Ho Ho Ho!!!

I just finished putting the last of the return address labels and stamps on my Christmas cards!

I like to get them out the week after Thanksgiving! We're headed out of town to spend Thanksgiving with my family at my sister's house (Jo Anna). I just finished making pie crusts for the pumpkin and triple berry pies I'll be bringing. Nothing makes me feel more like a housewife than making pie.

Not that I ever wear heels when I bake pies but I just have this 1950s image stuck in my head while I bake. Sorry to the feminists, I never was one.

Snowy...

On an earlier post, I mentioned that Merril's dirt bike broke down and we had to go rescue it. Here are the pictures! Merril decided to try and fix his bike out on the dunes. His buddy Ryan was there to help.

I knew it was going to be chilly so I brought coats and blankets. Mostly for riding in the scout because doesn't have a top for the back seat or doors that keep the wind out.


Merril or Ryan, I can't remember which, zip-tied a pizza box to the door to try and keep the wind out. It didn't really work.

While Merril was fixing his bike, the wind really picked up and it started snowing. The kids jumped on my lap to warm up and then would run around in the snow.

After about 15 minutes of blowing snow, we decided to just load up and head back to the truck. It was chilly but we made it just fine, and without too much whining.

On a side note, I sliced my finger pretty bad making Maxine's lunch this morning. It could've used stitches but I didn't have time so I told Merril to go buy some super glue. We dumped alcohol in it and sealed it up. It was the first time I've ever needed a wound glued shut! I think I'll just try to be more careful next time.

Potty training success...

Now just so you know, I'm knocking on my wood-composite desk for continued luck. Lately, we've had huge potty training successes at our house. About 2 weeks ago, I started bribing Juliet with a Dum Dum sucker if she pooped in the toilet. She whipped right into shape and hasn't had an accident since then. She's even starting to forget about the sucker reward.

Jack, whom I've struggled with for 10 months, has finally started to show some improvement! He's always told me that when he's 4, he'll start pooping in the toilet. Sure enough, he hasn't pooped in his underwear since Thursday. He just goes and does it. There are a couple of factors playing into our success.

#1-Juliet has shown great success and he didn't want to be shown up by his 2-year old sister.

#2-He has a Woody toy (from Toy Story) that would sit on the fridge until he pooped in the toilet.

#3-Recently, if he pooped in his underwear, he'd lose his underwear privileges and have to go commando until he pooped in the toilet to earn his underwear back (Thank you Emily).

Also, about a month ago, I quit putting Jack in pull-ups at night because I didn't feel like it was helping. At the same time, Juliet refused to wear a diaper or a pull-up to bed, so we were washing sheets every couple of days for a few weeks. However, they've both made it through the night dry for 2 weeks.

It's been a long, ugly, stinky road but I'm feeling relieved that the end might be near. It's only taken 4 years to get Jack completely potty trained and I think it has a lot to do with Juliet. Juliet has been my easiest to potty train because she wants to do everything herself. She's so tenacious!

I'm not saying there won't be relapses, but I haven't washed out poopy underwear for 5 days and that feels wonderful!! Let's hear some noise!!!!!! YEAH!!

Sinking in...

Merril went to the sand dunes today to ride his dirt bike. Unfortunately, his bike broke down and he had to hitch a ride on the back of a friend's dirt bike. So we're going back to the dunes tomorrow to rescue the bike because it's sleeping out at the dunes tonight. But before his bike broke down, Merril took this picture with his camera phone.

When he showed it to me, I said, "Wow, nice job with the solar flare and the offset subject." He replied, "Yeah, it was total luck. I kind of just held up my phone and snapped the picture." Well, whatever works, babe!

Birthdays...

Maxine and Jack have birthdays in early November. Maxine is now 7 and Jack is 4. Yikes, I have a seven-year old.

Maxine wanted to have a fairy party and everyone wore wings. (She looks unenthusiastic but I swear she had fun.)

The fairy idea was all inspired by a cake we saw at Wal-Mart with a cascading river and tons of Pixie Hollow fairies. They wanted $38 bucks for it. We decided to make our own. It's been a while since I've worked hard on a cake. It was fun!

