Wordless Wednesday (sort of)

I'm going to try and get my blog up and running again so I'm catching the coattails of many other bloggers and posting a "Wordless Wednesday." I'm not sure if any of mine will actually be wordless but I'll shoot for less each week.

Golf bag party in the parking lot! Jacob is taking a golf camp and it surprised and delighted me to see all the junior golf sets when I came to pick him up.

Yesterday was schedule pick-up for the new middle-school babies. It is hard to believe I have a child old enough for middle school; my parents were old when I was in middle school. Oh, how perceptions change!
Jacob and I walked through his schedule a few times and after practicing his lock a few times he finally got it. He seems more excited than scared so that makes the transition a bit easier, for me.

Up all night...

And unfortunately it isn't followed by "sleep all day."

Yesterday I was back at the doctor's office for this awful rash that has consumed my body. I was given a powerful antihistamine and was warned it would "knock me out" for 6-8 hours. I was apprehensive to take it because I have to get the kids up for school in the morning so I took it earlier than my bedtime so there was plenty of time for it to wear off.

Bedtime rolls around and I'm pretty awake, OK wide awake. I'm one of those weird people who has an opposite reaction to a medication. If I wasn't worried about waking people up I could have used my time productively and cleaned. OK, I wasn't really worried about anyone waking up; I was just being lazy and spent my time surfing the internet and updating the adoption blog in complete silence.

The best part of being awake all night? No, not all the noises that the house makes which I normally don't hear, and no, not the infomercials on every channel (did you know they have an adult toy home shopping show?! Who knew!).
It is the opportunity to see your children in their most angelic state of the day- ASLEEP.

Itchy Itchy

I'm covered in a rash
That's both speckled and red;
The worst time of day
Is when I'm lying in bed.
I've been to the doc,
And called on the phone.
Three visits and three calls,
I'm becoming well known.
They can't seem to figure out
Exactly why I'm itchy.
I hope they figure it out soon,
Because I'm getting quite bitchy.

Swimsuits

Today I offer you some advice, simply because I have nearly abandoned my blog recently and I am trying to make up for it.

Tip:
Do not call a store and trust the word of a male retail clerk when shopping for a little girl's swimsuit. Just don't.
If a male answers the phone when you call to check on sizes promptly reply with "sorry, I have the wrong number" or "oh, I was trying to reach the XYZ department." Be sure you pick a department that is far different than the little girls department to ensure he doesn't say "Oh, I can help you in that department too" because that is what will happen if you call unprepared. It is almost guaranteed that a clerk working in the girls department will not be handling air tools or appliances; then promptly hang up in mid-transfer.

As I'm sure most women understand a swim set should match. Pink tops with blue flowered bottoms is not what I consider a matching set. To his credit, they did have size 6 in a few pieces but not one of them made a matching set.

Berry Picking

I found a pick-your-own berry farm nearby so the kids and I set the alarm and got up early to go pick berries. Oh my, you can get way more berries than you intend when you have 3 kids picking! We ended up with 2 pints of raspberries and 8.5 pounds of strawberries! So right after picking we headed to the store in search of jelly jars and pectin. Emily and I spent the afternoon making 4 jars of raspberry jam and 8 jars of strawberry jam. It is seriously the best jam I have ever tasted, and not just because I made it. I'm really thinking about going back and picking a ton more berries and making jam to sell it; we are always looking for ways to raise money for our adoption.

Raspberry picking



Strawberry picking




All of our wonderful jam!

The Anniversary

So today was our 12 year anniversary. We reserved a babysitter for last night, enjoyed wine and chocolates after a fancy dinner and watched a great play at the Fox.

Insert record screech here...
Au contraire, mon frère.
Here is what we really did. I called four babysitters last week; one had her phone disconnected (how awesome are those parents?! Abuse it and lose it, which really sucks when that is the only number listed for the babysitter.), one listed phone number went to a business (and it wasn't the babysitting kind of business) and a set of twins didn't return my message. So, no babysitter for us.

