sorry guys there wont be mu
ch posting through mid july...
we have very limited phone and net access in kansas
steff

So Chris has been home a month.  He has fixed the lawnmower, the tractor(twice) and generally gotten to do everything he wants to do and a couple of things I have made him do like pick up furniture in Oklahoma City and go visit my grandma for mothers day. 

We also spent three days in Branson and went to SIlver Dollar City two days, played miniature golf, went to a big show (Clay Coopers Country Music Express)
The kids had a ball.  They don't quite understand the concept of golf, so that was really trying for daddy.  I think sometimes that because he was raised by his grandparents he doesnt always understand the small stuff.  So I was trying to tell him that cheating at mini golf is something that five year olds do.  He expects them to act full grown all the time and I don't know how else to tell them they are acting pretty normal for 5-6 year old boys. 

Silver Dollar City was a BLAST  we let them eat cotton candy for breakfast and the first day we got there early enough in the morning we didnt have to wait for anything.  They got to ride in the kiddy section to their hearts content.  But the one ride they really wanted was closed...They wanted to ride on the BIG pirate ship. We rode the spinning t cups, and flying elephants and pirate ships, the mini roller coaster, and then took a break for cotton candy and to walk around for a while.  We found the tree house splash pad area and they had a ball shooting with the water cannons and running in the maze.  Then Chris and Keifer went on the lost mine ride.  They got WET...this was of course Tanners cue to HAVE to go and C insisted I take him.  Yanno its just BAD to do those things when your husband is a crack shot and can feed quarters into a water cannon thing to shoot at you as you ride.  But ride we did.  And I stayed mostly dry until we reached the spot with the water cannons and C shot us...yep, he soaked us head to toe....

while we were waiting for C and K to ride Tan and I checked out a couple of shops.  He found a penguin magnet.  Now that boy is crazy about his penguins and it was the only one.  I was willing to pay the 3.99 it was marked, but then we got up there to pay and the lady says.... 28 cents.  YEAHHHH I love bargains and souvenier bargains are even better. 
Tanner was totally into the starfish and shells and wanted to buy me one for my "bootiful rock" collection he has started for me.  I convinced him that mommy didn't need one but that we would look at them next time for me. 
He is so giving and sensitive and I love that about him.  And he has this smile that just goes on for miles.  It lights up his whole face and carries over to his entire body.  Its gorgeous.  He has gotten in the habit recently that if he likes something it is "totally amazwing" 

Coming off the lost mine ride it was totally amazing and when I asked what he liked best he said, " I didnt know I would get soaking wet mom!"  He cracked me up completely and then in a few minutes asked me when we could go again.  We met back up with C and K and Sawyer and went around to eat lunch.  We ate barbecue and more cotton candy and then went on to ride more rides.  The boys wanted to see if the big pirate ship was fixed while we were there.  It was and so we rode, the boys and I.  Now that was always one of my favorite rides.  I love the feeling of flying high and falling back to the ground.  But what was frightening to me was that the bar does not close tightly and the kids could quite easily FALL OUT under it.  This didn't become completely apparent until we were nearing the highest point on the ride.  I spent the last half of the ride completely freaked out.  We got off the ride with both of them looking as shell shocked as I felt and they promptly began begging to ride it again.  I agreed, but its a bizarre thing allowing that freedom and at the same time wanting to hold on with my every ounce of strength.  But we rode, my boys and I, it was awesome and bittersweet and scary as hell, but I can't wait till our next trip back to do it again.
Steff

Oh joy the thing about full disclosure is that it cuts both ways.  I have to be just as honest about this as I was about starting the shred...I have lost 1 pound....I havent gotten to do the shred since Friday Morning because I cannot get into that room because of the furniture moving issues.
We have a sectional in 2 halves sitting in front of the TV that is in the playroom.  While its is mostly for  nice reason, my mom gave us her "old" furniture and my friend that is taking the sectional couldnt get it over the weekend because she was having a slumber party for a bunch of ten year old boys.
But I have gotten a good bit of exercise moving furniture around the house and emptying all the junk we have accumulated over the last 5 years.  We have rearranged moved about 60 % of the house around at this point and I still have a sofa and a bunch of boxes of stuff to get rid of.

