Laying low for week 4

Sometimes, though you may find it hard to believe, I get tired of taking pictures. While I love the memories and such, I honestly get tired of pulling out the camera to miss the good shot or always snapping instead of just enjoying. So I took a week off basically. I have some pictures but not as many as normal. We sort of just took a week off as we had been on the go and I knew our schedule would be jam packed again with things to do for 9 days straight without a day at home.

As some may have seen on my facebook page, we got glow sticks for the bath tub. The kiddos got to take a bath in the dark with the light of the glow in the water. I will be honest, I was a little jealous. It was so much fun for them. The girls did decorate the bathroom with the sticks after bath time and it was rather nice to get up my normal 6 times in the night and have the bathroom lit up without waking me up completely.

We also had a canning day with Hannah and Izzy over. We did a 2nd run of green beans and spicy pickles. It's much more entertaining with friends and it benefits us all. Since we have more beans than we need and I appreciated the help. The ladies were glad they could have Izzy to play with during the extensive event. The kiddos got soft pillow cases in the mail from Grammy and they played with them in every way they could think of, minus being used for the intended purpose, it was quite entertaining.

We had plans to go and pick blueberries but the blueberry patch we were counting on didn't seem to be open since I couldn't get a hold of them and was too far away to drive to find out it wasn't open. So back up plan I randomly remembered as a child using celery as a stamp for decoration shirts with flowers. I also made potato stamps for the girls and it turned out to be a time consuming process for the budding artists. I am slow and had a tough lesson to learn, do not expect much when painting while clumsily pregnant. I dropped paintbrushes on the girls shirts I was painting for them. I think I only dropped 1 on Lilli's but Baylee's shirt I dropped twice and had to find ways to cover it. Baylee got a sparkly winged hummingbird to cover hers and Lilli got a bouquet that was much more elaborate than I had planned. Only to then find out when we bought Lilli's shirt, we grabbed one that had a hole in the back of it. I was done painting and I didn't have the motivation to do another. The girls did a fantastic job on their shirts and enjoyed making them. I did also learn 3 bottles of puffy paint is not nearly enough for 3 girls to accent their shirts.

Cody brought home a turtle one morning to which, yes I put my foot down and said we didn't need a turtle. I figure we have enough going on right now adding to my work load was not fair and I turned him away. Lilli and Baylee had a blast playing with him for a while and moving him all around the house to which I had to send them outside so they didn't lose him again. Turtles can be surprisingly fast when they want to.

That Saturday we let Baylee pick out her new set of earrings since it was time for her to change them. The pickings were slim since her ears are so small but she settled on some very shiny flowers. We then walked around the mall since it was the flea market weekend. The girls had an older gentleman give them money for the fountain to throw in and as we were leaving, they each got a random tin box that some guy was selling but just gave them because they are cute. Then we went grocery shopping which takes a bit since I do the 2 week menu and ad match and coupon. Yes I'm that lady most of you are in line behind and say dirty things under your breath about. But why pay more than you have to? Unfortunately, being a stay at home mom doesn't pay very well in the monetary department, though it is more than made up for in other ways. It's also helpful when Cody goes, which I am lucky he loves to go with us and is very patient with my money saving games.

 I guess I forgot to add on a previous post that the weekend before, we went and had Chinese food at our favorite buffet here, which both girls adore and I am quite fond of as well. Lilli even remembered it from before. We told them it was a surprise day and we got food then were going to go bowling but all of the alleys were closed until late that night...surprise, failed plans. We went and saw Brave instead. They enjoyed it, Tanner lost interest but I wanted to watch so we stood on the side and I held him since that set up was acceptable to him. The girls started playing "Brave" around the house every day and Cody ended up getting them bows and arrows to help with the game. Teaching them how to shoot took longer than expected but they have loved going "bow and arrowing" as they call it and both have it down now. Luckily for us, they each kill about 8-20 bears a day, thus taking care of the bear issue we had. :)