I'm Back

I've totally neglected my blog for the last week or so. Things have been crazy: Nathan taking two on-line classes (have you ever tried to teach yourself chemistry? Yikes!), and he took the GRE last Wednesday. His score was higher than the average for the PA program he's applying to, and he talked to the admissions director at the school, and she will be calling him back with an interview date, hopefully by the end of the week. Nathan's classes will be over next week, so the stress level in our house should go down tremendously, and I should no longer feel like a single married mom! :)
Easter weekend was good. We spent the weekend with my parents. Saturday morning Nathan and my dad went turkey hunting (no luck...looks like we'll be buying our Thanksgiving turkey this year),  and my mom and I took Natalie to an Easter party hosted by a very sweet, very well-known lady in town. We missed the egg hunt, but got cupcakes, Easter books, and a treat bag. We will be sure to get to the party on time next year. Saturday evening, my mom, dad, a family friend, and I went to the Lorrie Morgan and Jesse Keith Whitley concert at a local wine company. Even though we were soaked and muddy, we had a blast and left there with lots of freebies (we met a couple of beer distributors who got into a little friendly competition). Easter Sunday was super relaxing. We enjoyed a nice service at church, an amazing lunch, and Natalie made out like a bandit with TWO Easter baskets.

It's been storming like crazy here for the last week. It's like we've gotten the same type of storm come through every night around the same time for the last several nights. There have been tornadoes, hail, and flooding all around. Thankfully my home is on high ground, and the levee to the lake behind my house was repaired last summer, so it's nice and strong. My family is from Poplar Bluff, MO (if you've watched the news or the weather channel in the last couple of days, you've likely heard of Poplar Bluff). Most of the town is under water, and several of my family members have had to evacuate and very well may lose most of their stuff. It's such a sad situation.

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Please pray for all those affected by the flooding. Some of my co-workers spent the afternoon sandbagging around their homes in Illinois. Praying they don't lose their homes and belongings, too.

This weekend is our subdivision yard sale. I'm so excited to get my storage room cleaned out!



Mother's Day

Mother's Day is right around the corner. Even though Father's Day is still a couple months away, Nathan very bluntly said, "For Father's Day, I want one of two things, depending on how much you want to spend: either a leaf blower, or a Stihl brand weed eater. Both gas-powered. They're both pretty pricey, though." He must really, really want those things, because we both always say, "You don't have to get me anything. Let's just take whatever money we'd spend and get something for the house." It's the same comment for every holiday- Christmas, birthdays, anniversary, Mother's/Father's Day, etc. I have some time to shop around, but Nathan's running out of time. I haven't really given him any specific ideas, just a subtle hint or two. Of course, I would never say, "This is what I want." I don't want him to feel obligated to buy me a Mother's Day gift. Honestly, I'm not sure he even knows how to find my blog, but on the off-chance that he does, I'll post my wishlist here, in no specific order:

1. Viva La Juicy perfume- I got a sample at the grand opening of our local Sephora; YUM!
2. Scentsy scents. I love this stuff! I have a drawer full of scents right now, but there are so many more  
    I'd like to have. I've actually considered becoming a Scentsy consultant. It's a line I adore, and I  
    could bring in a little extra money, since nurses are terribly underpaid.
3. A day at home alone.
4. Shaklee cleaning products. I had never heard of Shaklee until a couple of months ago when I started
    following the blog of a Shaklee distributor. Now I see and hear about it all over the internet.
5. Tori Spelling's books Stori Telling and Mommywood.
6. My car needs to be detailed- BADLY!
7. A new lens for my camera.

Hmmm, maybe I should "accidentally" leave this list out on my dresser or something. I don't expect a gift for any occasion, but I sure do get excited to open presents.

It's the Weekend!

I'm so thankful it's the weekend! I've been so tired for the last several days, so I went to bed at 9:00 last night and slept off and on until 7:00 this morning. It was exactly what I needed. I had planned to go yard-saling this morning, and I still might, but it looks cold and windy, so this could just as easily be a "spend-all-day-inside-the-house" kind of day.

Natalie and I made chocolate chip pancakes topped with cool whip for breakfast, just like Bob Evans serves them. I love having a little helper in the kitchen. I'm thinking since she likes to be in the kitchen so much, she may get a personalized apron for her birthday. I should start looking around on Etsy.

Today I plan on catching up on Project Purge from Jen at IHeart Organizing.

I also want to start working on something like this for Natalie's room, sooner rather than later, and this for our family reunion auction in June.

Tomorrow we are going to a birthday party at a local "petting zoo". They have
Alpacas, Antelope, Aoudads, Birds, Camels, Cavies, Deer, Donkeys, Emu, Goats, Ibex, Kangaroos, Llamas, Ostriches, Porcupines, Reptiles, Rheas, Tortoises, Wallabies, Zebras, and many more. (this is the list copy and pasted from their website). Natalie is going to love it, I'm sure! I just hope the weather holds out. I think it's supposed to be in the low 60s and mostly sunny, so it should be nice.

I don't know if anyone reads this blog, but if you are reading, I hope you have a great weekend too!

Show Us Your Life- Reading List

Kelly's Korner is an awesome blog I've recently started reading. On Fridays, Kelly does a special post called "Show Us Your Life" and each week there's a different topic. This week's topic is "Reading List". I recently picked up reading as a hobby; while I was in college the only reading I did was in text books and research articles. Most recently, I completed The Shack, which was pretty good.

Right now I'm reading this:

.