We started today with no real plans but Emily talked us into loading up the bikes and going for a ride. We were all hungry and planned to eat at Subway prior to our bike ride but there wasn't a Subway around. In fact, the only restaurant around was an old, run-down Burger King. We did get to eat alone though, the kids wanted to sit at the "bar" adjacent to us. We got to pretend we were on a high school date at Burger King; burger shots are so fancy and all.

We then headed into the park and started riding. The weather wasn't bad, a bit warm and humid but such is life in these parts. Then, as I was trying really hard not to look like a pansy and walk my bike up a steep hill I stood up to pedal. Big mistake. I thrust my leg down and directly into a sharp point of my water bottle holder. It reads like a really lame story but it really hurt like... well, let's move on. As I sat on the pavement nursing my bleeding, bruised leg my wonderful husband of 12 glorious years cleaned me up and bandaged my leg. He even threw in a "Happy Anniversary" to make it all feel better. I pulled up my big girl pants and carried on.

We took a trail that led us through some very dense (HUMID!) woods and then let the kids play at a playground while we took an obligatory sweaty self-portrait, before heading back. We've picked one or two ticks off of ourselves but at least three off each child; the kids must taste better. So, Happy 12th Anniversary to my wonderful husband. Thank you for always rescuing me when you sense the chaos is about to dunk me underwater. You are the life ring I can always reach out and grab and know I am safe; I simply can't imagine life without you.

Cool Video

This commercial was shown during the American Idol finale.

Happy Birthday Jacob

Today my oldest "baby" turns 11. He's transitioned from asking for cars and trucks for his birthday to asking for I-Pods and CDs instead. When did all this happen?! I simply can't be old enough to have a child starting middle school in the fall.

A few things we love about Jacob:

* He remembers every.single.thing he reads or learns. This comes in handy when you are wondering how many light years separate the Earth and Jupiter or just how many teeth a shark has.
* He loves learning about how things work.

* He can be extremely helpful around the house; he'll even start laundry on his own sometimes!

* He is very passionate about what he believes in.

* He is very concerned with doing the right thing. We hope and pray this will help him overcome bad peer pressure as he matures.

* He is extremely intelligent and we know he will change the world in some way.

* He loves to mow the yard!

* He loves to read and will out read J and I any day of the week.

* He loves to act and entertain; he's a great storyteller too.

* He is a great big brother to Matthew, even though we know younger siblings can be annoying sometimes. Matthew looks up to Jacob for everything.

Jacob made his splash into the world 3.5 weeks early to two very young parents that had no idea what they were doing. The first time he cried J and I looked at each other and said "Now what?!" Somehow we've muddled through and I don't think we've messed him up yet; I credit that all to Jacob's resilience and forgiveness! Jacob teaches us that we all love in a different way and Jacob has already touched many people in his short 11 years.

Big News

Go check it out!

Cards

I'm slow this week and I'm getting my Mother's Day cards out late. Those that expect cards this weekend do not fear, you will have an early week surprise instead. I prefer to blame the postal service; if they delivered on Sunday my cards would not be late. Right?

Monday

I'm not a Monday hater but today is inching me every bit closer to being one. Here is my day: (and it's not even over so help me now)
Disclaimer: This post is riddled with curse words that I usually only think in my head but don't actually type. Today has been so great I've thrown a few in.

