Two Hours in the Life of Me

Alarm goes off at 6:30. Paul is long gone. I'm reluctant to get out of bed as last night we discovered that our furnace was not working. Too late for a repair person to come. So we borrowed space heaters and we slept fine, but the rest of the house is going to be cold. It takes 15 minutes, but I do get up. Bundle up and head to the kitchen with the space heater. I start some hot chocolate and mix up some buttermilk pancakes. 7am now. Get the kids up. Take their space heater downstairs so it'll be warm when my preschool kids come at 9:30. Start the pancakes. Get the kids up again. Kiara goes and gets dressed. Kegan goes and spends 10 minutes in the bathroom. Tell him to get dressed and take his bedding downstairs as his bed wetting alarm is broken AGAIN and I have to do a batch or more of laundry EVERY day. Fix Payton and Zander's pancakes and pour hot chocolate. Yell at Kiara and Kegan that if they don't hurry their food will be cold. Kegan finally goes and gets dressed. Kiara arrives and starts eating. Kegan comes. Takes a few bites and then goes back to the bathroom. After fixing Payton and Kegan seconds I wolf down a few pancakes. Now time to cattle prod Kiara and Kegan into making their lunches. They ask me to make them, I politely refuse, I have the kitchen to clean and preschool to get ready for. I realize that it's trash day and due to the furnace issues last night we forgot to do it then. I take the garbage out in my jammies and socks. Discover the can is in the backyard. The gate won't open from the outside. I go through the house to the backyard and open the gate and get the garbage out. Back inside. After hemmming and hawwing and many suggestions from me Kiara gets done with her lunch and I almost have the kitchen clean. And I put together little boxes with kisses in them for my Valentines to the preschoolers. Kegan has only got a pudding out for his lunch. I suggest getting a baggie of chips. He does. Then starts complaining that he doesn't feel good and he doesn't want to go to school (just part of the daily ritual). But he informs me he has diarrhea. I actually believe him and get him some Immodium. Coach him on how to swallow a pill. With helpful hints from Kiara (who still can't do this) he finally gets it done. Now it's 5 minutes to 8. Knowing it will take Kegan 15 minutes to find and put on his shoes I send him to that and I finish his lunch. Phone call. Paul needs me to find some pictures for a presentation he is giving to day. If I can find a moment. Ha! I'll have to MAKE a moment. While talking to him I am filling up water bottles and putting them in the fridge. As I close the fridge the sugar cookies for preschool fall off the fridge onto the floor. (Yes I swore - which I'm sorry about. It was unwarranted. Now if the tray had shattered, well then swearing would have been fine.) Say a terse goodbye to Paul. Most of the cookies landed on the plastic wrap so were fine. Not pretty anymore, but edible. Do 3-year-old's care anyway? It sugar, that's all that matters. Now Kegan begins his full-out 'I hate school, I'm not going, you can't make me.' I ignore him and tie his shoes. Tell him he's going to be late and to get his coat. "Where's my sweatshirt. I hate my coat. I'm looking for my sweatshirt." Me-it's still dirty. Kegan goes and looks for it anyway and can't find it. I hand him his coat. He hates that one. So I search for his other one. Finally they are out the door, and only 10 minutes later than usual. They'll make it. I finish setting stuff out for preschool and turn on cartoons for Payton and Zander. I discover that Kegan did not take his bedding downstairs after all. So I do it. Did I mention our furnace was out? So he had extra blankets. All of which are wet. I start laundry, making sure his sweatshirt is put through too. Although he'll just find something else to complain about tomorrow.... Now get Zander dressed. He has been wearing the same thing for about 36 hours because he didn't want to get dressed yesterday (Superman jammies are awesome!) and I chose not to fight that battle. Now time to find pictures for Paul. Done. Phew! Now time to vent on my blog for 30 minutes before the preschoolers come. Only so I am somewhat normal for them. And that was just the first two hours. I won't mention my extensive to do list for the rest of the day......

