Growing skills in parenting and organizing.
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Every year when we pull out the Christmas decorations, our kids love these 2 Favorite Advent Toys. I love that every day during December they play with these and it helps them to remember that we are really celebrating the birth of Jesus. The fact that they are only out for one month during the year makes them special.
Last night we went to our local Christmas parade. I forgot what going to a parade with a 4-year-old is like. It was a blast. She loved everything about it. The lights, the candy and especially waving at everyone was so much fun to my little girl. We had debated whether or not we were even going to go and everything fell into place that we did it and I am so glad.
Does everyone else feel like this week is crunch time? I feel like everything has to be done by this Friday. I am starting to have so many lists in my head that I am forgetting things.
Last weeks goals:
Family
House/Home
Blog
This weeks goals:
2 Huge Tasks that I have to FOCUS on completing!
What I really want to be doing is working on planning our trip to Napa next summer. I need to stay off the Napa info until after Christmas but I keep procrastinating.
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I am so grateful to a friend that told me to keep my waterproof crib sheet. Who knew there are other uses for waterproof crib sheets? I would have never thought I would need it after the crib stage. Now when my kids are sick and I can protect my furniture from potential accidents.
Here is my little girl today.
She had to have a small procedure and the doctor gave her a muscle relaxer to help her through it. He warned me that she would want to lay around the next few hours and to make sure she was on her side if she fell asleep because the medicine could cause her stomach to be upset. Cue Mommy panic about what could happen to the furniture. Luckily, I keep these sheets in the closet so I can pull them out and protect my furniture.
These are the sheets that we used when the kids were babies.
They were great because you made up the bed with your regular crib sheet and then snapped this over top of the regular sheet. Then when your little one’s diaper leaked in the middle of the night you could just unsnap this sheet and not have to remake the bed at 3:00 am.
I don’t know about you but my boys had middle of the night diaper leaks almost every night. I guess it is a boy thing because my daughter had no problem.
When I bought these I had no clue that they would still be used 8 years later, I would say they have been a good purchase.
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So this week I get to sit back, relax and let my husband do the work. He would say that is what happens every week but whatever! 😉
I finally convinced him to pressure wash our front porch, bottom part of our house and windows. Let me just preface that we know it was desperately needed and like always it is embarrassing showing the before pictures. We live in a coastal area so everyone has to pressure wash their homes once a year to keep the green mold away so this is maybe a year and a half since the last time we did it which is way too long.
Here is the front porch.
Yes, I am hanging my head in shame. I can’t believe we let it get this bad. Especially, because we actually own a pressure washer. So I did what every good wife should do in this situation and nagged her husband to take care of this task.
Please ignore the landscaping. That is on our to do list soon.
Britton having some fun running through the spray.
My husband likes his pressure washer and it has paid for itself over the years. Here is an affiliate link if you think it will be a good gift for your husband. Men like tools, right?
After my husbands hard labor, it is all sparkly clean!
And we can sit back and relax after a hard days work…see, I get to take part of the credit too.
Let’s take a look again at the after again…ahh…much better.
Now I am going to say what we should never say, I will never let it get that bad again! Next, for the outside is taking care of our landscaping and weeds. Let me go find my husband, Ha Ha!!
Yes, it is true. Eating Popsicles helps me lose weight. Here is how.
After dinner, I can’t stop eating sweets. I eat when I want to relax. I eat when I am stressed. I love to eat no matter what, who’s with me? It is a terrible habit but when I find that all my snacking has caught up with me and I have gained a few pounds I switch to Sugar Free Popsicles as my after dinner snack. My girlfriends all laugh at me when I tell them but it works.
Sugar Free Popsicles are only 10 calories each. So, in my crazy head I can eat 10 of them and it would only be 100 calories. Now, I never actually get to 10 popsicles, but in my mind if I tell myself I can then it seems like such a treat and I am not depriving myself. It takes about 5 mins to eat a popsicles so I get that satisfaction of a sweet snack that takes a long time to eat. At most I have 2 -3 and then I am satisfied and (BONUS) I have only had 20 – 30 calories.
