Why I am happy.

I am actually fighting a really depressed state this morning.  Yesterday my daughter and I took my husband (daddy) to the airport to fly to Hawaii for a week for work.  There were a million reasons why we couldn't accompany him.  Number one being that we just plain couldn't afford it.  

I am having such a hard time today knowing that maybe someway, somehow we could have gone with him.  Well, we couldn't and we didn't so I need to get over it and focus on what I do have in my life that does make me happy.

1.  a wonderful healthy, happy and perfect daughter

2.  a sweet and dear husband who respects me and loves me more than anything

3.  that caring husband who is a gentile and loving father that loves and cherishes his daughter more than anything

4.  an emotionally close, loving and supportive family who all live just minutes from me

5.  a wonderful safe and comfortable home on private land

6.  the ability to do my favorite hobbies, soaping and sewing

7.  the knowledge and love of making wholesome and healthy meals

8.  a healthy body with never a concern

okay, the list could go on and on, but I feel much better now already.  Thank you.   :-)

What do you have to be happy about?

does this void my warrantee?

Only kidding!  This is a real cell phone though, an old one of mine we let the little one play with as she loves 'talking' on the phone so much now.  Guess we wont be able to donate this one to any charities in need.  Oops!

I was cleaning up the kitchen, my husband was in the other room and our daughter was clearly having her own fun while her bath filled up tonight.  

Sometimes I think my laughter is only encouragement....

sleeping better

Well, technically you can say she has slept through the night twice in a row!  Technically, because 5 hours straight counts as a 'full nights sleep' according to the 'experts'.  

(how can we trust these so called experts if they feel 5 hours of sleep is enough!  hmmm..)

I think she is learning that nursing is great for comfort and food, but she can sleep without it.  She now finishes nursing and rolls over to go to sleep!  She only woke up twice last night and only once the night before!  Getting her to bed is easier as well, thats dads report at least!

We have our early dinner (5:30pm sharp-ish) and early bath(6:45pm) and bedtime(7:45-8:15ish- we are working on that!) firmly in place.  I am doing WHATEVER it takes to get 2 naps in during the day.  Weather I rock and nurse her for an hour, or go for a drive in the car, I make it a priority to get her to nap at least 1 hour 2x per day.  That really is the hardest part right now!

I had a lot of faith in The No-Cry Sleep Solution and now I have even more faith!

We are still working on creating a 'lovey' for little one.  She has never had a favorite stuffed animal(I am her favorite 'lovey'!), so we are sleeping with a bunch of them!  Its such a funny sight to see stuffed animals all over our bed.  We are so NOT stuffed animal people! (as adults, you know)  I think she is getting more attached to them now and will slowly send them to her crib one at a time.

Also, the nap issue I will continue working on.  Maybe I will try to see if she will nap in our bed during the day...

Anyway, off to a good start today!  Nothing beats waking up happy and rested!  Yippee!

sleep much?

I was going to get myself some coffee this morning and my daughter some juice w/ liquid vitamins.  Yup.  Thought I'd have her vitamins in my coffee instead.  Mmmmm... B vitamins...

It was great to start the morning out with a good laugh though!

Actually, we did start the morning out all smiles.  For the second night in a row!!  I think this sleep plan stuff is working already.  I remember a few times last night when she woke to nurse, finished, then ROLLED OVER to sleep.  WITHOUT me!!  I cannot believe it.

Which brings us to why she didn't wake up miserable and crying like normal, maybe she knows she can now sleep without it (it being nursing) and is not distressed when waking as she doesn't feel like she is missing out now.

We really struggled to get her down to sleep last night.  My husband was finally successful by rocking her.  I am scavenging for ways to get her to nap during the day as well.  I think many of these issues are heaviest right now with her molars coming in.  I took a 30 minute drive today to finally get her morning nap in.  We tried rocking, nursing, walking around, lullabies....  Hopefully her naps will get easier too.

All in all, I think Elizabeth Pantley is on to something.  We are planning to progress each day (and Night!).

I thank you for all your warm thoughts and support.  Everyone has been so kind and inspiring.  I know everyones wishes and advice will help us make it through this hurdle.  I know that we all may raise our children differently but we do have in common the fact that we are all doing it the best way we know how, with our treasured families and children first.

Lets all sleep well tonight.

and the award goes to...

A huge thanks to Karla from Karla's Bonanza for appreciating my silly writings and awarding me the Lemonade Award.

I enjoy reading Karlas blog and seeing what awesome and stylish deal she finds at her local San Fran shops.  Secretly, I think I live through her beautiful finds!  Oh, how I wish our Thrift Stores were as awesome in my small town!  

