cabinet

With all his nice weather we have had lately I have been getting more and more anxious for my favorite time of the year! SUMMER! The warm weather, playing outside, picnics, swimming, drinking lemonade in my back yard. festivals, movies outside, and yard sales!!! I love yard sales!
Lat year I found this cabinet at a yard sale and I had to have it!!!!! it still needs a coat of paint but it's perfect for all my crafts. it sits in our living room/craft room/ playroom. (we spend a lot of time in this room)only problem It's so unorganized! So one day I got to work.

the best part of organizing all my stuff was finding things I forgot about and getting a new itch to start more crafts! My husband always jokes with me that I have about 10 crafts that are still in progress so why do I feel like I need to start more? my answer is.......just because! :)

I decided to help me complete my long list of projects I would tape some of the ideas to the inside of the doors. that way I see them and don't forget
I also found a few letters and cards that were sent to me from my family back in Uganda! I had to showcase those!!!

I am still debating on how I want to decorate our multifunction room. I am leaning toward yellow but I am not completely sold on it yet, so It my still be a while before this cabinet gets painted. At least I know it's organized :)

my kind of shopping

I got the idea for the cake reveal of the sex for the baby from my mama! But she had to work that night so she wasn't able to be there. to make it up to me, we went Thrift store shopping!!!!!!!
So my mom, sister, sister's friend and Miss Belle set off for a full day of fun!

Here is some of the interesting things we found:

old records turned into bowls! (my brother Jarrod would like them)
I loved this purse I am having a recent bird craze. I don't know why but I really like anything that has birds on it. I am thinking about decorating one of the rooms in our house with birds.
We found a very environment conscious store that sold reusable pads for that special time of the month. interesting............ I think we might have offended the clerk because we were laughing so hard! I do have to admit they were pretty but I couldn't bring myself to actually buy one. sorry mother nature.
My favorite bins in the world! SUPER CHEEP STUFF! I found a really pretty dress for only 3 dollars! but I don't think my growing belly would fit in it in the spring time :(
There was a really pretty decorated shelf not for sale I loved all the colors! made me thing about a certain desk in my hallway I might paint :)
One things for sure we had a lot of laughs picking out some really goofy things! this is one of them:
I love the candy corn eyebrows!

I am a huge fan of hats!!! I really wish it was a huge trend here to wear really cool colorful hats! maybe I will just start doing it and hope it catches on
LOOK Belle is with me on the hats!
My favorite thing I found was this pretty double sided booth! I dream of having a booth in our kitchen!
My sister is still at the age were she will not shop at second hand stores.She is defiantly the preppy one in our family :) She was so embarrassed by everything we actually thought about buying. Remember my love for posting embarrassing pictures of family members? This for all the eye rolling you gave me! :)
I did actually buy one thing :)
A newborn Dress for our new baby girl to come home from the hospital in! I keep looking at it and thinking about how little it is!
I had so much fun with some of my favorite people!

sneek peek, birthday, and school dance!

I have had an insane crazy weekend full of up's and up's and then a down but fallowed by tons more UP'S!!!!! I will share more details this week but for now here's a few previews:




Today is my Hubby's Birthday and Just because I love posting embarrassing pictures of my family here's one of Brian:
On Friday The Julia had her first school dance! Now I know what your thinking because everyone told me this, I know she's just in first grade and it was more of a school party with games and treats and they played music the whole time. The Julia promised me she wouldn't dance with a boy :)
She was so excited! She picked out a dress to wear and wanted me to curl her hair! That never happens! We have a deal that I get to do her hair for holidays, birthdays, and picture days but other than that she wont let me touch it! I think even if it wasn't a fancy REAL dance, my baby (er I mean big) girl was the best looking one there!

Sex

Sorry for the late post! I have had a super busy day!!!!

Growning up my family always kept the sex of the baby a surprize! We felt like it added to the birth and the moment when the doctor pulls the baby out and says "it's a...." I loved getting the phone calls of what my new brother or sister was! So when I was pregnant with Miss Belle it was a no brainier we wouldn't find out he was a girl until the day she was born.

This pregnancy Brian asked me if he could have say over the decisions with the baby. since he wasn't able to be at Julia's birth and I choose everything with Belle. I agreed, marriage is about compromises right?! But under one condition I wanted to find out in a special way not just at the doctors office.

So we had our sonagram this morning and I had the Ultrasound tech write down boy or girl on a paper and seal it up in an envelop. we stopped at the grocery store and I handed the envelop to the backery lady. I asked her to make a cake and write the answer on the cake. then box it up so we wouldn't find out, until dessert.

We asked Brian's mom and grandma to come over for dinner. Me and Brian cooked a yummy garlic roasted chicken! I zest a lemon!!!!!!!!!! seriously I am so proud of our dinner it was so good!!! Then I set my camera on timer and here is what happened:

1st offical belly pic

I have tons of maternity picture ideas racing through my head. I just wanted to get a little bigger in the belly area before I really started taking the pictures. I have a weird phobia that I look really fat an not pregnant. but the doctor thinks that I am a lot farther along than we originally thought. so they scheduled my ultrasound this week to find out for sure!