The boys school has an awards ceremony tomorrow so we are really looking forward to that. 

Steff

In the interest of full disclosure and maybe a little of holding my own feet to the fire to make myself continue with this because I really want to and need to I am going to lay it all on the line. 

I am 38 years old.  I have three sons, born in June of 03, March of 04 and December of 08. 
As of Sunday Morning I weighed 213 pounds and am at the largest I have ever been in my life with the exceptions of pregnancy.  Now this is particularly disgusting to me because in Jan and Feb I maintained an after birth weight of 203-205 for a good 8 weeks.  So what the heck happened inMARCH????

I don't have any idea, but the sad fact was it happend and I was starting to feel really miserable.  I ordered the Flirty Girl Fitness kit, and I really do enjoy it, but its hard for me to pick up dance moves and I did it for about 10 days solid and then something happened and fell off the wagon.  I tried to get back into it, and I can do two of the workouts straight thru pretty easily now, but I knew I needed something more.  So when I saw last week a bunch of Mommy bloggers were doing the 30 Day Shred and challenging others to do it too and swearing by their awesome results I thought what the heck? Its a twenty minute workout it surely cant kill me.  So I pickd it up on sale last Saturday at Target. 

Really excited by what everyone else was saying about it, I got started Sunday.  I did day 1, level 1.  It was hard and I dont think I was able to do but like 4 push ups the first time.  I got thru it and thought it wasnt too bad.  Sunday night I began to feel muscles I don't remember ever having before, but I persevered and did it again Monday....I think Igot 7 push ups done Monday.  Lets face it I am going from nearly nothing exercise wise so this can be a big deal for me.  I again made it through the entire workout without quitting and though I was feeling every muscle in my body, I was also feeling pretty proud of myself because it was hard and I still did it. 
I got up yesterday and I was really pushing myself a bit harder and I did 12 push ups within the time and again finished the entire workout.  I am guessing there will be more for me to get through, but I am improving every day it seems I can do just a little bit more.  I want to continue and I want to see what kind of results I will get through it. 

So my new plan is to post mini updates as part of my regular posts and will post full updates on Tuesdays, complete with weights and measurements and continue holding my feet to the fire so to speak.  I got through day 4 today and I am not dead yet.  I am not trying to lose all this weight instantly, but I do intend to reach my goal this time even if it hurts to get there, because my kids deserve a mom who is in shape and energetic, and lets face it a mom who is here, and not getting sick and if I continued on the sedentary path I was on I was at risk for all kinds of diseases in the not so distant future. 

Steff

Ok...so since a bunch of the mommy blogger I follow are doing this workout and exclaiming about the difference they felt in such a short time I decided I would join in the fun....so day 1 i survived not easily, but i was not fallng apart either....until about 10 hours later and then I started feeling muscles I dont remember owning before Sunday.  But I pressed on and did day 2 level one yesterday morning complete with C runing in a couple of times to make fun of me...jack a**....i still finished it but it was a little harder as i knew which muscles were there now.  I am assuming this morning will likely be the hardest, but I can survive it is only 20 minutes....but let me just say that last 30 seconds of jumping jacks...OMG OMG....
I will probably do my Booty Beat dvd first just cause its WAAYYYY more fun LOL.  It may kill me but I totally plan to be able to wear a cute bathing suit this summer and not freak out over the thought of being seen.  That is a hard promise to both make to myself and follow through on at 38 with just having had a 3rd babe, but I am going to do it....for them as much as for me, they deserve that happy active mama I know is in there hiding under all these extra layers of crap fat.

So I persevere and am off to do my workout beforeany of my stinky boy audiences can wake to cheer me on  torment me as I work.