So, I now get to choose 10 blogs that I enjoy and seem to also make 'lemonade out of lemons'.....

1. Jane from All Together Beautiful for her wonderful and positive views on life and raising a family.

2. Olivia from Shopaholic In Rehab for sharing with us her daily struggles trying to surviving life while being frugal and living it up in this fashion first, fast paced world.

3. Rachael from Beans and Rice who always posts the sweetest family pictures and the greatest frugal (and yummy!) recipes.

4.  Laura at Bloggin Momma who always makes me laugh with her amusing posts and great, frugal ideas as well!

5.  Sandy at Sandy's Space who always has inspirational postings and pictures.

6.  Michelle at Saving Some Green always has wonderful frugal ideas and great deals and freebies. 

7.  Amy at NW Frugal Weightloss is so inspiring and positive and full of fantastic recipes and ideas.  Her blog is awesome!

8.  Andrea at Momma In Flip Flops2 always has the very best reviews and giveaways.  Another place I 'dream' shop!!

9.  Debra from Beyond Prenatals does a wonderful job teaching us how to care for our bodies before and after children.

10.  Loretta at Vegan Footprints is such an inspirational blog full of healthy life tips and positive writings.

ahhh, well, just 10 is all I get to pick, but there are so much more I read and love.  Thank you to all of you who post positive and inspirational thoughts.  You make our days brighter!

silly little things...

I just found this fun little tool on another blog and wondered where my writing skills were at.  Scary.  I was happy to see I am at a Post-Grad level!  

Are they kidding??  Maybe Im not a dummy after all!!  :-)

Try it, its fun!!

(ps: the smiley face may have bought my level down just a little...)

out and about and ready to play!!

(again, I apologize for the poor picture quality, the late, dark evening seems to
produce poorer pictures. my new handy-dandy phone is just so simple to snap a pic,
email it to myself and post it no cords needed!!)

Okay, thats an exaggeration. But, he is doing much, much better.

Dave ate on his own today!! He made a 'number two' yesterday. And, here you see, he just ventured out into the living room!! It has been over a week (full 7 days) since he has done each of these. (except the #2, he did one of those last tuesday, sorry, TMI)

He has been such a sick baby. Just a mess really. He is down 9 pounds from 6 months ago. We never thought we would have to force feed him with an oral syringe just to keep him alive!

We are both so thankful he has made such a huge turn around. We will be able to sleep better tonight.

Feline Diabetes

We have spent every waking moment taking care of this big guy here. Saturday I discovered that he wouldn't come out from under the bed. Sunday he was not eating and seemed very lethargic. Monday we decided we better take him to the vet. We discovered Dave has diabetes, and we should not have waited so long to get him seen.

He was almost to diabetic coma state. He was at the point right before seizure. He spent 24 hours at the trauma clinic we were transferred to and is home now. They wanted to keep him for a couple more days but I convinced them that I could take care of him, plus our bills were almost at $1000 and we just didn't have anymore money. Never in my life has finances dictated health care. Something is really screwed up with the medical system, at least for vet care when payment plans are not even an option.

He had gained a lot of weight over the past few years being an indoor cat. My mother kept telling me I was going to kill him by feeding him too much. Harsh, I thought. No, she was right. When we moved in to our new home a few months ago he began going outside and running free and happy on our 7 acres. He got thin quickly. We were really happy to see him looking so good.

We didn't know his rapid weight loss was actually his body no longer producing insulin. Besides always eating a lot, we saw no signs.

I am watching him around the clock. Feeding him food and water with a medicine dropper, giving him glucose to bring him out of his constant hypoglycemic state and injecting him with insulin. This is my first time ever using a needle. Sorry for the practice, buddy. Tomorrow I have to go purchase a glucose meter thing because I think the insulin dosages may be causing increased hypoglycemia.

This is my first personal experience with diabetes and it sucks. I have learned a lot in just these past couple of days. I know it will get better. I know he will get stronger and be able to walk and feed himself soon. Hopefully not too much longer, this is hard.

I just needed to write this down on paper. It feels good to share, thank you for listening.

Happy New Year Goals

2009

Wow, what a year this will be.  We have just moved into a new and wonderful home, my daughter will turn 2 later this year and we will rise out of this recession finally with a democrat back  in office.  

My goal for 2009 is to create an organized home.  Between recently moving, having a baby, trying to work on a soap buisness and my husband working AND in college full time our home is not as organized as it used to be.  A few places are 'lined up and labeled' as I like it, but the rest is in a sort of chaos. 

To reach this goal I will dedicate Tuesday as my organizing day.  I will choose one item in the house (be it a drawer, cabinet, box or basket) and tackle it.  I feel that by the end of 2009 we will be back to running on a more orderly home.  Thus saving time, money and unneeded stress.