Here's a picture of the cousins eating cake at Jack's party. We just ate the leftovers from Max's party because that cake gets big in the back. It's 3 cake layers tall.

Another year older and I don't have to think about birthdays again until February, where I'll be turning 30. Oi.

Recycle...

Our Tahoe has a tape deck as well as a CD player. I can't think of a time that we've ever used the tape deck, until now. My MP3 player tends to slide around. Merril, bothered by things that rattle, buzz, or slide around while he's driving, took the MP3 player and stuck it in the little door of the tape player. It's the perfect size and fits nicely.

Today I'm elated because I was looking for a Christmas present for Merril and could only find it for $100 to $150 bucks while shopping on Saturday. Dismayed, I started hunting online. I searched some stores and found what I wanted on a big chain's website for $50. They have stores in town so I drove over to give it a look and it was only $40 on the shelf!! Wahoo! I'm actually going to cash in some rewards points off our business checking card and I'll only have to pay $15! I'm glad I didn't just give in and buy the $100 one. Saving money means more Christmas! (I'm almost done.)

Only Amy will appreciate this one...

I follow a baking blog for fun and they just posted that William Sonoma just released a limited edition Bundt cake pan that creates a small Christmas village. So with some powdered sugar and a little bit of colored icing, you can have a snowy scene. IT'S SO CUTE! It's $36 but I thought it was adorable. Totally not gonna buy it but I love clever ideas.

WOW! Clean stove grates! It really worked!

I've lived in my house for about 4 years. During that time, I've struggled with keeping the top of my stove clean. I have a gas stove and the grates on the top are not black cast iron, but an enameled grey color. Since they're enamel, they are a pain to clean. And let's face facts, I boil things over daily and rarely clean my stove top. :) I've tried spraying Oven Off cleaner and leaving them overnight and then scrubbing them like crazy the next day. It worked okay but it was a ton of elbow grease and they still looked like they had burned on food all over them.

I finally found a solution that required almost zero effort!! I thought about throwing them into the oven and then turning on my self-cleaning oven feature. I figured it bakes all the gunk in my oven down to ashes, could it work for my grates? I jumped online to see if it was okay and wouldn't totally ruin my grates. I found several people who'd done it and it had worked fantastic!

So I took my blackened/greasy grates and the little circle covers from the stove top, put them in the oven on the middle racks, and pressed the self-clean cycle and walked away for 3 hours. When it was done, my grates were as clean as the day I first used my stove. Some of them had a little white ash on them but it wiped right off, no scrubbing. SO CLEAN!

Just so you know, they were black in comparison from all the baked on food! I just thought I'd share.

P.S. A friend told me that her grates had little rubber feet and they got burned to ash. Maybe hold off if your grates have rubber feet. Mine were feetless so I didn't even think about it. Sorry Jamie B.

Family Home Freezing...

Yesterday was filled with sunshine and NO WIND. So what does our family do when it's warm, sunny and not windy?? We go to the lake. :)

I know it's November but it's unseasonably warm and we couldn't resist. It's supposed to stay in the 80s all this week! Yeah!

The water was so glassy because it was calm and there was hardly anyone there. Not that we were skiing because the water was freezing. I was trying to get the kids to the beach as quickly as possible because my toes kept numbing up.

We squished sand castles.

Maxine and Jack pretended to find buried treasure.

And as we left the lake, a HUGE moon was rising in the east.

So cheers to our first November lake day!

Something wicked this way comes...

Ahhh Halloween! One of my favorite holidays. Merril and I decided to dress up as The Blues Brothers for a Halloween party. Here's the original:

Here's us:

The crowd was kind of young and only a couple of people understood that we were the Blues Brothers and not Men in Black.

The kids were all themed from Peter Pan. Maxine was Peter Pan. Jack was the crocodile from Peter Pan.

Juliet was TinkerBell.

I made the costumes so they have that homey, unfinished quality about them. Jack's hat and Juliet's tutu were fun to make.

Can you believe Thanksgiving is right around the corner? Maxine's birthday is this week so I have to start thinking about what we're going to do for it. Yikes. I kind of loathe birthday parties for my kids! Mostly because I'm sure how to entertain kids for that long.