I borrowed it from a friend at work (who has 5 kids- bless her heart!). She recommended I read a particular chapter, given Natalie's age. I decided I would just read the whole book. I've had several laugh-out-loud moments, but I don't know how many of the author's other books I will read.

Consider me shallow, but the next books on my reading list are

and

I love me some Tori Spelling!

Project Purge

This week's area for IHeart Organizing's "Project Purge" is the kitchen. My kitchen countertops often stay cluttered (I'm working on that), but drawers and cabinets aren't AWFUL (though they could use some help). Tonight I went through almost every cabinet and drawer and purged what I could. I plan to do one more purge of the kitchen before our yard sale at the end of the month. It feels so good to get rid of things. I'm one of those who says, "But we may need it some day!"....NO MORE!I want to simplify our home and our lives, and I'm doing that a little at a time. I'm thinking at the end of this project, I will post pictures of the items I purged from each room. Hopefully I can make a little moolah from our stuff.

I Used to Think I Was Computer-Savvy

I've taken numerous computer-related classes and excelled at anything related to Microsoft Office. I can't say that I'm a computer whiz anymore. I've been looking forward to posting about my first purge from IHeart Organizing's "30 Items in 30 Days" (or, as she's now calling it, "Project Purge") challenge, but just talking  writing about it isn't very exciting. The post needs pictures. I have the pictures, but (this is where my newfound computer illiteracy comes in) I can't seem to upload pictures from my Canon Rebel to the computer. I have the software installed, but I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I've always just put my memory card into my old little Sanyo point and shoot, but that's getting old, and its battery is dead. I guess it's time to pull out the Canon instruction manual again and learn how to get pictures from the camera to the computer.
The reveal of the results of my purge will have to wait for another day.

Organizing Challenge

I have been reading some amazingly inspirational organizing blogs (more on them later), and I have slowly (very slowly) been participating in their organizing challenges (more on those later, too). Our subdivision yard sale is coming up at the end of the month, so I'm trying to PURGE, PURGE, PURGE. One thing I'm purging is my recipe box. It was a wedding gift, and I like it, but I don't like having to write all my recipes on a small card in order to keep my recipes organized. I've decided to start a recipe binder. When I originally decided to do this recipe binder, I was going to type every recipe I came across that I wanted to save so everything would be pretty and uniform. That's going to take too.much.time, so I will type the recipes that I already have, and just print the others that I come across. I have less than 3 weeks to complete this project so that my recipe box can go in the yard sale (I will even leave my cards of recipes in there to give the lucky buyer a good start or addition to their recipes). I'm planning to take before and after pictures to reveal the outcome when it's finished. Hopefully putting this challenge to myself in black and white will be my motivation to complete it in time.

So Far Behind

I have so many blog ideas to post about, but I've been so busy!
Tonight, Nathan and I are going to see a play called Thoroughly Modern Millie. We'll start our date night out with dinner and drinks (I need a few drinks after the day I've had at work!), then the play. I'm pretty excited, even though it's just a high-school play. We need a night out, just the two of us.

Hopefully this weekend I will have time to catch up on the things I want to blog about.

Healthy Snack Rave!

Several weeks ago a co-worker encouraged me to try some of her Laughing Cow cheese. I enjoy the commercials, but I'm not a Swiss cheese fan, and I'm such a cheapskate that I didn't want to spend the $3.98 on a circle of 8 cheese wedges and risk not liking them. The cheese was pretty good spread on a cracker, so I picked up some of my very own Laughing Cow Creamy Swiss Light during my next grocery trip. I picked up two more packages on the following grocery trip. This stuff is delicious, and at 35 calories per wedge, I eat one for a morning snack (or for breakfast) and one for an afternoon snack. My favorite dippers for this stuff? Apples and grapes. Eating healthy just got much tastier.

*ETA: I was in no way compensated by Laughing Cow for this review. These opinions are purely my own.

MOPS

MOPS stands for Mothers of Preschoolers. I joined a MOPS group through the church where Natalie attends daycare (it's one of those great opportunities I posted about a few days ago), and it has seriously been a Godsend! Natalie's BFF's mom (did ya catch that?) is one of the moms who started this specific group, and she invited me to attend the first meeting back in October. We meet the first Saturday of every month, and I haven't missed one yet. Our meeting this past weekend was great, as they all are. Generally our routine is 1) get a plate full of refreshments, 2) chit chat a little bit and our new members introduce themselves, 3) announcements (this is one of the ways I learn about the opportunities available through the "daycare church"), 4) watch our cirriculum video (this year's curriculum is "Momology"- more on that later), 5) discuss the video and share our own personal stories and bits of advice/struggles (it's great to know I'm not alone in many of the daily stuggles of parenting a toddler), 6) craft time. We cram a lot into two hours, and it would be great if we could meet more often or for a longer period of time, but we are all so busy, and we have free childcare (another advantage of MOPS), so we don't want to take any more of the sweet babysitters' valuable time. We try to have social outings too, in addition to our regular meeting time. We have movie nights, shopping trips, dinner dates (our hubbies are included here), and coffee dates. Childcare is provided 99% of the time during our social outings. Love it!
I've mostly used online forums to interact with moms of kids around Natalie's age for a couple of reasons: 1) I don't know a lot of people with kids Natalie's age around here, and 2) I feel less vulnerable when I ask a potentially stupid question when I'm hiding behind a computer screen and a screen name. Having real-life friends who are going through the same things I am and who aren't judgmental has been great. I encourage every "mother of preschoolers" to attend a MOPS group at least once if there's one nearby. It's totally worth it. Not only have I made friends, but Natalie has as well.