Have a wonderful new year!

Merry Christmas!

After a long day of travel (um, 13 hours door to door to be exact) we safely reached our destination.   Our daughter was a wonderful flyer.  She was great the entire time, not really a surprise, I suppose.  

She fussed only twice; once after going through all the lines at SeaTac (get me the HECK out of this Ergo, Mom!!) and once on our 2nd flight, a session of nursing eased that frustration.  Oh, the magic powers of nursing.

We have been just so busy visiting family and friends.  What a joy to see such welcoming people, I just love getting to know my husbands background and where he 'came from'.  

I am so thankful for all I have in my life.  Remember all the wonderful things you have in yours.

Have a wonderful Christmas.

wish us luck...

We have spent what feels like the last two weeks preparing for our holiday trip. We will be flying half way across the country to visit my husbands family for Christmas. It will be the first plane trip for our daughter.


Oh, I hope it goes well.

We have lots of new (used!) books for the trip and a few small quiet toys. I am also planning to bring my nursing cover and nurse in public if need be, which will be a first for me. I have enough snacks to hopefully keep her happy and entertained. I am also planning on bringing the iPod so she can listen to music, really, she loves music so much I think if we hold a earphone up to her ear she might enjoy it, who knows. The laptop will come along as well. She really loves looking at the family pictures on it (especially ones of herself!!).

We will be leaving later tomorrow morning, assuming we can get my car unstuck out of the driveway by then....

(my husband wanted to go run an errand yesterday, he took my car as generally all wheel drive can concur anything, well, he got it stuck half way up our really, really long and steep gravel driveway. He tells me it is sideways...)

We haven't flown since I was pregnant and are disappointed at the new luggage rule, no longer can you check a bag for free anymore, NO, it costs $15 for the first bag for each seat paid for!! The price goes up if you want to bring another bag. We were expecting to pack light, but I did not know that you had to pay for just one bag now...

Wish us luck. We will be in the air for only 2 1/2 hours, then 1 1/2 hours tomorrow with a stop in Denver. Unfortunately there are no Non-Stop flights to Oklahoma City. Shocker :-)

Does anyone have any advice for flying with a one year old??

Playing in the snow.

Power Outage Preparedness

We lost our power this morning at about 4 am and it didn't come back on till almost 5 pm.  A tree fell on some power lines on my road and 18 families (per the Power company) were out of power.

It hasn't been terribly windy, nor has it snowed more than an inch or two.  I think the big old tree was just ready to go.  It made a huge mess when it fell, taking out a ton of lines and creating grueling work in this bitterly cold weather for about 8 or more guys the whole day.  

We have gotten more than a few power outages during our lives and are generally prepared (ish).  I have a drawer in our entry way cabinet dedicated to flashlights, lanterns and candle lighting lighters.  

We are really lucky in our new house to have propane heat.  We were able to stay warm today and even fire up the stove-top to heat up some soup and easy foods.  When the power came back on this evening we had a sink-full of dishes to take care of, thankfully the outage was only so long!

And, lucky for me, I just purchased some disposable diapers and wipes yesterday for an upcoming trip.  Boy was I glad to put one on my daughter when we woke up this morning and knew her 'scheduled' 'number two' was coming.  Not having water would have made it tricky to deal with such dirty cloth diaper, I was thankful to be able to wrap up the offending package and not mess with it one bit.

I made a little mental list today on what I will keep in our Power Outage Drawer for the future.  Being as anti-disposable that I am, I will have to purchase, sign up for free, and, or, scrounge up many of the following items;

Flashlights (the battery/lightbulb drawer is above it)

Matches/ lighters (candles are in a separate closet)

Paper eating products (plates, cups, napkins, plastic utensils)

Disposable Diapers ( I have signed up for all different size freebies, this will be a perfect place for them!)

Baby Wipes (for everything!!)

Portable Radio/ CD player taking batteries

I will keep a gallon or two of water in the storage pantry as usual.

Anyone have any other suggestions??  Does anyone else do this??

just my vegetarian rant...

I have such a problem with the popular 'Turkey Pardon' done each year. President Bush Senior did not start a heartwarming tradition in my mind.

How can one feel so high and mighty making such a big deal pardoning ONE turkey its life? Later the next day supporting the killing of another. How about all the other 45 million turkeys killed each Thanksgiving?

Do something good Mr. President, pardon the rest of them as well.

not a frugal buy.

I did it, I did it!!

I just paid full price for something I have really been wanting.  I actually think this is the most I have ever spent on a pair of shoes, ever. Yes, I am certain.