1. The oldest child will.not get out of bed. I allow natural consequences to teach him a lesson and he leaves for school without breakfast. 25% of me feels bad because I know he will be hungry but the other 75% hopes it leads to more mornings that he is not laying in bed for 45 minutes when he should be up. Puberty is chomping at the bit so I'm sure it will not only continue but get a hell of a lot worse.
2. Get all the paperwork ready to pick up the adoption documents at the secretary of state's office and send them off to the consulate in Chicago. This wasn't too hard since I've done two other packets.
3. On my way downtown I stop and have lunch with J; that was nice. (which is good because the day goes to complete crap shortly thereafter)
4. I reach for the GPS to find my way downtown without driving myself into a neighborhood where I really should not be. The GPS isn't there so I call J to catch him before leaving the parking lot so I could get it from his car; he does not have it.
5. After some discussion we come to the conclusion that the GPS was stolen from the van last night. The ONE night we left the van unlocked and the ONE time we left the GPS mount suctioned to the windshield just happens to the one night that some craptastic criminal is looking to make a buck. The craptastic criminal was very polite though; they left my black pouch in the middle console where they found it, zipped shut no less!
6. I get lost on my way downtown due to the craptastic criminal stealing my GPS and end up next to a vehicle whose passenger is physically demonstrating how he beat in someone's face to the driver. Upon the next stop light I quickly did a U turn in the middle of the road; I can't tell you how much I love the tight turning radius on my Sienna. I love it so much I may just buy another one when the time comes; it probably just saved my life today.
7. My wonderful husband became my personal GPS and directed me over the phone. Once reaching downtown I had to call twice more because I was driving in circles among the one way roads...Lost AGAIN due to the craptastic criminal.
8. I parked...Parallel parked! Hallelujah, something is going right.
9. My documents were ready and they were ALL there. This is good because the secretary of state is really not someone you should lose your temper with.
10. Upon leaving I see a Kinko's and stop there to make some copies so I don't have to come all the way home to make the copies and then leave again to drop off the FedEx envelope. I quickly learned how to run the Kinko's copy machine and wow, that works much better than my scanner/printer/copier at home! I need a money order to pay the Chinese Consulate fees; they don't issue money orders but the convenience store two doors down does.
11. The convenience store will only accept cash for the money order payment; every other store has accepted debit. I don't have $225 cash on me and I don't have a GPS to pawn so I hit the ATM. At this point I'm starting to get a bit flustered but I am remaining calm. I step over to the ATM to withdraw the $225 and the ATM says; "screw you, I don't have $225 either. The most you can get from me is $200."
12. So I leave and head for the van but then I see a bank and a cashier's check is accepted at the consulate. I don't have an account at the bank but I thought I'd try anyway. I pull every card that I have in my purse...bat the eyelashes, talk real nice, it's for an adoption, we don't have a local bank, yada, yada, yada. No Go.
13. So I give up and leave downtown but not before getting lost TWO more times because my friggin GPS is gone.
14. Two hours later I finally made it back towards my house and go to Wal-Mart. I know some people really have the hate relationship thing for Wal-Mart but today, I ♥ Wal-Mart. I was able to get my stupid money order (and found out they have the cheapest money order fees), replace my kids' toothbrushes left at Nana's house this weekend and buy Matthew a cheap pair of tennis shoes to get him through the next few days until the shoe left behind gets mailed home. Bless you Wal-Mart.

The police came and took a report for the stolen GPS; maybe they will help it find it's way home. HA, GPS humor. I hope Bitchin' Betty is annoying somebody else this evening. I can only hope she is stuck saying "recalculating....do a U turn."

I was able to get the kids to eat every bit of dinner on their plates this evening. Want to know the secret? Hold strawberries dipped in chocolate over their heads until they eat their chicken. All of a sudden the chants of "chicken again? But we have chicken every night" turns into "wow, this chicken is great!"

For the birds

Last week I wanted to grill some chicken for dinner. I went outside to start the grill and imagine my surprise when I opened the lid and found this:

What in the world?! I originally jumped because I didn't expect to find my grill full of the scraps of my backyard but then I really freaked when I realized that an animal, most likely a nasty, dirty, poopy bird placed all these scraps here. I nearly peed in my pants when the thought of one very pissed off, nasty bird would come flying out to attack me. Thankfully I opened the grill while they were out for dinner so I wasn't attacked. We had to completely sterilize the grill before I would put food on it. I've opened the grill every day and the persistent little feathered creatures won't give up; they start over on their nest every day. Well, this morning I just left the grill lid open so we'll see if they are birds that enjoy voyeurism.