Steff

Before we had kids, there was nothing Chris and I liked more than to get in the truck and drive.  Get out in the country and just wind down some old back road and see where it takes us.  Last night, we took the kids to the pizza place that is similar to Chuck E Cheese.  It was their reward for behaving pretty good all day long while we drug them from here to kingdom come and back taking care of stuff.  Both of the boys won plenty of tickets, but Chris won at least 1000 tickets and won me a Razorback Basketball...my hero....
Then we let the boys pick and both had about 200 tickets....Keif picked 20 little bitty army men. Lovely something else to step on and throw away.  Tanner was a bit more discerning, he picked a rubber snake, a bitty plane, and the rest in army men.  They "fought" at least halfway home with Sawyers seat being a bit of the fighting range since he was in the middle.  We got back to Siloam and Keifer was asleep.  Chris mentioned that the crazy a** GPS that I got him for Christmas gives strange directions.  He said it keeps telling me to go home a strange way.  So we decided to try it.  After turnng of the highway it doesnt look too bad its blacktop, mostly smooth but definitely a country road.  Chris told Tanner he could "drive" and let T get in his lap.  About 2 miles in the blacktop runs out but we decide to continue on and keep following the directions.  As we are going thru the woods, Tanner tells Chris that the vampires and coyotes, and bears live in these woods and that the alligator ate all the witches.  We are giggling (all three of us) almost continuously.  Between Tanner's comments about what lives in the woods and Chris's about the GPS, I am near tears laughing hysterically.  We get about six miles back further in and we come to the river.  It is a low water bridge that is completely covered.  We can tell ther is no way we are going to cross it.  Chris puts it in 4 wheel and we back out of there to go around.  We backtrack about 4 miles an he takes another side road, all the while he and Tanner are still commenting about my crazy GPS and Tanner is just mad now.  Tells me I shouldnt have bought daddy this crazy GPS cause it tells him to go through the woods and drive on the river.  The thing is even though I can repeat his words I cannot describe his facial expressions and they are what makes this totally hysterical.  Long story short this little detour that says it will save us ten miles, wound up taking us on a 30 mile circle before we finally get back to the roads we know.  The moral of this story though is that sometimes to have some fun you have to get off the beaten path and take a few detours.  We had a blast. 
So take a little extra time today and enjoy a detour or two.
Steff

OK so Chris has been gone since November 1 except the two weeks he was here for Christmas and Sawyer's birth....which means we haven't had sex since HALLOWEEN....I am dying people.  So he gets home last night and the kids are all asleep so we get to have a lil fun but because it has been so long...well you get the idea.  So guess what arrived this morning....it is a cruel freaking joke people...

He is semi impressed with the house(good thing if he had started in on it I might have had to kill him....LOLOLOL
This is a bigger deal than I can really explain but the kicker in the whole thing is this is probably the first time in 5 years I have gotten this much done, and I did 90% of it  by myself.  I had a friend come help move furniture, but many of the other things I would normally have help with I have done by myself and in less than a week. 

I feel better now than I have felt in the last several years.  I guess we have finally gotten my meds back right since having kids threw off my dosage and we have been experimenting ever since.

How awesome it is to get out of bed and not feel like all I want is to go back.
Steff

Ok so we have already noted I am not a world class housekeeper...but I am a world class procrastinator, finding a whole world of things I could do instead of cleaning. 

T's room is all good.  A good portion of the front living room is now clean.  It is losing status as a play room and turning into a game room if I can manage it.  My current plan is to turn the "yard sale room" so dubbed because of th piles of crap I have in there to put in a yard sale some day, into a play room.  It is at the opposite end of the house and has a real door that can be shut and therefore hidden completely if I so choose.  The kids seem excited by this prospect on some level, but T informed me that I could keep one set of shelves for my "junk" as long as the rest of them were for their toys. 

As it is I am making progress however slowly right now but at least it is progress....

BTW
No I am not pregnant...maybe this is the nesting I missed that last month w/ Sawyer cause I was doing the whole bed rest thing....
Actually I can tell you that part of it is I think I have my depression issues TOTALLY under control for the first time since having kids.  I see mess and a way to get rid of it in a way that I have not in AGES.
YEAHHHHH!!!
Now to get it under control and take my life back!!!
Steff

OK I am not a housekeeper...as a matter of course my house generally looks like someone looted the lego factory and little tikes exploded and lets be really honest like i havent done laundry for six months....

