you see my button to pray for Veiyah. She is a premature twin who is having open-heart surgery today. For more info click on the button.
We love you Ani! We are praying for her.

T's Birthday

#3 turned 3 years old yesterday. I can't believe he is already three, and I can't believe we had

a baby this week. I guess you can survive anything. It's also weird that he has three Birthdays being the youngest. Not for long though.

I found an ebay seller who sold every kind of chocolate mold you can think of. It was cheaper on shipping to buy more, so I had each of the boys pick something for their B-days. T picked Monsters Inc., B picked Star Wars and C picked Batman and Spiderman.

It took me 4 hours to make 10 of these suckers. And then I was asked if my kids made them!

Oh well, T liked them.

See New Years resolution #10 He got lots of fun things including a Viewmaster Projector with lots of reels, Elefun, cars, a string art set, new jacket etc.

A new playdough set.

Happy Birthday T! We love having you in our family!

Today's favorite: Shoe Carnival

A while ago, my friend Krista starting doing Friday's favorite on her blog. Every Friday she picks something that is her favorite from a food, kitchen utensil, color and blogs about it.

I know today isn't Friday, and this probably won't be consistent, but I decided to do a favorite today.

My favorite is the Shoe Carnival. I love this store. I am a picky shoe person and this is the only place in Idaho Falls that I can really find shoes that I like. These shoes were clearance and all of their clearance shoes were buy one get one free. So, I was going to get both for $20.

If you've never been to here, they make announcements every few minutes (even if you are the only one in the store) about how if you buy in the next half-hour you get the spin the wheel, etc.)

So, I go to buy my shoes and I spin the wheel and get an extra $5 off. Then he asks me my name and announces that Julie has just got $5 off her purchase (luckily the only other people in the store were my friends Tammie and Shannon, and my mom and Tyce.

So anyway, to make a long story short I got both of these shoes for $15. And according to Stacey and Clinton a red shoe can be a neutral and be worn with lots of things that "go" not "match".

We'll see!