On a completely different song note...
The school was having the spring carnival this weekend and I volunteered to bake goodies for the cake walk. I found some very cute bluebird cupcakes online and decided to make two dozen for the school. I had decided this before I found nasty bird remnants in my grill, otherwise I wouldn't be making any cutesy bird products.These cupcakes are supposed to resemble a bird nest with three baby birds tweeting for some food. I quietly relish in the fact that someone ate the heads of these birds. OK no, I'm not some deep dark personality that likes to harm animals. But, if these birds don't stay out of my grill...

My baby is 7!

Happy Birthday Matthew!
I can't believe my youngest child, my little sweet boy, my baby is actually 7 years old today. Matthew decided to make a grand entrance and cause a lot of hub-bub commotion 7 years ago and he didn't stop there. A few things about Matthew:
1. He loves to build. He will build with anything he can find and has the most creative ideas. (in fact, his teacher had to remove a stack of paper from behind his desk because every time she looked up he was folding paper to build sculptures; is it bad that I laughed?)
2. He loves anything to do with Egypt and mummies; he knows more about mummies than I ever cared to learn. The grosser, the better.
3. I am convinced he will be an archaeologist when he grows up but if that doesn't work out he will be an architect.
4. He idolizes his big brother, Jacob and even said he wanted to have the same job Jacob does as an adult so they can be together.
5. He will climb any and every tree he can find; the picture is proof. He was actually climbing the small tree so he could reach the bottom branch of the huge tree. He has named that tree "The Grandfather Tree;" because I guess it has to as old as a grandfather?
6. He will ruin every shirt and pair of pants I buy with mud or holes from sticks. I have given up and started letting him wear his holey jeans because he thinks it's cool.
7. Despite his mummy loving, tree hugging, clothes ruining characteristics he has the softest heart of any boy I know. He has always been a cuddler.
8. He is very sensitive but also tries very hard to not show others he might be crying; "I've got something in my eyes" is his favorite cover-up for tears.
9. He is a great friend.
10. He is a wonderful son and he makes me a better person. I might have gray hair before he graduates from high school but he is going to give us a ride we'll never forget.

Adoption Fundraiser

We are thinking of several different ways to raise funds for our adoption and our first attempt is a Tastefully Simple catalog party through a consultant will donate 50% of her profits towards our adoption. Fill up on some good, EASY food while helping us bring our new girl home! (I can't wait until we get matched and decide on her name so we can stop saying "new girl, new sister or new daughter!") Click on the Tastefully Simple logo to order through our fundraiser.

My favorites are the beer bread mix and the almond pound cake. The beer bread can be made with any carbonated beverage making the possibilities endless! Check out the recipe section for many different uses for both products.

Easter dress

Here are the kids before we went to the Easter service at church.

I started making Emily's dress about a month before Easter and then procrastinated the finish work until a few days before. That dress is heavy, it has to weigh at least 4 lbs! It has a ton of material in the skirt and it is also fully lined. She loves it so that makes me happy.

Tie-Dye Eggs

I saw a blurb on TV about dying eggs with printed silk from neckties, scarfs or blouses. It looked really cool and I thought it might afford me one year in church with fingers that weren't blue, green and red. So I headed to the second hand store to buy a few ties because I have a husband who does not enjoy wearing items knotted around his neck.