The funny thing about this is I swear I do laundry every day....I jsut dont seem to make it to get the clean stuff back to its "place"

Anyway...I seldom get the bug to really clean...in the last 72 hours I have hauled off 9 bags of trash, a broken train table, moved 2 boxes of stuff to the donation pile.  I am going thru everything in the "yard sale room": as my kids have dubbed it and so far i am making some major progress.  I haven't been this serious since we moved in here in Jan of 05.

Steff
 

It didn't hit me unil around 11 last night that yesterday was April 19.  The anniversary of one of the worst terrorist events ever on American Soil.  It was a life altering event for many and when it happened in 1995 so many of us vowed to Okahomans that WE WOULD NOT FORGET.   That it was perpetrated by an American, a former soldier, one of our own.....made it that much worse.  It disturbs me that I almost forgot yesterday.  I know we get caught up in our everyday lives but don't forget to remember those lost 14 years ago yesterday.  That makes today an anniversary as well.  The Massacre at Columbine occurred ten years ago today.    When these things happen and we promise ourselves and each other that we won't forget and for a year or two we make it a big deal and we go to threat level red and we put cement pilings around every major building we can think of so Oklahoma City cannot happen again.....but then it begins to fade from our conciousness and we start to let go of our safeguards, and eventually we let down our guard.  It scares me that we seem to be forgetting and that could make us relax those threat levels and that opens us up to new attacks.  Folks it has been seven and a half years since 9/11 and we are getting complacent again.  Be aware of things around you, of the people and events....and take a moment to remember.

Steff

 




 

  Well this week we have just been trying to keep up.  So here are a few little funnies from our neck of the woods.

Monday evening Sawyer was having a rough afternoon, fussy, cranky, not wanting to be held, or put down, was full, not gassy....
just fussy in general.  So after a while Chris calls and I immediately put him on speakerphone.  Within seconds Sawyer quit fussing and started cooing and "chattering" and him and giggling....giggling...he has not seen him since he was 10 days old and thats what hes going to settle down for and giggle at????  How fair is this?  All three of them Daddy's boys.....

Wednesday I picked the kids up from school.  Tanner came out first and as he was gettiing in the van
" Mama, I got you's some beautiful rocks today"
Thats sweet where are they?
"But I threw them down the slide and when I got to the bottom they were all mixed up with the  other rocks."

Yesterday afternoon:
I got them all dressed up to go to Razorfest, in our Razorback shirts and gear and off we went.   The first "event" of the day is the pep rally. 
Tanner is calling the hogs to his hearts content....Woooo Pigggg.....Go Soooooiieee....Im a Razorback.....ok so he is  changing it a little to suit himself.  I can deal with that....but Keif....waits until I am right behind him....knowing I will hear him....and yells....GO TIGERS....my daddy said so.  I said You cant do that we are calling the HOGS....and he said, but I am daddys boy and I like the Tigers.....

Great, here we are in all our Razorback glory and this kid is going to cheer the tigers....Help me Lord.....

Not too sure how much I will post this week I have totally gotten a spring cleaning bug and have to get ready for the Ghost Dad to come home at the end of the month!!!! YEAH

Next week however look back for the posts about making your own SOAP and Bath salts.....