With the help of some birthday money (thank you Diana, see, I DID spend it on myself!!!) I was able to splurge on some boots I just love to death.  They are those 'trendy Uggs', but this style, the Knightsbridge, is just sooo much cuter than their original.  And they have made a name for themselves for comfort, and thats got me sold.  Plus, they are the cutest thing ever, did I mention that part?

Zappos said they should be here in 4-5 days.....  I dont think I can wait that long!

EDIT:  I just got these boots delivered to my door by the Fed Ex Home Delivery man.  I think they over-nighted them as I placed the order 8pm wednesday.  I didn't even pay for shipping!!  I just might remember Zappos for the next time I want to purchase some really nice shoes!

By the way, they are soooo comfortable and super cute!

(the moral of this story;  we work very hard to save our families tons of money.  treat yourself when you can, you deserve it!)

and on a lighter note..

Happy Birthday Sweet Baby.

this is how I feed myself.

Our little baby is becoming so much more independent. She now wants to feed herself with a spoon. Not an easy task for a little one. I gave her a mix of peas (her favorite), brown rice and refried beans. She loved it and made quite the mess.

Selling Your Home

This weeks Frugal Friday I will discuss easy and thrifty ways to stage your home to get it sold as fast as possible.  Yes, even in this market.

Staging your home is an easy thing to do if you can keep focused on only one thing; staging.  When a home is staged it 'appears' as if it could be comfortably lived in as shown.  It should be roomy yet comfortable, modern yet cozy.

Something to first consider is where to store all of your excess 'junk', this includes all furniture that doesn't fit, extra clothing crowding closets and anything you may have 'stored' in the basement, garage, ect.  If you dont have a relative nearby with an empty garage than you should consider renting a storage unit.  Fifty or eighty dollars a month is nothing compared with the thousands you will be paying toward your mortgage each month your home does not sell.

To stage a home, each room should be looked at as an individual.  Start with, say, the master bedroom.  Empty everything out.   Only place the few items that look good in it.  Remember, it does not need to be livable, just look livable. 

Is your bed too big for the room?  You mustn't make the room look crowded or small.  Swap your large bed for a smaller one.  Maybe a friend or family member can trade you for a bit?  How about your dressers or night-stands?  Keep maybe one or two night-stands and the dresser only if it does not crowed the room.  Keep all items cleared off with the exception on one or 2 items each, maybe a lamp or vase of flowers.  NO TV, NO family pictures and nothing else.  Your room must resemble one you would see in a magazine.

Keep personal items away.  This includes all family pictures, nicknacks, baby toys and pet items.  You want your buyers imagining their families in this house, not yours.  

Bring in fresh flowers.  These can be inexpensive when purchased at grocerys stores and mixed with any floral items you can pick from your own yard, be it flowers, leaves or branches.  Also inexpensive small plants can be purchased at nurserys or home improvement stores and placed inside the home.  Just wrap a piece of decorative paper (or newsprint or brown paper bag) around plastic container and tie with a ribbon.

It is so important to remember that you are staging and your home may not be very functional. It is just a small inconvenience and you would be surprised how easy it is to live with very little.

Still need help staging?  Check out any local open-houses, especially ones in new developments featuring new homes.  These are perfect inspiration and examples of how staging works.

The goal of a staged home can be achieved with a little hard labor, some helpful opinions and extra attention to details.  It will make your house so unbelievably cute that everyone will want to call it their own.

It worked for us.

its 8am, what have you done today?

It is amazing how much you have to do as a mother.

In my 'past life' by 8am I would have gotten up, showered, ate cereal and gone to work.  Thats it.

Now with a baby things are so different.  We got to sleep in today which is so wonderful, I feel so great.  My husband is taking a test in a class today for work so he gets to sleep in, which means the alarm didnt go off to wake up baby and we slept in till 6.45!!

Heres my day so far;

6:45 wake up

6:46 nurse baby then watch her wake up daddy

7:02 drive to neighbors farm to see if they have any eggs out for sale.

7:05 no eggs, so I go home

7:20 throw diapers in the dryer

7:22 cut up a muffin from fridge, pour juice and bring to bedroom where husband is studying

7:24 get teething biscuit for baby so she can eat too

7:31 fold laundry while baby unfolds it

7:40 decide maybe eggs were just put out late this morning so get back in car and drive down to farm again.  Surprise!! no luck.

7:50 go to kitchen with baby, feed her banana and bread in high chair

7:51 make myself toast and try to eat it as baby decides she doesnt want to eat her breakfast

7:59 open up laptop as I want reflect upon my morning

8:00 baby fusses, must get down, we go read a book

8:09 baby is happy and plays by herself while mommy gets to write.

Oh, how life has changed!