Find yourself some old silk ties or scarves in the closet or hit the second hand store as I did. Also find some white material, it can be muslin or even an old pillowcase.
Cut both materials into squares big enough to wrap up around an egg.
Wrap egg with silk material, printed side towards egg, and fasten with a twist tie. Wrap white material around the silk and secure it with a twist tie.
I buy drawstring trash bags so I did not have twist ties lying around. I headed to the grocery store to find they don't sell a package of twist ties. I could have bought a box of trash bags that use twist ties but I thought that would be pretty useless. So instead, Emily and I got some fresh produce and accidently dropped some twist ties into the bags. Oopsie

Boil your eggs for 20-25 minutes in a non-reactive pot with 1/4 cup white vinegar. Immediately place eggs into an ice bath (this gets rid of that funky green coated yolk) until cool enough to handle.

Have fun unwrapping your eggs!

Easter Cake

I had planned on making this cake with the kids this weekend but they were downstairs playing so nicely that I decided to spend some therapy time in the kitchen baking; just me and my Kitchen Aid. There is one thing that I have learned beyond "never wake a sleeping baby" and that is never ask questions when all three kids are playing nicely.

J and I have done Weight Watchers for three months without any baked goods in the house so I thought we'd splurge this weekend...sort of. I took this recipe out of Family Circle magazine and tweaked it a bit. OK, after looking at the recipe and picture I guess I kind of took this cake as the inspiration and pretty much changed every part of it.

Original:
http://www.parents.com/recipe/layer-cakes/oreos-n-cream-cake/

Now my cake with changes made to be a bit more friendly to those of us who need to fit into the majority of the clothes hanging in the closet.

Cake:
1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour
2/3 cup Dutch-process cocoa powder
1-1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup (1-1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, lite margarine sticks, softened
1-1/2 cups granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 large eggs, at room temperature
1-1/4 cups buttermilk skim milk with 1 1/4 tbsp. lemon juice to make buttermilk

Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease 2 8” circle pans.
Mix dry ingredients (first 5). Beat butter sugar and vanilla for 3 minutes, add eggs 1 at a time. Slowly beat flour into sugar mixture, alternating with buttermilk. (Begin and end with flour mixture.) Divide into two pans and bake 34 minutes. Cool 10 minutes and turn cakes out.
Bakers Note: If I had regular margarine sticks I would have used those. Due to my longing desire to fit into the clothes in my closet I only stock lite margarine sticks in the fridge. The batter gets pretty runny after adding the eggs when using the lite margarine but the cakes appear to have baked fine. Also, it took a bit of extra flour to make a cake batter consistency so either plan on using a bit more flour or a bit less buttermilk. Consider your kitchen a mad science lab!

Filling: (original filling completely scrapped)
1 container fat free Cool Whip
2 tbsp. cocoa powder
2 tbsp. sugar

Divide each cake layer in half.
Mix all ingredients until smooth and then spread 1/3 of mixture between the cake layers.

Frosting: (original filling completely scrapped)
1 container fat free cool whip
3 cups crushed Oreos

Spread cool whip over cake. Place crushed oreos on sides of cake.

The original cake is 13 points per piece (16 servings). My diet twist is 5 points per piece (16 servings).
I can say that the cake was completely gone in two days, so I guess it was edible even with the diet twist.

More veggie soup

Another dose of blogger vegetable soup; if you don't like vegetable soup imagine chicken noodle or french onion- just stay away from the clam chowder. I don't like stinky blogs.

Whenever I go out I look for hidden treasures that other people overlook and try to figure out a way to fix it up and use it. All that means is I like junk; I look for junk and then try to find a way to make it pretty junk that I will use in my house. Sometimes it works, and other times i just make the junk even more junky so I toss it out.

Last week I found this lovely, painted mirror for a mere $16. The frame around it was great and the mirror even had a bevel around it. I would have paid a lot more for just a mirror, let alone a frame as well. Only one problem; it was ugly! Copper looking paint doesn't match a darn thing in my house and I can only imagine that is why it was still sitting on the clearance shelf. But I was able to look beyond the hideous, gaudy colored frame so I bought it and bought a can of spray paint the same day.