Have a Great Week!!
Steff

I got this from http://kylerandkady.blogspot.com/
and thought i would play along.  Your Turn!!
steff

I have done just about half...if you count there are 53, but thre are a couple I am iffy about but had trouble getting the bold off....
I have tasted Caviar...not my thing....
I have visited the everglades but dont know that I would say I have toured them....and I was 8 I have little to no memory of this....
Steff

I have posted many times over the past year or so about "Baby Grandma".  She is my 91+year old grandmother.  She has lived a life many of us couldnt even dream of.  She grew up as one of 14 siblings in a little old wood frame house.  She grew up in the twenties and experienced the depression first hand.  In talking about something this weekend she mentioned that she was 12 before they had a bathroom at their house and that she was so proud of that bathroom she loved to clean it.  Wow, what if we all looked at our homes as such a huge blessing?  I have to get my home on track....to be the mom and wife I want to be and it has to start somewhere. 
Grandma worked when it wasnt the norm, and as long as I can remember she cooked.  It was nothing for my granddad and my uncle to show up for lunch with people they worked with and she always had enough....and her house was always ready.  It wasn't pristine, I know of many times you had to step over my little people in the living room to get to the line for food in the kitchen, but outside of that any room in her home was presentable....at my house the little people are the least of my worries...it would take me every waking second to clean the house if my husband were to call me tomorrow and ask to bring someone for dinner a week from Tuesday.  And that would probably just be the major surface cleaning....

So tell me girls how do you with kids stay neat and organized? 

So Tanner has become interested in Indiana Jones and for some crazy reason he has also decided that IJ is not only related to us, but is his "Cowboy Grandpa"  This can make for some interesting conversations especially considering that he has never seen the movies etc.  The only reason he knows anything about it is because we have some IJ Lego sets.    The boys found a book at Dollar General about IJ and I agreed to buy it for them. 

This is the conversation in the van as they looked at the book:

K--the guy all in white is a skettleton
T--yeah about fourteen years ago he was a person
K--no hes a skettleton...is that right mom
M--skeleton Keif
K-- yeah skeleton
T-- no 14 years ago he was a guy but now hes just bones


T talking to Chris-- we got a cowboy grandpa jones lego....C what do you mean?  T dad you know...its your grandpa jones from the movies

Do your kids have a strange fascination with someone real or imagined?

Steff

The cake turned out perfect.  It is actually cupcakes shaped and iced.  Tanner pronounced his Guitar cake AMAZING. 
We had a good turnout for a rainy Friday evening.  They sang, they danced they chased each other with microphones and cheap shades....

The big kids seemed to have almost as much fun as the little kids. 




 

So I have spent the last several hours putting this monstrosity together for Tanners 5th birthday.  It is a present from his Nana.  All I have to say is that my degree from MIT must be lost in the mail.  I know I must have earned one because I was able to take the minimal gibberish included with this and disguised as directions, and still put this together. 
T had seen this in the Penneys toy catalog back at Christmas and fell in love with it.  We talked about it forever, mom and T and I.  I told him it wasnt likely this ship would ever live at our house because it was expensive....its regular price was around 100$.  Well in January we were hecking out their clearance toys and low and behold there was the ship....and the grand price of 29.99 clearance.  That by itself was pretty good, but then I got an email from Penneys with a coupon for an additional 20 % off my order and free shipping.   So I ordered it...I wound up paying a total of 26.50 to get the ship here.  It has been hiding in Daddy's shop for months waiting for such a special time as his birthday. 

I am really excited about his birthday tomorrow.  He is going to have a great party.
Steff

I have your goodies ready to mail out I just need the rest of your addresses....
My kitchen smells soooo good after making the rest of the salts this afternoon.
Steff

Ok so I never thought I would say this, but thank heaven Spring Break is over.  I was so excited to put the boys on the bus this morning that when my alarm went off at 6 25 I totally jumped out of bed.  I fairly skipped down the hall calling for the guys to get up andget clothes on.  They both got up pretty easily and made excellent time getting dressed.  We got everyone ready and went down to catch the bus.  Both boys seemed excited about telling their teachers about their vacation at Nana;s house.  I am not even sure who was more excited to see the bus coming down the road.  They raced to get on the bus and as I watched them pull away, I CHEERED.  I was almost moved to cartwheels, except that where the lord has moved things around to allow my body to carry children  he didnt replace my balance and  I would most likely fall on my head, so I settled for cartwheels in my head. 
I came back to the house and folded a couple of loads of laundry and then went to town to get a new permanent. 
I only have 4000 more things to get dne this week before Tanners birthday party on Friday evening.
Steff