I love tricks like this so if you have anything similar please share with me!
I don’t know about you but I love receiving Christmas Cards from friends and family. I like seeing the kids growing up. I even like the families that send the letters updating us on everything they have been doing. I don’t send a letter but I do send out a photo card.
After all the time and energy getting the right photo of the kids and selecting the best layout of the card, I didn’t want to just throw our family card into a box to not be seen again. It brings such joy to look at how far we have come as a family.
Here is how to use your Christmas cards to decorate.
First – I decided to buy frames and frame our cards. I bought 10 frames at Target so I would be able to use the same frames for several years. I need to go look and see if they still have these and buy some more. Here are some great ones on Amazon.
Second – I had to decide on a size for the cards. I only order 5 x 7 cards now. If you notice close in the picture above, the year before I decided to do this I had used a landscape card so it has a different frame.
Third – We store them with our decorations so every year so these are only out during December.
My kids love to look at them and it brings back memories of different years. These have become one of my top 3 Christmas decorations.
I am proud to say that I finished reading a book! I want to say that I love reading but after having kids I realized that I am not a good book reader and Mom. My problem is that I get completely involved with reading and hate to put the book down so I end up staying up half the night to read just “one more chapter”. Anyone with me?? 🙂 Then I wake up the next morning and am cranky and have no patience.
With all the traveling I did last week I took a book with me (plus my Grandmother’s house has no internet). I read The Girl on the Train.
Such a good book. I am usually a romance reader but love a good thriller occasionally.
Let’s catch up. My Grandmother passed away last week. I am super sad and trying to deal with it so can’t even write about it yet. My in-laws did a fantastic job watching the kids. I am so thankful they could watch them.
Let’s talk about Goals for the week, I am not even going to go over last weeks goals since I didn’t even look at them since I was away from internet. I did get most of the Christmas Cards complete.
Let’s go with a fresh start.
This weeks goals:
Family
House/Home
Blog
My beautiful Grandmother went to heaven yesterday. I know she will go straight to heaven as there is no one I know who is more faithful and obedient to the Lord than her. She is going to be terribly missed. She has 9 children and 25 grandchildren and even more great grandchildren. What a strong woman. My Granddaddy died when they were in their late 40’s so she has raised our family all by herself. Amazing.
I will be on a blog break for the rest of the week to be fully present with my family during these tough times.
I hope you had a great Thanksgiving holiday. I love having the whole week off to head to my parents beach house. We couldn’t have had better weather. It was warm and sunny. We heated up their pool and went swimming and swam in the tidal pools at the beach.
We enjoyed reconnecting with cousins and having lots of laughs. Even finished a 1,000 piece puzzle.
My youngest sister and I were able to see a small Darius Rucker concert. It was so fun since it was a small event with open bar. The sky was a clear blue and it was so fun to experience it with my sister.
My Mom does an incredible turkey dinner. This is a small peak at her new kitchen, it is gorgeous. Maybe one day we can do a tour of the renovations to the entire house.
Let’s talk about this upcoming week. It is Christmas Season!! Woohoo! I could tell by the line at the post office that the crowds have begun to come out for shopping and errands. I have lots to do to get ready, I am sure you do to.
Last weeks goals:
Family
House/Home
Blog
This weeks goals:
Family
House/Home
Blog
I hope everyone enjoys the rush this week brings to the season. We put up our 12 foot tree last night and it is way bigger than we expected but looks great. I can’t wait to put the decorations on it.
I hope you are enjoying your holiday. We are spending time with family so I am going to take the rest of the week off from the blog. If you are visiting for the first time feel free to take a look at my favorite posts so far.
Here is a preview of our new family photos. I am so happy with how they turned out.