Here is the painted version in our bedroom. Every time I bring home of these ugly gems my husband always gives me a look. It is the same look every time which says "that is ugly, very ugly and what do you plan on doing with it in our house?" I always tell him my grand plan and I still get the look, only now it has transformed into "that won't work, but have a nice time trying honey." He hung my mirror for me a couple days ago; enough said.

Last weekend the fifth graders got to take a trip to the science center and sleep there overnight. I didn't think a mom with a group of 10-11 year old boys was a stellar idea so I volunteered J. I could tell the second I saw him Saturday morning that it was a long night on a very hard floor. Although, I think he secretly had a good time wagering bets with the boys on how much pizza they could eat.
(Doesn't Jacob look like a mini-me of J?!)


And finally, here is a picture of the kids' bathroom. We have had ducks in our kids bathroom for four years so I figured it was about time to change to something else. I painted the walls a very light lime green and added turquoise rugs and the brightly striped shower curtain. It is like a color explosion in there! Even with the new theme we still refer to it as the "ducky bathroom" because "stripey bathroom" just doesn't have the same flow.

Your reward

Thank you to all the family members who will soon be receiving three seperate post cards, all containing the same information. Every year at school the kids bring home a packet of post cards to address to friends and family with the hopes that they will be suckered into buying a magazine subscription with money coming back to the school. Some years I'm able to quietly dispose of them, but not this year. An assembly and promise of a great toy made it impossible to wrangle these post card packets out of their dirty, long fingernailed (yes, I say that is a word) hands this year. All three of them were so eager to get their straw glasses.

So, without further ado...I give you your reward for accepting three offers of exactly the same thing and so lovingly disposing of them, for me.

Toes and more

What do you think the purpose is of the little toe? You know, the short little stubby stub at the end of your line of toes; what is that thing there for? Do we really need to spread our weight out among five toes, one of those being a little stubby stub that barely grows a toenail? I think the little toe is simply there to act as our spatial guide and to loudly let us know when we get too close to something. Think of it like a cat's whiskers determining the space they can fit into. My spatial awareness is quite off; like a swollen stubby stub little toe with no nail- off. OK, very off. I'm about to invest in steel-toed shoes.

When you eat whatever you want regardless of calories that would include eating the full fat, full sugar chocolate. Do the manufacturers kindly guide you to the amount you should eat? Nope, they will even sell you a king size version.

What happens when you decide to try and lose weight thus requiring you to buy the sugar free chocolate? You just want to enjoy a little bit of chocolate flavor after all.

Why do they put that suggestion on the DIET chocolate but not the full fat, full sugar variety? Isn't that a bit backwards?

This- This is why they tell you to eat sugar free chocolate in moderation.

Sorry for the poor pictures; my camera is also revolting against the diet chocolate.

Absent

Some of you may have noticed that I am blogging far less these days. If you didn't let's just pretend you did; for me, OK?

Anyway, we are adopting! I have been very focused the past several weeks to get our adoption off and running and it has been an insane amount of paperwork. I researched anything and every thing I could find for over a year and the amount of paperwork still surprised me.

I am reserving this blog for our chaotic, comical moments so I started a separate blog detailing our adoption journey. You can find a link to our adoption blog on the right, titled, "Five, Six...Pick Up Sticks"
Follow along as we work through the mountain of paperwork, rolls of tape and immense joy of adopting our next child...a daughter from China.

A word from Jacob

One morning last week I was in my room getting ready while the kids were also getting ready for school and I overheard the following conversation.

Matthew- Yea, but what is a depression?
Jacob- It was when companies couldn't afford to pay people so they lost their job and then when they looked for a new job they couldn't find one so they had to travel somewhere else and that meant that families were spilt up and separated. Then because their family was split-up they became sad and depressed; that is why it is called the depression- because so many people were depressed.

I did take the opportunity to tell him that an economic depression is different than medical depression but when you stop and think about it; it makes complete sense.