I got this idea for a picture on a onsie I saw for a newborn that had a picture of Iowa and said made in Iowa. I thought how cute if I colored a stamp on my belly that said made in Ohio.
(were we live)

It took me a little bit to get it perfect but I was happy with the end result! Now I have to talk my husband into doing the next pregnancy picture idea. If i can get him to do it I think it will be my new favorite picture of our family!!!!! I will post it as soon as I take it!

Stay at home mommy's lunch break

Things have been normal around here. (if that's possible) But I wanted to share a little glimpse into what normal loos like for me :)

Around 11:30 all three babies start getting hungry and when I mean hungry they all stand at the baby gate screaming at me in the kitchen cooking lunch. demanding me to hurry up! My husband was upstairs in th bedroom trying to hide from all the crying. I have a better tolerance for crying. but then again I guess most mom do.
fast forward an hour and all three babies and my husband had a full belly and were laying down to take naps. I saw my moment to clock out and take a break myself! so I went into the computer room and started catching up on my favorite blogs!
I noticed something moving across the street
It was a dog! eating the neighbors garbage and leaving a mess in her yard!
I borrowed some of Jerky's dog treats and noticed he was wearing a color with a tag! I walked the litter bug to his home. I was thinking to myself I couldn't leave all the trash to be carried away by the wind so I had to clean it up. I grabbed a garbage bag and some gloves and got to work.

Wouldn't you know it as I was walking back up our steps after cleaning everything up the garbage truck pulled into my street. I laughed and opened the door only to hear three babies telling me my lunch break was over! Back to work!!

Fat Tuesday

Since today is fat Tuesday I wanted to share with you ALL the wonderful food we ate while in Africa! That is probably the most asked question. what did you eat?

First of all I am a very picky eater and I was nervous I wouldn't like anything they had to offer us. I had herd about the fruit being the best tasting fruit in the world and I was excited about that. But I am not a veggie person and I was nervous about the meat. would we be eating snakes and lions? bugs?

Breakfast: not a common meal time for most Ugandans. luckily some of us had packed some instant coffee and hot chocolate, cereal bears and instant oatmeal. (I am picky but I can't skip Breakfast!)
Lunch and dinner: We had a mixture of pinapple, mangos, rice, pasta, potaotes, beef, and chicken. matoke (boiled and mashed green banana) maize and Cassava


The largest Grocery store close by! it was no where close to a super Walmart!

Our Kitchen staff was amazing! They worked their butts off everyday to cook us so much food everyday! They were told us Americans eat a lot! so they kept cooking! we told them for future trips they don't have to work that hard!
For drinks they had bottled water, coke, sprite, Bell beer, and a local favorite was a little like grape flavored Dr. Pepper they called Mirinda.
They made us some mango flavored koolaid......
But by far my favorite meal was the Roasted PORK!!!!!!!!!!!! o it was so yummy I just couldn't stop eating!
Yes all Three of those plates were mine! Everyone told me before my trip I was going to loose a lot of weight while I was in Africa but I don't think any of us did! We truly were treated like Kings and Queens!

I hope you dont PIG out too much on fat tuesday- hahahaha :) I laugh at my own jokes lol

things could still be worse

I woke up Friday feeling excited but not looking forward to the day ahead. does that make sense?
Well I had every right to feel that way! I was finally getting a van!!!!!! But the 2 hour drive that turned into a 7 hour drive, 3 kids complaining, car overheating 3 times, arguing with the dealership, having to leave my husband at a sketchy mom and pop shop to get the new car repaired, missing craft night with my best friend, and sore bum after all that driving was what I was So not wanting my day to go like! It was a nightmare!
The whole ride home the kids were getting rightfully stressed out and tiered of the car. I tried to be positive and tell them "things could always be worse!"
Austin says "no they couldn't!"
"You could be homeless, really sick, and just peed your pants and things could still be worse."
"I don't think things could be worse than that."





in the end it wasn't all bad I had a surprise steak dinner at my aunts house and then I got the phone call that my husband was on his was home and the van was running perfect now! Yeah My Van is perfect! I have officially crossed into the mommy world now!

well worth the mess!

Who is ready for a big mess?!?!

I found a way to make an arts and craft project that would be fun and safe for my 3 babies!
2 CUPS OF FLOUR
2 CUPS OF COLD WATER
FOOD COLORING
no worries about some of them wanting to taste the paint instead of actually painting! yeah! first I stripped them down to their diapers, covered the chairs with garbage bags and put a sheet on the floor. then gave each their own paper and a little paint on the trays, I stood back and took thousands of pictures!





Miss Belle is definitely my girlie girl! she wanted no part of the mess! so the boys more than made up for her part! can you guess whose painting is whose?

one more hint: Korben thought the paint tasted so good he wanted to see what the paper taste like!

afterwards they all fell asleep for an hour and a half! maybe all this extra work I did to get things ready and cleaning up was worth it. I think edible paint is going to be a reoccurring thing in this play group :)