I love being a MOM! (and that is not sarcastic - well, only a little)

Slacker, but only at blogging

Man, I've been slacking here lately. Blame facebook, blame life being busy, blame my new IPod, but here I am. Briefly. Just to let you know I'm alive. And well, busy! As shown by the following pictures. Enjoy!

I know, not cake. But they were so pretty.....

Ahoy Matey!

This is for a friend. My kids are getting tired of not being able to eat my cakes. Luckily I have no more cakes on my schedule. Time for a break! I need a good book to read or a sewing project. Or I could do my laundry.....hmmm. Any one wanna recommend a book?

Crazy Cake Month

I have been doing tons of cakes lately. About 1 a week for the last few weeks, with one more next week. It's fun, but occasionally stressful. The most stress comes after they are done and waiting to be delivered/picked up. With 40 little fingers in the house, one almost always finds its way to the cake. I'm getting better about time management though. I usually get a huge head start and then finish early. Now I'm better at knowing how long something will take so it's done right before it needs to be. Leaving less time for mishaps.
This is from a long time ago, I don't think I ever posted it, but maybe I did. Kiara's birthday cake. She loves the show iCarly. It was going to be a lap top, but I couldn't figure out the top so it didn't happen.

Cookie Monster!!!!

I can't see!

Phew! That's better!

Completed cake. For a 1-year-old. The present was the smash cake for him to dig into. Fun, fun!

I also did a wedding cake, but I have no photos of it. It was 3 tier square covered in chocolate fondant. That was all I did. They had ribbon they put around it. Simple and elegant. Oh, and the cupcakes for our Halloween party. No pics of those either. I just frosted them in pinkish frosting and squiggled it to make it look like a brain. Kiara said they looked like small intestines. Whatever, that works too.

Puppy

Yeah, after a year or so of begging and pleading from the kids, Paul and I gave in and we have a new puppy. We named her Peanut. She is a Shi Tzu/English Pointer mix. Paul has dubbed her a Shinter.

That's a treat, not poo. Although.....sigh new puppies, I don't need to say more.

We've had her a month or so now so she is bigger than in these photos, although without a point of reference it's hard to say how big she really is anyway.

Baby Quilts

Baby quilts are my favorite kind to make. 1. You can do whatever you want, they don't have any preferences to consider. 2. They are always cute. 3. They are small so they only take from 3-10 days, depending on how complex and whether you do laundry and clean the house while you are working on it... ;)
This was for my friend in our ward having her 3rd little girl. I mostly used scraps I already had, so bonus!

And since it was the 3rd girl the older sisters needed some doll quilts to match so hopefully when those moments come when they want to be a little 'too' helpful they can be diverted to the dolls...

This was for my very best friend who is having a little boy after 2 girls. Ever since I heard it would be a boy I've had the idea floating in my head that I wanted to do a quilt based on the poem What Are Little Boys Made Of? This is what I came up with. It was so fun to make because I got to do lots of different quilting methods. Regular piecing, paper piecing, applique, and embroidery, then I machine quilted it. I love the way it turned out. I had a small mishap when my embroidery machine gummed up on the last line of the poem, but luckily it resulted in only a small tear that I was able to patch. No way did I want to start over, it took FOREVER to get it all centered and stitched!

A close up of the cute doggies on both of the quilts. I love the little 3D feet that hang off. Fun fun!

This was for friends from law school having their first baby. Josh, the dad, and some other friends threw us a baby shower when we were expecting Kegan, even though we'd only known them a month or so. And they even got presents for Kiara, which is incredibly thoughtful. So I knew I wanted to make something special for them when we heard they were expecting.

Missionary Cake

I got to make this cake for a friend in our ward. Her son's birthday was the same day as his farewell, so if you look close, Happy Birthday is written on one of the stripes of the tie. This combined my clothing making skills with my cake making skills since I had to figure out how to make the collars 3D.