Last night we were discussing a savings account with Jacob. He decided he wanted to open a savings account with his few dollars in change so he could start earning interest and getting more money. We revisited the idea of the 401 P, as in 401 Parents, with matching contribution. We have told the kids for a couple of years now that whatever money they present to buy a car at the age of 16, we will match it. So that got Jacob's wheels turning and J sat him down at eBay to find what $1000-$2000 will buy him compared to $3000-$4000. He looked for awhile and then came into eat dinner.

Later that night I found a sheet of paper with Jacob's requested car features.
-tinted windows
-tilt steering wheel
-tachometer
-split fold down rear seat
-rear window defog

I nearly busted a gut laughing when I saw this list.

Happy Birthday Emily!

Nine years ago today I was lying in a hospital bed, crying and begging for the doctors to induce me. My dear daughter had overstayed her welcome by one week and J would be leaving for a week in two short days. It was imperative that I put the "Closed" sign on my womb and evict the tenant. The doctor's finally relented and decided to induce my labor. I tried to tell them that I'd be no trouble, my babies come quick and I wouldn't use too much of their time. They didn't believe me.

From the start of Pitocin to a bouncing, screaming baby girl in my arms was 2 1/2 hours. I secretly love proving people wrong; one labor nurse in particular.

It is hard to believe my little girl is 9 years old today. Here are a few things I love about Emily.

* She has a very caring heart and is always thinking of other people.

* She loves any type of crafts, making for a great craft partner.

* She has beautiful eyes that are a color of her own. Her eyes are a grayish green that doesn't match anyone in the entire family.

* She has beautiful, thick hair. She often likes to complain about how thick her hair is and I remind her that she didn't have a choice; it is a trait that she comes by honestly.

* She makes friends easily but then does not forget them when we move her around often. She will have many friends all over the country by the time she graduates.

* She loves little children and is wonderful with them; she will make an excellent babysitter in a few years.

* She likes to bake and cook.

* She is an excellent student whom the teachers always love.

* She is extremely responsible for her age.

We will be taking Emily and three of her friends to lunch and a movie on Saturday to celebrate.

Bottomless Pit

So it has started. I knew when I gave birth to two boys that a few years down the road I would be needing to make grocery store trips a couple times a week and a family meal at a fast food restaurant would cost more than a sit down meal for J and myself.

Last week I took the kids to Subway before we took the dog to training. Each child ate a 6 inch sub; so much for the kids meal subs. Then 1 1/2 hours later both boys were clutching their stomach and whining "I'm starving, Mom!" Yes, because you know a 6 inch sub is not nearly enough to feed a 6 and 10 year old boy; what was a I thinking?

I dread the sounds my bank account will be making as we get through the full teenage years.

A little thought for your food

Every woman loves chocolate, right? OK, well I have met a few loose nuts that say they don't like chocolate and I wonder if they've ever had their estrogen levels checked because that just doesn't sound normal.

But, have you ever wondered where your chocolate comes from? I learned last year that most big name chocolate manufacturers actually buy their cocoa from plantations that use child labor. Here is a photo slide show that msnbc.com posted online this morning showing cocoa production in Ivory Coast, Africa. And here is an article detailing the child labor at cocoa plantations.

This Valentine's Day I urge you to pay a little bit extra to buy chocolates from a fair trade manufacturer. It will cost more than the chocolate bars that saturate the market but I have found it tastes a bit sweeter when I know the workers on the beginning end of my chocolate bar were paid fair wages for their work and more importantly- were not children.

To find retailers near you that sell Fair Trade Certified products, click here.

To view a list of chocolate brands that are presumably slave-free, click here.

The kitchen

I've never posted a kitchen after we finally finished the wood floor. We finished off the floor around Thanksgiving but the kitchen has not been showcase clean until this week. We were preparing for our first visit from the social worker for our home study so all the island paper weights were hidden in the cabinets.